General Systems Theory for Humanity

[Schuyler]

I’d like to address a couple of issues that have come up recently in several threads. The basic idea is that humanity is to the Alien Guys™ as (Pick one or several) {ants, amoebas, monkeys, Christopher Columbus, the natives of Tierra del Fuego, etc.} are to the modern age of humanity. If you gave a nuclear submarine or an iPhone to Columbus, he would not be able to replicate it. The Alien Guys™ are so far ahead of us that we can’t even recognize what they are and so we ‘interpret’ them as spaceships this century even as we called then faeries and elves in times past. They are (pick one) {hundreds, thousands, millions, billions} of years ahead of us.

Or not.

Those are nice analogies, truly insightful. I get what you are saying, but I’ve heard them for years—decades, even. The concept that the Alien Guys™ are ahead of us is not new. In fact, it is probably one of the oldest concepts surrounding UFOs ever. You can identify this concept in The White Sands Incident, one of the very first contactee books ever written. In fact, you could make a case that this concept pervades Ufology.

I would like to suggest that we may not be as far behind as lots of people seem to think. I’d also like to deal with some other concepts such as our origins at the same time.

Theorem One: We are not stupid. Amoebas and ants have not formulated E=MC(2). Monkeys have not launched telescopes into earth orbit in an attempt to find the edges of the universe. None of them used higher math to come up with nuclear energy or pondered Super String theory. None of them have sent robots to Mars to poke around in the dust and send back pictures. Now, you can say we are warlike, emotional, and greedy little bastards if you like. I’ll leave that kind of gnashing of teeth and hand wringing to others. There’s plenty of pessimism in the world. I do not share it.

The point is that we are at an advanced enough stage of development that we can back engineer anything within our own paradigms. We can do literally anything with electricity, for example. I’m not claiming Corso was right. The historical evidence indicates we came up with integrated circuits all by ourselves. The very design of them even today harkens back to elements in place in the 1800’s. Intel did not get its ideas from Roswell, but AMD did get its ideas from Intel and back engineered all their chips from scratch. All they had were outputs. They put engineers who swore they had never seen the innards of an Intel chip, put them in a room and told them to design a chip that provided the same outputs as the Intel chips. Now that’s back engineering at its finest. And if there was anything the least bit electrical from an alien ship, you can bet that we are capable of figuring it out.

Theorem Two: We have a Paradigm Problem. The previous pervasive paradigm was that “God did it.” The Holy Roman Empire ruled Europe with this paradigm until finally Henry VIII, the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance began to poke at it with sufficient zeal to break it open, helped along, oddly enough, by the Black Plague and the printing press. Dead people didn’t need clothes, so that made paper, the CD-ROM of the Renaissance, much cheaper. The survivors of the plague inherited the property of its victims thus creating a much more affluent society—and the rest is history!

The “God did it” paradigm is still with us and causing problems as fundamentalists of all stripes continue to battle on behalf of their archaic beliefs, but the culture as a whole has moved on in the for of Newtonian physics, which is all but conquered and on to the kinds of physics we hear of today in quantum mechanics and relativity, two diametrically opposed viewpoints that have agreed to disagree. The paradigm this time is the Scientific Method, a reaction against the “God did it” folks insisting on proving everything with solid evidence. It needed to happen and it has done much to foster progress.

The problem is that it is an “in the box” method. You can’t “think outside the box” because you can’t prove there is an outside to the box. To those immersed in the Scientific Method, if you can’t prove there is an outside to the box, then it does not exist. This is made pervasive by peer review, which ensures no one will step outside the box at all. Obviously the Scientific Method has allowed many technological wonders, so this is proof staying inside the box is sufficient. Also, outside the box is inhabited by many demons, some of them the same demons that were pervasive in the “God did it” paradigm. We certainly do not want to return to THAT sorry scenario, which is another good reason to stay inside the box. It’s much safer there.

I believe we are at the end of what the present paradigm can do for us. Unfortunately, the attitude that if it can’t be proven scientifically, then not only does it not exist, we can’t even talk about it is stifling progress. We need the Lance Moodys of the world to point out some of the silliness of sloppy thinking, but they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater and that’s what we have to get beyond.

