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*** XO Poll on Extraterrestrial Life ***
Poast new message in this thread
Date: April 29th, 2026 9:04 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Do you believe there is intelligent life in the universe other than on earth?
(0) No (1) Yes, but humanity will never encounter it (2) Yes, but humanity hasn't encountered it yet (3) Yes, and humanity has already encountered it
Discuss. |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:13 PM Author: excitant fat ankles 3. I have have seen 100% authentic irrefutable proof that I unfortunately cannot discuss. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853075) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:15 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse 180. Can u say generally why u were privy to the info? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853081) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:32 PM Author: excitant fat ankles not really. What I can say is that it was inside a SCIF. What I can't say is why I was there besides mentioning that I had access.
I'll rephrase so it doesn't sound cryptic: The level of classification is/was itself classified. |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:35 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Got it ty (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853131) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:41 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Was Tom Delonge present? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853141) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 3:00 AM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Cqqqq (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853363) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 7:44 PM Author: Heady address (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855405) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:05 PM Author: Apoplectic hyperactive weed whacker business firm (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856965) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 8:11 PM Author: coral exhilarant stag film potus Love you TSINAH, but you're obviously flaming. You'd never get security clearance needed to have the need to see anything in a SCIF. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855477) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:04 PM Author: cream elastic band (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856961) |
Date: April 29th, 2026 9:35 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria My answer is 2, but I think humans could have encountered it before but the signal was just ambiguous enough to never reach consensus or be able to communicate it to other humans and have them believe it. So I lean hard toward 2, but think (3) is possible but it's not something I can fully commit to as a hardened belief (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852870) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:51 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Yeah I'm (2)-(3) but leaning (3). But have no proof (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852917) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:06 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria I think cold small stealthy probes that could be made of advanced materials and engineered in regimes we have barely theorized + occasional detected anomalies could predict the exact epistemic situation we are in. A world where (3) is true would look almost identical to a world where (2) is true. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852937) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:26 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852978) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:39 PM Author: Curious Aggressive Lettuce By "encountered" do you mean "witnessed it in any way?" Or "interacted with"
If the former, I'm 3, if the latter, 2 |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:44 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse I'd say one of the following: - interacted with, whether knowingly or unknowingly; or - witnessed proof positive of their existence, e.g. a crashed vessel with an alien body |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:53 PM Author: Curious Aggressive Lettuce The many credible sightings of craft that move contrary to our understanding of the laws of physics have no explanation other than extraterrestrial life imo
So 3 for me then |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:01 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Still too weak of a signal for me to fully believe because people confabulate and misreport or draw conclusions wrong all the time, but its not nothing because many of the people reporting are credible and have a lot to lose if they lie plus there is corroboration across a lot of reports. I would like to see and do python analysis on full ATFLIR data (and maybe data from other instruments) instead of just the lossy vids of dashboard projections, that would help to be able to constrain what some of these things are much more. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852933) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:06 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Personally I still think any of it could be foreign tech so it doesn't get me all the way to (3). I don't presume to know what other countries have figured out (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852936) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:14 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria To me I think the strongest evidence UAP could be tech from elsewhere isn't one single piece of evidence but the conjunction of several independent lines that converge awkwardly. And actually the transmedium accounts I think are the most interesting, because there are a lot of credible reports and if they are correct traveling from air to water is not easily explained by any known human engineering. For anything shown to exhibit truly anomalous behavior like transmedium travel I don't think adversarial human origin is a viable explanation because of how difficult it is to hide advanced tech at scale without leaving traces, and because someone would be using them for things other than playing cat and mouse games with our navy. They have been reported for a long time now too. The Nimitz tic tac case was in like 2004. That would be too long to have something and use it for nothing legit and also keep it hidden (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852947) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:22 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Yeah that's compelling for sure, like why wouldn't they have used it for something else... (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852966) |
