Probability Alien Life Watching Us Cannot be Determined

Says who? We may be interesting or we may not be and even if intelligent alien life exists nearby that doesn't necessarily mean they follow a similar evolutionary scale as humanity.

We only have one planet to study in regards to evolutionary timelines, ours. And even so, remember that humanity only kicked into high gear in regards to technology over the past 100 years or so although we've been here as "humans" for hundreds of thousands of years. A lot of things fell in to place for us humans very recently.

We don't know if we are special or not. We believe we are because we are human but who's to say we actually are? There could be a full blown Type II civilization living in the Alpha Centauri system that knows full well we are here and has zero interest in us.

We humans have a very "human centric" view of ourselves and our place in the cosmos, we always have. We believe that hey we are here, if anybody else is nearby and they are looking around the cosmos then they MUST have seen US, we are Earth, we are special and if they've seen us then they MUST have taken a keen interest in us sitting over here. Maybe....maybe not.

We could be extremely special with aliens all staring at us in fascination with their telescopes. Or we could be so technologically outclassed that our theoretical alien neighbors don't even care about us enough to acknowledge our presence. The same way we all walk by ant hills on a daily basis and don't stop and pay any attention to them because they are just ants.

What I believe personally is that the Milky Way, and the Universe itself, it teeming with life both rudimentary and advanced yet the laws of physics are real and we are all just sort of stuck where we happened to evolve. I believe that aliens somewhere out there are likely doing what we are doing and scanning and cataloging the cosmos and wondering "does anything live on any of those planets in the Sol system?" I believe that some civilizations have outpaced us and evolved to colonize their own star systems and some are well behind. Many have likely evolved and died off long ago as well.

But who knows? We could be part of a full blown Romulan Star Empire and have no idea because our overlords made our entire Solar System a protected off limits site to the galaxy because the little oxygen breathing 4 limbed carbon thingy's on that water planet are cute and harmless and should be left alone. They may glance over at us every once and awhile to see how we are doing or something. We humans do that here on Earth. There are a few uncontacted tribes living on Earth that "civilization" protects and leaves alone on their own little island and we just fly a helo or something over there every few years to see how they are doing but leave them alone out side of that.

I don't believe aliens have ever come here. I think most of that is just folklore and human imaginations running wild coupled with our belief that we are special so if aliens are out there they must have come to our special little planet to visit at some point. You will notice that aliens seem to have stopped visiting us after the invention of HD photography and video lol....Same with Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman, for some reason all of these things lost interest in us humans once 1080p became widespread throughout our society lol.

 

Well they may but they may not. We humans believe that another civilization would certainly take at least some interest in us because that's how WE operate as humans. As I said, we only have one sample from which to deduce "characteristics" which comes from our lifeforms here on Earth.

We would be interested in aliens even primitive ones or single celled ones so surely aliens would be interested in us. Perhaps, if they have similar human neurological characteristics. Aliens may be very technologically advanced yet have the same characteristics as an ant colony or something to where they don't even have the cognitive ability to recognize the fact that we live here. They just colonize things. Sort of like construction, when construction begins on a new development nobody stops and thinks about the millions of ants that just got displaced when the bulldozers arrived to lay the foundation.

Or like the Borg from Star Trek lol. The Borg would board a ship and just walk right by people and start messing with the equipment. "What is it doing? It's not responding to us talking to it?" "He's not interested in you, he doesn't even acknowledge your existence he's interested in your star ship" LOL.

I'd surely hope that if aliens are nearby they would have least taken some interest in us. But at the end of the day we have no real idea either way. If we apply human traits to them then sure they would at least acknowledge that we are here if they see our planet at all. But who's to say they even have human traits? Or even cognitive thought? Or brains at all? For all we know our theoretical alien neighbors could be a super advanced race of parasites without the ability to even comprehend that anything else is "alive".

Plus we may not want them to have human traits that take interest in other species like us. We humans have a terrible track record when it comes to "discovering" and "studying" things. Aliens show up one day to say hello and accidentally infect the entire planet and kill us all, sort of like our explorers tend to do from time to time. Or show up and say hey we see you guys are started to become space faring, we don't trust you, stay on your on planet and never leave or we will kill you all. Ya know, sort of like how we humans treat each other.

Remember, "scientists" tend to be respectful and careful such as throwing probes into planets to make sure we don't accidentally contaminate other worlds, and sharing discoveries, etc. "Humans" are a species that drains our own planet of resources without mercy, contaminates it without mercy, and have been systematically slaughtering one another for millennia and spends much of it's research and finances figuring out more effective ways to do that.

I'm not too sure I'd want an alien race with human traits to be "interested" in Earth...If I were an advanced alien race having watched the Earth for generations I would conclude that the Earthlings are irresponsible psychopaths that need to be kept in their own little corner of the galaxy at any cost and prohibit them from ever even making contact with anybody else until they learn how to act right.

 

Hope so, half of me remains optimistic believing that if aliens are out there and they follow even something resembling our own evolutionary path then by the time they reach interstellar space travel they will have hopefully made peace with themselves and united as a species for a common goal. And would be friendly or at a minimum cautiously interested in knowing more about us.

The other half of me hears the echoes of Stephen Hawking's belief that broadcasting our existence over here on our technologically primitive little world may not be the best of ideas. He believed that because he too was nervous that our possible alien neighbors might actually hold some of our own terrible human traits. It is indeed a huge gamble for us to start waving welcome signs to the cosmos, we never know who might actually answer us and the consequences for us could be dire if the wrong folks end up picking up the phone.

Plus recently I read the premise for a book that went something like "After decades of humanity broadcasting to the cosmos, SETI finally received a rather unexpected reply: "Be quiet! They will hear you!"

I thought that was pretty cool, hopefully they actually write that book I'd like to read that.

 

I think that's the pill that a lot of folks just don't want to swallow. We believe ourselves special, our religious and spiritual beliefs all say we are special, plus we exist and have the cognitive ability to understand that we exist so we think we are special.

There is nothing about anything around us that's even abnormal or unique. Normal star, normal star system, normal galaxy, random place within the galaxy, etc. A lot of people find that disheartening but I find that fascinating. The fact that the space around us is completely normal and we really are just a random planet in a random arm of a random galaxy makes me appreciate the fact that we even exist more so than I would if our little corner of the Universe was somehow different than the rest of it.

The fact that the Universe is nature and it doesn't give one iota that we are sitting here on this little blue planet is fascinating. If we blinked out of existence tomorrow, a massive solar flare eradicates us all, then we would simply vanish from the Universe without anything ever having known we existed over here. Or to just speculate on the fact that we humans think we are so smart with our internet and our hybrid cars and jet planes yet there could be advanced civilizations living in the proverbial house next door who look at us and don't even see us as worthy of acknowledgement.

All of that is humbling to me.

 

I say we tell SETI to focus our efforts on sending concentrated radio signals to 40 Eridani indefinitely and just annoy the crap out of them until they decide to respond to us. Sort of like when we were children and just called mom's name a thousand times until she just got irritated and paid attention to us so we'd shut up lol.

Maybe if we throw a temper tantrum long enough the Vulcans will just give us the warp drive blueprints so we'll stop crying lol.

Most of the Prime Directive civilizations were primitive by human standards, tribal peoples and what not. We have the ability to throw stuff into space and make noise. Those other civ's were like new born babies, we are terrible two's I say we use that and start annoying our parents. We're already destroying our room over here now we need to just start screaming until they give us the cell phone so we can play too lol.