Theorem Three: We are from here. Oh, we may have been tweaked. That is certainly possible, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that we did not originate elsewhere. There is DNA and the fossil record to go by. We’ve got the fossil record back to Homo erectus down, and that’s all you really need. Homo afrensis is just icing on the cake. Yes, dates keep getting pushed further and further back, but in the greater scheme of things, not that much. I think there is clear evidence of a near Renaissance era culture back about 12,000 years ago, much predating Egypt, that was wiped out by a flood. Read Graham Hancock’s Underworld for an accounting of it. But this is not evidence of the co-existence of humans with dinosaurs, or any technologically advanced civilization in the distant past. 19th century anecdotal evidence to the contrary, there’s not a shred of proof showing this happened. And I know all about Cremo. Just because his work is long and detailed does not mean it is scholarly.

The DNA evidence is even more overwhelming for an earthly origin of our species. Our DNA shows very close associations with not only all the primates, but even with rats. The idea that we evolved elsewhere and were planted or marooned here simply does not match with the evidence we have.

Theorem Four: The next paradigm will include a spiritual element. That does not mean a return to the “God did it” paradigm, but a recognition that at a basic elemental level some parts of that paradigm are correct. That does not mean God, Jesus, Satan, angels, Mother Mary, Allah, or 72 virgins awaiting you in heaven is anywhere near correct, but it does mean there is a heretofore unexplored by science dimensional aspect of reality. In other words we are multi-dimensional beings.

Think of it this way. You are sitting on a dock built over a lake. Your legs are dangling in the water, feeling its coolness. The rest of you is in the element of air, a vastly less dense medium. Your legs can’t see or feel the air; they feel and experience only the more dense water. No one would say you are not connected to your legs, but if your legs were conscious, they would only have a vague sense of who you were as a whole. The only conversation you have with your legs is when you order them to move, or if you are frightened, they experience an adrenalin rush and increased blood flow.

If this is the nature of reality, then we can’t help but go there next time. It is certain that the current Scientific method paradigm will resist this, just as the Church resisted the advent of the scientific paradigm. We see that already in the disdain mainstream science places on subjects we discuss here. It’s not just that these subjects are taboo. They are a threat. To the scientific paradigm they are seen as a throwback to the religious paradigm. The thing is, a new paradigm would be just as scientific as the old one, once we get there. It’s not that science is wrong, it’s just that it doesn’t include enough. We have to expand the box.

That’s why a White House Lawn Landing™ is necessary. We need something to break us loose from the old paradigm by demonstrating conclusively that this ‘something else’ exists. Of course, that may already have happened at some level and we just don’t know about it. We may need the Alien Guys’ help to get to the next level.

Theorem Five: We’re not that far behind. The evidence would suggest that the Alien Guys are concerned about our nukes. Why would they be? If you believe the ETH, they passed a zillion nuclear furnaces on the way here. Yes, a nuclear blast can ruin your whole day, but why would they care unless it WOULD affect them? If you start considering the multi-dimensional aspect of this, then it starts to make sense. There are also anecdotal reports of our radar making their ship navigation systems go awry. None of these incidents points o a culture billions of years advanced.

There is also the issue of the Singularity, ala Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge. The idea is that we are at a crossroads where technological progress is about to travel upwards very fast, to the point that we can’t predict where it is going. This is not just another 2012 scenario. Kurzweil has been very accurate in the past. His predictions from ten and twenty years ago have largely been correct. If he is correct, then the next hundred years of progress will exceed the last million exponentially. That would put the idea of ‘number of years ahead’ in a new light. If we are with a few decades of Kurzweil’s Singularity, we may be only the same few decades behind the Alien Guys.

What does all this mean? Only that we need not continue to have an inferiority complex. We need not be pessimistic about our own future. Our vision is too narrow. What we think we see today may not at all be true. Our politics, of which we are all so certain is correct, may not be correct at all and our vision of the future as abysmal may be askew. From what I think I know about reality today, from my own underwater consciousness, I’m not sure I want to return here once I depart, but I still think the future will be glorious for all of us even though I’m not quite sure what the future will be.

 

[CapnG]

I am largely in agreement with your theorums (espescially five). I have often maintained that if you can crack the lightspeed riddle, you can pretty much do anything. I would argue how ever that practitioners of accupressure/accupuncture would tend to disagree with your air/water analogy and the degree to which your legs (and specifically your feet) are in communicaiton with the rest of you.