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Date: May 2nd, 2026 10:24 AM Author: Bistre aromatic locus brethren cr (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49859304) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:40 PM Author: tan slap-happy area 1 we are in computer many worlds simulation (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852882) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:23 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852968) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:29 AM Author: Claret Rebellious Theater Stage Organic Girlfriend many worlds yes, computer no (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856315) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:30 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Guess depends how broadly you define computer? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856317) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:49 PM Author: Ultramarine cuckold These points do not work if your underlying 1960s materialist sci-fi consept of reality is completely wrong (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852912) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:14 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Wdym? I'm not saying anything about their form or anything. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852948) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:38 PM Author: Ultramarine cuckold The word extraterrestrial has no meaning in any other context, for example (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853000) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:10 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria idk about that one brother (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853072) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:14 PM Author: Ultramarine cuckold The penis has spoken (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853077) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 9:53 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef 0 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852922) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:09 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Well yeah, you barely think there's intelligent life outside your own mind (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852940) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:18 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Absolutely devastating
For one I have always counted you among the sentient |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:23 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Tyty (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852970) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:11 PM Author: fishy boyish casino nowag No (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852941) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:25 PM Author: Slimy Wine Garrison Internal Respiration 3 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49852977) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 10:30 PM Author: Soul-stirring chartreuse house Haven't you heard, women are from Venus
But yeah. There's definitely alien life and we've encountered it even if we didn't know it |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:29 PM Author: Violet Stirring Toilet Seat Church Ad astra covered this. We are truly alone. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853117) |
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Date: April 29th, 2026 11:59 PM Author: Diverse azure queen of the night (1)
The universe is so huge that intelligent life is almost certainly out there. But the universe is so huge that the chances that other intelligent life will ever make it to Earth is almost nil. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:10 AM Author: trip piazza roast beef It is physically impossible based on the current understanding of physics for a human to travel to the next closest star even if they were given multiple lifetimes. It's simply impossible unless we invent something that has not been invented.
Also while people often say that just because the universe is near infinitely large than there must be life somewhere even if it was 10 billion light years away cannot be proven. We have no idea how or why life exists. So yes it's theoretically possible but it's also possible that there's not.
And either way we can't even go to the nearest star let alone all the other stars and check up on them all. The moon and Mars is it. All we got. Forever. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:16 AM Author: Soul-stirring chartreuse house Name checks out (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853204) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:31 AM Author: trip piazza roast beef The truth is in fact a snooze (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853223) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 3:01 AM Author: Salmon Whorehouse People with FTL travel could come to us though. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853367) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 3:07 AM Author: trip piazza roast beef Yes but first they would have to detect us. Also no current hypothesis on how FTL travel would even work. It's aspirational at best. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853373) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 9:44 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Your statements are too strong (physically impossible means ruled out completely but then you shift to "unless we invent something new" which cancels out your own point), and they don't really prove anything about detection with or contact with other lifeforms. A post-biological intelligence has none of the limitations we do in terms of travel time for one thing, and for another it only would take like 3 million years to completely populate a galaxy thats been around for 10 billion years with ai guided von-neumann probes which is a blink of an eye in galactic terms (meaning it likely has already happened unless there is some great filter that wipes people out before reaching this level of tech which I think is an argument that requires special pleading). This is where the fermi paradox comes from, and I think the likely answer is just that we haven't detected it or hand-waved it away as an anomaly.
