Do you believe in psychics, extraterrestrial life, time travel, other universes?

[Agent Smith]

Why did America's government spend millions on psychic programs and UFO research, like Project Blue Book, if they are such ludicrous subjects to most Americans today?

Someone asking the real questions. Ill answer.

Same thing you do when you can just print money and use it: Just to see if there's any viability to it. Boom.

[Paperfox]

If you don't believe in the possibility of alien life existing you must not believe in math either.

The Drake Formula isn't math, it's a made up number that has some impressive math-y-ness to it to sound impressive.
If it doesn't give you the number you want, just add a few zeros. You wanted 80 alien civilizations instead of 8? Simply do another survey of the stars, discover that the count was off a bit and add a zero or two. Or if that is too much trouble, just change one or more of the estimates or factors.

It's like that saying: 80% of statistics are made up on the spot.

At one time if you wanted to convey the idea of something being infinite before that word was widely known, you would use one of two sayings: as many as the stars in the sky, or the grains of sand.

[Dreyen]

Interesting thread considering I just finished rewatching the anime Suzumiya Haruhi.

That said, it sounds a bit intense to say we're the only planet with life, so I feel pretty confident in claiming there is life outside of the earth. Beyond that, I don't believe in anything magical, so no psychics, no time travel and no other universes.

[Eldar45]

There is almost certainly life on other planets, but none that have ever visited our world. The likelihood of other life being capable of sentience beyond an animal level is pretty small, and compound that with the difficulty of interstellar travel.

The weirdest thing I believe in is ghosts. I don't really believe in the other stuff you listed. I've had strange experiences in supposedly haunted houses. I have, to quote Winston Zeddemore, "Seen shit that will turn you white". I think I've written about them on this forum before.

[Adam Jensen]

Psychics? No. Hogwash. There's no known mechanism for one human mind to access the thoughts of another. Nothing that can emit or receive. Most "psychics" are just clever charlatans.

Extraterrestrial life? Yes. There are 10^22 stars, most of those are going to have planets and many of those planets will have moons. The odds that some amount of those have life on them is unknown, but it would have to be fantastically rare for it to not have happened more than once (though not impossible). Furthermore, life arose from non-living chemistry, which could have happened anywhere, and therefore Earth isn't special. Neither is our sun. They both simply happen to have formed the right conditions for life. Has alien life ever visited earth? No. UFO sightings are just that, UFOs. Unidentified Flying Objects. They are hoaxes, illusions, unrecognized aircraft, ext, but there's no evidence of any of them being alien life.

Time travel? Forwards time travel? Yes. As a consequence of General Relativity. Backwards time travel? Maybe. Are stable wormholes possible? If so then yes. But if backwards time travel is possible, why haven't we seen any time travelers? They'd either be unable to affect our past, or they'd go into the past, but in another universe.

Multiple universes? Sort of. Do I believe in it? Not really as there's no evidence for it. However the idea of a multiverse is a very good explanation as to why our universe has the properties it has, why the values of different physical constants are such specific numbers. If our universe is one in an infinite sea of universes, then those values are explained by simply stating ours is one of the ones that happened to have those values, while other universes had other values.

[Nynax]

Why did America's government spend millions on psychic programs and UFO research, like Project Blue Book, if they are such ludicrous subjects to most Americans today?

I think you're not quite making a fair comparison. "Why did America spend millions back then" vs "If they are ludicrous now." Need to ask how sensible it might have been to Americans back then. The country certainly had a period of time where a lot of people had an obsession with the occult, New Age thinking, and "higher mind" stuff. We know with some certainty now that all that stuff is hogwash, after all of those experiments have proven them false.

[Afrospinach]

wtf you even talking about?

The drake equation has variables which no one call really quantify making it pretty useless as a predictive tool.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...does anyone really believe a psychic would advertise...go public? If anyone thinks it through...it's not a good idea.

[Triceron]

I don't particularly believe in 'alien life', but I do have a theory that if they do exist, some might be living on Mars.

My theory is that since Mars is further from the Sun than the Earth, to reach their 'Goldilocks' habitable zone we would have to look deep underground, where the heat of the core and underground pools of water (since we know water does exist on Mars, in the form of ice) may be hospitable to sustain life.

