Weird Stuff (tinfoil hat wearing goons only, please) - The Bear and Badger

g.man

Tempy wrote:

The truth is in Brisbane, apparently.

Armitage_Shankburn

Follow up's grand https://twitter.com/thomas_violence/status/1391717852227407873?s=20

LivDiv

I really want this to be a high tier troll after that follow up.

Facewon

Thomas violence is an excellent tweeter. Trufax.

Facewon

https://www.pedestrian.tv/bites/cafe-63-menu-brisbane-chaos-twitter/

The real mysteries are here..

bad_hair_day

The New Yorker recently delved into the historical relationship between governments and UFO’s. Some eye widening quotes and quite a read, but concludes with this:

Full piece here.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously

Djornson

So i got a question on the UFO thing. Let's say there are lots of UFOs, let's say they are piloted by aliens, let's say the government(s) know about them and hide the truth from the general public. Like.. so what? Why is that so upsetting? What benefit does the government(s) telling us about it bring? What am i missing?

(I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here. I'd like to know but i dont really know why. And for the record, i'm pretty on the fence about the whole thing, i don't think people are insane for believing that UFOs are piloted by aliens etc.)

Lord_Griff

We need the holodeck tech.

bad_hair_day

Djornson wrote:

So i got a question on the UFO thing. Let's say there are lots of UFOs, let's say they are piloted by aliens, let's say the government(s) know about them and hide the truth from the general public. Like.. so what? Why is that so upsetting? What benefit does the government(s) telling us about it bring? What am i missing?

If they are, isn’t it more why they feel the need to keep what they know secret if the UFO’s are not hostile? Do governments have the right to hide the knowledge of a benign phenomenon if it leads to greater human enlightenment and understanding of our place in the cosmos? Besides, how cool would it be to have a forty foot Tic Tac to pop down to Waitrose?

superflyninja

Djornson wrote:

So i got a question on the UFO thing. Let's say there are lots of UFOs, let's say they are piloted by aliens, let's say the government(s) know about them and hide the truth from the general public. Like.. so what? Why is that so upsetting? What benefit does the government(s) telling us about it bring? What am i missing?

(I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here. I'd like to know but i dont really know why. And for the record, i'm pretty on the fence about the whole thing, i don't think people are insane for believing that UFOs are piloted by aliens etc.)

Well I think if for example the US government knows about UFOs then it's only a handful of people that really know. The rest are probably in the dark. But I think a government would deny UFOs because that acknowledges there is something in the air that they can't control or defend against.

Djornson

Good point superfly but it kind of adds to my question, is it a bad thing that they hide it? Hair, i guess another reason is they want to copy the tech for their military and not sure with other countries. To me thats the bigger problem, not specifically the UFO thing but the fact that our whole society is based on competition.

bad_hair_day

Djorn, as it’s a worldwide phenomenon the US wouldn’t (necessarily) be the only military to have first hand knowledge of what they are - as mentioned in the New Yorker article I linked a few posts ago.

There’s a ‘60 Minutes’ documentary airing tonight centring around pilot encounters. I’ll put it up in here if possible.

Diluted Dante

I can solve this one right now.

Those are planes.

Wookienopants

bad_hair_day wrote:

Djorn, as it’s a worldwide phenomenon the US wouldn’t (necessarily) be the only military to have first hand knowledge of what they are - as mentioned in the New Yorker article I linked a few posts ago.

There’s a ‘60 Minutes’ documentary airing tonight centring around pilot encounters. I’ll put it up in here if possible.

Oooooh, post it! Post it!

Djornson

Maybe i'm making incorrect assumptions. Maybe you just find it interesting and want to know about it? That's cool. I got the impression from some youtube videos that people are really angry the cover up. I dont really get the anger about UFOs in particular. Lots of things are classified. As i wrote i just thought of something.. i guess aliens might be controversial for religious people? I'm not religious so it hadn't occurred to me before.

superflyninja

Djornson wrote:

Maybe i'm making incorrect assumptions. Maybe you just find it interesting and want to know about it? That's cool. I got the impression from some youtube videos that people are really angry the cover up. I dont really get the anger about UFOs in particular. Lots of things are classified. As i wrote i just thought of something.. i guess aliens might be controversial for religious people? I'm not religious so it hadn't occurred to me before.

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.
But like I posted above, there may well be a good reason for it to be covered up.

