...probed 23,000 adults?
Oh noes! IPSOS are aliens!
I for one welcome our clip-board bearing overlords!
One fifth of humans say aliens walk among us
One-fifth of the world's population believes that aliens walk among us, disguised as Homo sapiens for an unknown, but doubtless chilling purpose. That's according to a Reuters Ipsos poll, which probed 23,000 adults in 22 countries, and discovered that India is an epicentre of ET activity, with 45 per cent convinced the …
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:12 GMT Marvin the Martian
Depends on phrasing by said monkeys.
If you ask people whether there's "aliens amongst us, illegal or otherwise" you should get about a 100% score; shorten it to "aliens amongst us" and you should get about 15% (from the slightly-autistic, literal-parsing amongst us --- mostly techies and mathsy ones, call 'em RegReaders).
Damn ambiguous English language. With XKCD and using the Groucho club logic, I'd consider learning Lojban [a constructed language with no ambiguities] but then I'd be only able to speak with the kind of saddos that learn Lojban.
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Monday 12th April 2010 11:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
thinking about it
It's far more believable that aliens have arrived on earth and are among us in some capacity then it is to think a magical man of some kind created all existence. But much like the magical man I don't see much point in getting up tight about it, can't prove it either way may as well get back to everyday life.
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Tuesday 13th April 2010 11:22 GMT TeeCee
Really?
Is that because you've heard of the concept of statistics and have no truck with it or just that you're in that "half"?
Hint: Average intelligence is usually* defined as being within one standard deviation of the mean and 2/3 of the population fall into this category.
Now, if you'd said that half of the people you meet are below mean intelligence you'd be closer to the truth, but you'd still have a problem with the fact that people of exactly mean intelligence do exist in numbers.
*YMMV. Some scales tighten this to 10 points against an SD of 15 and other definitions exist, but they all specify a *range*.....
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Monday 12th April 2010 11:58 GMT heyrick
Alien visitations
It still staggers me to think that humans are so egocentric that some super hyper advanced lifeform (which, obligatorily, looks just like us) can span vast distances of space, travel through wormholes, faster than the speed of light, and generally bend the universe to their demands...
...and they'd come HERE. A planet full of people who still believe in God. Not just *a* God, but many different ideas of that one God, to whom we'd readily kill each other in defence of. A planet full of people who have yet to step beyond their own satellite, maybe. Or was it faked? A planet full of people with grandiose ideas of The Federation keeping control of the vastness of space, while in reality we can only just about get different countries to agree on things if we push hard enough. A planet full of people who essentially defecate all over their terrain, and then pretend it isn't happening, and when it is too late to stop chaos from unfolding, it'll be a punishment sent from the heavens. And we're right back to the beginning of the paragraph. Repeat until False.
You think alien life would willingly come HERE? Yeah, right.
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
There are plenty of reasons
There are plenty of reasons aliens may take a passing interest in Earth, an opportunity to watch a primative species grow from apes.
A reality TV show "How will Ten Aliens survive one year on the Human planet"?
Studies into primative cultures and superstition.
Gambling "which country will develop fusion power first? Or will they give up before hand and cluster around a wind mill?"
If you go further along a "well what if" I suppose it's entirely possible the whole planet is a lab designed for a specific experiment. Or a bet, two ancient powerful Aliens betting that developing the intelligence to transcend your own environment was unique to their species and any other being would simply kill itself long before managing to venture into the cosmos. I bet they were getting a bit jittery in the 60s.
Or maybe their just fucking with us, much like running mice through mazes. Hey Zorg check out what I made the humans believe! Ho HO HO.
It's also entirely possible aliens visited, met the most intelligent life on Earth (say Ants) had a fantastic chat then left. Or they came and tried to have a chat with the most organised life form (Cars) but weren't able to strike up a dialogue.
Your inability to show imagination is far sadder then peoples willingness to believe flights of fantasy. Also your lack of faith in human ingenutiy is quite telling (and rather typical of a large section of modern society.)
What do I think? No idea, we'll never know in my life time that's something I'd be willing to put money on. As such I shall get on with life,.
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:19 GMT Mountford D
Agree
We are also defining life as we know it: The carbon-based model and making the assumption that all higher-order life forms are like our own, where in fact our planet environment may actually be extremely harmful to a superior and incomprehensible alien life form.
Even if we were to compare like with like and only look at carbon-based models, Earth is hardly the benign environment most of us believe it to be. Aside from the already-mentioned undesirable beings that populate it, the environment is really quite hostile. We just happen to exist in a narrow time-frame that is condusive to our life model. A few degrees higher or lower and we would cease to exist. Remember the dinosaurs?
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Monday 12th April 2010 11:58 GMT PerfectBlue
David Icke?
I don't think that we can seriously blame David Icke for belief in aliens in the UK.
David Icke's thing is giant alien lizards which is mostly a cover for antisemitism (He thinks that the banking system is run by shape shifting Jewish aliens). This is a US based belief. Few people in the UK know who David Icke is, or what his particular UFO fetish is.
