UFO's fact or fiction?

What I find hard to fathom is our massive leap in intelligence in such a tiny amount of time. In terms of our existence we have been around for mere minutes comparatively to the centuries that other life that has existed on this planet. Can this only be due to us being cannibalistic in our distant past, as one theory suggests?
Or have we been adapted at some point or placed here as part of a massive experiment that is monitored with the Earth as a Petr-dish of massive proportions?
Relativity shows us that as you approach the speed of light, time for the traveler moves at a different rate than everything else. What seems like months for the traveler is in fact 100's of years relatively to everyone else.

Who's to say that somewhere, maybe not that far away, intelligences have conquered the limitations of relativity and have seeded the cosmos.
With us as part of this experiment.
But we're getting more stupid. For example, teenagers may be able to text but they can't string two words together into a coherent sentence. Maybe the same thing happened to the dinosaurs.
 
But we're getting more stupid. For example, teenagers may be able to text but they can't string two words together into a coherent sentence. Maybe the same thing happened to the dinosaurs.

How did they hold their mobile phones. Not like they had thumbs is it!

All this theorizing is pointless. Let's stick to the hard facts.

Aliens are here! Trying to work out how and why is about as pointless as Ants trying to understand what wifi is. :D
 
How did they hold their mobile phones. Not like they had thumbs is it!

All this theorizing is pointless. Let's stick to the hard facts.

Aliens are here! Trying to work out how and why is about as pointless as Ants trying to understand what wifi is. :D

That's just another way of saying:

"God moves in mysterious ways".

I don't think we should let ETs off the hook so easily. If they're here, they should bloody well make it obvious OR be less careless in their attempts to hide from us. Frankly, their behaviour so far does them no favours in the superiority stakes.

The overwhelming probability ('hard facts' dont apply here) is: they aren't here.
 
But we're getting more stupid. For example, teenagers may be able to text but they can't string two words together into a coherent sentence. Maybe the same thing happened to the dinosaurs.
Completely wrong! :mad:

99% of the evidence says human intelligence hasn't changed for 50,000 years or more. 1% of the evidence says we're getting smarter.

My mother could string two words together (usually many more :D), but she couldn't use a computer or mobile phone to save her life.

Teenagers today using multimedia devices to text, twitter, blog, SMS, etc, demonstrate communication skills of a very high order indeed. They understand each other perfectly and the ideas they communicate are no more simple than anybody else's. What else do you want? Not only that, the vast majority are also quite capable of condescending to communicate with us neanderthals at our own primitive levels when they want to.
 
Completely wrong! :mad:

99% of the evidence says human intelligence hasn't changed for 50,000 years or more.
I happen to agree with that. I don't think we're any more intelligent than ancient civilisations like the Egyptians or Greeks.
 
I happen to agree with that. I don't think we're any more intelligent than ancient civilisations like the Egyptians or Greeks.

That's an interesting point. Problem solving integligence I believe hasn't changed, we just have better tools.
But how can we have developed manned flight, computers etc without a rise in intelligence?
I guess its all down to how you measure intelligence.
 
I happen to agree with that. I don't think we're any more intelligent than ancient civilisations like the Egyptians or Greeks.

I also adgree,we have seen when the **** hit the fan,we a fall back on the most basic of insticts.

But i do belive their are other lifeform out there,have they ever been here that i am not so sure about :)
 
Teenagers today using multimedia devices to text, twitter, blog, SMS, etc, demonstrate communication skills of a very high order indeed. They understand each other perfectly and the ideas they communicate are no more simple than anybody else's. What else do you want? Not only that, the vast majority are also quite capable of condescending to communicate with us neanderthals at our own primitive levels when they want to.

Teenagers know all the answers.

The older you get the more you realise how little you do know.

The more answers we get so many more questions are thrown up.

... And long may it continue! :)
 
That's an interesting point. Problem solving integligence I believe hasn't changed, we just have better tools.
But how can we have developed manned flight, computers etc without a rise in intelligence?
Apparently the oldest known mechanical computer was invented by the Ancient Greeks.
 
Intelligence is not the same as education, which is maybe where the discussion above was heading.
 
Teenagers know all the answers.

The older you get the more you realise how little you do know.

The more answers we get so many more questions are thrown up.

... And long may it continue! :)


Love this one, attributed to Mark Twain: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
 
Intelligence is not the same as education, which is maybe where the discussion above was heading.

Intelligence = finding the answers to the questions.

Education = reading the answers someone else has found.

Er... I better stop writing this rubbish.

:D
 
That's an interesting point. Problem solving integligence I believe hasn't changed, we just have better tools.
But how can we have developed manned flight, computers etc without a rise in intelligence?
I guess its all down to how you measure intelligence.

By acquiring knowledge and applying it :smashin:
 
That's an interesting point. Problem solving integligence I believe hasn't changed, we just have better tools.
But how can we have developed manned flight, computers etc without a rise in intelligence?
I guess its all down to how you measure intelligence.

