Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor says

[sojourner]

Re: Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor s

There are no "known extraterrestrial species".

 

[Taylirious]

Re: Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor s

^ Tru dat!

 

[JES]

Re: Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor s

The main problem that I have with conspiracy theories having to do with known extraterrestrial species is that they all seem to be humanoid.

Okay, I could take the Greys as a single coincidence, and according to the story, the Reptilians/Alpha Draconians claim they were dropped into our space/universe by some unknown higher power, so they could count as beings from another reality.

But then there are the Pleaidians, who are described as looking like Nordics, the Sirians and Lyrans, who are claimed to have created us (obviously in their image), and the list goes on. But it seems that alien races that are vastly different from us are rare.

The consistent thing about UFO claims is the stunning lack of imagination in them. Looking over the history, the descriptions of the UFO aliens always conform to the dominant media images of aliens in the era in question. In the late '40s and early '50s, they were described as little green men; in the B-movie age of the later '50s, they were big scary monsters; and in the '60s, when TV aliens were usually just actors in fancy dress, UFO aliens came to be described as idealized humanoids. The "Gray" image actually debuted in a '60s book as a conjectural image of what humans might evolve into in a million years -- although looking back now, that conjecture was clearly based on cultural biases and assumptions about evolution and what traits qualified as superior, e.g. favoring the brain over the body, losing animal-like attributes like hair and teeth and sex organs, and being extremely light-skinned. It was a couple of years after the "future human" image was published and publicized that it began showing up in UFO reports -- I think the famous Barney and Betty Hill "abduction" was the first major one.

But by this point, UFO lore itself was becoming part of popular culture, and so the Gray image was popularized in Close Encounters and other films, and eventually things like Communion and The X-Files, creating a feedback loop that kept it prominent in UFO reports and mass media alike.

If you ask me, the clearest proof (aside from the fact that we actually know the source) that the "Gray alien" image is merely a distortion of the human form rather than a genuine alien is that it includes a pointed chin. Anatomically modern humans are the only hominids or primates on Earth that have pointed chins. Not even our closest hominin relatives had them. They're our trademark. The coincidence of an alien happening to have our basic body shape is great enough, but having the single most uniquely human physiognomic feature of all? That's kind of a dead giveaway.

I don't know, if/when the government/military should ever feel fit to divulge what they know to the public, maybe we'll all be in for a shock.

Umm, nope. We've currently got telescopes out there that are detecting exoplanets by the hundreds, and a variety of other scientific projects dedicated to searching for signs of alien life. If the government actually did know some great secret about alien life that it felt compelled to keep for some bizarre reason, would they really be okay with funding all these projects to learn as much about alien life as possible?

Heh, that is quite a coincidence! In my mind, the chances of Greys actually existing has lessened considerably, though there is just a chance it is all coincidence.

And there is actually the possibility that they did find intelligent alien life as early as the Roswell incident, and simply redacted/covered it up. There is this thing called the Brookings Report, and the analysis was that the revelation of intelligent extraterrestrial life was something that the public couldn't handle. They also might not want to acknowledge that there are foreign craft flying in our airspace, and there is not a damn thing they can do about it. For simplification, I'll avoid going further down the rabbit hole.

There are two possibilities of why the same government that would cover up the existence of intelligent life, while also allowing these programs to exist, and that is
1) to acknowledge the public's interest in extraterrestrial life
2) plausible deniability that programs exist that explore more...juicier aspects of extraterrestrial life
3) the parts of the government that run these programs aren't even aware such programs exist. I've heard this one story while Bill Clinton was being briefed as President-Elect that when he asked about the subject of aliens and the like, he was denied access to this knowledge because he "didn't need to know". This could apply to anybody else.
Then again, I think that it is a military/intelligence branch(es) that is chiefly in charge of enforcing any cover ups, assuming they exist.

Aliens in science fiction have often represented the good, bad & ugly of humanity, being the something of dreams and nightmares.

Life out in the universe will be what it is and we/humanity will just make it mean whatever we chose.

We should appreciate life on Earth first.

I just love how you have an avatar of Deanna. I can't help but read this with her voice in mind. It just fits!

 

[Taylirious]

Re: Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor s

^ I changed it from the usual Taylor Swift for I am guessing a failed campaign to have fun with moments from 'Data's Day' see Misc. If it was Taylor singing it would sound like a break-up song!

 

[Dryson]

Re: Trek got it right? Humanoid aliens possible, Cambridge professor s

Meh. Some scientists have been spouting these "aliens will look like us because of convergent evolution" ideas for decades, but they're just egocentrism. Every time humans have assumed that we were the center of all things, or even typical of the universe as a whole, we've been proven wrong. Up until a couple of decades ago, scientists took it for granted that most solar systems would be arranged the same way as ours; now we know that our system's arrangement is extremely unusual. By now we should know better than to assume we can safely extrapolate from our own example.

This assertion in particular is egocentric because it ignores all the other evolutionary paths life on Earth has already taken. Look at theropod dinosaurs, say. A bipedal organism with free hands doesn't have to be upright like us, but can be horizontal-bodied with a cantilevering tail. And hands aren't the only tool-using appendages. Look at elephants with their trunks, or octopus and squids with their amazingly sensitive tentacles. Those are both examples of highly intelligent animals as well, probably even conscious ones in the elephants' case at least. It's an outdated myth that humans are the only intelligent life on this planet. There are also dolphins, of course, though their tool use is extremely limited due to their anatomy and environment.

The problem with this hackneyed "convergent evolution" line as a basis for humanoid aliens is that convergent evolution tends to apply to specific attributes of an animal, not entire animals. And those attributes tend not to be identical even when they are convergent. The eye has convergently evolved multiple different times in Earth's history, but with differences each time, and in the context of otherwise wildly different organisms. The wing has convergently evolved in several different categories of life -- insects, pterosaurs, birds, bats -- but with a different structure in every case. So even convergent evolution is no guarantee that aliens will look like human actors in latex, or be distortions of the human form like the cliched Gray Aliens used to illustrate that article. Sure, it's possible that some intelligent, tool-using aliens would have a form roughly equivalent to ours in certain ways, and in a galaxy as big as ours it's possible that a few might happen to resemble us strongly. But it would be most unwise to assume that most tool-using sophonts out there would resemble us.

Aliens or Sentient Life? There is a different. Alien life is something that is akin to being different or out of the ordinary compared to life forms within an environment. Take for instance humans swimming around in the water coming into contact with a herd of crabs scurrying across the sea floor. To the crabs their environment and everything around it would be normal, but the aliens would be humans.

Sentient life however has the ability to reason between was is correct and what is wrong as well as developing complex thoughts in order to sustain their level of survivability.

Humans once again go swimming in the ocean and come across a herd of crabs scurrying across the sea bed floor. The humans begin to build underwater habitats while the crabs continue to watch and scurry around. Then along comes a dolphin and brings small rocks and begins placing them in piles at the base of the habitat showing that the dolphin has some rudimentary senses of sentient life of being able to able stand what it is seeing as well as helping to build.

Two completely different looking species from two completely different environments both with the ability to reason and develop higher forms of thought patterns associated with building things with a purpose.

The crab still scurries along the sea bed floor watching eating and reproducing.