Aliens Exist: Yes
Aliens Visit Earth: Nope
Aliens look anything like us:Nope

Probability of a fanatic religious group gaining power and enslaving the aliens should they visit earth by claiming they don't look like us therefore aren't sentient: 85.3%

Probability of world war due to aliens landing in say Russia and USA nuking Russia because America thinks that Russia now has technology that could threaten them. : 94:5%

Probability of war with Aliens should they land on earth: 74.3%

Don't be so sure about that.
It may well be the case that only bi-peds with highly prehensile hands have
a high chance of developing as complex intelligence as us.

OR, we can't accept a non-bipedal life-form being as sentient as us.

The point of it is to merely establish the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations within our own galaxy which we may come into contact with. It's really not hard to make conjectures on the subject, when all you need do is model it off our own planet.

There definitely is. Just use common sense to reach that conclusion.

Again, though, this is where you use common sense. Do you really think that all this:

http://mail.colonial.net/~rpavlik/sc...ep%20space.jpg

. . .has no life in it whatsoever? There are 10,000 galaxies in that photograph alone, and it doesn't even cover a fraction of the visible sky.

That is certainly a possibility, but it seams more likely that other intelligent
beings would be bi-peds if we assume that the conditions required for
intelligent life are somewhat universal i.e. Earth-like.

At various times on earth completely separated groups of animals in similar
environments have followed similar evolutionary paths. Nature tends to tackle
the same problems in the same ways.

The formula establishes nothing. One of its factors is totally impossible to calculate (the odds of a planet sustaining life) and several of the other factors are easily fudged to generate any possibilities that you care to.



One mans common sense is another mans folly. Your common sense is folly. You have no way of knowing whether there is any other life in the universe or not. It seems that a "scientific" person, such as you claim to be, would demand proof (or at least evidence) of said life.



Again, this is where you use common sense. Do you really believe that all of that just came from nowhere? If I used that kind of "common sense" in a debate regarding the existence of God, I'd be laughed out of the room by the so called "scientific" types (I believe you fall into that category). Why should I accept that "logic" when you're attempting to argue your point?



Having said all that, I do believe that there is probably life out there, but I don't know it to be a fact and your formula doesn't prove it to anyone.

How?

I wonder... If on anouther planet... in anouther galaxy... if they are haveing a conversation like this one.:rotfl:

Obviously....if it was your school spelling book that they read :DL

Most assuredly so, and accomplishing just as much as this one:D

What's interesting is that you can apply all the logic you want to this subject, but everything changes when you actually see one of these things. At that point, your life changes and logic goes out the window.

In my case, I wasn't looking at some distant object in the sky through a grainy quality domestic camcorder, I was looking at a huge, silent object, hovering about 500 feet from me and about 100 feet in the air.

I had two choices; become part of the whole UFO thing by reporting it, or simply take it as an incredible personal experience. I chose the latter.

The same way we get all good knowledge.
We look at the refutable evidence for the hypothesis and use various tools of
reasoning to decide if the evidence makes the hypothesis more than likely.

Either:
A) There will be enough evidence for us to reason that the hypothesis is
more likely than not. In this case we can say that we know the hypothesis
to be true to some degree of certainty, however small.
or
B) There will not be enough evidence for us to reason that the hypothesis
is more likely than not. In this case we can say that we know the
hypothesis to be false to some degree of certainty, however small.

I can't imagine a situation in which the evidence we have makes it
impossible to reason one way or the other. Only refusal to do so would
result in a 'I don't know' answer.

:shifty:Howd ya know.:shifty::rotfl:

Jim... did they try to beam you up and take you home as a pet also.. lol:rotfl:

In other words, you make an educated guess.

Of course :DL


http://planetsmilies.net/alien-smiley-126.gif

I just figured out why hunter dowent like those facehuggers.:rotfl:

In so far as all our knowledge is the result of educated guesses, including things like "does the moon exist?", yes; one makes an educated guess.

well, I can. Very often. Easily. As Paul Watzlawick once put it so very laconic and precise on a German-language speech: "Die 'Wirklichkeit', die wir mit unseren Sinnen wahrzunehmen glauben, wird von uns weniger gefunden als vielmehr erfunden." - "The 'reality' that we believe to perceive by our senses not so much gets found but more gets invented by us."

i wonder what "evidence" with regard pro or contra UFOs, that is beyond doubt to be taken as that, you consider to be sop special and unique and beyond dohb t that you dare to make a statement like the above. You seem to think that either science or human logic/reason/ratio has made "unthinkable" the theme or object which ti cannot adequately deral with. Having read quite a lot oif books on UFOs in a now quite distant past have cionvinced me of the opposite.

The only thing we can be really sure of is that humans have a very strong tendency to anthropomorphise and/or to reduce the rest of the universe to scales and standards human thinking is fit for. Intelligence researchers often say that probably we would be completely unable to recognise an intelligence that is either a.) too much superior to ours or is b.) too low beyond our level, as "intelligence". To think that our rationals are adequate to describe the rest of the universe in all it's diverse complexity, is just an expression of that antropomoprhising tendency, though a very arrogant (and by that: maybe typical human) one.

Science is no objective effort of finding truths. I arranges both random and arbitrary-systematic observations into artifical orders that matches the way we do observations, to improce our way to make further observations. Ultimate triuthgs is not so much our goal, although we make ourselves believeing that. to carry on with our same old ways - that is what science is after. Science wants to maintain itself. the way it does that is called the current "paradigm". sometimes paradiogms get replaced. but the new paradigms just fit better the purporse to make observations in a new, different weay, and sort them into categories and artificial orders. However, these new orders and categories are as arbitrary as before. They are just different.

the only way you can find out real truths about the universe your senses communicate to you, is by exmaining your own mind. If you want to know how the universe functions, find our how mind is functioning. If there would not be your mind, you even do not know if there is really something called a "universe". the ways and mechnisms by which your mind is forming the universe "in your mind" - decides the very shape of this universe.

So how can you be so sure like you claim you can be? ;) Don't get fooled by yourself.

The truth is out there....does anyone know the Url? :hmmm:

I don't know it, but if you Google it, you might find it:D