In fact he;s more famous in the UK for his none UFO related work, and even then 99% of the country has no idea who he is.
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Tuesday 13th April 2010 11:36 GMT TeeCee
Re: No, No, No...
Yes, but it is quite revealing that the non-homegrown ones tend to gravitate there in search of a like minded group of wingnuts to believe in what they're saying though, don't you think?
Here's a thought: Just why does that US immigration form have checkboxes for "Terrorist", "Criminal" and such, but lack one for "I am a complete teapot who believes that the world is built and run by sentient bananas?".
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Tuesday 13th April 2010 15:50 GMT JShel
Umm...
Because they are dim government bureaucrats? Like dim government bureaucrats worldwide.
Seems like they should remove the others at some point. After all, the IRS eventually removed the line on the tax form where you enter your income from "criminal or illegal activity." After 10-15 years of nobody seriously checking the box, they'll figure it out. Now, if they actually distributed the declaration before you got on the plane, not 30 minutes before landing - there is some language about not being allowed on the plane depending on your answers. I'm still waiting for the report of someone being chucked off by a dim crew member taking it literally!
The one with the base jumper rig built in, thanks.
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Monday 12th April 2010 11:59 GMT Craig 28
Idiots come in different flavours
It's just that only 20% of the population is made up of idiots who believe aliens walk among us. There are plenty more idiots, and not all idiots have to believe the same things. Hell my mother's boyfriend believes that anyone who doesn't vote in the general election has their vote counted towards the current government, that's some heavy duty idiot right there. No he obviously hasn't considered the statistics that would be involved in that before anyone asks, he also thinks you can make your own distilled water by boiling it in the kettle and that the "try it and see" approach to wiring a light fitting is valid, even when the fusebox keeps banging every time you try a different combination...
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Monday 12th April 2010 12:32 GMT amanfromMars 1
Alien Election Candidates .. are there any or is it just a primitive human population contest ..
... /php ego trip?
"One fifth of humans say aliens walk among us"
Lester,
One might like to consider the probability that they would hardly need to walk anywhere but rather more run everything anywhere from here, there and everywhere for everyone.
And you have failed to provide any figure for what percentage of the planet's population is primitive human.
* I personally cannot imagine them being stupid enough to waste their time standing for such a waste of time and effort, and for someone with quite a highly developed sense of imagination, that is certainly saying something about the shoddy value of the media show, which appears to be all about avoiding the truth and compounding ongoing fallacies rather than confronting the spin and building novel structures and innovative infrastructures with undoubted politically correct prime champions too.
Surely anything else is less than honest and a desperately cobbled together travesty of a noble competition for the intellectually challenged and sham beings in a shamefully divisive scam.
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Congratulations 20%
Congratulations to the 1/5th of the people for being idiots... Learn to think people!...dont take all the bullshit the government feeds you through your 52inch box call "The Television" . There's this program that i saw on youtube called "The Arrivals"...it states that the biggest card that the FreeMasons are going to play is to convince everyone that the Aliens exist. not only this they are also going...wait for it...wait...they are also going to convince the world that they are a BIG threat to earth and have all the governments come together to the fight....now you're think that this guy is nuts!...well how do you think they manage to fool everyone about the 9/11 attack. Has anyone seen fahrenheit 911?..if not then i suggest you should.
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Monday 12th April 2010 18:14 GMT Oninoshiko
I'm not sure that's right either....
I believe the word you are looking for is "Sociology." It is here that we deal with the beliefs of peoples. Psychology is still dealing with the menal (mis)workings of individuals, although studies like this would be useful in establishing that he belief is fairly "normal." The two topics are quite closely tied together, and it's preatty easy to confuse them.
I suppose it could also be filed under memeology, although that has never been more then a joke in my mind.
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Tuesday 13th April 2010 11:38 GMT TeeCee
Re: That explains call centres then
They need to work on their disguises a bit too. I ended up speaking to a support type called "Melanie Jones" the other day and I'd swear the accent was more Bangalore than Bangor.
At least our would-be alien overlords know they're crap. She wasn't very keen to switch to voice chat.....
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:10 GMT lucsan
All your bases are belong to us
This is the usual sloppy work of humans, how many belive they are aliens. I for one am happy to be your overlord when Eastenders and I'm a nonentity are on. We do not have these documetories on our planet...
Ps. We aliens do not eat your tasty tasty brains, that the other aliens, the tasty brains eating type.
Paris cos she's an alien.
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Monday 12th April 2010 13:12 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Gender disparity....
If more men believe in aliens, and men are more intelligent than women, then there must be aliens walking among us.
So either there are advanced superbeings from beyond the stars on the planet, or women are more intelligent than men.
It's a Morton's fork between Catch 22, a Pyrrhic Victory and Hobson's Choice -- whatever choice I make, men are no longer the most intelligent creatures in the universe.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
