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100/1 Odds On 'First Contact' Within a Year
astroengine writes "After all the kerfuffle of 'Ambassadorgate' — when the UK media went nuts over the rumored promotion of Mazlan Othman to become the UN's first choice as mankind's alien point of contact — it would appear that gamblers saw this as a tip that an alien landing was imminent."
Bullshit.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
Phone home !!
100/1 seems like a way too high probability.
Those are very liberal odds, unless the bookies have some information that the rest of us don't have. Or a few too many people have been listening to the clan of the tinfoil hat.
If aliens do visit massive fluctuations in currencies and wealth will render said bet meaningless. It only makes sense to vote against.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I could be better than 1% interest by putting the money in a good bank for a year. A sure thing, indeed...but still not worth the bet.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Let the Probing begin...
First as first official contact and not the past covered up ones?
... that some bookies figured that by giving great odds on an impossible events, idiots would flock to give them money.
What do you mean "First"? I thought we already covered that in `June or July 1947`.
I have it on good authority that they won't be back until Dec, 2012.
They're misreading it the situation.
If a landing were imminent, they would have appointed a complete incompetent as ambassador.
In Soviet Russia, new alien overlords welcome YOU!
If you bet against extraterrstrials you win %1 of you bet in year, which I am sure "worlds biggest bookmaker" will invest at a higher percent.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
...are a hundred to one, they say...
but still they come!
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
"giving great odds on an impossible event"
In the instance that this does happen, Clarke was only a year off. Stay away from Europa.
The summary is incorrect. The 100 to 1 odds aren't even for first contact, but merely that the US/UK will announce the existence of aliens. From TFA:
the gambling company is offering odds of 100/1 on either the US President or the serving British Prime Minister to announce the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrials within a year of the bet being placed.
Maybe they're here to build a hyperspace bypass...
Where the hell is my towel?!
I'm sorry but First Contact happened in 1996.
Even if there is/was/will be a first contact, chances are, it would not be public knowledge. I thought this quote from Men In Black would be appropriate:
Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
All we have to do have the Treasury Department put everything on Aliens and then have Obama make announcement of exis announcement.
The U.N. is corrupt and they most likely wanted to give some individual a job where they didn't have to do anything.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
that what we know about physics and speed limits is wrong? Because unless you have "easy" FTL odds for contacting an alien civilization are pretty low (far less than 1/100).Or they are talking about an alien-ated civilization? because we are going definately in that direction if that kind of bets becomes part of our culture.
In the other hand, odds are not so low that we are the one driving the "first contact" to an alien lifeform, just probably not intelligent ones, if life in any way is discovered i.e. in Mars
Since earlier comments indicate that humans see this as a bad bet, I can only assume that 1 in 100 people on Earth are already, in fact, aliens.
100/1=100. Should read 100:1.
Please follow the following links to find out more on this issue. http://www.understandthetimes.org/inthenews/256na_ris.shtml http://www.thebereancall.org/node/5840
"the best case scenario of alien contact would be us ending up as their pets"
The two dogs and one cat who I cohabit with have their meals prepared and served on time, daily. They sleep as often as they want, and are completely sheltered from the evils of the world. I would say that so long as my new alien overload refrains from habitually beating me, I'm good.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Denver has this really persistent guy trying to increase UFO awareness in the area. He asks city council to create a program every year and is politely turned down. This year he managed to put it on the ballot. Denver has a relatively low threshhold for proposition petitions, something like 5000 signatures.
I thought our First Contact staff would include Will Smith.
... and please don't rush to the "tin foil hat" responses, but I've noticed a great increase in the number of movies, shows and books dealing with the human races' contact and collaboration with aliens.
Here's my wild speculation theory: The Governments of the world and media are working together to slowly get us used to the idea of aliens being on earth. Little by little we are getting more complacient with the idea and accepting of the reality that alien lifeforms could visit Earth and we could somehow lean to live with each other.
Is this just some grand plan being put forth over years / decades to get humans ready for some type of incredible revelation?
That guy (Jeff Peckman) is a known hoax artist and crank, from what I gather.
in Siberia.
A couple of weeks ago, wasn't he quoted as saying contact with aliens at our current level of tech would be a bad idea? Hmmm...
The PTB (powers that be) need a "new world order" since the previous order failed. Well the people will not fall for the same scam ( banksters + politicians + media + war profiteers + bureocrats + Al Gore + X ) So they will invoke the almighty aliens... a few more weeks of 2012 horror like the earthquakes that happened like 6 months ago... some more swine flu variants... and whatever their tiny imaginations can pull out of the hat.
