Aliens on Earth

[Sam Slater]

So a rabbit, who cannot comprehend logic or reason (thus, cannot be considered having intellect) cannot experience reality? Interesting.

What I think you meant to say was that our experience of reality is constructed in the brain. How this likens the mad ideas you have of being true, I cannot fathom - but it is late and I've had a tipple.

[eroticartist]

I have one conviction for violence and that was false-murder.

[eroticartist]

It means that "reality" only exists in one's mind.

[eroticartist]

As long as people don't consider me "normal" I am flattered!

Perhaps you should try some mind expanding substances rather than alcohol which depresses the central nervous system!

[Sam Slater]

So we agree that our experience of reality is constructed inside the brain?

[eroticartist]

Yes and we all experience a different sense of reality

[jimslip]

You ain't "Mad" you're a visionary! Do not despair at the drivellings of those that will not see! I'm sure Leonardo da Vinci was victim of bigotry and small mindedness and wasn't Marconi scoffed at for stating he could, "Send talking waves through the very air itself!"

The braying, snarling hordes bearing pitch forks and flaming torches will always masse where brave souls dare to state the outlandish or the incredible!

Bolt your doors and batten your windows! Stand proud and command to these untutoured savages, "Calm your hate, put down your weapons and extinguish your torches, for you are little more than cave men in the face of my great intellect. Turn around, return to your hovels and reflect on your bigotry and slavish beliefs of all you are told, YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE!"!wink!

A bit like this:

[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7zJCG5ZqjDg/T ... heston.jpg[/img]

[andy at handiwork]

If, as you have asserted earlier, and I am probably paraphrasing here, we can only be sure of our sense of reality, how do you know everybody's is different?

[Sam Slater]

I agree with you, Mike. Our brains collect data via the senses and build a 'reality' which we cannot prove is anything near accurate of the real three-dimensional space/time in which we reside.

Put simply, our brains create a world from data it would be disadvantageous to ignore. Sort of like a summary of a newspaper article which omits the irrelevant filler and just sticks to the main points. If certain aspects of three-dimensional space has no selective pressures then our brains would be less likely to use up more energy processing the extra data and making sense of it. Brains, after all, are expensive to build and run.

So we can conclude that given our experience of reality is solely dependent on how much data our senses can collect and how well our brains build up an image of the world from that data. Following on from this logic, we must assume that like all cells, muscles and other organs, brains are liable to become dysfunctional. Our brains and senses aren't perfect and will make mistakes. You'll have experienced this, no doubt, when under the influence of certain substances you're so fond of.

So here we come to the most important point in our debates on UFOs and the like: people's brains aren't infallible. We sometimes hear and see things that aren't there. We often misremember and are deceived by our own interpretation of the world. The flying saucers, zooming, erratic lights in the sky, poltergeists and ghostly apparitions people claim to see are most likely brains making mistakes or people just making shit up for attention.

I cannot put it more succinctly than David Hume's view on miracles: ?No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish? In other words, is it more likely highly intelligent beings traversed light-years of space-time for no apparent reason apart from scaring pilots and lonely travellers in New Mexico or that out of billions of people on the planet some are prone to lies, exaggeration and attention-seeking by which they will make things up? And though less likely, but more likely than visiting aliens, some people are fooled by their own brains and have been the victim of suffering grave misapprehensions?

[eroticartist]

Because one's emotions colour what we see...