From: wb9omc@dynamo.ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: UFO's
Date: 31 Jul 92 19:38:14 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

bjohnson@casper.cs.uct.ac.za (B Johnson) writes:

>It strikes me that either UFO's are non-existent (UFO in the ETI sense)
>or the universe is so crowded with inhabited planets as to make earth
>uninteresting.
>Lets look at it this way. What would you do if you're the captain of
>an interggalactic space exploring vessel. You encounter a planet that
>plainly exhibits several life forms ( Intelligent or not).
>Do you
>a) get all excited, jump up and down, and "radio" base for further 
>   instructions.
>b) go have a quick squiz, grab a couple of specimans, and bug out.
>c) tell all your intergalactic explorer buddies, so they come have
>   a look.
>d) do a detailed survey, and after determining intelligence, try
>   and make contact. 
>e) Say "ho-hum another bunch of bi-peds, how boring."
>So the qustion is... if life is as rare as everyone would make it 
>out to be, and UFO's are around, why aren't we the major attraction
>in the galactic fairground.

	You have some good points here, although it might be worthwhile
to point out that you are looking at it from the point of view of
"human", with all the self-biases that this suggests.

	While it seems fairly obvious that the vast majority of UFO
reports are pure bullshit so far as any link to ETI is concerned,
there remains a body of reports that cannot be explained away by
conventional means.  One could make the assumption that some percent
of these reports suggest "visitation", at least for the purpose of
this discussion.

	Why aren't WE the major attraction?

	I think that's really fairly simple.  If the "visitors" are
advanced enough to be capable of travel TO earth and back FROM earth
to wherever they might reside, it suggests a level of technology
considerably more advanced than ours.  Thus, from the technology
standpoint, we probably have absolutely NOTHING that they would be
interested in.

	We have been here for umpteen gazillion years as a planet
and for (apparently) quite a while as humans of some sort.  There has
been plenty of time for such an advanced civilization to learn
plenty about us - while our means for really reporting, recording and
analyzing THEM in any *practical* way is only a few hundred years old,
if that much.

	Given the assumption of a radically higher technology, their
ability to hide from us makes our current high-tech "stealth"
technology look bozoic by comparison.  If the assumed visitors
would prefer not to interfere and to remain hidden, I think it would
be fairly presumptuous of us to assume that we'd always know they
were there.

	Why should they visit at all?  That's kind of a tough
question to answer without resorting to the aforementioned human
concepts of thought.  Perhaps they are as naturally curious as we
are.  Perhaps they are interested in watching our technological
develpoment like WE might watch football (hmmm....wonder if they
take bets on us?  1945 - will it blow up over Hiroshima or not....
OOPS, you lose!  Geez, these humans are murdering swine!  :-)  )

(of course, to borrow from another thread - if they were like Klingons,
they'd have been pleased by the use of the Abombs in 1945...)

	As far as making contact is concerned, why?  Think about it.
If they are such an advanced race with presumably advanced
societies, why the heck do they want primitive savages like humans
dogging them?  To an advanced civilization, we probably come off
looking like third-rate kamikazes.

	There have been many speculations thrown around that we attract
"visitors" with our radio waves and power emanations and so forth.
Until we actually ever got a chance to talk to  one of said visitors,
who would know?

	Duane
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro