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Aliens
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Post by
606231
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Post by
Morec0
I belive that there could be extraterrestrial life out there, but what those individual aliens look like or whether or not any of our theories about them (including Area 51) are anything but man-made fiction remains to be seen. It's no secret that the American Government hides things from its citizens, however, so maybe extraterrestrial life does exist, and is one of those things.
Post by
xaratherus
Xartherus, I think its a bit obvious who it is, I was using sacarsm ;)
I wasn't sure. :) Sorry, it's hard to tell sarcasm, especially when I'm just 'in a mood' like I am today.
Post by
224056
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Post by
Tartonga
Also:
If there is life out there, why does it have to be more evolved than us?
What do you mean? Evolution is aimless so there's no scale that it could be more or less of.
First of all, I said that.
Secondly...WTF? Are you implying a simple cell is as evolved as a whole human being? Just to remind you, we were just cells some thousands of years ago. In other planets of this solar system there might not be any intelligent life out there, but there might be bacteries or other types of microcells that we are not aware of.
Post by
91604
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Post by
204878
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Post by
804522
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Post by
Tartonga
The extant single-celled organisms have spent just as much time evolving as we have via different paths (every species on Earth has), just because they aren't as big or intelligent doesn't mean they're lesser organisms, they are just as well-adapted to survive as we are, this can easily be demonstrated by the fact that they're still alive and in all likelihood will continue to be until Earth becomes inhospitable to life.
Obviously, the size has nothing to do with evolution, however the quantity of cells in one organism (See Unicellular and Multicellular) and what kind of cells are involved (See Prokaryote and Eukaryote) does. Also, the intelligence is another fact of evolution. Humans are the only species on Earth that can reason abstractly and we also do not only trust our instincts, we also use rationality.
Every organism is well-adapted to survive in his own habitat (i.e. you as a human being won't be able to live on top of a volcano, but there are actually bacteries and uncellular organisms that do live there).
And no, we were not "just some cells" thousands of years ago, we haven't been "just some cells" for hundreds of millions of years. While you may not know the difference, modern and pre-historic micro-organisms couldn't be more different. I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.
Do you know how is the human body mainly composed? Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen and Nitrogen. Those are the main components of everything alive on Earth and were the main components of the Earth millions of years ago. Those components starting reacting to each other until they formed cells. You can see more about the
Urey & Miller experiment
which explains this.
I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.
For your information, I study medicine...guess what were my first classes about?
Post by
238331
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Post by
Skreeran
In the beginning of the thread I said, "let's all assume that there is extraterrestrial life." The existence of aliens or not will be in another thread. I am still very skeptical of it's existence. On a personal level, 70% of me don't believe in aliens, and the other 30% thinks about it to kill time.
Where do I think they come from? I don't know. There's a high probability that they are from another solar system unless we can find proof of an "alien" base somewhere in our solar system..
Why would they attack us? We would never know that answer. I can list a few things off the back. protecting their race / species, in need of resources, killing everything they see, fear, research, fun, exploration, answers.
How do they know about us? They probably send "observers" to scout Earth like in Starcraft.
If there is life out there, why does it have to be more evolved than us? I guess you have a point. We have evolved to the current optimal level needed to live on this earth. I can guess that they are not more evolved than us, but I can say that their technology for traveling through space could and possibly be more sophisticated than ours. It was my mistake to include the difference of our evolution to their evolution in terms of technology and space.What I'm confused about is how you jumped from "Let's assume their existence," to "Let's assume they've made contact, we've seen them, and they're going to attack us."
Post by
204878
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Post by
Tartonga
Clearly not evolutionary history nor spelling.
I guess that's what braindead say when they just realized they didn't know anything but trying to sound smart. Next time bring something worthy to the argument, so we can discuss about it.
Post by
204878
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Post by
80642
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Post by
Monday
I was listening to Exo-Politics today. I never realized it was about aliens until yesterday.Prehaps our race is the most evovled in the entire cosmos, why do we have to lag behind?
I agree. Why should humanity be at the bottom of the heap, both morally and technologically?
How can we assume that any extraterrestrial life will be humanoid? Who says they have to have 2 arms, 2 legs, a head, 2 eyes, a nose and mouth in order to be intelligent? Why can't they be gelatinous blobs, or insectoid?
This ^
Star Trek aliens probably wouldn't exist imo, as it takes a very specific set of circumstances for them to be humanoid.
Another alien race may not need water to survive. They may have developed without the need for it.
Something I remember reading is that any lifeform needs water to survive.
I think.
Post by
Tartonga
Wut? You're the one who thought we were "just some cells" when were already in the genus Homo then started throwing out information to hide it.
I guess you didn't study spelling either. Your point is that there is no such thing as evolution, that there are no scales to measure who is more evolved than others and yet you call that we, human beings, evolved from previous Homo genders. Are you retarded? I'm seriously asking. My point is that there is evolution and it can be measured, since from the beginning the human race was just cells that had millions of years to evolve. If you didn't study biology, it's not my fault, go troll somewhere else, or even better, go back to school. You just didn't bring anything but your meaningless thoughts to the argument. Try to come back when you have cleared your mind.
Post by
Skreeran
What DoctorLore appears to be saying from my perspective, is that extant bacteria have been evolving just as much as we "higher" creatures, just in less immediately visible ways. Intelligence is the best survival strategy for us, but not necessarily for bacteria, or, say, annelid worms. While some people might consider them to be "lower" life forms, the fact is that the worms around today have been naturally selected just as much as we have.
What Tartonga seems to be saying, from my perspective, is that while there may not be a "scale" from less evolved to more evolved, aliens on other worlds may not have been around for as long, and thus might not have had as much time to develop as we have. Perhaps they are less specialized for their specific niches than we are. We humans, for example, are still "built" for the roles we had two million years ago when our species initially showed up on the block. Natural selection can still make us fit our current role better. Perhaps some alien life forms are even farther "behind" us, when it comes to the survival strategies they are adopting.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
But you must also consider that organisms are not always perfectly suited for their current ecological niche. That's why natural selection works. Even if a species lives in their environment
fine
, there are going to be individuals who are better suited for surviving in their environment. And of those survivors, there will be individuals who are even better. And so on. Even once they cannot become more suited to their ecological environment, they're still competing with each other for food and mates.
While evolution cannot be graded on a scale of "more evolved" to "less evolved," you can measure how well they have adapted to their current ecological niche. Our ancestors made a big shift from a survival strategy based on dexterity and agility (a perfectly legitimate strategy that is still in use by many primates), to a strategy based on intelligence and tool use. This was not a sudden jump, but it was a shift from one niche to another, and if you compare our ancient Homo Erectus ancestors to us now, you could say that they survived just fine, and, as dictated by natural selection, were the most effective survivors of their time, we today fit the "intelligence and tool use" niche better than they did. Homo Erectus went extinct because they were not as good at surviving as their descendants.
Edit: Addendum: It may be that some aliens that have achieved what we know as "sentience" do not fill that niche as well as we do, and while it would be technically incorrect to say that we are "more evolved" or "further along," it would not be incorrect to say that we have adapted to the same ecological niche to a greater degree than they yet have.
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