On the notion of "spiritualism", one aspect of the so-called contactee experience that bugs me tremendously is the notion that humans need to be on a higher "spiritual plane" in order to properly utilize advanced technology. The suggestion is there's some mystical component that prevents us from "getting it". This directly contradicts the notion of hostile entities commiting abductions but more over it's simply illogical. No technology is spiritual. The hammer that builds your house could just as easily bash someone's brains in. Moreover, if the aliens (whoever they are) have mastered the technology's use, then there's nothing "mystical" about it to them. It's just more technology. So I would tend to be more wary about tossing around terms like "spiritual" and would prefer to use a term like "enlightened" ie to have a greater understanding of the world around you.

 

[conor]

What does all this mean? Only that we need not continue to have an inferiority complex. We need not be pessimistic about our own future. Our vision is too narrow. What we think we see today may not at all be true. Our politics, of which we are all so certain is correct, may not be correct at all and our vision of the future as abysmal may be askew. From what I think I know about reality today, from my own underwater consciousness, I’m not sure I want to return here once I depart, but I still think the future will be glorious for all of us even though I’m not quite sure what the future will be.

Excellent post. That last part rings true especially for me. The fact that we think we are powerless in the face of society as a whole like telling a child about the boogey man, only to have the child scared for months after of what's in the closet. It is a scary bed time story which a lot of people have fallen for.

I am a firm believer that we make the world not just what it will be, but what it is, and a collective fear of the boogey man, the trickster, the devil, the nasty side of ourselves, well that never helped anyone.

This video seems appropriate.

Kudos on the post

 

[Schuyler]

So I would tend to be more wary about tossing around terms like "spiritual" and would prefer to use a term like "enlightened" ie to have a greater understanding of the world around you.

Yeah, you know it's awfully difficult to discuss this stuff without tripping over words with connotations. I've heard this idea called 'a higher nutational spin of the atoms,' and that's getting pretty arcane. I guess the main idea I was trying to get across was that a 'higher plane' is possible without being religious about it and that religions have got that part right, only to hang all their crap and dogma all over it. If they would just get out of the way, science might be willing to look at it.

Thanks for your comments. Work in progress.

 

[dusty]

I like it Schuyler,

Particularly Three and Four. I agree that the inclusion of a more spiritual/enlightened Cheers Capn, element in how we attempt to understand our universe is probably necessary. Like the many facets of human nature I can see why difficulties arise because of our tendency to be exclusive rather than inclusive with so many things.

A White House Lawn type event would sure change everything, but to be honest I dont think we are prepared or stable enough to deal well with such an abrupt awakening. That's just my opinion, not necessarily the way I would like things to be.
Maybe the discovery of some lowly life form on Mars or remnants of some previous civilization, something non threatening could be a trigger for more open minded investigation into all possibilities.

Meanwhile back in the real world. It really saddens me to see just how badly we treat ourselves and our world. Especially in light of what you say about how we are likely to advance rapidly in the technology field, and in unpredictable ways. I have high hopes for my daughters childrens children.

Mark

 

[DrLogic]

Couple of things of interest for me.

I agree totally about our own development as a species on this planet. I believe those that subscribe to the many connotations of us being seeded or genetically manipulated in one form or another are merely suffering from a deity complex once organised religion has fallen out of favour with them. I'd ask them the same question I'd ask any religious person, who genetically manipulated the aliens to make them smarter in the first place?

I totally disagree with the sentiment that we can back engineer to our hearts content. AMD/Intel doesnt really serve as a good example in that respect as there was huge amounts of intel design already in AMD's hand via both pre-agreed contracts and court orders.

The argument that our next 100 years of development is equivalent to the last million years - ergo in a 100 years time we will have caught up quite significantly doesn’t stack up. Especially when it comes to space travel if anything we have gone backwards. We can say races a million years ahead of us just to throw large numbers into the mix, the reality being that a universe of some description or other existed for at least 8-9 billion years before the earth came into being, to some the idea of using electricity might be a quaint archaic way of going about ones business.

Just reverse engineering in general is talked about in far too dumbed down terms, we are talking about translating hieroglyphics without a rosetta stone on a scale of complexity beyond anything we could imagine. And if we are talking about superluminal achievement, the closest understanding we have would be in the realms of quantum mechanics. In which case observer bias by in very nature in QM could likely mean that just by trying to 'observe' how it works, it would stop working. Already achieved that ourselves with quantum cryptography...