How will it happear ? something like the "day when the earth stood still" with a triumphant pact of peace in the 2012 Olimpics in London. How will the aliens first look like ? they will be able to take off and land like http://homelandsecuritynewswire.net/israels-latest-uav-worlds-largest-no-game-changer and they will have some spectacular cover probably... I'm curious how they will create a mother ship. Maybe the aliens will disrupt the TV signals and replace the TV signal with the generic of the "outer limits" gains control :)
In the end, the V will be humans and David Ickle will be named the great champion of the human race.
Nuffield said...fucking iPad.
What's with all the crap hitting the front page that should be on Idle? We've gotten stories about creative art in Minecraft, Asteriods on web pages, and now this. Slow news the past couple of days?
I think you meant "I'm-gonna-rape-your-face-if-you-add-'gate'-to-anything-ever-again."
"When Wernher Von Braun [German rocket scientist] was dying of cancer [1974], he asked me to be his spokesperson. Von Braun actually told me that the reasons for space-based weaponry that were going to be given - the enemies that we were going to identify - were all based on a lie. He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics; that first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy. Then terrorists would be identified. Then we were going to identify third-world 'crazies.' The next enemy was asteroids - against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons. And over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up the last card. 'And remember, Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens, and all of it is a lie.' He was too afraid to talk about it. He would not tell me the details. I am not sure I would have absorbed them if he had told me the details, or even believed him in 1974... In 1977, I was at a meeting in Fairchild Industries in a conference room called the War Room... They continued the conversation about how they were going to antagonize these enemies and at some point, there was going to be a war in the Gulf, a Gulf War. Now this is 1977!" - Dr. Carol Rosin, Fairchild Industries Corporate Manager, Von Braun spokesperson
If an event is sure, then it will always happen, and no other event can possibly occur. If an event is almost sure, then other events are theoretically possible in a given sample space; however, as the cardinality of the sample space increases, the probability of any other event asymptotically converges toward zero. Thus, one can never definitively say for any sample space that other events will never occur, but can in the general case assume this to be true. In this respect, the concept is similar to that of a mathematical limit.
adding to that, "almost impossible" sounds good to me.
The Disclosure Project - 2006:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6552475158249898710#
The Disclosure Project - 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqzoC3QPI_E&feature=player_embedded#
But, of course they're all liars (sarcasm).
~hylas
See subject line above, and Einstein as well: Energy can be neither created NOR destroyed!
Energy equals matter (atoms) times the speed of light squared, right?
Then, matter IS energy and vice-a-versa, via E=mc "squared" (just working at diff. frequencies apparently, & since it IS an equation, then there you go: They ARE the same (matter & energy))
Thus, there is no more nor no less than what this universe started with inside of it in the way of energy, nor matter, when you come right down to it.
Now, they say there is no "closed system" (meaning totally lossless), but Einstein's work in math & theoretical physics seems to say so, see above (since apparently NOTHING is ever lost in the way of energy OR matter in this universe/dimension).
(However, particle collisions via linear or circular accelerators/cyclotrons, such as the LHC, that seem to 'create new particles' from the collisions, those particles don't seem to last long as matter OR energy in this dimension at least BUT, I have also heard tell they create new elements there at the LHC, and therefore atoms)...
So, does that mean that Einstein's work is "erroneous"? Trick question guys, or is it??
APK
P.S.=> I am NOT a physicist here, so, take some pity on me (those of you who ARE expert in this area)... thanks! apk
The idea that something like Project BlueBeam exists sounds more likely to me than actual aliens visiting us.
If they are here, they're not the aliens, they're the drones. Send out a legion of drones who roam the galaxy and reproduce every so often to send out their own set of drones. Think of it as the Voyager mission with fleshy AI. If they report back, great, but the creators of the drones know well they will most likely all be gone before getting word back. The drones just take information and aren't necessarily as intelligent as their makers (usually a bad idea to make something that reproduces to many times your own number smarter than you if you can control it). So, bunch of boring data takers floating above. And yes, with probably advanced nanotechnology and other science wizardry. Interesting side note: if you read the account of Fire in the Sky author, Travis Walton, as detailed in "The Walton Experience" (totally different than the movie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walton_Experience), there is a part where he mentions trying to break a glass-like cylinder and is unable. I wouldn't be surprised (assuming this is all a true account and not made up), that it was made out of pure diamond.
