"Independently, our current knowledge of physics strongly suggests that interstellar travelers arriving in this solar system would be visible (during deceleration) to any serious observation of the night sky, whether Mayan, Ptolemaic, Galilean, or modern. The absence of any record that suggests arrival is strong evidence against interstellar aliens."
Just curious:
Does human kind has in place 24/7 surveillance of every part of the sky around the globe? Citation?
Close enough to see the kind of effect that would be present from decelerating from interstellar speeds, assuming that aliens noticed us sometime after we made electromagnetic fields that exceeded background noise in orbit.
Recently I've been struck with a belief in Aliens being present on this Earth. It happened after I watched this documenary (and subsequently several others). My feeling of belief is not particular interesting in itself - I could be lunatic or otherwise psychological dysfunctional. What I'm interested in knowing is to what extend other people, who consider themselves rationalists, feel belief in the existence of aliens on this earth, after watching this documentary. Is anyone willing to try and watch it and then report back?
Another question arising in this matter is how to treat evidence of extraordinary things. Should one require 'extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims'? I somehow feel that this notion is misguided - it discriminates evidence prior to observation. That is not the right time to start discriminating. At most we should ascribe a prior probability of zero and then do some Bayesian updating to get a posterior. Hmm, if no one has seen a black swan and some bayesian thinking person then sees a black swan a) in the distance or b) up front, what will his a posterior probability of the existence of black swans then be?