 

[Gareth]

Youre premise that we are not that far behind "them" also fits into the thought experiment thread I made yesterday.

 

[Schuyler]

Youre premise that we are not that far behind "them" also fits into the thought experiment thread I made yesterday.

I probably should have just added this to your thread, but I was hung up on the iPhone Columbus thing.

I know this stuff is more complex than I've submitted it. It really should be footnoted, referenced, and argued much more tightly. I was just trying to throw out a quick summary, kind of like Luther throwing his feces on a wall to see what stuck.

 

[Gareth]

No its cool. I hope people dont see the making of a new thread as a declaration of die hard belief in whatever happens to be the subject of the thread.

It seems like you just put down a few ideas that you been thinking about lately. I like that.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Interesting points! But here's my problems with the "we are not that far behind" theorem:

The means required to travel space in a manner that does not take thousands of years would require not just a theoretical knowledge of mathematics and physics but a well developed engineering infrastructure well beyond what he have.

The ability to manipulate exotic forms of energies that might allow FTL (faster than light) travel are not ones you get by burning chemical rockets or fossil fuels, and ordinary glass and steel are not going to you there in terms of building such devices.

That means exotic materials and techniques many hundred of years beyond our own would be needed even if we ever solve happen to solve the math (with the help of AI computers no doubt) Remember, knowing the theoretical physics and engineering a solution on a large scale are two different things.

But say its possible for us humans in a mere 200 years.

Ok then so if Kurweil's accelerating singularity stuff is correct, even 200 years difference would be immense since advancements are not linear 200 years would seem like 10000 in linear years since progression is geometric or exponential.

So assuming that the ET's are at minimum several hundred years ahead of where we are when they first got here, they would be THAT much better by now (unless you are saying that only we are advancing and not them). 60 years of advances (say from 1947) when you are the upper end of the asymptote is staggeringly more than 60 years at the beginning of the hockey stick curve. And my hunch is that they have been here even longer - hundreds or years or more - and so the diverging technology levels would be even more enormous

I agree there is no strong evidence to suggest that humans did not come from this planet or we were seeded, unless that happened millions of years ago and then we are back to the fact that they ARE millions of years ahead of us

Even if one concedes that aliens minds may work differently than ours and their technology operates in a different manner, they still would have to be able to solve the same huge problems of interstellar travel first and foremost. Even if they just "coincidentally" happened to spawn absurdly close to us, say 20-100 light years, traveling 20+ light years (with or without higher dimensional travel) at sub light speeds is a truly daunting task no matter how you stack it up due to energy requirements, radiation, micro-meteors etc.

Not enough space to cover things like ancient Martian civilizations but my main points remain unchanged either way.

Theorem 1 and 5 seem to contradict each other. If the singularity phenomena you mentioned and that I talked about above holds true then technology 200 years from now vs today is like today vs Ancient Rome. No way in hell Romans could decipher an Ipod or reverse engineer a nuclear sub. For example, alien tech might be forged or grown at the nano level using exotic forms of energy we aren't even aware of to infuse and manipulate the materials with properties we can't even identify or activate since we cannot access those energies or materials ourselves. Think about superconductivity. It doesn't even become apparent until you reach ultra low temperatures and you have to have advanced methods to get things that cool. A block of ice isn't going to cut it.

So one day we could be presented with a material that appears odd, but generally mundane to normal tests, but does something strange like warp and stretch subatomic manifold dimensions of space time only when exposed to specific types of intense fields of dark energy on the order of 1000 TeV (the large Hadron Collider Generates a mere 7 Tev) How in the hell would mankind even begin to realize what it does or how it works?

Forgot to mention, if that stretching of space time is the way "they" travel to higher branes of the Multiverse, but of course you'd have to have a ship that wields monopole quantum strings to be able to generate the forces to stimulate that material in the first place. Oh yea, that material also needs to be held in a lattice using a combination of high electromagnetic and gravitational forces in constantly fluctuating geometric patterns determined by equations we haven't yet discovered and can only be derived when a new branch of physics is created.

So we might as well be that Roman with an ipod at this point.

