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>No cosmically connected society would even think of talking to us.

I am pretty sure scientists do research that involves laying down and pheromone trails. So, to the extent ants can talk, we have interest in talking to ants. You're making the unfounded assumption that aliens would treat humans like a small and unrepresentative sample (Victorian nobility?) of humans treat other humans.

Although there are many anthills we don't talk to, that is because each anthill of the same species would say the same thing. There is only one human anthill, so that objection does not apply.

Is that talking to ants, or is that running experiments on them? Because those are two VERY different things. Additionally, talking to an alien race the size of a planet, is probably like speaking Ent: a human's lifespan is likely not long enough to hear an entire phrase of communication, because at the planet scale, shit moves a lot slower, or rather, it should, the way life moves. Hummingbirds move and react way faster than elephants.

> Is that talking to ants, or is that running experiments on them?

Do you think we wouldn't be trying to actually communicate with ants if we found a viable way of doing so?

I don't think we'd set up an embassy with the ants and sign trade agreements with them...

If that's absurd it's only because ant's cant talk, or comprehend trade agreements, which people can.

And whatever a cosmic civilization would want us to comprehend, we likely could not, in a similar fashion.

What are you basing that likelihood on?

But how do you know for sure that the Earth isn’t just a floating brain? Mycology suggests that there are neural networks within forests, and the vast variety of species act in a sort of symbiotic equilibrium. Perhaps human consciousness and the creation of the internet was the final step in connecting the circuit.

I would say that planet earth resembles a living brain far more than it resembles a stagnant rock.

Definitely agree. Humanity becoming an ingrained part of that living brain would exemplify a giant step forward in evolution for us, and growth for the brain. A maturation.

But what is the output of this earth brain? Outwardly it appears, to us at least, that there is zero affect to observe and so we'd have to assume this brain is locked in or at least completely indecipherable to us.

I mean the obvious answer is the radio waves that leave our planet are an observable affect.

Radio waves are simply electromagnetic radiation, this is ubiquitous throughout the universe. Nothing special about the earth being formed in a particular brain-like way and the radio radiation emanating from earth itself is as random as the radiation emanating from the sun.

A human brain doesn't just stop operation if it lacks the physical appendages to interact with an exterior environment.

I can only imagine, if such a posited earth-brain exists, that its entire functioning would be to continue functioning while it reflects upon its own existence and trying to understand its environment with what information it gathers.

And if we're a part of that earth-brain then our effects are its effects.

I wonder how a psychologist might diagnose such an earth-brain in its present condition... anxious, self-destructive, but not without redeeming qualities, and trying to reach out for connection just the same...

By your reasoning we could describe the entirety of everything as a brain. It's just brains all the way. Can any meaning be extracted from that, at all? Seems to me semantics and language are really just illusions of meaning.

Isn't that kind of what's described in physics? It's forces interacting all the way down.

I like your ideas, but they are no less ludicrous. Based on your reasoning, Jane Goodall would never have attempted communication with gorillas nor would her work be of interest to societies of research.

Effectively, we're the same as gorillas and ants on the cosmic scale, so this is not a good analogy. Humans communicating with amoeba would be a better one. But even so, we're not establishing diplomatic embassies and trade agreements with ants and gorillas. People keep thinking that just because we study ants and gorillas, that means my argument is spurious.

Alien races that see us may find us intriguing, but Douglas Adams did explain this sort of stuff in fantastic ways, for example, when humanity missed the Dolphins' last message to Earth and interpreted it as a really neat triple somersault.

So, yes, maybe gorillas and ants and dolphins are trying to speak with us, but we're not trying to have those conversations. We're having the "Do you want a banana?" conversations.

What people think of when they think of UFOs is diplomatic relations between two cultures. And I am saying that, cosmically, we could no less have a diplomatic relationship between a human society and a cosmically traveling giant brain society than could a person establish diplomatic ties with an oyster. The frames of reference are simply not there to even communicate in a meaningful, cultural way beyond Pearls.

So, maybe I am wrong and the giant brains are reaching out and do want to talk to us, but maybe they speak with asteroids and quarks and we cannot even begin to understand what they want. We're too busy deciding which ant is the correct, one true ant to lead us all.

Any sci-fi idea about what extra terrestrial life would look like is as good as the next. All of them involve speculation from almost no data.

If I had to bet though, I’d say that alien life is even more diverse than life on earth since it would necessarily involve multiple origins both natural and artificial.

We can pick this UFO thing back up when we're all one unified peoples across Germany with a single purpose. I will additionally bet that there's about a 99% chance that such a society would be ruled by a military man. I'd be OK with that, actually, as we've REALLY fucked things up using common politicians as leaders, recently. I cannot imagine saying that 20 years ago, but here we are.

This will all probably start to happen in earnest (these changes to Germany, I mean) sometime after we install a dictator to deal with the economic and foreign relations problems which we allowed to get utterly out of control to a point where the only solution will be utter dictatorship and violence and instant death for anyone who damages Germany. It'll REALLY suck, but we will hopefully come out the other side with fewer opportunities for greedy people to direct entire civilizations to memorialize their greatness in blood.

I mean, yeah. This is not something I WANT to happen. Just, it's probably going to happen, and honestly, it'll probably worse than Nazi Germany. I'm not trying to be some kind of Gaia-theory genocidal advocate. Just a realist who's starting to see that humanity is NOT solving the climate crisis in a manner that involves consensus, agreement, and cooperation. We sincerely suck at those things recently.

> The idea that alien lifeforms we could recognize are visiting us and traveling in space is utterly ludicrous [...]

> I believe

There are a whoooooooole lot of assumptions being made here that don't seem to based in any kind of physical reality

The Soviet Union was an attempt at creating a Zerg like hive mind with a centralized “brain” in Moscow.

Didn’t work out, but with today’s technology it might be more possible.

You know who is interested in ants - other ants.

Humans also know a lot about ants. Even kids keep ant farms because ants are thoroughly interesting.