Also "we don't know how life arises" cuts both ways. It could either be extremely common or relatively rare. I'm guessing it tends more toward being common just based on the sheer numbers, otherwise you'd have to argue that we are pretty special, which cuts against most of what we know about the relative uniformity of physical conditions in the Universe. The idea that Earth is the only instance of life I think isn't something that really is worthy of consideration. It might be logically possible on the face of it, but the chances are just so low given the sheer number of stars that it would require new information about special conditions and fine-tuning on our planet |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:06 AM Author: Histrionic really tough guy (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853934) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:45 AM Author: Salmon Whorehouse (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854066) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:02 AM Author: trip piazza roast beef Your argument is that Santa Claus exists because hypothetically humans could invent a way to warp one guy with an enormous sack of presents around the globe to billions of homes in one night. Yeah anything is technically possible, but what you're saying is so improbable and based on wishful thinking that it's laughable. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854142) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:11 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria I'm going to assume you are targeting "post-biological intelligence and von-neumann probes", not simply the idea that life exists elsewhere, because if so then lol. But even re: the former that's a bad analogy. I'm not arguing from mere logical possibility. I'm arguing from scale and expected consequences. Santa is an arbitrary magical folklore example. Self-replicating probes, post-biological intelligence, and long galactic timescales aren't magic. They’re speculative but physically motivated. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854173) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:50 AM Author: trip piazza roast beef I enjoyed how you moved the goal poasts to interstellar travel but it can't be alive. So it's got the sentience of a human but the durability of a hunk of scrap metal and it's basically a self replicating virus whose only mission is to probe the universe. OK now at least we're in a much more plausible realm than humans doing it. You still have to solve the problem of AGI and how this thing is going to preserve itself across the eons and make more of whatever it is but since ditching the problem of biological life you've made vast improvements to your schema.
As for the life ought to be common given the law of large numbers argument it makes too many leaps of faith. Until we can explain abiogenisis there's no point in jumping to the conclusion that the thing that only happened one time in our collective understanding is easily found elsewhere just because the universe is enormous and full of randomness. It's too big a leap of faith. But I enjoy your unscientific magical thinking. It belongs with Bob Lazar and all of the unserious claims of a Roganverse guest. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:02 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria You’re treating several different claims as if they’re equally ridiculous. “Life may be common elsewhere” is not Bob Lazar territory or magical thinking. It’s a probabilistic claim under uncertainty. If abiogenesis is not extraordinarily rare, then the number of planets and the age of the universe make extraterrestrial life plausible. The fact that we currently have one confirmed example does not prove it is common, but it also does not prove it is rare. The von Neumann probe argument is more speculative, but the objections against them are engineering and probability objections not Santa Clause objections. Also lol at implying that John Von Neumann is Roganverse level. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854354) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:19 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Nigga the von Neumann probe was named after him, not hypothesized by him. Are you Jewish BTW? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854400) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:25 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Yeah but the name wasn't arbitrary, it comes directly from von Neumann's work on self-replicating automata. And I'm technically not Jewish I'm non-religious. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854415) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 8:15 AM Author: Claret Rebellious Theater Stage Organic Girlfriend (1) or (2). IMO a more fun poll for next time would be "are language models conscious". I think the split between computer people and everyone else is very revealing (the humanitiesqueens are right on this one fwiw, though many are right for the wrong reasons). (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853619) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 8:09 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Good idea, I'll do a poll on that next. I've thought harder about that one than aliens so I might have something to contribute besides the question itself :) and yeah it'll be interesting to see how people in diff fields think about it (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855475) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 9:51 AM Author: mewling pistol psychic (1) obviously (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853881) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 9:52 AM Author: Judgmental house-broken striped hyena 0 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853883) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:01 AM Author: Razzle Orchestra Pit Prole 2, maybe 3 (I'm not convinced that UFO activity is necessarily extraterrestrial; it may be a mix of things more common and more weird) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853912) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:02 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853914) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:04 AM Author: mewling pistol psychic all of the "UFO" activity has always been chinks and russians (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853923) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:05 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Only works if the "UFO" turns out to be something mundane and misclassified rather than genuinely anomalous. Like if the pilot and person who reviewed the data at first was confused and thought it looked weird, but then more careful review by the engineers who designed the sensors shows it was obviously just a jet or drone and the tracker or correction algorithm made it look weird (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49853929) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 10:06 AM Author: Razzle Orchestra Pit Prole Most of the really anomalous stuff is definitely experimental defense tech
But there has been and is some truly weird shit
I'm talking about just UFOs btw not 'alien abductions' etc. which are completely debunked flame |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:08 AM Author: Ultramarine cuckold There was a declassified CIA memo to CIA personal in Guatemala after some failed activities to plant UFO stories in the press for distraction. That’s all there is to it.