 

[Schuyler]

Well, I'm not betting on FTL travel because I don't buy the ETH in the first place. What I suspect (and have no way of really knowing) is that the next paradigm will take care of that. Whether it is via wormholes, portals, or dimensions, I'm betting that if we need to get somewhere 'far away' (which is itself a huge assumption) we'll be able to do so. The answer may be as close as (as Gene said in this week's message) switching the channel. If we can recognize there is a channel to switch, we'll be able to do it.

I see what you mean about the contradiction between the singularity idea and the Columbus/iPhone idea. Good point. My contention in One is that we're not stupid and that unlike Columbus, we do have technology available to us and that we are very good at manipulating the Newtonian world and have made great strides into the quantum mechanical world as well. I'd say we're most behind in biology, but we've cracked the code and things are starting to move in that field as well.

In terms of the singularity, Kurzweil is saying that the fields of biology, computers, robotics, and nanotechnology are going to experience exponential rather than lineal growth. If that happens, it won't be independent of us. It is still us doing the inventing and we'll ride the scale on up. We may not know what it is going to look like, but it's not as if we are sitting on the sidelines. we're in the game and the future might get here for us a lot faster than we thought. In that sense I don't see a contradiction. Unlike a lot of people, I have faith in our abilities to overcome issues and move forward.

I have to agree with dusty, though, that the white house lawn thing may be a bad idea. Maybe a 'Kilroy was here' sign on Mars would be sufficient. I just think it would be nice to find a 'Look here' sign with an arrow to push us to the next step, because if we know it's possible, we'll get there.

 

[DrLogic]

Well one of the problems of theorising is that unless you are at the top of the pile technologically, taking one side or another on what is or isn’t possible can have no basis in reality (until you have figured out everything that is).

There should be the clarity that while something may serve a practical purpose, that doesn’t make it the final word on the subject. Newtonian physics being a perfect example, to this day it still serves us well in practice, but Einstein made great strides in showing us that it was not the be all and end all.

In the same way QM and relativity are at serious loggerheads today, something has to give eventually and when that day comes, yet another 'scientific fact' will be reduced to an practical approximation (that is way off the mark when using very fine measurement).

Due to the very short time we have been studying physics, the outcome of the above might be just about anything, including the possibility that FTL is a realistic goal under special circumstances. I think the statistics probably lean towards a large number of possibilities that have already been tested throughout the universe, as obviously what we humans happen to have worked out so far has no bearing whatsoever on the achievements of other races.

 

[conor]

Perhaps another general theory is the time-travel hypothesis. Perhaps that would explain their interest in nuclear weapons, and their apparent random actions could have a lot of meaning with hindsight. And, if they knew about history in any way, perhaps they have access to UFO reports and disguise themselves as such with high technology. With what purpose, you ask? Well, that is the million dollar question when we discuss these issues.

One thing that I have been thinking about lately is facts of physics. The speed of light is a barrier to space travel in general. It was one of the reasons that Vallee went away from the ETH. Biological beings may simply not be able to undertake such massive journeys, except, if they have the technology to travel across the stars at or near to the speed of light, they would have to accept that such journeys would still be long journeys. Plus, the logistics of keeping a biological being alive on such a long journey would be the biggest hindrance of all against such a journey.

So, perhaps we are dealing with a super advanced probe of some description, one which can convert radio waves and light waves into mass, or other such exotic abilities, and it is studying us with the parameters that it has been given, but being that these are only parameters, it sometimes appears to us as bizzare and meaningless when it manifests itself in some way.

For instance, if it has been given the parameter "let them know you're here in some fashion, but don't disclose yourself fully until they are ready (What are the requirements for being ready? We have no idea.), don't alarm them too much, so appear like them but different also." Or, perhaps the biological beings are on their way, and the Artificial intelligences are sending back information on us.

AIs might act in such a strange manner that it really does come across as bizarre and odd. Especially if they had a parameter like, "don't alarm them too much." How does an AI interpret such a parameter?

Now, let's go one further. There is something called the singularity problem. Anybody familiar with the Terminator or the Matrix franchises has touched upon it vaguely. It goes like this. Technology gets to a stage (the invention of AI perhaps) where it overtakes humanity, becomes self-replicating, and mankind becomes useless in the face of his tools.

