First of all, I'd like to dedicate this installment to Torkel, he's the one who got me into blogging in the first place, thanks to his own blog. Ie. it's his fault you're reading this now ;-)

It amazes me the kind of ideas people have about intelligence in outer space. For many it's hard to imagine we are alone on this tiny little planet, in an infinite (or not) universe, just us and there's noone anywhere. So they make up stories about aliens, who they are, what they look like and so on (apparently their ships are gigantic and in most cases silent). We like to picture them as similar to us, breathing air, looking all weird with various animal like features and we like to kick some alien butt too.

Well I got a beef with that, it's far too simplistic for my taste. The assumption is common for all speculation of that kind, ie. the human being is the center of the universe. Apparently, that is obvious to a lot of people, few dare question it. Why does it have to be so? Because all those theories assume that if indeed there is life in the universe, the human being can see it, communicate with it and why not destroy it. Ie. the human mind is at least equal, perhaps superior, to any other form of intelligence.

Let's take a radical step now, what if that is not the case? What if the human being, along with the human mind, is just a small element of a greater whole? If you think about it this way.. everything that we know stems from our reasoning. Our senses give us a base to explore the Earth. We employ them to do that, and every step from that very beginning all the way to modern time, is a chain of deductions, nothing more. All science is based on the information we first obtain through our senses. The periodic table is a list of chemical materials we believe cannot be split and make up the world we know, it's a result of our reasoning.

Time for that step now... What if the world we know is relative to a greater entity? What if our minds operate in some section of that entity and there are things we are not fit to understand? If we imagine this is the case, then it follows that we will never understand anything more than we now do. The term "dimension" is one we like to use. Time is the 4th dimension, no further dimensions are defined. What if extra terrestial life is to be found in other "dimensions"? Wouldn't that make more sense, imagine "life" is spread uniformly in the universe and our specific brand of life exist on Earth, but there are other life forms we don't know about, will never know about and even if we did, could never understand nor communicate with? We simply have no bridge into their world, their type of existence is completely abstract to us. Is that a less reasonable speculation?

To me that makes just as much sense, simply because of the explanation already given: our understanding of our own existence boils down to our mind. "It's all in your head" and that's exactly right. Imagine there is a world where concepts of time, quantity, memory etc (all fabrications of the human mind) are abstract.

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that it becomes very vague very quickly, ideas emanate which are hard to grasp, there are no firm definitions because very few assumptions are being made. I cannot say if the statement above makes any sense to anyone but me.

Ps. No, it's not "The Matrix", I've had these thoughts way before I knew about the movie, nor do they have anything to do with it. The closest movie I know to touch on the ideas I've put forth is "Contact", though it is egregiously boring.