Are we alone in this universe? Who knows? But it would be arrorgant for us to think we are. There are way to many galaxies out there. There has to be another planet that can sustain life. I am not saying they have arrived. I believe most if not all UFO pictures are hoaxes. Now as for the paranormal,it would be cocky to say that just cause we have 5 senses we know it all, our science can’t explain everything now. We don’t know jack. There is so much more to be learned.I think we need to devote more study to this stuff. Well you’ve heard my ramblings now debate about it.
This is a repost I changed some stuff thanks to some suggestions
Ahem. What makes you think the paranormal HASN’T been studied? I assure you it has. And the studies have turned up nothing. OK, fine we just need better studies. Well, how about you people who believe in the paranormal do them, and we’ll point out the flaws. After a couple hundred years of failing to show any paranormal effects then can we quit?
“The Paranormal” is a pretty broad range of stuff. A lot of it has been studied. For example, what used to be called demonic posession is now called multiple personality disorder, psychosis, auditory hallucinations, etc. We can alleviate a lot of the symptoms with medications.
As for life on other planets, Discover Magazine and the Discovery Channel have articles by scientists who think there might be now or might at one time have been microscopic life on mars. I think we *are* studying a lot of "the paranormal" right now.
If you're talking about investigating Miss Cleo, Kresgin(sp?) and other 'psychics', Randi the magician has done that for years. Most of the Spiritualists seance stunts were exposed as frauds by Houdini. Depending on who you ask, the federal government has done a lot of work with psychic observers called operation stargate. My guess is that most of the hits you'd get on a search engine would be links to crackpots like **Seethruart**.
Xan, you raise some interesting talking points. And you might have some pretty good debates if you actually raise some solid issues we can take sides on, and then pick a side and defend it intelligently.
That said, it doesn’t mean much just to say that because our senses are limited, there is stuff out there we have no clue about. Almost anyone would agree to that. But going out on a limb and making wild assertations and predictions based on little real fact is equally meaningless. I don’t think anyone would disagree that we’ve only scratched the surface of understanding what’s out there. But we do know a bit more than jack, especially about physics and the natural sciences. For example, our theory of gravity holds true, that is, it gives good predictions, for all scenarios except some very exotic ones like near the center of a black hole. And we can determine the chemical composition of a star by examining its light, and with that knowledge we can guess at the star’s age. And we might be limited to five senses (actually six, with proprioception) as human beings, but we can build tools, like radios and IR goggles and compasses, that let us use information around us that we cannot directly percieve.
But the most important thing is that we, as a species, keep banging our heads into the dead-ends of bad hypotheses and misinterpreted data until we finally hit upon something that works. We keep an open mind, even though sometimes it takes a Darwin or an Einstein to kick out the jams, so to speak, and we advance. Pretty neat, I think.
Some aspects of the paranormal may be true BUT the problem is making them happen ‘to order’ and finding a way of making money from them.
Until this happens it will not be a mainstream science.
UFOs - if the aliens are visiting they don’t want us to know or would be sending out there own tv channel by now.
Intelligent life is probably very rare, i suspect life i.e. microbe and mammal is a lot commoner, for example if a ufo came here a while back they would have just met a bunch of dinosaurs.
Xan. It isn’t arrogance to believe we are alone in the universe – though you can certainly be arrogant while thinking. Currently, we have evidence that an all powerful alien who wants to make contact with us doesn’t exist – hence dudes comment about the TV. We don’t have evidence that life doesn’t exist. All we have are some vague calculations based on “how many planets are out there” vs “the chance of planets supporting intellegent life”. That unfortunately comes down to snake oil – anyone can change the results from Fatalisticly improbable to Almost Guaranteed just by fudging a few numbers.
So, the intellegent response is to say “we don’t know a lot, maybe maybe not.”
Oh, and Derleth – Just for giggles, I’d disagree that “we’ve only scratched the surface of understanding what’s out there”. Of course, my basis would be a bit strange – it’d essentially deal on how frequently science can make accurate predictions verses how frequently it can’t – which implies einstein really didn’t do much – since even though he revolutionised scientific knowledge, he only upped our prediction from 90% -> 95%. And, if I come up with the GUTE ( Grand Unified Theory of Everything ) then I’ll have little effect as well (95%->99%)
It is true that there are alot of things we do not know. Sometimes, scientists tend to wholly discount subjects that can be considered “fringe”. But to accomplish it’s goal science must be able to explain all of the data. Clearly, there is still data that is unexplainable. For a great treatment of the subject read “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot.
The problem is, alot of people use these fringe science issues to take advantage (get money from) of people. Others use the existence of the issues as an excuse to subscribe to silly superstitions. To just say, “I think/feel/believe that this is true” definately does not make it true. It does need to be recorded, quantified, and repeated. Than it moves into the realm of fact.
No, the posthuman will have evolved from homo sapiens. Who evolved from the big bang ultimately. But there is already a thread for that discussion, isn’t there?
If your saying that my entertaing the idea of a Posthuman is superstitious, you are incorrect.
