Ask HN: Do You Believe in Aliens?

[otherayden]

Seems like a topic that doesn’t come up so much in popular discourse now that we have AI taking up a lot of air time. I personally do, but I wonder if some of you have some thoughts about it

[mindcrime]

1. Do I believe other life has existed, does exist, and/or will exist elsewhere in the universe? Yes, with pretty close to 100% confidence.

2. Do I believe other intelligent life forms visit earth in their flying saucers, abduct people, anal probe them, abduct and slaughter cows, build pyramids, and - apparently - crash often? No, not really. I mean, I can't rule it out, but my personal subjective Bayesian prior towards this notion would probably be something like 0.001 or so. But that's actually up from years past, as we learn more about more possibly inhabitable planets that are closer to Earth than was previously known, etc.

[jimbo808]

I think it would be absurd to believe we're the only place life is has happened. But I also think it's absurd to believe that life has come here.

[gaoryrt]

No. I think the appearance of life on Earth was the result of a long series of coincidences. If even a small part of that had been different, life wouldn’t have emerged.

I’ve come to believe in the Great Filter theory more and more in recent years.

[fullstackwife]

Just thinking opposite direction: if you were to spawn a new planet with life somewhere in the universe, how would you do that? Micro manage every detail, or rather prepare proper conditions, and see what happens? Wouldn't the "proper conditions" eventually look like series of coincidences?

[krapp]

Do I believe extraterrestrial life exists somewhere in the universe? Yes. I think it's more probable that it does than doesn't.

I don't assume the existence of extraterrestrial life, even intelligent life, means interstellar colonization or the consumption of the galaxy by swarms of Von Neumann probes must be a certainty.

Do I believe any of the transdimensional NHI booga sphere abduction Majestic 12 nonsense? No. I don't believe faster than light travel is possible, I don't believe aliens have ever been here. I think that's just folklore, like Bigfoot, ghosts and Finland.

[_heimdall]

I can only assume there must be other life in the universe. If intelligence is emergent, there should be other intelligent life as well.

I do find the great filter theory as an interesting explanation tot he Fermi paradox. We humans sure seem on a path to wipe ourselves out, hopefully we won't destroy the planet entirely but similarly we seem on that path. Maybe all intelligent civilizations destroy themselves before ever reaching the level of intergalactic travel.

[CM30]

Yeah I believe there's other life in the universe, and that some of it is probably sentient.

Whether it's visited Earth on the other hand... that's a lot less likely. Feels like the distances you need to travel for that kind of space exploration are vast enough that even an advanced species might not take it lightly.

[carlnewton]

Intuitively it seems likely that alien life would exist elsewhere in the universe, but I tend to favour evidence over intuition, and I haven't read any compelling evidence. The Wow Signal might be the most interesting thing we've observed in that regard, but it's still not enough for me personally.

[_heimdall]

I'd be curious to hear a few more details for the question.

Does it matter whether the aliens have visited earth, or only that life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Do they need to be intelligent aliens, by some definition of intelligent?

And do they have to still exist today, or is it enough to think life may gave existed elsewhere at some point?

[otherayden]

Let’s focus specifically on aliens that exist somewhere in the universe, regardless of intelligence. My one criteria is that if it was seen by an average human that they would think “yep, this is definitely life”

[incomingpain]

Yes aliens for sure exist; too many planets for there not to be. Alien Life for sure exists in the milky way.

I do believe aliens have been to earth many times. The last time was thousands of years ago though. Everyone claiming to be abducted is lying.

[pillefitz]

Reading "UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry", albeit a bit dry, changed my mind on the topic - I now believe with reasonable confidence alien visitations took place.

[unfixed]

I assume that the universe is almost infinite, so I belive that almost every creature that I can think of has existed, does exist or will exist somewhere.

[leet_thow]

Yes, and the working hypothesis as to why they have been here in the last century, with sightings mainly in the southwest US, is because they were checking in on our nuclear arms development.

[krapp]

Why would they care about our nuclear arms development?

To any species capable of interstellar travel, nuclear weapons would be about as threatening as a match is to us.