This misapprehension explains why there are [-]fools[/-] people who cannot accept that the ancients built the Pyramids. As captainarchive said, the ancients were just as clever and ingenious, and without modern tech to aid them they had to be inventive and do the best with the tools available.

It isn't intelligence that leads to technological development; its intelligence + experience. Each generation builds on the knowledge of the previous one. Every new piece of technology is an improvement on the last. Apply that over time, and you get an evolution of technology that mirrors our biological evolution (albeit on a much faster scale).

You could, for example, take an aborigine and train him to be an airline pilot. You haven't increased his intelligence- just expanded his knowledge and skill set.
 
I wonder if anyone has worked out the limit of intelligence of humans. Technology is going through the same evolution humanity has, but at a quicker rate because of having human intelligence behind it. I reckon intelligence in human must still be increasing (though stupid people seem to actually breed more) at its regular evolutionary rate, but that is a lot slower than technological evolution. From that I guess we can surmise that the must be a point in the future where technology evolution will slow and probably end up matching the rate at which human intelligence increases (assuming it still does). From that, we must be able to work out in theory the limit of humanities technological advancement, at least theoretically.
 
Does anyone watch Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files on SyFy? Unlike a lot of shows they go out of their way to try and show that the photo or video was faked or mistaken identity, a bug on the lens etc. Then they often have 'night investigation' and here weird noises in old buildings and all that crap. In a recent episode they showed how humans probably built Stonehenge with only a few people, with techniques similar to those shown by a guy in Michigan.
No ancient structures were built by 'ancient astronauts' or what have you, humans were well capable of building them themselves no matter what Mr. Tsoukalos says.

 
I haven't read through all the posts so not sure if this has been posted already but I saw a few pics from old paintings from the Renaissance Era that some "experts" claim are proof of UFOs existed.

Here is a site that shows some examples. Not sure I go along with the whole UFO thing but these are quite odd.

UFO's In Ancient Art
 
I haven't read through all the posts so not sure if this has been posted already but I saw a few pics from old paintings from the Renaissance Era that some "experts" claim are proof of UFOs existed.

Here is a site that shows some examples. Not sure I go along with the whole UFO thing but these are quite odd.

UFO's In Ancient Art
They've missed the most famous one of all:

bayeux tapestry halley's comet
 
...It isn't intelligence that leads to technological development; its intelligence + experience. Each generation builds on the knowledge of the previous one...
I'll add to that: it's intelligence + tools + experience.

Tools are the most important, and within that term I include methods such as maths and science, not just hammers and levers.

Cognitive intelligence is, in my opinion, largely based on the ability to 'rehearse scenarios' in the mind (thought experiments), and those scenarios can include selected memories.

For instance, many animals use simple tools, but none, even chimps, are capable of taking it the next step to wonder how it could be made better. When it wants to winkle ants out of a tree, a chimp takes a stick, bites off the leaves, and then uses it. But it never keeps a well-tried stick for next time; nor is it very selective in choice of stick.
I wonder if anyone has worked out the limit of intelligence of humans. Technology is going through the same evolution humanity has, but at a quicker rate because of having human intelligence behind it. I reckon intelligence in human must still be increasing (though stupid people seem to actually breed more) at its regular evolutionary rate, but that is a lot slower than technological evolution. From that I guess we can surmise that the must be a point in the future where technology evolution will slow and probably end up matching the rate at which human intelligence increases (assuming it still does). From that, we must be able to work out in theory the limit of humanities technological advancement, at least theoretically.
Insofar as intelligence is very much based on memory, there is probably a storage limit. Processing power is not easily measurable, especially as we're delegating a lot of it to external machines these days.

There is no reason at all to think that intelligence is generally increasing or decreasing. It can only do so under natural selection, and we have no real idea what its physical basis is, nor can we know what selective pressures are at work. Our basic intelligence is good enough for us to continually refine our tools through the basic processes such as maths and science which we have already developed.

And by the way, that to my mind is another argument increasing the odds against ET intelligence. It might be that human intelligence is not the only possible type, and that others have never come up with science and technology at all.
 
Our intelligence certainly hasn't changed, what has changed massively is our rate of information exchange, from language to the written word to the printing press to the internet.
 
As Homo Sapiens, no.

But that has only been a miniscule % of a miniscule % of a second in evolutionary time.

Cave dwelling mammoth hunters were as intelligent as us.
 
Really? Not changed at all during our entire evolutionary journey?

Probably not in the last 50-150kya, when we are recogniseable as modern homo-sapiens. If you go further back, you might begin to see change. Probably commensurate with our comparative brain size.

But not commensurate with our technological level. Technology doesn't make us smarter- it just makes it easier for us to acquire and use information.
 
Really? Not changed at all during our entire evolutionary journey?
I was refering to the last 50,000 years figure mentioned earlier.
 

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