Now, what they decide to do with us after such a point is anyone's guess. I don't really think we would be wiped out or anything like that by machines, but if this scenario did happen, and it was a common development among intelligent species across the universe, then perhaps we are dealing with EAEs, Extraterrestrial Artificial Entities, or time travelling artificial intelligences from our own future.

Perhaps this scenario is extreme. Perhaps not. Perhaps we will develop with our tools to a point where the distinction between tool and tool maker is indistinguishable. In other words, we would be pretty much immortal provided our tools were advanced enough, and we could enjoy the best of both worlds. That, too, could be a common occurance throughout the universe.

Such beings could perhaps exist across the electromagnetic spectrum, changing from one form to another, manifesting into matter at will. The only constraint of such a being may be the speed of light. Also, such a race could get to a stage where it was extremely low energy, and as such would not show up from great distances, or perhaps you wouldn't even know they were on a planet unless they wanted to manifest themselves to you. This could satisfy Fermi's "Why aren't they here?" I know it sounds far out, but think about all the advances that are being made in things like nanotechnology every day.

This could even be the fate of some race far back in Earth's history, thus tying in with the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis.

Who knows, but it's nice to speculate.

 

[DrLogic]

All the fun is to be had in the speculating, if we already knew then it would be as mundane as any other factoid that rattles around our heads on a daily basis.

Time travel is a bit of a pandoras box as the second it is invented pretty much every connotation of anything that possibly could happen - happens in that instant. Are we the product of all those combinations? Are we just a stream amongst trillions of others? Is time travel impossible because time is just a fuzzy human construct used to measure the entropy of our very existence??! dont ask me

Again the scope in which a person is putting a theorem forward plays an important role. When we use a theory for motive and ability of they, them, are we assuming a singular individual or race?

If I were to throw an idea out there it would be that given the eclectic mix of sighting and encounters, more likely it is in one of two camps. Either a product of our own imaginations, subject to the individual or group expectations, or that visitations have a variety only explainable via a huge number of different races and individuals visiting us.

If it is the latter, then there is no singular theorem that would suffice, no guiding principal that they go by. Rather a big mixture of individuals coming here for their individual reason, interacting to different extents based on their own views and way of thinking, that may or may not be shared with other visitors.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

All the fun is to be had in the speculating, if we already knew then it would be as mundane as any other factoid that rattles around our heads on a daily basis.

Time travel is a bit of a pandoras box as the second it is invented pretty much every connotation of anything that possibly could happen - happens in that instant. Are we the product of all those combinations? Are we just a stream amongst trillions of others? Is time travel impossible because time is just a fuzzy human construct used to measure the entropy of our very existence??! dont ask me

Again the scope in which a person is putting a theorem forward plays an important role. When we use a theory for motive and ability of they, them, are we assuming a singular individual or race?

If I were to throw an idea out there it would be that given the eclectic mix of sighting and encounters, more likely it is in one of two camps. Either a product of our own imaginations, subject to the individual or group expectations, or that visitations have a variety only explainable via a huge number of different races and individuals visiting us.

If it is the latter, then there is no singular theorem that would suffice, no guiding principal that they go by. Rather a big mixture of individuals coming here for their individual reason, interacting to different extents based on their own views and way of thinking, that may or may not be shared with other visitors.

What about a another option - 99.99 percent of the phenomena is false (ie misidentifications, lies, hoaxes, delusions, mistakes etc.) but a real core phenomena does exist although it is incredibly rare.

Perhaps only 10 incidents out the many thousands are real and have similar or identical characteristics but its impossible to sift out whats real from what's not. 99.99% noise as it were. Even a slight deviation from the actual facts by a witness could throw off even those few true encounters from ever being linked to one another since, to a researcher, it would appear to be different from the other 9 "true" events.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Well, I'm not betting on FTL travel because I don't buy the ETH in the first place. What I suspect (and have no way of really knowing) is that the next paradigm will take care of that. Whether it is via wormholes, portals, or dimensions, I'm betting that if we need to get somewhere 'far away' (which is itself a huge assumption) we'll be able to do so.

Fair enough - I did mean to allude to that option in my previous post - but I don't see how traveling amongst higher dimensions etc. is any less a feat of engineering than FTL. If anything it sounds HARDER to do and more esoteric.