Also, “the best documented” UFOs are from Iran, when Iran had US puppet regime, and US had consents about its stability |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:38 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria That's extremely weak evidence. All that establishes is that at one specific moment in one specific operational context the CIA considered using UFO stories as a distraction. What it doesn't establish is that the entire UAP phenomenon across decades, multiple nations, independent military observers, and sensor platforms is a psyop. That's an inferential leap so large its not really even an argument. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854263) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:43 AM Author: Ultramarine cuckold False (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854285) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:46 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria No what I said is correct. Gesturing at a historical footnote in order to dismiss a much larger and more recent evidentiary record without touching any of it isn't an argument. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854294) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:52 AM Author: Ultramarine cuckold Also false. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854322) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:12 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria Still not an argument. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854371) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:56 PM Author: Ultramarine cuckold “False” is more of an argument than “ That's extremely weak evidence” idiocy sprayed with marginally related verbal diarrhea for support (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854490) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 1:06 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria You are just retreating back to bulverism and meta-level attack which is the ultimate sign someone has lost the object-level argument (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854515) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 5:08 PM Author: Ultramarine cuckold Because I believe that engaging in good faith dialogue with a practitioner of bad faith narcissistic demagoguery is not unlike casting pearls before swine (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855008) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:05 AM Author: talented grizzly heaven alpha Nothing leads me to believe we're anything but a cosmic mistake in the universe. Human desperately want this to not to be the case. Fermi blah blah blah (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854148) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:14 AM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria It's the opposite. Humans desperately want to believe they are special, which is the main motivation for trying to dismiss life elsewhere. It's a primitive ape instinct, similar to what caused geocentrism. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854182) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:50 PM Author: talented grizzly heaven alpha Having space beings that have immense powers to travel the cosmos somehow being interested in what we do here on this shit planet is an unnatural belief we are special in some broader sense. We are very likely a quirk in the universe. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854478) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:59 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria This assumes that an advanced civilization would "be interested in us" because we are "special" or "want to contact us" directly rather than just use us for knowledge/observation and training models. We model ants and it doesn't mean we aren't mostly indifferent to them. And "immense powers" is relative. We just started modern technology/science a couple hundred years ago, and it would look like we have immense powers to someone earlier. For something a million years ahead probing and studying the universe could be easy. Any sufficiently long technological development curve renders current limitations irrelevant, and a million years is an almost incomprehensible head start. We went from no powered flight to landing on the moon in 66 years.
The "quirk in the universe" bit is just the Rare Earth Hypothesis asserted without argument. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 1:46 PM Author: talented grizzly heaven alpha I'm more likely to buy the simulation theory and light-years are essentially a programming limit to the simulation experience. It takes too much processing power to generate a massive universe, so using light speed as a maximum allows the servers to process the request and not violate rules of the sim. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854569) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 1:59 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef The Penis tp argues out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he wants to hypothesize unimaginable super technology based on the premise that "in millions of years surely technology will advance beyond anything we can comprehend," but while taking these enormous leaps of faith he also wants to argue that you're the one being obtuse for thinking life could have only happened once or that self-replicating probes couldn't easily observe the entire universe in a pinch. He can't have it both ways. Either a ton of impossible shit will become possible at which point why not just say we'll have warp gates around the universe like in a sci-fi show. If you're going to uncork limitless possibilities for you baseline, why not go all the way. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854588) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 5:32 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria I could say you are deploying asymmetric skepticism as well. You guys will demand extraordinary evidence for von Neumann probes or life frequency and then make your own strong claims that Earth is unusual or that life is extremely rare without recognizing those also require justification.
Von Neumann probes are not a speculative technology. The concept is just kinematic replication, which is a thing that already exists in biology and in principle requires no new physics whatsoever. The 3 million year colonization timeline follows from known physics. Sub-relativistic travel speeds we could plausibly achieve with existing propulsion concepts plus exponential replication.