As for what types of lifeforms have evolved from there, my tin-foil hat theory would be that the commonly known 'Grays' could have come from here since their eyes are huge and their skin is grey indicating a lack of direct sunlight and potentially being underground inhabitants.

[Lollis]

wtf is the drake equation and why am I being bombarded by it?

The drake equation is a semi formal idea about the probability of life other than our own in the galaxy. Detractors say "but it's stupid" because of its conjecture, which it is, but still completely overlook just how valid it is.

The thought that there isn't some sort of life out there seems so overwhelmingly minute when you take the absolute unimaginable vastness of the universe into account (and that's just what we can see) that you basically might as well say that there IS life out there.

To put it into perspective, the hubble deep field contains approximately 3000 galaxies, each likely with billions of stars and many with their own planetary systems. The hubble deep field's frame size is one 24 millionth of the night sky.

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The fuck is this thread? Physics isn't something you believe in, it's a system of describing observable natural phenomena and the underlying mathematical models that predict them.

Psychics, as in nutters/scammers who say they can read minds. Not physics as in gravity.

[Afrospinach]

wtf is the drake equation and why am I being bombarded by it?

I am pretty surprised you have not heard of it but if sincere: N = R*fp*ne*fl*fi*fc*L

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);
and

R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[5][6]

Shamelessly lifted from wikipedia. It is more of a thought experiment than a mathematical concept because of the issue I listed above. Lots of people say things like "oh the universe is big and therefore there is life in the universe" but that is irrelevant unless we know our the chances of own existence are not infinitesimally small. In fact, we do not know a lot of things about all the variables making the "the universe is very big" position just as bad as saying there is no life in the universe but us.

Indeed even the original poster you were replying to should go and read about the drake equation. The issues are obvious even to the author. Mechanically sound, quantifiably bullshit.

For me one of the more interesting things about it is this one guy that tried to convert civilization's existences into distances. It holds the same issue as the Drake equation itself but it is pretty depressing to think that we can just be too far away to expect to contact another civilization and just miss them on the passage of time.

[Lollis]

I was just speaking to the sheer probability of there being other life out there given all of the infinite amount of planets out there in the universe. It seems pretty arrogant to believe that we are the only life existing in this Universe that we can't even see the end of.

Yep, with the numbers we are talking about, it's stuff we can't even imagine. We couldn't write down the number of planets out there in our whole lifetime.

[TigTone]

I believe there is certainly simple extraterrestrial life forms out there.

The chances for complex life forms like us is very very very low.

As for time travel and other universes I don’t vuelve they exist at not until it’s proven by physics experiments.

As for psychics , a weird addition to the list, no. There is no evidence for it.

[Adam Jensen]

Shamelessly lifted from wikipedia. It is more of a thought experiment than a mathematical concept because of the issue I listed above. Lots of people say things like "oh the universe is big and therefore there is life in the universe" but that is irrelevant unless we know our the chances of own existence are not infinitesimally small. In fact, we do not know a lot of things about all the variables making the "the universe is very big" position just as bad as saying there is no life in the universe but us.

How is it bad?

Life as we know it occured on a planet comprised of fairly common rock, around a fairly common star. Granted, we know that in order for life to occur, many different conditions had to be just right. And granted, we don't know how rare life is, given we only have one sample size (Earth.) But with the enormous number of stars out there, it would have to be incredibly rare for it to have not happened anywhere else.

Winning the lottery is an incredibly low probability . . . until you buy all the lottery tickets.

And why wouldn't it happen anywhere else? The things that life is made from aren't exactly rare, there's nothing special about our end of the universe. Water, carbon, organic chemistry, these things are found all over the universe. If life only exists on earth, why?

Seems to me like there's a good chance there's life somewhere. And it's not like it'd be very visible. Even a civilization like ours would be near impossible to detect around other stars. And that's assuming that the life even has civilization or even resembles earth life at all.

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Exactly. And people that want to think that we are the single planet in a universe with numbers are you are describing are sort of the definition of arrogance imho.

