Thread: The more I learn and the more I think about the existance of aliens

Cool, I was gonna do maths mebbe. Or maths with CS. Which Uni you off to? I'm trying for oxbridge...

Originally Posted by Xei

Cool, I was gonna do maths mebbe. Or maths with CS. Which Uni you off to? I'm trying for oxbridge...

Glasgow university. Apparently I have to do maths with computer science, which sucks because I failed advanced maths in my last year Maybe a second chance will make it easier, but that's along with computer science, AND, in first year, another subject. Might do astronomy or something - might aswell have something linked to reality, lol.

That's pretty weird, I just saw glasgow Uni on the telly and my parents told me not to apply there 'cos it's 'rough'.

I think if you wanna do computational neuroscience then studying maths is pretty important... computer science is supposed to be really mathematically too actually. :\

Originally Posted by Xei

That's pretty weird, I just saw glasgow Uni on the telly and my parents told me not to apply there 'cos it's 'rough'.

I think if you wanna do computational neuroscience then studying maths is pretty important... computer science is supposed to be really mathematically too actually. :\

Nononono, GLASGOW is rough Glasgow is basically seperated into the west end and the rest of glasgow, and you're only a real glaswegian if you don't live in the west end. Everywhere around the uni is really nice and friends, mostly because of the uni itself.

As for any course involving computing etc, I think maths is important because it helps you think outside the box, mostly. I've seen plenty of that happening in this thread alone, heheh.

Ohhhh okies, yeah I thought that was odd cos it looked like it had really nice old architecture, pretty oxbridgey. Cool.

My career's advice has been pretty appalling here... my adviser asked what I wanted to do as my career and naturally I said mathematical neuroscience. She then completely failed to give me any advice at all and then complained about me to the head of Sixth Form for wasting her time.

It doesn't help that my head of Sixth Form is a giant man eating robot.

Originally Posted by Xei

Ohhhh okies, yeah I thought that was odd cos it looked like it had really nice old architecture, pretty oxbridgey. Cool.

My career's advice has been pretty appalling here... my adviser asked what I wanted to do as my career and naturally I said mathematical neuroscience. She then completely failed to give me any advice at all and then complained about me to the head of Sixth Form for wasting her time.

It doesn't help that my head of Sixth Form is a giant man eating robot.

Rofl, she actually sent you back saying that you were wasting her time? I suppose that's the case. I mean, what did they tell THEY'RE careers advisors... "I wanna be a careers advisor"? I highly doubt it. The only reason they are probably there is because they suck at everything


(No offence if you are related to any careers advisors)

naturally I said mathematical neuroscience

Yeah naturally it goes without saying. Why did she think you're wasting her time anyway? I mean just the mathematical neuroscience of a cheeseburger and fries obviously. Common sensible every day stuff. Something we all use everyday and something we all agree on and are familiar with. At least those that count! Not the giant man eating robot career advisor's that doesn't help. Not to worry you're still in school plenty of time. I wanted to go to the moon when I was little. How things change.

You might want to start reading a lot of data. Quantum mechanics etc all that helps. The more data the more mathematically evolved. Until you get to the point where all the data is a dot. That's the summit. So when you get your mathematical neuroscience flag ready realize the possibilities are infinite.

I think that is great and you have potential to do this you're mathematically minded.

Originally Posted by Zotoaster

The only reason they are probably there is because they suck at everything
(No offence if you are related to any careers advisors)

Wow. Is our children learning?

Not to spit in the bucket or anything but uh...career advisors that I've met usually have (or have had) more than one job at a time in their life time. Of course I live in a different country than you do.

Originally Posted by Sandform

Not to spit in the bucket or anything but uh...career advisors that I've met usually have (or have had) more than one job at a time in their life time. Of course I live in a different country than you do.

Yeah I was just making a joke anyway. But still, I haven't ever actually met anyone who actively wants to be a careers advisor.

I guess it's not something you initially shoot for.

Mars? Bacteria found, that classes as life, and i think bacteria is intelligent. Anyway human life might of came to earth as bacteria on a meteor, so we actually may of came millions of light years away from earth. If there are aliens they might be in there stone age period, there might be extinct alien races, and very advanced races, but look at it like this, would they waste there time and recourses to travel to us? NO! We wouldn't travel that far to visit a planet to see maggots, we are a low life form

would they waste there time and recourses to travel to us? NO! We wouldn't travel that far to visit a planet to see maggots, we are a low life form

This is inconsistent because if they were so evolved it wouldn't use up much resources. For example you don't have to travel distance at all when you have the technology to skip in and out of space through something similar to wormholes and any infinite amount of knowledge about the universe which allows such things. That aside if the aliens were sophisticated then they would actually care about nature and human beings. If they had the ability to love they would not be wasting their time in contacting something else with the ability as an entity to love with similar potential and we see evidence of communication from something beyond human intelligence all around us for years now.

Cool, I was gonna do maths mebbe. Or maths with CS. Which Uni you off to? I'm trying for oxbridge...

Do you do further mathematics? if not I would not apply to Cambridge you need AS further math to get an offer. Also, you should apply to Warwick as they would give you a offer, but you need to do STEP 1.

I'm doing further mathematics, however I applying for Oxford this year, I hope I get in.

Also, you should really do further mathematics.

As for any course involving computing etc, I think maths is important because it helps you think outside the box, mostly. I've seen plenty of that happening in this thread alone, heheh.

Computing is a branch of applied mathematics, so you need to understand mathematics to really be good at computer science.

Xei don't do CS, it better to do regular mathematics and just do some CS options.

Oh yeah, I get my results for AS in eight days.

I will admit right now I didn't read anything after the OP. I know exactly what kind of blather it is and I've read on a thousand other forums. So, hopefully without being too hypocritical, I would like to insert my $0.02:

Evolution will always tend to fill niches, because to not do so would require a circumstance of incredible improbability. All of the trillions of mutations that go on every day all over the planet would have to not be suitable to exploit an environmental niche, and this seems ridiculous. Also, the history of life on Earth has shown that after every great extinction, all niches were prompty filled. If filling niches was uncommon, then this would not likely be the case, given that there have been half a dozen great extinctions. In fact, not only were all niches filled every time, but they got filled quicker every time. For example, the Cambrian Explosion took a few tens of millions of years, whereas the rise of mammals after the K/T event took only a couple of million years. So I contend that all niches will always be filled as a matter of course.

So now, to look at the neuron, it seems clear that its development was absolutely inevitable. The niche of animals is quite large, and to think that there would be some special reason that it wouldn't normally be filled is ludicrous.

Now, I would also like to touch upon the Fermi Paradox. Now, I'm sure someone must have mentioned the Drake Equation somewhere in this thread. If you put reasonable numbers into it, you will find that at any given time, the galaxy (or conversely the sky) will have at most a few dozen communicating civilizations in it. A few dozen, sharing an entire galaxy. And then I look at SETI, and I see that:

1) SETI has been searching one frequency for the vast majority of the time it's been going
2) SETI has been focused on nearby stars
3) SETI doesn't have the capability to detect stray radio signals from civs more than a few hundred lightyears away
4) SETI assumes civs will prefer radio over one of the dozens of other communication methods
5) SETI assumes other civs will be as wasteful as we were in the 20th century and send their signals out into space

Given all this, it should not come as a surprise that SETI hasn't found anything. So that resolves the paradox.