Ask HN: Do You Believe in Aliens?

5 otherayden 3 8/27/2025, 12:19:19 AM
Seems like a topic that doesn’t come up so much in popular discourse now that we have AI taking up a lot of air time. I personally do, but I wonder if some of you have some thoughts about it

Comments (3)

mindcrime · 44m ago
1. Do I believe other life has existed, does exist, and/or will exist elsewhere in the universe? Yes, with pretty close to 100% confidence.

2. Do I believe other intelligent life forms visit earth in their flying saucers, abduct people, anal probe them, abduct and slaughter cows, build pyramids, and - apparently - crash often? No, not really. I mean, I can't rule it out, but my personal subjective Bayesian prior towards this notion would probably be something like 0.001 or so. But that's actually up from years past, as we learn more about more possibly inhabitable planets that are closer to Earth than was previously known, etc.

jimbo808 · 1h ago
I think it would be absurd to believe we're the only place life is has happened. But I also think it's absurd to believe that life has come here.
_heimdall · 1h ago
I'd be curious to hear a few more details for the question.

Does it matter whether the aliens have visited earth, or only that life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Do they need to be intelligent aliens, by some definition of intelligent?

And do they have to still exist today, or is it enough to think life may gave existed elsewhere at some point?