From: kymhorsell@gmail.com   
      
   You get a lot of time to think, waiting for AI's to churn through all the   
   data and tell you what is most reasonable.   
      
   I'm sitting here watching them now. Churn, churn, churn.  They're   
   looking at patterns in sightings of interactions between military   
   aircraft and odd things in the sky the Pentagon will probably call   
   Chinese weather balloons. Or something else -- anything else -- that   
   isn't "conclusively aliens".   
      
   And, somehow, a few pieces of the puzzle fell into place.    
      
   It's often assumed in textbooks -- certainly the ones I grew up on   
   over a few decades dipping in and out of college -- that the earth   
   and/or the sun are "average". The so-called "assumption of mediocrity"  says   
   that   
   if you don't have any other information, start out by assuming whatever   
   you are thinking about is an average example of its type.  It makes   
   mathematical sense.   
      
   But the problem is. We have information. A growing list. The earth and the sun   
   are not average. Assuming   
   they are will lead to bad conclusions.    
      
   I listened to astronomers talking on one of those docs about the planets they   
   are discovering now via space telescope. Some of them complained their idea   
   that many of the stars -- maybe most of them -- would have solar systems like   
   ours. But it turns out    
   with a list of several 1000 cases now -- THEY DONT.   
      
   The sun is  a very late   
   bloomer.  Most of the G-type stars in our Milky Way are long dead. The   
   bulk of the G population bloomed billions of years before our sun was   
   even a glint in papa's eye. So now G-type stars like our sun are only   
   5-10% of the galaxy's population.   
      
   So when we assume the average star out there might have MIGHT have   
   life like ours and access to a radio and we beam some gibberish in   
   that direction and don't receive anything back, it isn't because no-one   
   is there. It is that almost everyone that might have started out   
   similar to us because they lived in the Goldilocks Zone around a G sun   
   is now billions of years in advance of us. I think if you calculate it   
   out given you might only be using radio for 100-200 years before you   
   find something much better then the nearest civilization in our state   
   of childhood is likely on the rim of the Milky Way and 10-20,000 light   
   years away. On top of that, fat chance too many of them are in the   
   same state of using radio for communication. We can assume maybe that   
   astronomers on those remote planets EVENTUALYY do the calculation and find   
   contacting any other "baby" is pretty futile and they stop listening for   
   signals. Stop sending signals. After    
   all, they are surrounded by... well...   
      
   If we are NOT average and are, in fact, the   
   youngest or as good as youngest planet in the galaxy, what have the   
   other civilizations been doing in the past 13 billion years?   
      
   Well we can guess the answer. They have been growing and spreading   
   out.  Various astronomers have advanced the idea that even travelling   
   at sub-light speeds any civilization willing to spend what we spend on   
   arms on space flight could make it to the core region of the Milky Way   
   in 100,000 years and then after a similar time radiate out to explore   
   or colonize every suitable star in the whole galaxy in another 100,000 years.   
      
   Given there are possibly going to be a few more than 1 such   
   civilizations in the past 14 billion years then you can imagine the   
   price of real estate in most of the galaxy is  sky high about now   
   because of the demand.   
      
   Avi Loeb has calculated that even if 1 civilization had bothered to   
   start exploring at the height of when G-type stars were a new thing   
   all that time ago, and spend a defence budget each year up until now,   
   and sent out probes at sub-light speeds, then by now there would be a   
   million of them floating around in our own solar system our here on The Rim.   
      
   But he stops short in his written musings from the follow-on thoughts -- they   
   would have probably followed their probes to the promised lands they   
   found soon after.  And if the first ones were typical then every other   
   similar civilization would have done the same thing pretty much.   
      
   So if you're wondering why all these ufo's seem to be a hodge-podge of   
   different things -- not only shapes and colors but also apparently   
   some are only partly material objects and some are so crazy they don't   
   seem to fall under headings of matter or energy or anything else much   
   -- and if you're wondering why all kinds of paranormal stuff seem to   
   also be connected with ufos and lake monsters and goblins and all   
   manner of other crap... then maybe if you consider the neighborhood   
   might be full of 1000s of different competing groups that came out   
   here in the past few billion years and never left. Well... it starts STARTS to   
   make some kind of sense.   
      
   As one group of theories go -- the earth is like a wilderness   
   preserve.  Sure. They may grow food here since it's conveniently   
   close to a yellow star and has above-ground oceans. But the place is   
   otherwise like "back home" was billions of years back and just HAS to   
   be persevered like that.  Aliens are all greenies because it just   
   makes sense. :)   
      
   So now comes the hard part. For many of us. If such a situation turns   
   out to be the case we have to learn to accept it.  Over the past few   
   years I've chatted with various people about various way-out   
   ideas. And some have argued they would be seriously distressed if it   
   turned out earth was somehow a colony or prison or had been seeded by   
   some advanced race. Yeah. I get it.   
      
   In my younger years I walked the earth -- as they used to say --   
   looking for my roots. I ended up at one point in Lapland where it   
   turned out some of my father's people came from. And it turned out by   
   total co-incidence my mother's people had links with islands off N   
   Russia probably also considered to be part of Lapland.   
      
   Anyhow, I ended up someplace talking or trying to talk with a local   
   wise woman of some tribe. In the 1970s people up there still lived   
   in tents and followed reindeer herds around and otherwise lived by   
   hunting and gathering. They also spoke 1000s different languages so   
   finding anyone around that could speak English and translate it to the   
   local dialect and back was tricky.   
      
   But I was talking with this old dear and she wanted to know what the   
   heck I was doing back there on the other side of the planet and did I herd   
   reindeer and such back home. And I told her I was training to be a scientist.   
   She had a vague idea of what that was. I tried to describe what it   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)