Do you believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life?

Cogito ergo sum.

Now I just need to prove the existence of the universe.

Clearly not around here.

I can conceive of a lot of possible advanced life forms that may have avoided the radio on their road to civilisation. I think the most commonly held theory is that intelligent life is out there but it is too far away for us to get in touch with using any means we can currently come up with. Also, given the age and size of the universe it is likely that somewhere advanced lifeforms have already gained civilisation and declined and become extinct. We could get a message from some friendly near neighbours that takes so long to get here the civilisation that sent it out could be long gone.

I chose other. I can't imagine we're the only intelligent life in a universe that has dimensions beyond my comprehension, but I don't have any evidence in favor of their existence.

I would say I believe that it is highly improbable that we are the only intelligent life in the entire Universe, but I'm unwilling to state I believe in something of which I have no proof.

beat me to it!

In astronomy, my prof told us the improbable nature of being the only lifeforms in the universe. He told the class that there should be many, many other civilizations in our own galaxy, let alone the universe.

I thought that question might pop up, and it's a legitimate one. I do believe in a god, but I struggle with it mightily. The rational side of me wants to dismiss the notion in its entirety, but there's something I can't explain that brings me back to faith every time. In fact, the biggest reason I believe in a god is because I can't shake this feeling (for lack of a better term) that there is such a being. It's weak evidence, to be sure, but it's still stronger than the evidence I have for intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.

I don't even believe in intelligent terrestrial life.

they're probably here among us

This is a question of belief? I believe you're an asswipe. Also, I'm always surprised to see how many people will remark that it's probable that there is intelligent life out there somewhere even though we have absolutely zero (non-circumstantial) evidence to support the claim. And the Drake equation doesn't count on the grounds that it's absolute bullshit.

Just playing around with the Drake equation and its variants...



where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and

R* is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space




...I have trouble believing there are not other intelligences in our universe.

The bigger question for me has been why have they not made themselves known to us. I tend to downplay considerations of technology in communicating over large distances and instead believe these intelligences just don't care about us.

One idea is that they have an extremely interior focus, that they've long ago discovered the secrets of the structure of the physical Universe and now have moved on to deeper considerations. Why should we believe that any intelligence reasonably more advanced than ours would get juiced traveling around the universe and attempting to communicate with minds comparable to insects?

For contact between two advanced civilizations to be worthwhile, their intelligence development would have to be at similar levels. The chances of that kind of convergence strikes me as having a pretty low probability- the overlap period in which meaningful contact could occur might be as little as a 100,000 years.


And if you believe in the limitations of surpassing the speed of light, the constraint in communicating might not be between humans and extraterrestrial intelligence, but among the extraterrestrials themselves. This civilization would have grown used to communicating and processing at the speed of light, so by necessity the life is in very close proximity with each other, and meaningful thought and existence couldn't occur over large distances.

It seems likely to me that at advanced levels of development, an intelligent civilization would find a way of transferring its consciousness/soul beyond biological constraints, and its continual evolution would require it to migrate into the smallest density possible, to optimize its processing/communicating capacity. For any intelligent life-form to continue to advance, it is going to need to migrate into something resembling a very advanced computer. I see this as the future of humanity as well, as long as we aren't wiped out in the next few hundred years, we'll hit that point of singularity. As soon as we're able to advance a generalized AI, we'll see an exponential explosion of intelligence, as a self-perpetrating loop is created where AI is able to further begat AI+.

The huge challenge is going to be aligning/incorporating human values in the AI, or we'll just be left in the dust. You could try to contain the AI in a black box and just learn from it, but I see no way the AI doesn't jump mediums into the 'real' world. I don't see an easy answer to the problem, and am glad I'll probably be dead before the singularity occurs. My kids might not, though- I think it could happen that soon...

It's after posts like these that I sometimes think I should smoke less pot...