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I am sure racism plays a role, but also: how many old structures are there in Europe that were so fantastic that aliens become part of the conversation?

Yeah same now I’ve seen it written down this is pretty obvious, yet somehow never occurred to me. Still, I think back in the day there were ‘theories’ about aliens building Stonehenge so maybe there is a part of the brain that wants to ascribe mysterious things to mysterious extraterrestrial forces 👽

Ah yes, the Parthenon, most famous of the mud huts.

That's so factually wrong it hurts lmao

Yea, people just apply racism to everything instead of thinking about it for a second.

Don't worry!

Stargates aren't real, they can't hurt you.

I never quite understood the stargate mythos. Did all the goulds live here on earth, which is why earth culture is so diverse? Ra and Apophis in Egypt, lord Yu in China, the asgard in scandinavia etc. That doesn't make sense because the system lords all control their own space right? It's hard to imagine one big happy gould family on one planet. But then how and why did earth culture come to adopt all the other gould cultures? I just don't get it. I actually really like the part about humans ultimately becoming one of the galactic superpowers at the end of SG-1 and Atlantis.

Obviously the worldbuilding and writing wasn't done under a microscope like tolkein level continuity and isn't meant to be taken seriously. It's a miracle SG-1 lasted ten seasons and they were all fantastic, even 9 and 10. Its success is mostly just good old fashioned terrific entertaining writing and chemistry between the cast and crew.

but is it really inconceivable that aliens visited earth? Or that they influenced our culture?

Actually. yes.
Okay, so lets take this one thing at a time.

the solar system is actually quite boring. It's pretty typical. there's no surprising elements. there's no materials that we haven't detected in several other worlds and such. as far as we know, it's a pretty bog standard star, with a pretty bog standard system. the ONLY thing worthing noting- that makes this system unique is us. More specifically. Life. it has life. As far as we know, it's totally unique. (we don't know all that far.)

This means, we're the only reason any society would come here. it's easy to assume there are resources much closer to home, much more easily harvested and exploited.

now, establishing that, lets look at how they'd know we'd exist:

• the JWST is our most sensitive space borne telescope. it's capable of identifying atmospheric compounds of exoplanets. some of those compounds, we associate heavily with the presence of life; it's reasonable to assume any species capable of coming here would have such technology. It's detected such things on several worlds over the past year that it's been active; and has been answering questions and opening new ones for that year.

It's therefore possible that some hypothetical society could identify our presence from such a similar telescope. This gives the outer bound of detection of life at something like four million years. Lots of stars exist in that bubble. Lots. I mean, I don't know that we actually have a count on how many. JWST is finding more all the time

This assumes they're looking at it. maybe those 'earliest life' compounds are... how shall we say super common. Maybe they'r emore interested in say industrial pollutants? The industrial revolution started in 1760- about 250 years ago. Lets say those pollutants weren't really concentrated enough to be highly obvious, until 50 years after the start. that would mean 200 lightyears is the minimum distance to know that humans were altering the enviroment, specifically.

• alternatively, they could have detected our radio transmissions. We're a noisy species. the Arecebo message was sent to messier 13 in '74- about 50 years ago. it wasn't a serious attempt to contact anyone, but it's a powerful signal that could attract attention. We've been broadcasting into space for about a hundred years. here's a picture of just how small 200LY's is,

but that article fails to talk about detectability. Most signals we transmit would be indistinguisable from background radiation. probably the oldest signals that would reliably be detectable are military radar signals intended for detection of ballistic missiles.- creating a bubble with a 60ly radius. 40 for a steady stream of soaps and reality tv.

lets be honest hear. aliens watching Days of Our Lives Reruns probably get a bad impression. And lets not talk about all the, uh, premium, channels.

ALL THAT to say, it's extremely unlikely they actually know we're here.

Now, we need to consider would they come here. Hypothetically, they could be curious about us. Hypothetically, they want to know how Land Before Time Saga ends. (hey, the last one was in 2016. unless they're at proxima centauri, no chance they've seen it yet!)

it would be a serious undertaking to even have the ability to get here in a reasonable time frame... it would take a shit load of energy. Like, on the order of global annual energy consumption. And that's just for the payload. Forget about the size and mass of the fuel tanks necessary- and just to get up to speed. This doesn't include the whole 'slowing down so we can moon them' thing.

basically... any species capable of getting here, and motivated by curiosity about us enough to get here, is probably going to abstain simply because they have the ability to realize we're psychotic fucks who nuked ourselves. multiple times. It's extremely unlikely that any society capable of getting here won't have enough social control in place to prevent idiots from joyriding and mooning the psychotic primitive apes. because if you think nuking people is bad, we won't even need nukes. Just take their giant rocket and point it at the planet- no need to even slow down. (actually, it works better if you don't!)

Do I believe aliens Exist? I believe it's probable.
Do I believe they've come here- ever? Highly unlikely.

but is it really inconceivable that aliens visited earth? Or that they influenced our culture?

Yes.

The idea that History Channel doesn't think that a non-white person couldn't build a pyramid on their own doesn't come from nothing. When i look at the german equivalent of History Channel, K1 Doku, i didn't see a documentation so far of a pharao constructing the pyramid and why it was a pyramid etc. . It was scientist thinking that aliens were somehow involved. It really gives off the vibe as if the network doesn't think non-white people can build anything monumental on their own.

I think it's more the original theory than the show itself. They just perpetuate it. As far as I remember, the original alien theories directly descended from conspiracy theories that Germanic people must have actually built wonders of 'primitive' people. They just subbed aliens for Germanic people.

As for alien contact, why would a super advanced civilization interact at all? We'd be a similar cognitive level as ants comparatively. They'd just strip mine the planet or drain the whole oceans or whatever they wanted. Why would their contact be so tiny and limited to only things that are better explaned by similar cultural developments wanting monumental structures to demonstrate power that can be easily built.

Yes. Inconceivable, and I do know what the word means. Aliens show up, humans say, hey, stack these stones for us. No, we don't care about your light box thingies or your leave-the-planet mobiles. We just really want those stones stacked up.

I think it is demeaning but not racist.

It is demeaning to past humanity in general when these dudes look at ancient works of incredible skill and engineering created by our ancestors and they conclude.

Nah, ancient people were stupid, they couldn't have done this without outside help.

Pyramids couldn't be aliens there's no fricken Ipads. Checkmate xterresterialists