[Wilshire]

My biggest issue with this kind of thing is that some species travels hundreds of thousands of light-years, which would be enormously taxing in time and resources, just to fly around scaring superstitious farmers and to push over some corn? Seems unlikely.

Then again, the longer one lives, the quicker time seems to flow. When I was a kid a 5 minute time-out was forever, and 10 years seemed like an eternity. Now, the past 8 years seemed to fly by, and the last 6 months seemed to have gone by without my notice. Perhaps this perception of time dilation multiplies with age, so some super long lived species of ETs might not mind spending 10,000 slowly manipulating a population of sentient beings to some unfathomable end.

Possible, but still unlikely. But, to keep with the skeptical atmosphere, nearly 40,000 generations of evolution and there were no discernible speciation events in human ancestral history, but the past several thousand years (only a few thousand generations) we went from using stone tools to space flight. Aliens, God, or just pure evolutionary chance?

[Royce]

I do not think that we can "understand" alien behavior. It is alien to us. We are not supposed to understand it using human concepts and terminology. Alien could be anything, even far outside of our imagination. If we start to describe it in a human way, it is not alien, it is vaguely human.

[Wilshire]

Sorry, but that is a really lame cop-out. One might have once said we cannot explain natural phenomenon because its from God and we cannot fathom our creator.

We've only got our own brains to think with so thats the frame we use to understand. There are thousands of "alien" species on this planet and people work to understand them every day with varying degrees of success. No reason we can't understand any species, ET or not, through study and observation. Sure, perhaps initial guesses on what drives so-called ET motives might be out of scope, but you cannot categorically dismiss every argument based on lack of experience.

[Royce]

Oh, of course if it is a natural phenomenon we can figure it out. I am not dismissing anything at all
All I am saying is that there is a possibility that something can be to alien for our brains to percieive/understand.

[sciborg2]

Say that it was debunked then. I still have problems with the intentions to those people involved.
Why on earth would you not take credit for making something so beautiful? Why hide and pretend that it is aliens or whatever? They would be considered genuine artists for making these pieces, but instead they do it in secret, and spread rumours that there is aliens involved.

Or it might be like tagging. They would be arrested for destroying private property, so they hide to escape jail.

I think it depends on the currency you're looking for. Some people like the perpetuation of mysteries.

I think so long as people approach the UFO phenomenon as a hobby it's a perfectly good reality tunnel to wander through. But I do worry about people who become excessively paranoid [or obsessive] about the whole thing. [Didn't that one guy at Temple Uni. make hypnotic suggestions to women about having alien hybrids in their bodies?]

On the subject of alien mentality, I'm with Wilshire. I feel like so long as a common means of communication opened up we'd be able to categorize their goals. It's just hard for me to fathom how any mind wouldn't map to some kind of agent-with-goals structure.

[Wilshire]

Maybe there is an entirely separate evolutionary line that doesn't focus on survival of your own species.... Not sure how that would work, but its possible I suppose.

btw I don't think aliens are on or anywhere near our pale blue dot, but I don't condemn those who do. I do however despise the idea that this planet is the only one in the entire universe that has life/intelligent life (whether or not we ever meet another is still debatable in my mind). Its far too flattering to be true. The world isn't flat, we aren't the center of the solar system/galaxy/universe, and we aren't the only living planet.

[Srancy]

As much as I despise that thought,  Wilshire,  I also despite the thought there must be 'life' without any evidence to the contrary

[Wilshire]

Fair enough, but I pick the solution that doesn't flatter quite so much.

[sciborg2]

I guess the aliens could be really obsessed with "redness" and base their morality the quality of their own color qualia for reasons they can't explain to us? Like blue is abhorrent to them in the way murder & rape is to us?

Just trying to come up with some plausible shit they could say but we couldn't really understand. So they still are agents with goals but their inclinations are just bizarre.

Yet even then if we could see the evolutionary history of their species we should understand why their wiring is different from ours and why red is Good but blue is Evil?

[Callan S.]

I do not think that we can "understand" alien behavior. It is alien to us. We are not supposed to understand it using human concepts and terminology. Alien could be anything, even far outside of our imagination. If we start to describe it in a human way, it is not alien, it is vaguely human.

I think it'd be better to say were under some sort of endangered species protection area and that's the legal limit of what they can do in the area!

[Madness]

Or it might be like tagging. They would be arrested for destroying private property, so they hide to escape jail.

This is actually a divisive issue among those affected by this sociocultural artifact... farmers especially can lose an an entire years profits (if they aren't savvy enough to make money off the carnival that usually follows the more intricate "circles" (this, this, this, and this don't look like "circles" to me).

so some super long lived species of ETs might not mind spending 10,000 slowly manipulating a population of sentient beings to some unfathomable end.

"Carve me in stone."

Maybe there is an entirely separate evolutionary line that doesn't focus on survival of your own species.... Not sure how that would work, but its possible I suppose.

Biology has done stranger things. The White-Luck Species .

Fair enough, but I pick the solution that doesn't flatter quite so much.

+1

I do not think that we can "understand" alien behavior. It is alien to us. We are not supposed to understand it using human concepts and terminology. Alien could be anything, even far outside of our imagination. If we start to describe it in a human way, it is not alien, it is vaguely human.

I think it'd be better to say were under some sort of endangered species protection area and that's the legal limit of what they can do in the area!

I look forward to my proceeding generations being eaten by our new alien/trans-dimensional overlords - actually that basically sounds terrible; I hope we're an acquired taste.

[Royce]

This is actually a divisive issue among those affected by this sociocultural artifact... farmers especially can lose an an entire years profits (if they aren't savvy enough to make money off the carnival that usually follows the more intricate "circles" (this, this, this, and this don't look like "circles" to me).

Wow, those are quite amazing. Do you make this happen without the farmers noticing? As you mentioned they can loose a lot of money on this, so I cant see why they would be in on it.

[Madness]

I think all crop circles - human made or otherwise - are usually done in a night, Royce.

Farmers wake up and their lives are overturned.

[Raizen]

It's interesting to note that this time period of humanity isn't the only one obsessed with "signs" left by supposed extraterrestrials.  The ancient Egyptians (who seem to be the crux of all things strange and unexplained in the world) had very interesting hieroglyphics depicting sky people and the like.  I realize now that the motivation for fabricating crop circles today could be wealth, but what about back then?

I suppose you could argue they used such things as a religious driving force to increase faith in their gods, but there are quite a lot of weird signs and symbols that exist throughout human culture.

[Royce]

It's interesting to note that this time period of humanity isn't the only one obsessed with "signs" left by supposed extraterrestrials.  The ancient Egyptians (who seem to be the crux of all things strange and unexplained in the world) had very interesting hieroglyphics depicting sky people and the like.  I realize now that the motivation for fabricating crop circles today could be wealth, but what about back then?

This reminded me of that old docu called Magical Egypt or something I enjoyed that one.

I guess they were greedy on the substances that alter consciousness, so they tried their best to depict what they saw. One theory amongst many