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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

Three times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right?

And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth.

Too many "and"s for me...

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> had to spawn pretty near our solar system

Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?

Let me propose a thought experiment. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that humanity has survived 100,000 years into the future. Now, let’s put you in a time machine and fast forward you to that distant future.

Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly? Barely remembered artifacts of humanity’s Stupid Ages? That new discoveries were made over those thousand centuries, discoveries that we 21st century humans can only vaguely begin to comprehend?

Because you raised my biggest problem with modern cosmology: it’s arrogant assumption that Einstein is the end. But more importantly, that evidence indicating that relativity is not in fact the end — such as UAPs — is completely disregarded.

And the reason it is disregarded? Because relativity is the end! It’s circular reasoning at its absolute worst.

> Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?

It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.

Even if we review our understanding, the universe is still a massive place and humanity's existence a mere blip. It becomes more about statistics and probability than physics, but yeah, our understanding of physics also makes ETs visiting Earth very unlikely.

If you mean to say "a major revision of physics would make it more feasible", I don't know. Maybe? Or maybe even less feasible! We have to approach this rationally, and so far reason and evidence both lean to "extremely unlikely".

> Let me propose a thought experiment [...] Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly?

As a thought experiment it's a decent piece of science fiction, but as any sort of serious thought it seems like begging the question to me.

> It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.

Which it only is if you limit cosmology to spectroscopy and ignore UAP. If you start to examine UAP as a real thing, and ask questions about “how”, then it all falls apart.

Which is exciting.

I don't think that's true, or at least, you're jumping prematurely to conclusions and sort of begging the question too.

The "U" just means "unidentified", not "contradicting our understanding of physics" or "extraterrestrial intelligence".

There are many life forms on Earth that remain unidentified by many estimations, and we keep discovering new organisms. "Unidentified" doesn't have to violate our understanding of the universe.

But if it does, then our understanding is wrong. That means there are new things to discover.

One of the common reported characteristics of some UAP is that they are able to accelerate hypersonic speeds without a sonic boom.

If that is true then there are things to be learned here. You appear to be saying that this obviously cannot be true because it violates what we currently know.

I think that is tragically unscientific.

> But if it does, then our understanding is wrong. That means there are new things to discover.

That's a big "if". If magic exists, then maybe Gandalf is real.

That there are new things to discover there is no doubt. I don't know how it relates to your need to believe in ETs visiting Earth, but rest assured we have plenty of things to discover about the universe. Most things we will never know.

> One of the common reported characteristics of some UAP is that they are able to accelerate hypersonic speeds without a sonic boom.

> I think that is tragically unscientific.

What's tragically unscientific is cherry picking reports (sometimes by people who are not even claiming the final implication you'd like), disregarding the obvious implications (hoax, liars, top secret military tech, etc) and jumping to conclusions.

What's tragically unscientific is not understanding the scientific method and that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

It might be like a lot if there could have been intelligent civilizations 8 billion years older then us.

I doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections].

Seems very unlikely to me.

We're are extremely unlikely by any available measure.

What's the argument you're making?

The universe is huge. Life seems to be unlikely since it's very concentrated. But the universe is very, very big and even if it is unlikely as it seems at the moment, it would be quite weird if it were unlikely to the point of only one living planet existing in 13 billion light years of space and yet we exist.

Fascinating stuff really.

Yeah? But that's an argument against seeing any aliens up close (if you believe in that kind of thing), because presumably they're extremely unlikely too.

They're not there, or they're far away in time and space, with a remaining tiny chance that something incredibly unlikely happened.

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