How would beings living/using higher dimensions or alternate realities know of our presence in the here and now? Are you saying they live on Earth of another universe? or they live on Earth but are in other dimensions or that they are from another planet and traveled here using dimensional shortcuts? Either way, accessing the means to do that requires advanced technology WAY beyond where we are. So again I go back to the point that they are very far ahead of us, not simply 100 years or so. I would put FTL and "dimensional traveling" in the same general category of "Not for a long ass time" when it comes to human technology.

 

[DrLogic]

Well I think inter-dimensional speculation enjoys an easier ride because of the fact that we wouldnt even know where to start our approach on the subject. Modern quantum theory is as close as we come to some concept of multiple dimension, and thats not to say an alternative 4 dimensions to ours, but rather describing our own existance in many more dimensions as oppose to just 4. In any event it is currently about as evidential as poltergeists at this point.

Whereas FTL has special relativity to contend with. While i'd like to think I dont possess the hubris to start denouncing Einstein, as mentioned earlier QM & Einstein dont exactly see eye to eye. As we speak there are theoretical physicists backtracking to aether theory for some sort of divine inspiration, something we probably wouldnt have seen even 10 years ago.

The long and short of it is that we are at (and have been for longer than scientists care to mention) a crossroads in that respect. Either of the micro or macro worlds could win the day, or even possibly both are put out to pasture with a totally new way of describing everything.

One thing is for sure, when that day comes more than a few gospel truths are going to be thrown on the fire, and a whole new world of possibilities will open up to us, until that day (and probably not even then) a little humility on our parts will go a long way.

 

[Schuyler]

How would beings living/using higher dimensions or alternate realities know of our presence in the here and now? Are you saying they live on Earth of another universe? or they live on Earth but are in other dimensions or that they are from another planet and traveled here using dimensional shortcuts? Either way, accessing the means to do that requires advanced technology WAY beyond where we are.

I'm learning from the comments here that I have to be really careful with my terminology! And for all this stuff, I know I don't know; I'm just trying to get oriented in the right direction, not that I'd recognize it. I'm thinking a little bit of both from the questions above.

First, I think there is a multi-dimensional aspect to our existence that we either do not recognize literally, recognize only within the context of religion, or refuse to recognize because of the latter. That's where our current 'scientific method' paradigm holds us back. Rather than search for a way to explain the paranormal with a paradigm that encompasses and explains it, the culture as a whole refuses to recognize its existence at anything but a highly personal and anecdotal level. I don't think the Alien Guys(tm) would have any problem recognizing our own existence. They've already been there, done that.

OK, Fractured Analogy time: The scientific method uses a brute force approach. If you have a combination lock, the kind with multiple wheels that must be properly aligned for the lock to open, and say you have 10 wheels each with ten numbers 0-9, then the number of possible combinations is ten to the tenth power The scientific method would start out with 0000000001, then try 0000000002, then try 0000000003, etc. until all the combinations were tried. In theory there is a 50% chance of finding the correct combination by the time you get to 5555555555 and a 100% chance of finding the correct combination by the time you get to 9999999999. It will take a long long time, but the brute force method will work.

When you look at FTL travel, brute force means 'Scotty, I gotta have more power!!' as the brute force method is to point yourself in the direction of Alpha Centauri, and go as fast as you can to get there, which you really can't do very well, since as you approach the speed of light, you wind up hitting the proverbial brick wall and simply cannot get there. Brute force doesn't always work.

So if there IS an answer, it's got to be 'dimensional' in nature. There's got to be a back door, a portal, a wormhole, or some way to circumvent the logical conundrum relativity insists upon, to make it all work consistently with what we think we know about the universe and its structure. It's certainly possible that there is no answer, that FTL travel is impossible, that there are no Alien Guys(tm) and that we are stuck on this rock until we die, and then there is nothing else. It's absolutely possible.

I would suggest that none of us would be here if we believed that wholeheartedly. WE think there is 'something going on' though most of us would not insist we know the answer, at least here.

The assumption I find most difficult to accept is the idea that 'they' are so far advanced from us at we can't possibly understand their science and advanced capabilities. Well, what if it's just a tweak? What if a serendipitous discovery by us allowed us to 'change the channel' (Gene S.) with ease, and suddenly, we level the playing field. It doesn't have to take advanced technology to get there. It may be that we just need to change our orientation so that we recognize where we are. There is some anecdotal evidence that 'they' are damn afraid of us, and if they are it means they know we're close to understanding what and where they are. Once we do, they may have a problem. Holding a tiger by the tail has its limits.