Oh I'm nearly done listening to a recent Joe Rogan interview with Christopher Mellon about UFOs. He is an ex department of defense (or something) guy. Mentions a lot about how the information might not be available to a great number of people.
Very interesting.

bad_hair_day

Djornson wrote:

As i wrote i just thought of something.. i guess aliens might be controversial for religious people? I'm not religious so it hadn't occurred to me before.

The religious tend to encompass discoveries within their faith as proof of their God’s reach and plan. Microorganisms, not the devil causing disease is no longer a thing. No problems with Earth being round, in the outer arm of a galaxy and not the centre of the Universe. Evolution is fine because the big fella has eternity and other life forms still would fall under his watch. Though fuck ‘em if it advances humanity, daily life must carry on and the world will continue to turn.

Djornson

superflyninja wrote:

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.

I choose to believe that the answer to the question is self evident. If everything we know about the universe is correct, then there must be or least has been extraterrestrial life more advanced than us. The idea that we are the pinaccle of life is so terrifying i refuse to entertain it.

You know how they do pandemic modelling? (and then don't follow the recommendations.) I wonder what the model for the revelation that it's admitted aliens are visiting us is? Maybe it's not good?

Yossarian

Djornson wrote:

superflyninja wrote:

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.

I choose to believe that the answer to the question is self evident. If everything we know about the universe is correct, then there must be or least has been extraterrestrial life more advanced than us. The idea that we are the pinaccle of life is so terrifying i refuse to entertain it.

There’s a theory that humans evolved incredibly early in the existence of the universe, the universe is about 13.8bn years old and is expected to last around 10 trillion years, so right now we aren’t even 0.14% into the lifetime of the universe. Could be that we’re early to the party.

bad_hair_day

The venues are there for when the guests arrive with 6 billion earth like planets in the Minky Way alone, astronomers estimate.

Elmlea

Yossarian wrote:

Djornson wrote:

superflyninja wrote:

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.

I choose to believe that the answer to the question is self evident. If everything we know about the universe is correct, then there must be or least has been extraterrestrial life more advanced than us. The idea that we are the pinaccle of life is so terrifying i refuse to entertain it.

There’s a theory that humans evolved incredibly early in the existence of the universe, the universe is about 13.8bn years old and is expected to last around 10 trillion years, so right now we aren’t even 0.14% into the lifetime of the universe. Could be that we’re early to the party.

This is a hugely interesting area of cosmology mixed with metaphysics, encapsulated in the Fermi Paradox. Empirically, there should be other races out there, so why don't we see them? The best response is the idea of the 'great filter,' which stops races evolving far enough to become truly interplanetary or intergalactic.

There's then a theory that we're either before that, or after it; and if we're after it, no-one else is yet like Yoss says. If we're before it, we'll kill ourselves off before we reach another galaxy.

GurtTractor

There's also the thing of perhaps we just haven't looked hard enough yet -

However, perhaps more importantly for now, even order-of-magnitude estimates of the SETI space searched to date are valuable because they rebut the pervasive misconception that SETI work to date has significantly “sharpened” the Fermi Paradox or proven so dispositive that SETI can be said to have “failed” to find what it seeks.

We should be careful, however, not to let this result swing the pendulum of public perceptions of SETI too far or the other way by suggesting that the SETI haystack is so large that wecan never hope to find a needle. The whole haystack need only be searched if one needs to prove that there are zero needles—because technological life might spread through the Galaxy, and/or technological species might arise independently in many places, we might expect there to be agreat number of needles to be found. Also, our haystack definition included vast swaths of interstellar space where we have no particular reason to expect to find transmitters; humanity’s completeness to subsets of this haystack—for instance, for continuous, permanent transmissions from nearby stars—is many orders of magnitude higher.

Sourcey paper

A more simple summary - https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/only-small-fraction-space-has-been-searched-aliens

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2018/10/02/into-the-cosmic-haystack/ -

Maybe, then, there is no such thing as an ‘eerie silence,’ or at least not one whose existence has been shown to be plausible. The matter seems theoretical until you realize it impacts practical concerns like SETI funding. If we assume that extraterrestrial civilizations do not exist because they have not visited us, then SETI is a wasteful exercise, its money better spent elsewhere.

By the same token, some argue that because we have not yet had a SETI detection of an alien culture, we can rule out their existence, at least anywhere near us in the galaxy. What Wright wants to do is show that the conclusion is false, because given the size of the search space, SETI has barely begun. We need, then, to examine just how much of a search we have actually been able to mount. What interstellar beacons, for example, might we have missed because we lacked the resources to keep a constant eye on the same patch of sky?

