Thoughts on Other lifeform

[Lupernikes_shadowbark]

 

that's excellently put!!

[Lilith]

A pharmacology prof I know always says "Reality is for people who can't deal with drugs"

Aliens, gods, demons... all plant (or chemical-)based, imo   
Well, extraterrestical life forms exist for sure, but it's highly improbable that they are intelligent and able enough to get here... and let us be honest: why the hell should they???

[Tempest Virago]

A pharmacology prof I know always says "Reality is for people who can't deal with drugs"

Aliens, gods, demons... all plant (or chemical-)based, imo   
Well, extraterrestical life forms exist for sure, but it's highly improbable that they are intelligent and able enough to get here... and let us be honest: why the hell should they???

I question whether we will ever find aliens that are comprehensible to us. Intelligent, perhaps, but a fundamentally, well, alien intelligence.

[Lupernikes_shadowbark]

my point entirely, about the sense I get from the entities I have encountered....it ain't going to be like Star Trek where the only thing different between them and us is foreheads or ears!  To think Nature was uncreative enough to fill the universe, even the galaxy with minor variations upon a  theme.. *sigh*

so maybe aliens, maybe bad reality trip (heeeeeavy on irony there), maybe lor' knows what....but hey, thanks for the feedback guys (Except Roger of course, you were about as helpful as a match in space  *wink*)

[Golden Applesauce]

I often get the sense that there is utterly no world beyond the observable, that there are no supernatural entities, nothing paranormal in the least.  It's hard to describe - it's like hearing a sound, but without tone or pitch, the kind of sound that you feel as vibrations in the organs less firmly tied down.  Only without vibrations, just... stillness.  The feelingness of being utterly alone, with only a handful of tailless apes on a rock ball kept from falling into absolute zero by nothing other than the happenstance of a fairly mediocre cosmic fusion reactor.

I know that what my senses, my intuitions, tell me are correct have not been confirmed or even supported directly by any controlled experiment (except in their lack of finding anything beyond the veil,) but I am deeply convinced that they are correct.



[On the subject of hard sf aliens: probably, but I doubt that any two such lifeforms are close enough in spacetime for either to contact the other while both are extant.  Assuming they develop in the direction of being able to communicate.]

[Lilith]

I have a huge imagination, but I'm pretty sure, there's nothing beyond that. In this world at least.
In short, I'd like to see fairies, but never have and never will.

[Lupernikes_shadowbark]

who was it who said "inspiration has to have been inspired by something"?  If you can imagine, perhaps you don't have to be wrong, perhaps you subconciously give shape to some energy or suchlike?

I believe in a truly open mind, if we can't see something doesn't preclude it from existing.  I don't say I know any hidden truths or secret knowledge, simply that I try, as much as I can, to exclude no possibility which has not been conclusively proven false to my satisfaction (science is more often wrong than right)....until we can prove or study these phenomenon (as long they remain unexplained in other words) I shall continue to muse on them....truth is I don't think we humans are too well equipped with our 'where are the bananas?' brains anyway

[Lilith]

It's true with most 'facts' that they are proven wrong a few centuries later
And I guess without imagination and thinking out of bananas, we wouldn't have invented anything by now (okay, mabe a ladder to reach the bananas)... and most often we just think we are smarter than we actually are.
The source is important: if we experience something, we have to take it seriously and think of what might have caused it (and if there is no proper cause, we can start imagine), but we can't just imagine omething and believe that therefor it's true.
I'm just unable to really believe in it unless it's clear to me.

[Golden Applesauce]

If you can imagine, perhaps you don't have to be wrong, perhaps you subconciously give shape to some energy or suchlike?

Think about that sentence for a second.  Are you really saying that by believing in something, mystic energies will contort themselves to humor you?  That simply by imagining things they become real?

[Lupernikes_shadowbark]

Not really simply that the energy is there, nothing at all mystic about it (why is everything not scientifically proven classed as 'mystic' these days?); simply how we perceive it varies.  An example is a TV channel, you percieve it as fuzz or, if you tune your TV properly as images and sound.

Supernatural is just a term scientists use rather than admit that they don't understand something, or to dismiss something which doesn't follow the rules properly

[Golden Applesauce]

Not really simply that the energy is there, nothing at all mystic about it (why is everything not scientifically proven classed as 'mystic' these days?); simply how we perceive it varies.  An example is a TV channel, you percieve it as fuzz or, if you tune your TV properly as images and sound.

So you're saying that you never have to be wrong, as long as you reinterpret your data to make it fit what you want?

Supernatural is just a term scientists use rather than admit that they don't understand something, or to dismiss something which doesn't follow the rules properly

When scientists don't understand something, they go nuts trying to figure it out.  When something doesn't fit the rules, they go positively loony until they figure out why.  If what you are saying was true, then the double-split experiment would just have been dismissed as supernatural.  Example: right now, scientists don't really know what dark matter is made of.  They aren't saying, oh it's mysterious, its supernatural.  They're investing millions in new detectors and running experiments and they aren't going to stop until they know exactly what's going on.  This is the difference between the scientific viewpoint and the supernatural worldview.

