Bob,
I share much of your skepticism, and many of your reasons for doubting. I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. But I have a tremendous belief in the ability of people to misperceive things and for rational people to develop arguments for unjustified conspiracy-like theories --- so I still remain skeptical. But if one combines (a) the increasing evidence that habitable planet are probably plentiful in our solar system, (b) the evidence of how quickly life originated on earth, (c) the reasonable belief of what amazing advances in intelligence and technology AGI could give to a civilization that survived it and how such technology might reasonably be expected to enable galactic space travel and civilization, (d) that it would take only one civilization that achieved AGI say 10 to 100 million years ago to have distributed itself throughout much of our galaxy, and (d) if one accepts that it is at least possible that not all the people claiming to have seen or recorded aliens or UFO are lying or have experienced misperceptions or delusions or mis-interpretations of their recorded data --- then I think it is not unreasonable to assume that there is --- at least --- a non insignificant chance that aliens are visiting and monitoring us. In my own rather skeptical mind, if I were to make a wild guess I would currently put the probability of this at roughly at least one in ten, a large enough possibility that it should, at least, be considered in discussions of the future of AGI and the singularity. Ed Porter. -----Original Message----- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 3:27 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > As we learn just how common exoplanets are, the possibility that aliens have > visited earth seems increasingly scientifically believable I'm not sure that alien visitation logically follows from the discovery of exoplanets. > There have, in fact, been many > reportings of UFOs from sources that are hard to reject out of hand. Well I'm happy to report that I can dismiss all the reports which I've read about out of hand, since they don't really constitute good evidence in my opinion. Blurry photos or videos, and anecdotal claims wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny in a scientific journal. > An > astronaut that NASA respected enough to send to the moon, has publicly > stated he has attended government briefings in which he was told there is > substantial evidence aliens have repeatedly visited earth. Unfortunately if you read the biography of this guy it seems that he's held outspoken views on such things for a very long time. Astronauts are not supermen - they're just ordinary people with the same biases and superstitions as everyone else. They're just as likely to believe in conspiracy theories and other wacky stuff. I should say that I do think there is a good chance that the universe is populated with life, but that we have observed no direct evidence of this at present. Also, the existence of life does not necessarily imply human-like life with an advanced technological civilization. Having a large brain is only one minority strategy for reproducing your genes. But, all of the above is off topic, so you can safely ignore it. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