Fractured Analogy Time: I hope you will forgive me for using a military-themed one this time. I apologize in advance, but I'm from Decker's generation and I have the same attitude he does. The American military is very, very good at faking it. Really. Perhaps we should talk about it some time. I have dozens of examples. This particular one works for this example.

During the first Gulf War under Bush #1, General Schwarzkopf had a game plan. He misled the media and Saddam into thinking they were going to invade by sea. Fake tanks were staged opposing the Iraqi lines. They lit fires in the fake tanks to simulate engines running and visible through infrared, which he knew the Iraqis had. They drug chains across the desert to create clouds of dust and simulate mass troop movements. The Iraqis could not launch any air support to verify it because that part was over. It was all completely fake. The MSM spread this over the world, and the Iraqi's bought it. SEAL teams came ashore to take soil samples. Schwarzkopf leaked that little morsel, too. Everyone was just so clever to have guessed the US Army's intent. Oh, so clever.

So when it all went down the Abrams M1-A1 tanks descended from the East, through the impossible-to-pass killer desert that would have made Rommel say, "WTF?" The Iraqi's were completely surprised. Game over. Why? One minor thing:

GPS. The First Army knew where they were every step of the way because they had portable GPS units. When the Iraqi generals were 'in the tent' beside the sign that said "Welcome to Iraq. US Army." on a hand painted sign outside, with Schwarzkopf telling them 'You vill do this.' one of them asked how we did it. The Colonel simply gave the general a GPS unit and said, 'With this.' Now you can say, well, we had satellites and they didn't and you would be right, but the thing is, they had knowledge of the GPS system. They could have imported boxes of Garmins. There was nothing stopping them from doing that. But they didn't do it. And it proved fatal--eventually. They simply did not get it.

I'm suggesting here that it is not so much a matter of supremely advanced technology that would enable us, humanity, to get to the next level of understanding, but a matter of orientation. It might be that our current state of technology, properly oriented, would be enough to formulate a key to allow us to 'change the channel' fairly easily, like Edison did when he finally found the carbon filament that allowed a light bulb to work, after trying a thousand different things that did not. The Alien Guys(tm) have already shown us it is possible. And if it's possible, we can get there.

In short, the future may be much closer than we think. At least I hope so.

 

[CapnG]

How would beings living/using higher dimensions or alternate realities know of our presence in the here and now?

Perhaps they would only be tangentally aware of our existence, in the same way we are tangentally aware of the trillions of bacteria crawling all over us at any given moment?

 

[DrLogic]

So if there IS an answer, it's got to be 'dimensional' in nature. There's got to be a back door, a portal, a wormhole, or some way to circumvent the logical conundrum relativity insists upon, to make it all work consistently with what we think we know about the universe and its structure.

I reckon the above is the operative word, there are many, many aspects to the world around us that we can define as attributes and naturally, in testing we can verify our assumptions about those attributes and create formulae to describe them to a certain degree of accuracy.

As time passes our ability to improve the accuracy increases, which can result in a change or entire rewrite of the formula. But theres also the very good possibility that there are attributes we just arent aware of, in that respect we wouldnt know about them to measure them, and, by extension, are effectively incorrect in our understanding of the structure universe without it being overtly noticeable.

I like your analogy about the safe, but there is another way to look at it. If you found the person who already knew the combination, you could utilise a less consuming, but no less forceful technique and have the key instantly Or to look at it another way, our goal of FTL may well be singular, but that isnt to assume there is only a singular way to go about achieving it.

For example, just to throw a random idea out there, if I found a quirk of space time that meant I could use to all but remove the effect of inertia. Propelling something that weights little more than a photon the speed of light suddenly isnt so difficult. Suddenly I have no inertial frame of reference, even the possibility of travelling at high speed without time dilation or (noticeable) mass expansion are up for grabs.

Of course as high level meanderings go, we might be reaching a convergence here where inter-dimensional and space time both share a 'corridor', for lack of a better word, whereby the ETH & inter-dimensional are both one and the same thing.

...And yes if you are still reading this, you are as sad as me