[Lupernikes_shadowbark]

Not really simply that the energy is there, nothing at all mystic about it (why is everything not scientifically proven classed as 'mystic' these days?); simply how we perceive it varies.  An example is a TV channel, you percieve it as fuzz or, if you tune your TV properly as images and sound.

So you're saying that you never have to be wrong, as long as you reinterpret your data to make it fit what you want?

Why not, that's what scientists do??  I'm NOT telling anyone I'm right, sheesh!  I'm putting ideas forward which may or may not be right; It's called discussion....part of the damn point of boards like this no?

Supernatural is just a term scientists use rather than admit that they don't understand something, or to dismiss something which doesn't follow the rules properly

When scientists don't understand something, they go nuts trying to figure it out.  When something doesn't fit the rules, they go positively loony until they figure out why.  If what you are saying was true, then the double-split experiment would just have been dismissed as supernatural.  Example: right now, scientists don't really know what dark matter is made of.  They aren't saying, oh it's mysterious, its supernatural.  They're investing millions in new detectors and running experiments and they aren't going to stop until they know exactly what's going on.  This is the difference between the scientific viewpoint and the supernatural worldview.

So science doesn'yt get it wrong ever then?  There is ample evidence of paranormal activity, well documented evidence by independent witnesses which cannot be explained in any way shape or form by anyone yet something is happening and is not imaged by everyone.  However, 'serious science' dismisses it as hokum and so forth. Space is not where the fount of all knowledge resides, just where all the grants are given.  There is so much going on closer to home which is not funded and therefore not studied as it should be.  I accept other views and applaud scientic discoveries of all kinds but I still ackowledge that there is plenty that we still do not know.  To dismiss potential options is foolish in the extreme in my mind.  Therefore the box does not fit.  I am not of the 'supernatural' mind set, rather of the 'eternally curious' mind set.   Question everything because there's no persoanl growth in repeating other people's words.  Just because we can split atoms doesn't mean we can forget everything else.

[Roo]

I often get the sense that there is utterly no world beyond the observable, that there are no supernatural entities, nothing paranormal in the least.  It's hard to describe - it's like hearing a sound, but without tone or pitch, the kind of sound that you feel as vibrations in the organs less firmly tied down.  Only without vibrations, just... stillness.  The feelingness of being utterly alone, with only a handful of tailless apes on a rock ball kept from falling into absolute zero by nothing other than the happenstance of a fairly mediocre cosmic fusion reactor.

I know that what my senses, my intuitions, tell me are correct have not been confirmed or even supported directly by any controlled experiment (except in their lack of finding anything beyond the veil,) but I am deeply convinced that they are correct.



[On the subject of hard sf aliens: probably, but I doubt that any two such lifeforms are close enough in spacetime for either to contact the other while both are extant.  Assuming they develop in the direction of being able to communicate.]

I think that all depends on what you classify as 'observable'. What you or I can observe is so infinitesimally small compared to what's really there (as observed by scientific equipment, like microscopes and such), that I really have to wonder what else we're missing in our observations.

I think that there is far, far more 'out there', than we can possibly imagine. But it's not anything that we can sense in the normal ways. It's far more subtle than that. It's like where you describe a sound without vibration...only there is a vibration, and we can't feel it, just as we can't see things on the microscopic level without a microscope.

[Roo]

If you can imagine, perhaps you don't have to be wrong, perhaps you subconciously give shape to some energy or suchlike?

Think about that sentence for a second.  Are you really saying that by believing in something, mystic energies will contort themselves to humor you?  That simply by imagining things they become real?

Wouldn't that be a kicker? Suppose for a second that were true. Think about all the wars, poverty, abuses of power and people, all the things that are wrong with the world...what if we make them real by believing they are? What if we could change those things simply by imagining something else?

It's a fucked up hypothesis at this point. We have no way to prove it even if it were true. And yet, some of my experiences suggest that it might be. Not in the sense of mystic energies contorting themselves to humor me, but in the sense of being part of those mystical energies, and having the ability to shape and manipulate them through thought and belief. 

A lot of people I've discussed the idea with tend to throw in "well, what about the victims?" What about the people who get raped, or murdered, or hit by some natural disaster? Are you saying it's their fault? That they thought or believed what happened to them into existence?". I can't say no without shooting down the whole hypothesis, and I can't say yes without some people taking it as blaming the victims. So I'll take the chance on people thinking I'm blaming the victims, and say that each of us is ultimately responsible for our lives. We are responsible for our thoughts and beliefs, and have the power to change those as we wish. We can accept whatever we were taught, and go through life believing without understanding, or we can question what we were taught, and decide whether or not to keep those beliefs. In essence, there are no victims, only people experiencing life in all its complexity. There is no blame, only choices and consequences.

[Payne]

This hypothesis is bullshit, and I think you know it.

It's looking for a way to reconcile why bad things happen to good people. There is a much simpler explanation for it- "Shit Happens".

I agree that there are choices and consequences, but blame will always exist because some people will always choose the "wrong" thing, for whatever reason (greed, stupidity etc)

This isn't science, mystical energies or believing in something causing it to happen, it's life.