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Post by cuthbertj on Dec 14, 2011 14:00:09 GMT -5
Whenever I think about UFOs I think about Clarke's 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguisable from magic. I think too, how would someone from 2000 years ago think about what they'd consider a UFO. How would they think about investigating what they saw? Chances are they'd think in completely human terms, and even their stretches of imagination would be in human terms, and terms dictated by their current technology.
Let's say the Wright brothers got zapped back in time and made a few flights. Observers from 2000 years ago would probably think they saw something very fast. They might speculate that the beings have developed special seeds for the birds they've learned to fly on. It would never occur to them that a combustable liquid was combined with electricity to power an engine, etc.
And how would one person prove the flight took place? Maybe they'd look for bird droppings. They'd never think to (and couldn't) test a sample of air for engine fumes.
So how are we any different? I watched a show the other day featuring scientists trying to explain (and kind of debunk) means of UFO traveling to earth. It occurred to me that every idea they discussed was our current day equivalent of "special seeds".
My point is, while we can't just say anything goes, we also have to be careful not to think too anthropomorphically.
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Post by jeffdanielk on Dec 19, 2011 18:19:29 GMT -5
I totally agree with you. Very well written, Cuthbertj.
A human civilization from 1000 years ago would have no chance of ever understanding the technology of a jet plane. So how could we possibly ever understand (let alone reverse-engineer) the technology of a more intelligent species millions or billions of years ahead of us? It would be like a monkey trying to comprehend and then rebuild a computer!
Alien beings would do things that would certainly appear to us to be magic. They would seem like gods in comparison to us.
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Post by avalonswan on Dec 20, 2011 14:05:07 GMT -5
@ jeff Not to be critical of you, but critically thinking, I think you just stepped in or illuminated what cuthbertj was trying to get across with your quote above. I think cuthbertj was trying to say that we need to think outside of the box when contemplating anything related to UFO's!
I would expand this just a bit and say that we need to be reasoned in our approach to thinking about UFO phenomena. Anthropology does have a good idea of how we perceive future hardware due to studies done to Indonesian tribes who witnessed aircraft from WWII for the first time. Some mistook them for Gods and even went so far as to emulate the planes with reed statues after the planes left at the close of WWII. So we have a really good example if not total understanding of how a primitive people can perceive advanced technology. We have since then been able to analyze and build upon this information to better understand our own issues concerning trying to understand advanced technology and UFO studies.
This said, I’d say that even 1000 years ago man, while not completely understanding of what made a flying machine fly, would be able to draw conclusions that perhaps some day we could fly! Remember that Da Vinci made drawings of craft he could never build himself, but his reasoned brain could dream of. We dreamed up Star Wars and Star Trek, so even though we are not to sure how anything could get here per say, we can and have begun to constructively think about how it may be possible.
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Post by darkcrow555 on Dec 20, 2011 14:42:05 GMT -5
Its amazing to think thousands of years ago, these UFOs were seen as gods. But these days if these things showed them self s to the world, we would call them something different. Aliens, extra terrestrials or what ever. The thing is, there not even alien to our world. They have been here as long or longer then humans them self s. But really they are showing them self s. And our people in power are saying they are not even here, even tho they have been seen thousands of years ago to now, What are the powers at hand so afraid of?
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Post by cuthbertj on Dec 21, 2011 13:02:50 GMT -5
Interesting about studies done of "natives" perception of advanced technology.
I think too about the character "Q" on Star Trek. I can't recall how advanced his civilization was but I think it was something like hundreds of thousands of years more than humans. And that'd be almost nothing compared to the age of the universe.
So we think, even in our wildest imagination, of mostly mechanical, mechanical-bio hybrid terms. But like the fictional Q there might be life forms that have gone way WAY beyond even that.
I wonder if we're just some alien kids SIMS game! How could we prove otherwise?
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Post by jeffdanielk on Dec 21, 2011 18:10:00 GMT -5
Most people seem to think of alien races similar to Vulcans or Klingons; at our level of intelligence but just a little bit more scientifically advanced. There may be some races out there at our level, but I believe the majority of them will be similar to Q's race. They would be so far above us that we could not even comprehend them.
There are several philosophy articles in respected journals that argue that our whole existence is computer simulation on some alien's supercomputer. There would be no way for us to know if this were the case or not. (Unless the alien programmers left us clues or told us). This possiblity was the theme of a couple very good episodes of Star Trek TNG involving the holodeck and Prof. Moriarti.
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