(no subject)

[theweaselking]

From today's Lowering The Bar:

"Supporters of Initiative 300 say that the government has covered up visits by extraterrestrials and is suppressing advanced technologies the visitors have brought with them. The initiative would address this by authorizing a commission made up mostly of Denver residents, and directing the commission to "create a responsible, responsive, common sense strategy for dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial intelligent beings on Earth."

Opponents of Initiative 300 say that's stupid."

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Hypothetically, I cannot argue with the logic that if aliens visited earth and the government knew, they might try to cover that up. That makes good sense. Holding back advanced technology does not make any sense at all.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

.. unless the government thinks that just releasing it would lead to economic disaster, in which case it'd have to be released slowly and in nice little chunks somehow.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of unless. I think that assuming that the government would do anything but use such technology for enhanced military applications is naive. And the fact that our military really has proven to be only mildly effective against primitively armed civilians in the last few years really discredits this idea.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to argue that if aliens visited the government might try to cover it up, but their chances of success at that are very low. So low, in fact, that I'm willing to accept their non-failure as evidence that they haven't tried.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

To be fair, there are plenty of people who have "evidence" of this now. Some of them former astronauts, former government employees, and former military. I admit to having not actually paid a lot of attention to them (like most people) but I'm not sure what that says about the idea of a coverup. It could be (as most people assume) that these people are crazy or wrong and that their evidence is nothing. Or it could be that they're right and we just don 't care because the idea has been discredited to the point where even firsthand accounts and credible facts son't matter anymore.

At this point I wouldn't believe someone who brought forward video pf Clinton eating dinner with an alien diplomat, not even if it looked flawless. So really, what hope does such evidence have?

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Well, the way I see it: hypothetical interstellar-travel-capable aliens are highly unlikely to have the exact same political dysfunctions we do (they'd have different ones!), so if they wanted to make contact, why would they cooperate with our governments' conspiracy attempts? They could just be like "Yo Earth. 'Sup?"

It's roughly how I feel about god. "Wow, this deity of yours shares your prejudices and is remarkably inefficient for an omnipotent being. It's almost like you made it all up."

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I think that assuming that is not different than assuming that they WOULD work with our leadership. IMO, the best thing to do is assume nothing about potential aliens, because it's something that we know nothing about.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I think the only safe assumption about aliens is that they would be, in fact, totally alien. Which is why all the contact stories make me raise an eyebrow, because the aliens in them are far too comprehensible.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I'm for that, though I like to entertain the notion that they might be comprehensible in some ways. They must abide by the same laws of physics as us, for the most part, so we ought to be able to understand them in some way. then again, most humans are not even capable of understanding the family dog, who who am I kidding?

[swwoodsy.livejournal.com]

A little bit farther down on Lowering the Bar is a link to a HILARIOUS rant/petition for a re-hearing in which the plaintiff calls the appellate court a bunch of ass clowns, little bitches, c*cksuckers, m*therf*ckers and other obscenities. It is a laugh riot. Seriously. I have it saved to send to some of my lawyer and legal friends.

[glenn-3.livejournal.com]

Sadly, 300 has lost, by about 85%-15%. Now we'll never know what awesome alien technology the government is hiding from us.