Intelligence off the subject

[Stang1996@aol.com]

Some of this is "on the subject", some of it isn't (none of it is about
dinosaurs however).  Read what you want.

I have been listening to all of this talk on the probabilty of inteligent
life, aliens yada, yada, yada.

While it is interesting, to speculate on such subjects, I have to ask you
guys: how in the world does one even begin to decide the number of
"habitable" planets in the galaxy?  How do we know that the planets have to
have water?  How does one figure out how many planets have water on them
(I've never been to those planets)?  How do we know the probability of a
"Cambrian Explosion" happening?  Hey, bacteria could have still been tiddling
around doing nothing, or they could have gone endosymbiotic within a half
billion years of a cellular organization.  How does one figure out the
probabilty of "intelegent" life evolving?  Even if all that happened, who are
we to ASSume that alien cultures would act even remotely similar to, or have
any remotely similar interests as humans?  What I'm basicly saying is: how do
we come up with an answer that has hard real numbers if the only thing in the
equation is an unknown number of variables?

About aliens being here.... I just happen to be one of those UFO enthusiasts
who think (99% sure) that "advanced" alien cultures are here and have been
for a while.  I think all this BS about why haven't we intersepted radio
signals etc, is just that; BS.  My personal view on our galaxy is as follows:
Long, long ago (20-25 billion years ago) when the first stars in the galaxy
had been formed for a while and intelegent life had evolved and left and
explored, they were the true, real, FIRST intersteller pioneers.  When those
first cultures met, they weren't stupid, there were no intersteller wars;
come on this isn't Star Trek; though intersteller wars look neat, they are
pretty moronic.  I believe that they just kept building technologies better
and better over millions and billions of years.  As species evolved over
millions of years (with the firsts watching), they were introduced to the
firsts and other alien cultures before they became "explorers".  I believe
that is what is happening to humans now, them thinking, "hey, now that they
have the capacity of being intersteller travelers, perhaps we should
introduce ourselves to them slowly and calmly, instead of having them learn
about us the hard way."  What gives you the idea that in a galaxy that is
Billions of years old, we would be the very first planet that would evolve
intersteller flight and such?  Come on.  I know before you tell me, I have no
"proof" that things happened this way, it's just an idea.  On the other hand,
I don't see any "proof" associated with any other theory about alien
inteligence either.

Peter Buchholz
Stang1996@aol.com