Life happened once is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. There is no evidence at all that we are in a special privileged corner of the universe, and most physics strongly suggests otherwise. We don't have to know the exact detailed mechanism of "abiogenesis" because the physics/chemistry required shouldn't in principle be locally restricted. The copernican principle has been vindicated every time we have tested it and the burden of proof sits entirely on the person claiming we're the exception, not on me for claiming we are typical. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:14 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef >you demand extraordinary evidence for my claims >there is no evidence
There's as much evidence for an all knowing all powerful all loving Creator than that given a large universe all of your highfalutin hypotheses are probable. There actually isn't one piece of evidence for anything you have said. Science fiction is not evidence. Neither is religion. I do not require a leap of faith to defend the probability of my beliefs. We know life happened once for sure, and we have no idea how. We know we cannot detect other life in the universe. We know that living things cannot complete interstellar travel. Sure, anything is possible. It's possible that Sydney Sweeney would let me titty fuck her. But scientists do not deal in hypothetical possibilities. Technology that does not currently exist and the law of large numbers isn't evidence. You're the one making giant leaps of faith. Yeah, hypothetically you could be right. But the fact is there is zero evidence for your claims. Hypothetically a lot of things could happen. I'm still waiting on Syd to return my call. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:39 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria You've lost the thread and are now making several distinct errors simultaneously. Your core mistake is conflating evidence with direct observation. You've set up a standard where the only valid evidence is something we've directly detected, which would rule out most of cosmology, most of evolutionary biology, and large chunks of physics. We have never directly observed the interior of a black hole, the first seconds after the big bang or the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The methodology for all of these is inference from known principles plus available data, which is exactly what I'm doing.
Your god comparison fails immediately, because my claims are grounded in known physics and scale reasoning where theological claims are not constrained by physical law at all. You are defending radical Earth Exceptionalism while accusing me of making leaps of faith.
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:46 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Large chunks of cosmology are refuted and overturned all the time by new evidence. Countless theories have been wiped out over time. It is an inherently speculative field. Similarly evolutionary biology is itself the biggest crock in all of science. The majority of Gad Saad's claims are unsubstantiated. There are things we can observe such as men gamble at higher rates than women. But when you start speculating about what the dodo bird did millions of years ago you lose the plot fast. These are all highly speculative fields.
Rare Earth may or may not be true. It could be horribly incorrect. We just don't have any EVIDENCE that it's wrong. And claiming the law of large numbers isn't evidentiary. It's speculative. It's fundamentally speculative. I can't prove beyond all doubt that the Earth is exceptional, but the burden isn't on me to leap up and declare that it's not. You're saying it's so obvious that it's not that I have to go out and prove that it is! I'm not trying to prove it. I'm going by empirical evidence. That there are billions or trillions of rocky planets is not evidence. It's pure speculation. They could all be trash for all we know. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:56 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria I agree with you about much of this. I agree modeling is more like best-fit guesses based on known physical data and that cosmology and evolutionary biology are constantly updating and predictions are overturned with anomalies accumulating. But I still think your claims about my argument for rare earth being unlikely are just "law of large numbers" are too strong. I'll say why later I gotta do something real quick (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855256) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 7:43 PM Author: Heady address I really enjoyed this entire subthread, tyvmft (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855403) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:07 AM Author: mind-boggling flushed point rigpig 2 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854160) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:10 AM Author: stimulating mustard doctorate (1). But I wouldn’t discount (0). No love for 0 here but there are plausible theories/discussions on how intelligent life may be a one in a bazillion freak accident even if there are a couple billion earths out there. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854170) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 11:16 AM Author: cream elastic band (3) Yes, and humanity has already encountered it
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:22 PM Author: bateful haunted graveyard Not extraterrestrials, but ultraterrestrials. Basically spirit beings.
