It’s a good point. There’s UFOs which are in the bottom tier. Belief that UFOs are extra-terrestrial which is somewhere else. And alien abductions. Which might be in the same tier.

Pedantically there’s also ‘aliens exist’ independent of any involvement with our planet. Which is an unproven theory.

Then there’s ‘aliens live inside Oumuamua’ which is also in the fact zone.

nick_md wrote:

UFO doesn't necessarily mean aliens for sure, but to the folks into that kinda thing I'd assume many do equate the term with aliens. If you do think aliens are visiting/monitoring (not saying I do, just saying if), then I think them abducting locals for research is on the same tier, because... why wouldn't they?

Ethics, morality, prime directive, logistics, practicality - why grab people and probe them for a few hours? If you can do that, you might as well just scoop them up without caring, and keep them in zoos, like we do with animals. It just stretches belief too far for me. Surveillance I can accept, anything beyond just seems like a wish to make us feel important.

Obvs it's fine if you believe otherwise, but I don't think "why wouldn't they" answers a whole bevy of questions that make it unlikely.

For me, alien abduction is like a whole massive level above just aliens coming here to fly around and check us out and even landing and getting out for a look around. 

At the moment, when humans explore somewhere we can't easily reach, we travel in small vehicles, submarines and other deep sea exploration vessels are a good example, as are the lunar landers and every manned mission to space and the space station. We have to minimise weight as much as possible for the sake of making our vehicles operate efficiently with the available power. 

It's not a huge stretch to assume that unless the aliens coming here have completely mastered interstellar travel (in which case they would probably just be here now and would be taking whatever resources we have that they want since we are a planet full of intelligent beings who can be communicated with and either persuaded or made to do whatever they like), they are subject to similar considerations when they have to build their craft.

Edit: Even after that, if you think how humans behave and what we try to do when we go to a new evironment, we aren't generally taking things to probe them for "reasons". We just look at stuff and try not to disturb anything. Unless you think that aliens coming here would act like white people did hundreds of years ago in the new world.

monkey wrote:

The belief gap isn’t that large between ‘aliens have visited Earth’ to ‘aliens have nabbed some humans to take a look at them’.

For me it is pretty big belief gap for the reasons I have outlined, and I agree with Rouj. What ya gonna do.

Oh yeah for sure, I think they're reasonable, I just agree with the chart that abductions are like leaving the bounds of rational thought compared to just saying "hey are we being visited by aliens and is that what some of theses UFOs are?"

We need our own pyramid really. I’m happy to accept that ‘alien abductions’ is a step beyond ‘alien visitation’ but it’s not that far beyond.

Not to the point where visitation is ‘speculation’ but abduction is on the same plane of likelihood as Prince Charles being a vampire.

Like why is ET shoving this thing up my ass? Just ask me to unlock my phone.

I think the alternative is a Roadside Picnic style situation where we're so different from whatever extra-terrestrials are visiting us that the impact of a proper visit is so profound it changes the whole world in a way that requires a complete rethink of our place in the universe, and they didn't even regard us as anything beyond insects.

I hope that happens.

They’re aliens. They might not have your 21st century human soy boy sensibilities.

Our ‘technological progress’ might be a comparative ant colony to them. If they can fly here, they can evade our primitive video capturing devices.

As for plugging into the internet to see what’s what.
1) Time travelling scientists going back to the prehistoric times aren’t going to rely on the testimony of Neanderthals.
2) Who do you think gave us the internet?

monkey wrote:

2) Who do you think gave us the internet?

Al Gore.

Roujin wrote:

Yes but given human's have become less savage over time, it is not unreasonable to expect alien life to do similat. The alternative for that would be if the aliens coming here were more barbaric, they undoubtedly wouldn't care about remaining hidden as we pose no threat to them a la a load of spanish people visiting south america a long time ago.

I think if aliens know we are capable of sending objects to the edge of the solar system, that at least some of us are probably okay at taking notes, I don't think they would look at a civilisation taking it's first steps into space and think "What a bunch of morons, we can't trust any of their own language or mathematical understanding of the universe at all", like they would discount all that and then just start taking flesh from the eyes of cows and shoving things up our butts instead?

Advanced civilisations will collect biological data we can’t even conceive of. So yes they might need to collect this first hand. Preferably up the arse.

On savagery - like I said, this might be ethical to them. They’re not savages by exploring the universe and collecting data in as low-key way as possible.

Right but like, do you think they would just do that as their first port of call?

Like okay we've arrived, okay start grabbing some of the hairless monkeys and take repeated samples from them, over a period of decades? How much is there about us that they need that much time and so many visits to collect? They could just take one single human male and female and breed their own in captivity at this point?

Tempy wrote:

At the end of the day you're willing to make big leaps like: interstellar travel equals ability to have stealth and mindwipe tech, and I am not. Or that because we put chimps and dolphins in zoos, aliens would do the same to beings with tech, which I see as a bigger leap than you clearly do. They are leaps I do not feel ring true. You do, that's cool. This is the thread for it.

You think aliens can break the light-speed barrier but not locate a mammalian hippocampus and disrupt it.

You think aliens can break the light-speed barrier but see a society that built its first computer 80 years ago as advanced.

monkey wrote:

Tempy wrote:

At the end of the day you're willing to make big leaps like: interstellar travel equals ability to have stealth and mindwipe tech, and I am not. Or that because we put chimps and dolphins in zoos, aliens would do the same to beings with tech, which I see as a bigger leap than you clearly do. They are leaps I do not feel ring true. You do, that's cool. This is the thread for it.

You think aliens can break the light-speed barrier but not locate a mammalian hippocampus and disrupt it. You think aliens can break the light-speed barrier but see a society that built its first computer 80 years ago as advanced.

How do you know they broke light speed to get here? Alpha centauri is less than 5 light years away. What if these guys can go half the speed of light, but they live 500 years or something because they have gene therapy on lock? So they just do these missions like sailors on submarines doing long stints under the arctic and stuff?

Roujin wrote:

Like why on game reserves where extremely endangered life exists like rhino populations, which are monitored by the park rangers, is there never any sign of weird mutilations reported on rare/exotic fauna?

What is it about US cows and humans that is so interesting to aliens coming here?

Your turning this into ‘monkey thinks alien abductions are real’ which I don’t. I just don’t think that the possibility of them is on a completely different plane from ‘aliens have visited Earth.’

They might be trying to work out where we came from, how we evolved, genetic analysis from sections of various yocals from all over the world. Maybe they just really like arses. Extra-terrestrial bum lovers.

Why would they visit and not be interested in taking biological samples?