there is a zero chance we’ve made contact with non Earth life
Yeah! Because heavier than air flight is impossible, and there’s no way aliens could hold enough helium to fly to another planet!
(Our ideas about what is possible change as our technology advances)
People tend to misapply this argument frequently. It is definitely a bit excessive to say there is zero chance, but still.
It’s less about what is possible, and more about what is likely. Our understanding of physics (and by extension, reality) is extremely advanced. There isn’t much that is going to surprise us going forward. Even relativity and quantum theory didn’t make Newtonian mechanics obsolete, they simply covered the fringe cases.
I just hate when people imply that we might suddenly learn that we were completely wrong about everything. It’s dismissive of the scientists who have given their lives to bring humanity to this level of understanding the universe.
I think when people imply we might suddenly learn that we were completely wrong about everything they are actually talking about how fast science seems to evolve these days, at the very least the public’s understanding of science.
I have coworkers with who i can talk about 3+ dimensions, quantum mechanics, time travel, uap and while none of us are experts in any of those fields it no longer feels like we should be wearing a tinfoil hat simply for being fascinated by such topics because we now understand these are real (nuanced) scientific topics and not “something from the movies”.
Ufology, at least what we saw in Congress recently, is not remotely in the same boat as quantum, higher level dimensions, or time travel in terms of being a real scientific topic.
The other stuff I’ve all heard discussed seriously by actual non crackpot employed physicists.
If an alien civilization was developed by the same survival mechanism as on earth, they’d value survival and expansion over things like discovery. So if an alien civilization had gotten to earth, it’d be advanced enough to have strip minded or taraformed the whole planet by now. And why wouldn’t they, since we’d be the intelligence of ants comparatively
Why would they strip mine earth when there are so many other planets around? There’s no point
Lots of water, useful for fuel. We also don’t see evidence of resource collection elsewhere
Well I’m a Star Trek fan, and I’m optimistic that maybe the community between the stars is less narrow minded than the people on Earth today
Maybe climate change is the reason why. It’s a great filter that requires long term thinking and global cooperation to overcome. Maybe all the species similar to modern humanity end up polluting themselves back to the stone age and have to try again.
