Extraterrestrial life (did I spell it right?)

[TPUK]

Equally with our track record of wars and inhumanity we are probably no where near civilised enough to be worthy of contacting. Can you imagine the power struggle that would occur trying to gain their technology each nation claiming they would use it for the good of mankind - untill we stop fighting amongst ourselves and put our efforts in advancing as a peaceful world I don't think any INTELLIGENT alien life forms would come anywhere near us

[KOOPS95]

Equally with our track record of wars and inhumanity we are probably no where near civilised enough to be worthy of contacting. Can you imagine the power struggle that would occur trying to gain their technology each nation claiming they would use it for the good of mankind - untill we stop fighting amongst ourselves and put our efforts in advancing as a peaceful world I don't think any INTELLIGENT alien life forms would come anywhere near us

Remember, it is highly likely every civilized species would have this problem. Greed, lust for power, and coveting are naturally a mainstay of sentience, as they often bring the advances we know today as normal to our world.

[TPUK]

Well I tend to think that an advanced civilisation would need to move above/beyond that - if mankind used the money, time, knowledge and resources that they used to invent better ways of killing to improve the world as a whole we too could move beyond the baser values mankind unfortunately displays.

[Wildor]

Remember, it is highly likely every civilized species would have this problem. Greed, lust for power, and coveting are naturally a mainstay of sentience, as they often bring the advances we know today as normal to our world.

I couldn't agree more! Nature works as it does precisely because attributes of competitiveness promotes and spurs all life forms. It is indeed the way the universe insuflates vitality in those collections of molecular complexity that we call life forms.

It is incredibly naive, in my view, to suppose an hypothetical extra-terrestrial life form to be peaceful simply because it would have better space ships and would thus be able to reach us.
Likewise, I find the notion of equating pacifism to higher intelligence to be a very strange proposition.

[Lord Ken Deathmarr]

I think there are many planets and life forms, we just haven't discovered. You know, there are life forms on Earth we have not found yet. Like lets say one planet has water, this could be a possibility of life because there could be water creatures.

[TPUK]

I couldn't agree more! Nature works as it does precisely because attributes of competitiveness promotes and spurs all life forms. It is indeed the way the universe insuflates vitality in those collections of molecular complexity that we call life forms.

It is incredibly naive, in my view, to suppose an hypothetical extra-terrestrial life form to be peaceful simply because it would have better space ships and would thus be able to reach us.
Likewise, I find the notion of equating pacifism to higher intelligence to be a very strange proposition.

Well not necessarily peaceful in totality - but as a race it would work together as a whole even if it were toward intergalactic domination.

Star Trek has a lot to answer for. LOL

[jgarn21@eq.edu.eu]

i hope the aliens are like the covernet then the U.S army (which i am apart of) would destroy em

[theturkeywithin]

It's a very complex question. You might view it with a sort of "the universe is so big life is bound to exist somewhere" kind of opinion or with a "the things needed for sustaining life are so specific we're lucky it exists at all" opinion. Personally, i go with the latter. Just thinking about the fact that you need water, oxygen (though not too much of it), etc. to all come together on a place that is not too hot and not too cold makes the odds incredibly small. Throw in the factors that you need two species (or one cannibalistic one) in the same place for food and reproduction and you reduce the odds even more. I also agree with the earlier posters in the fact that if life does in fact exist, we will never find them. Simply because we've searched so far and wide already that even if we did at last discover some alien race, there would be no way of sending word to them that we exist. Anyways, that's just my two cents.

[Montros]

There are miniscule odds of a planet being capable of supporting life, and miniscule odds of life developing on those planets, and miniscule odds of that life developing an intelligent species, and miniscule odds of that intelligence creating a civilization capable of space flight.
Then there is the utterly incomprehensible, huge, vast, enormity of space.
(probably deserves more "big" adjectives)

The odds of our two civilizations meeting are so astronomically small, I don't know how to begin to describe it.

But it's not like there are only two civilizations in the whole universe. There might be millions!!! Which means, for example, planet A might contact planet C, while planet B might contact Planet D, and so on. So, if there were a serious amount of civilizations in the universe, we're bound to find at least ONE civilization. If we're lucky, we may even find two!

But, as I said, if it's so easy to find a civilization in space, why haven't we found one yet? Project S.E.T.I (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Inteligence) is searching for some right now, but they've only found space dust and nebulas. Plus, they're also starting to lose some funds, and if they're broke, no more satalites for them. which means there will be an even lower chance to find intellegent lifeforms other than humans.

[Rahu]

If we ever encounter intelligent life, it'll be like the dove scene in Mars Attacks. Except we'll be the martians.