I highly, highly recommend you read "The Mothman Prophecies" by John Keel if you are interested. |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:24 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Welcome back PF (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854412) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 12:54 PM Author: bateful haunted graveyard ? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854485) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 1:51 PM Author: Cobalt tantric resort (Mothman (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49854576) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:15 PM Author: concupiscible garnet university (1) is the most likely, the math simply works out that way. I even espouse a weaker version which states the life HAS or WILL exist in our universe but perhaps not contemporaneously with life on Earth. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855164) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:17 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef There is no evidence for this (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855170) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:25 PM Author: concupiscible garnet university There's no evidence for any of these actually but given that we've seen lots of earthlike planets in our own galaxy and there are 2 trillion other galaxies out there, we would have to be exceptionally rare to exist and not have anyone else out there at all ever. Remember, this is life period not even intelligent life. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855200) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:31 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef If we stick to the facts and evidence we have an example of 1. Again you can hypothesize that Sydney Sweeney will let you have a threesome with her and her best friend but that doesn't mean it's likely to happen. Even given incredibly large numbers there's no current evidence of life outside of Earth. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855216) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:34 PM Author: concupiscible garnet university There's plausible evidence of life having once existed on mars. That means life is probably incredibly common, and even so the strongest claim I would ever advance is (1) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855220) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:35 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef We simply don't know that life existed on Mars or the Moon. More wishful thinking. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855223) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:36 PM Author: concupiscible garnet university We don't actually know that life exists on Earth by that standard (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855225) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 6:37 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef This is false and a straw man. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855229) |
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Date: April 30th, 2026 8:31 PM Author: concupiscible garnet university Simply because you don't have evidence that something does exist does not mean you have evidence of something that doesn't exist. We have known unknowns, and unknown unknowns; things we don't know that we don't know.
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Date: April 30th, 2026 9:24 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Yes hypothetically Sydney Sweeney would let me do anal on the first date (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49855734) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:10 PM Author: Cerebral Site Foreskin Them evolving early enough, to be advanced enough, to do the physics-defying journey far enough, to happen upon our planet among gazillions, at the exact blink of an eye that "humans" existed over the entire course of earth-history, much less "humans existed and could conceptualize spacefaring aliens"... is lmao
just do throw a pebble into infinite oceans of space-time and have it land perfectly in the mouth of a little fish coming up to belch
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:14 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse "to happen upon our planet" – well, if they're advanced enough to travel this far, I bet they're advanced enough to detect the life here from a great distance. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856975) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 1:24 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef do you think we could detect life if it was on a planet surrounding Proxima Centauri? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49856985) |
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Date: May 1st, 2026 10:58 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Cowgod has produced some scholarship on the topic: https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5862671&forum_id=2 (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49858466) |
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Date: May 2nd, 2026 2:32 PM Author: cream elastic band so where are we on this poll? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49859723) |
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Date: May 2nd, 2026 2:35 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Eventually I'll make a chart but I'll give it more time. For now, you can count 'em yourself ;) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49859729) |
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Date: May 2nd, 2026 2:52 PM Author: trip piazza roast beef Non-Ivy No Aliens
I want some sort of badge. |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 8:56 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Here are the results btw, fairly evenly distributed but 1/3 of us think we've already encountered aliens: https://ibb.co/W7hd31N (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49875961) |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 8:57 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria 180. Didn't expect 3 to win. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49875968) |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 8:59 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse (2) being relatively uncommon among the "Yes" options (although ofc the sample size is tiny) is interesting. Like either we're not gonna meet them or we already have. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49875982) |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 9:05 PM Author: self-absorbed snowy toaster school cafeteria I think 1 is a stronger option if you read 2 as implying humanity *has* to eventually encounter it. But when you think about it it really doesn't it leaves it open. All it is saying is hasn't encountered yet. Where 1 closes off the chances of ever discovering it. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49875994) |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 9:18 PM Author: Salmon Whorehouse Yeah you can believe (1) and (2) but I just assumed people would pick (1) if they believe (1). (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861790&forum_id=2Elisa#49876019) |
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Date: May 8th, 2026 10:31 PM Author: flickering candlestick maker parlour 3
There is no God, only extraterrestrial life far superior to humanity |