I can not recall how many times I've heard a scientist or skeptic on TV say something along the line of "A highly advanced alien race would probably regard humans as nothing, but insects. (sometimes cattle)" Likewise I can not tell you how much I disagree with that. Wait, I can!
Human history is riddled with "civilized" humans encountering other humans that we often consider "savage" or uncultured. For the most part we also disrespected many of these cultures by forcing our beliefs on them or enslaving them. And while today there are some groups and individuals who would still prefer to do the above, we have more regard for cultures that aren't part of the "modern world". In fact we are more curious about them then anything else, but at the same time hesitant to contact them for their good and ours. (Exposure to our diseases which isolated tribes have no immunity to can wipe them out. Some of these tribes aren't exactly the most friendly to outsiders either.)
I feel that an extra-terrestrial culture would probably react to us in one of the many ways mentioned above. If our history as a civilized species in full of it, an E.T. civilization would probably be as well, both the good and bad elements. That also means that they'd probably recognize us as being intelligent (at least to an extent) and would either try to communicate with us (for good or bad) or leave us alone for reasons they view as being good. However, until we have open and regular communication with an E.T. society, the best way to study how one would behave is to study ourselves.
Some related reading/examples:
Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes - Daily Mail Online
Article about the same tribe - BBC News
Wikipedia on slavery
Native American Timeline of Events
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Is there an evolutionary advantage to telepathy?
While reading UFO Magazine today, one of the articles was talking about a book about this new agey guy who thinks that "star beings" are going to help us develop telepathy in order for us to move to a new spiritual level. In one sense, it's a cool idea, but then I tried to think about what the advantage would be to telepathy.
We humans prefer to think of ourselves as individuals, albeit social individuals and for the most part it works. Sure we can be selfish, but we value our privacy from time to time, and for the creative types that can be crucial. If we suddenly found ourselves with telepathy however, our minds would be open to anyone (or anything) close enough to us to hear thoughts. Unless there was a means to block people from reading our brains or we started thinking the same, I doubt we'd be able to walk down the street without hearing stuff we don't want to, or don't need to hear. Heck, there is enough of that without the telepathy.
From an evolutionary perspective, I see almost no reason for telepathy to develop. There are some situations where perhaps a species could develop something similar, such pack predators who rely on silence, but still need to communicate, but I feel it is unlikely that it would. Also like this article from Hard SF mentions, if a species already has other means of communication, the development of telepathy is doubtful and having multiple means of communication ourselves (vocal or visual) I find it unlikely we'd develop telepathy to replace any of them.
Overall I feel the idea is fantasy more then anything, at least for Earth based life. I will admit that it could develop elsewhere as a form of communication, maybe even in aliens who might be visiting our planet. And while I do feel that we as people need to evolve more spiritually or philosophically, I don't see how telepathy would help, in fact it would probably do more harm then good.
We humans prefer to think of ourselves as individuals, albeit social individuals and for the most part it works. Sure we can be selfish, but we value our privacy from time to time, and for the creative types that can be crucial. If we suddenly found ourselves with telepathy however, our minds would be open to anyone (or anything) close enough to us to hear thoughts. Unless there was a means to block people from reading our brains or we started thinking the same, I doubt we'd be able to walk down the street without hearing stuff we don't want to, or don't need to hear. Heck, there is enough of that without the telepathy.
From an evolutionary perspective, I see almost no reason for telepathy to develop. There are some situations where perhaps a species could develop something similar, such pack predators who rely on silence, but still need to communicate, but I feel it is unlikely that it would. Also like this article from Hard SF mentions, if a species already has other means of communication, the development of telepathy is doubtful and having multiple means of communication ourselves (vocal or visual) I find it unlikely we'd develop telepathy to replace any of them.
Overall I feel the idea is fantasy more then anything, at least for Earth based life. I will admit that it could develop elsewhere as a form of communication, maybe even in aliens who might be visiting our planet. And while I do feel that we as people need to evolve more spiritually or philosophically, I don't see how telepathy would help, in fact it would probably do more harm then good.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Triangular UFO seen in Portland
Well the first reported Oregon UFO sighting of October has been posted over at MUFON . Again this one reportedly contained multiple eyewitnesses (hopefully more come forward) and was of an apparent triangular object. Full account of sighting can be read here: Triangle UFO, three gray lights underneath moving west to east
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