Roujin

Yossarian wrote:

Djornson wrote:

superflyninja wrote:

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.

I choose to believe that the answer to the question is self evident. If everything we know about the universe is correct, then there must be or least has been extraterrestrial life more advanced than us. The idea that we are the pinaccle of life is so terrifying i refuse to entertain it.

There’s a theory that humans evolved incredibly early in the existence of the universe, the universe is about 13.8bn years old and is expected to last around 10 trillion years, so right now we aren’t even 0.14% into the lifetime of the universe. Could be that we’re early to the party.

Although we're early-ish, much of the universe's long existence will be shit, the centres of galaxies running out of material to birth new stars, existing galaxies and their stars sytems, drifting trillions of light years away from each other, cold and long dead, with equally dormant planets, just waiting for the expansion to end and the theorised contraction back down to a singularity to begin.

We are lucky enough to have existed during the golden age of the universe.

Edit: Oh also re the question: I guess a lot of people are mad that the government is not telling us about aliens because we have problems that their technology could probably fix and also I guess people have a right to be able to talk to whoever they want, even if it's aliens, so stop cock blocking pls. But the more you pick at those ideas the more it makes no sense for a government to cover up the existence of aliens, far better to be a country with an open diplomatic relationship with them, to learn from them and improve the quality of life for its own citizens, rather than just like, not do that, for some reason.

Minkymu

In the minky way hair?

bad_hair_day

bad_hair_day

Morning, fellow weirdos.

Can’t get much more credible mainstream reporting than 60 minutes. It’s not a question if UFO’s are real but what are they?

Armitage_Shankburn

Elmlea wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Djornson wrote:

superflyninja wrote:

I get why people are mad. Whether advanced extraterrestrial life exists is one of the fundamental questions. To think that some government officials may know the answer and be actively covering it up is hugely frustrating.

I choose to believe that the answer to the question is self evident. If everything we know about the universe is correct, then there must be or least has been extraterrestrial life more advanced than us. The idea that we are the pinaccle of life is so terrifying i refuse to entertain it.

There’s a theory that humans evolved incredibly early in the existence of the universe, the universe is about 13.8bn years old and is expected to last around 10 trillion years, so right now we aren’t even 0.14% into the lifetime of the universe. Could be that we’re early to the party.

This is a hugely interesting area of cosmology mixed with metaphysics, encapsulated in the Fermi Paradox. Empirically, there should be other races out there, so why don't we see them? The best response is the idea of the 'great filter,' which stops races evolving far enough to become truly interplanetary or intergalactic.

There's then a theory that we're either before that, or after it; and if we're after it, no-one else is yet like Yoss says. If we're before it, we'll kill ourselves off before we reach another galaxy.

Nice post elm, but you forgot some important points, like sometimes, the aliens drive cars

bad_hair_day

Woman from Mars is through with cars
She's eatin' bars, yeah wall to wall
Door to door, hall to hall
She's gonna eat 'em all

poprock

I was going to post this in the science thread, but fuck it. Mushrooms are weird. Into the weird thread they go.

This is a brilliant article. It’s a review of a book about mushrooms, from the London Review of Books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/francis-gooding/from-its-myriad-tips

In just over 3,000 words, it manages to cover biology, history, science fiction, artificial intelligence, zombies and more.

My favourite bit:

Take the proficiency of fungi at problem-solving. Fungi are used to searching out food by exploring complex three-dimensional environments such as soil, so maybe it’s no surprise that fungal mycelium solves maze puzzles so accurately. It is also very good at finding the most economical route between points of interest. The mycologist Lynne Boddy once made a scale model of Britain out of soil, placing blocks of fungus-colonised wood at the points of the major cities; the blocks were sized proportionately to the places they represented. Mycelial networks quickly grew between the blocks: the web they created reproduced the pattern of the UK’s motorways (‘You could see the M5, M4, M1, M6’). Other researchers have set slime mould loose on tiny scale-models of Tokyo with food placed at the major hubs (in a single day they reproduced the form of the subway system) and on maps of Ikea (they found the exit, more efficiently than the scientists who set the task). Slime moulds are so good at this kind of puzzle that researchers are now using them to plan urban transport networks and fire-escape routes for large buildings.

I mean … holy shit. Just wow.

Kow

Joe Rogan has an interview with Paul Stamets, a top mycologist (who's also into the psychedelic aspect). It's a really interesting talk.

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