Two of my coworkers frequently mention shows like “Encounters” or “Ancient apocalypse” or whatever. I’m not the best at debating or forming arguments against these though I do feel strongly that bold claims require better evidence than a blurry photo and an eyewitness account. How do you all go about this?
Today I clumsily stumbled through conversation and said “I’ll need some evidence” and was hit with “there’s plenty of evidence in the episode ‘Lights over Fukushima’”. I didn’t have an answer because I haven’t watched it. I’m 99% sure that if I watch it it’s gonna be dramatized, designed to scare/freak you out a little and consist of eyewitness accounts and blurry photos set to eerie music. But I’m afraid I just sound like a haughty know-it-all if I do assert this before watching.
These are good people and I want to remain on good terms and not come across as a cynical asshole.
(Sorry if language is too formal or stilted. Not my native tongue)
I mean, if you are so disinterested in the conversation that you would ask the internet how to have your side of it rather than check out the show, maybe you just shouldn’t have that conversation. Change the subject or tell them you’re not into it. Who cares if they believe there are aliens?
Personally, I find it impossible to believe there isn’t other intelligent life out there. It’s not because of blurry photos or spooky stories. It’s that the universe is just so vast and there’s so much we will never understand about this place we are in. How can it not be out there? Frankly, it takes more faith to believe there isn’t something.
With that perspective, I do occasionally find those shows interesting. Not because it’s proof of anything but because it’s fun to watch and wonder what it is. It doesn’t have to make you a believer or a non-believer. There’s obviously something in the videos. What it is and where it comes from is entirely different. It’s just entertainment for people who like to indulge in a little speculation.
That’s fair, thanks. Reading this and other comments I think I’m taking this too seriously and furthernore, they’re having fun. It feels silly now to have asked but still, bouncing this off of strangers helped. I can only echo chamber in my own head.
I tried to engage them with exoplanetary research. I am also in the camp that surely we are not alone in the universe. Why assume we’re special in a seemingly homogenous universe? I am looking forward to humanity finding their first reliable biomarker in space.
I guess we’re just excited about the same thing, really.
Cool! The exo-planetary stuff and astronomy is interesting to me. I’m loving the data we are getting from JWST. There was recently an article about possible biological chemical processes on a faraway planet. The asteroid sample NASA collected also contained the building blocks for life. Not too long ago, we got to see the first picture of a black hole. There’s just so much out there to explore.
I wonder if we would even recognize other intelligent life if we found it. Could we figure out how to communicate? We can barely recognize intelligent life on Earth. Humans eat octopus and it’s one of the most intelligent creatures we are aware of. We still look right past them.
Personally, I find it impossible to believe there isn’t other intelligent life out there.
If the universe is infinite, and there’s no reason not to believe that this very well may be the case, then it’s almost certain that there is other intelligent life out there. However, just as the vastness of an infinite universe guarantees other intelligent life, it also guarantees that we’ll never meet. We may find evidence of them, or they may find evidence of us, but the odds of intelligent life concurrently existing in near enough proximity for our independent geneses, evolution, and advancement to interstellar travel before either people managed to die out is effectively zero. And mere radio communication between interstellar civilizations would literally take generations for a basic conversation at best. Humans may not even last another thousand or even hundred years. Can you imagine history textbooks in 3000 talking about current times the way that we talk about the Norman conquest of England or the first crusade? It’s weird to imagine where they’ll be to look down upon our ways of life now.