Debate Topic: Aliens
 

I want to try something new. I'm going to throw a topic up and let the shit storm ensue.

Lets get this ball rolling. Aliens do they exist? Have they visited us? How intelligent is extraterrestrial life?

@JaCoby and @Godbody to thread.

---------- Post added at 05:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:07 AM ----------

I might be wrong on this but If I remember rightly @Dean was our resident Carl Sagan. Fill us in dude.

I'd say they do exist but not those big ass monsters you often see in movies

But more so in the form of worms/insects. There is definitely life outside of the earth. The universe is a big place.

I think aliens are out there, probably lots of them. I just think that the universe is too big for us to be likely to encounter them.

According to Google, there are an estimated 10^24 (that's a 1 with 24 zeroes behind it, for those of you who are rusty on their math) stars in the observable universe (not the whole universe, but I digress).

I'm not an astronomer, (exo- or regular) biologist, or someone with significant knowledge in the relevant areas, but:

Yes, I do believe that aliens exist. Life happened here, and apparently not long after conditions became favorable. While we don't have good values for each parameter in the Drake equation (or whatever similar equation you're using), the tremendous amount of places where life could arise makes it a near-certainty.

Whether these aliens are intelligent, or anything like humans, is another matter. It may be that chemistry, practically speaking, restricts life to forms relatively similar to humanity. It may also be that truly exotic, even incomprehensible, forms of life exist. As for intelligence, keep in mind that truly sentient lifeforms with high intelligence didn't emerge on Earth for billions of years. In fact, sometimes I wonder whether they've emerged at all.

If they do exist and have reached intelligence, they may be so different that we cannot communicate with them. They may be so much more advanced than we are as to have "ascended to a higher plane of existence," rendering them undetectable to us. They may exist in a completely different time frame, rendering their civilization extinct minutes after it began. And most life in the universe is probably primitive, not in the sense of "cavemen" but in the sense of "amoebae and bacteria."

But realistically, given the entire universe, there are probably at least a few we could hypothetically contact, given the travel time...

and they're probably way more advanced than we are, so be careful, you stupid fucks.

I dont think its a question if they exist or not, but if they've been here, if some of the theories of them pushing our society a little bit forward, what did they do when they were here etc. I think its almost ignorant to think that there couldnt be life outside of earth. Its also if its intelligent life, which I think theres a good chance theres intelligent life. Depends on what level of a civilization they are. If they are intelligent and advanced enough to travel space and visit other planets without effort then they probably think we're a bunch of cavemen still.

The aliens are dead.

You're stupid as fuck if you think "aliens" don't exist. In layman's terms if we're self aware, why wouldn't anything else be? Considering the vast infinite space we're in, the sheer number of probability that we're alone is astronomically small.

the aliens made you double post

It's highly probable that life exists outside of Earth. However, that probability alone is not enough to say definitively that aliens do or don't exist. There is no evidence that I'm aware of that proves we've been visited by aliens. It's possible that the organic materials which developed into lifeforms on Earth were seeded by asteroids and comets. It's really all just speculation. If aliens do exist, they would probably come with a wide range of intelligences...From amoeba to superhuman. If some have been capable of visiting us, they would most certainly be smarter than us. We haven't even figured out how to send manned missions to some of the planets within our own solar system. If we are ever discovered by extraterrestrial beings before we discover them, let's just hope they are benign.