Hell didn't we just discover that Mars had water at one point? gtfo here of course there is life somewhere out there I don't need 8 graduate degrees to see that. The problem (in my uneducated opinion) is probably the same for them as it is for us: the distance is just too vast and we have no way of navigating, never mind even being able to actually cross such great distances. Every intelligent life form (assuming there are others at this point) all probably would think that they are the only ones out there too.

We do not have a very good view of our universe.

We only have good quality of planets in our own solar system. We didn't even have good images of Pluto until New Horizons five years ago and Pluto is a "mere" five light hours away.

We can see some exoplanets, but only very large ones, and even those we don't see clearly. Rocky planets that would hold life like Earth has, barely register as a blip on the star's light and gravity (which is usually how we find them.) The galaxy could be teeming with life, maybe there's life in the vast majority of solar systems, and we wouldn't know. We don't have the technology at the moment.

We do know none of that life has tried to contact us. And maybe it can't. Or maybe it doesn't exist. Or maybe it has and the signal hasn't arrived yet. We just don't know.

But if I were a betting man, I'd assume that there is life out there on other planets, somewhere, because there's no reason why Earth would be unique.

[Zafire]

Psychics - No, absolutely not.

Extraterrestrial life - The probability is very high. Especially if you include things like bacteria or single cell organisms. So yes, I do.

Time Travel - Time Travel forward is already possible, albeit not instant. The closer to the speed of light we get, the more this become reality. So yes, I believe in time travel. If you want to talk about travel backwards, that's a different story. It's a topic for another thread, but to TLDR; I think it's possible but not something we will be able to do without being able to harness almost limitless amounts of energy. And even THEN, I think it will still be limited.

Other Universes - This ones tricky, so I'm on the fence. I'll say yes for now, until it's ever discovered what exactly happens in a supermassive black hole.

[aceperson]

Do i believe in psychics? potentially, but definitely not human psychics. I have seen no evidence that proves human psychics are real. though i've seen plenty of evidence of frauds and conmen in this field. There is currently a space-folding engine in development that is meant for long-term space travel so it's possible that telekinetic psychics could exist if they evolved properly. though that is a stretch.

Extraterrestrial life? absolutely. if our race can exist, there is no reason another can't exist. the sheer fact we exist gives precedent to another species existing somewhere.

Time travel? most likely not. time travel would likely involve bending physics way too far and possible break something. so either no one has invented it and thus isn't possible or research of the topic is outlawed once it becomes possible due to the potentially species ending calamity that might occur from a mistake.

Other universes? this one is vague. there is clearly other universes in our plane of existence so yes on that front. if you mean on a multi-versal scale, that's a hard call. there is an experiment that shows extremely small amounts of matter (like one molecule at a time small) pop in and out of existence in our universe. this implies there is something happened that could at least verify the existence of an opposite universe, if not a multi-verse.

[bloodkin]

Why did America's government spend millions on psychic programs and UFO research, like Project Blue Book, if they are such ludicrous subjects to most Americans today?

the murrican government, or more accurately the CIA, als dosed unknowing John doe's with LSD, with the predicted outcome of of nothing (operation midnight climax) as part of a mind control research project (Project MKUltra). They also routinely dosed agents with LSD without them knowing, which resulted in bad trips, psychosis and suicide of said agents. They were literally fucking about with drugs for shit 'n giggles, as no researcher worth their salt would do something so incredibly unprofessional and unethical. So I'd say that there are absolutely enough idiots in the us government (or any government for that matter) to investigate something that is a total waste of time and money.

[LedZeppelin]

psychics: no
extraterrestrial life: this already exists
time travel: yeah, forward in time lmao
other universes: yes

[Afrospinach]

Winning the lottery is an incredibly low probability . . . until you buy all the lottery tickets.

But this is exactly the point. In the lottery you know the odds. We do not know even remotely the odds in this case.

[Adam Jensen]

But this is exactly the point. In the lottery you know the odds. We do not know even remotely the odds in this case.

We don't know the odds, that's right.

But what we do know is, whatever the odds are, they'd have to be ridiculously low in order for Earth to be unique.

One planet out of between 10^22 to 10^24?

Maybe the odds are that low, but again, given that there's nothing about Earth's composition or the Sun's composition that's unique, why would it life, which arose from that composition, be unique?