Of course, the probability of all this is scant as there are other explanations that would make more sense. But, as a scientist, I feel it is wrong to dismiss it out of hand as bullshit without at least investigating it a little and setting aside my biases.
Isn't that a hypothesis and not theory? If it is a theory like gravity then where is the data you've collected from numerous experiments and observations?
Sincerely,
The pedANT.
...always had a African-American President in them. The end is near.
If you spend $100 gambling that the existence of aliens won't be announced in the next year, and the betting market odds are 100-to-1 against you losing, and the bookmaker requires you to deposit that $100 in advance (so they can be certain to have the money in case you lose), then a year later even if you win you'll have $101.
If you put $100 into an insured savings account, then even at today's atrocious interest rates you'll have $101.30 or so a year later. So why would you have ever bothered to make the wager?
Reality is much more complicated. E.g. your bookmaker may have looser liquidity requirements which allow you to make a simultaneous investment with your betting dollars, your opportunity cost may be a higher return in something less liquid like a CD or something more risky like a bond or stock. But even in "fake money" idea futures markets like the Foresight Exchange there seems to be this sort of opportunity cost effect. Even if you think a bet is 99% sure to win you don't want to spend 99 cents on the dollar for it, because you can find a better rate of return elsewhere. The market then reflects this: 3-1 odds may reflect an underlying market belief in 25% probability, but 99-1 odds reflect a belief of significantly less than 1% probability.
See subject. That's not destroyed. You even said it yourself: It only changes into some other form, but it is not destroyed. This is just like heat in modern CPUs - it's the "bleeding of current" (electricity) out of them, only changed into heat instead of electricity (iirc).
http://ufoseries.com/movieClips/ufoRawFootage.wmv
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
"The law of conservation of energy is an empirical law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time). A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. The only thing that can happen to energy in a closed system is that it can change form: for instance chemical energy can become kinetic energy."
Additionally/more importantly from the same page:
"In simple terms, this means that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another."
Plus, there does remain the fact you yourself even stated only a transformation occurred in your init. reply (quoting you now):
----
"Energy _could_ be destroyed, if it's building blocks are information. That information can change and thus energy could be transfort into non-energy." - by V!NCENT (1105021) on Wednesday September 29, @03:34PM (#33738786)
Note the bolded part, & the keyword there would be TRANFORT (you most likely meant transformed I am guessing, just a misspelling).
----
However, my REAL question basically was more about the creation of NEW ELEMENTS in linear or circular/cyclotron particle accelerators, such as the LHC in Europe (hence, new forms of matter being made really since new elements are made there in collisions) really, but since energy cannot be created or destroyed, and matter & energy are the SAME per Einstein's equation E=mc squared? Then, how is the creation of NEW ELEMENTS explained & fit into that law??
(Above all else: PLEASE, do bear in mind that this is just a question from me, not an argument here. I seriously want to know what the deal is here, but I am guessing what's in my "ps" below probably is correct on this note!)
APK
P.S.=> My "best guess" on that account is this: Nothing REALLY "new" was created out of "nothing" during particle collisions & new elements appearing to be added to the periodic table... it's only being made from EXISTING elements (much as how FUSION of hydrogen results in helium)... apk
Here's why the odds-makers are wrong: They assume that the people at the UN know something. As in anything at all. It's just the opposite.
As for me, i'd rather have the Doctor as my first point for contact with aliens (or Amy Pond for first point for -nudge nudge- CONTACT with me! Huh huh huh)
--- "The 21st century is when everything changes." Captain Jack Harkness
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
and it will be fake. London Olympics; Project Bluebeam.
End of story.
Well, we can safely say, based on recent facts, that neither the US President nor the serving British Prime Minister will find any intelligence.
When NEW elements that have been added to the periodic table (which have been, afaik, created by linear or circular particle accelerators, such as the LHC, & due to particle collisions):
----
1.) The resultant particles, per the above, are new forms of matter being made (& merely out of older already existing ones (sort of like how fusion makes helium from hydrogen), & not from "nothing", whatever that is)
2.) Energy cannot be created or destroyed per the law of conservation -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
3.) This universe is a closed system also (this is questionable though imo, but also per the law of conservation that states matter & energy cannot be created or destroyed -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy )
4.) Matter & energy being the SAME per Einstein's equation E=mc squared
----
Q.) Then, how is the creation of NEW ELEMENTS explained & fit into that set of laws/conditions, 1-4 above, and are they created from already existing materials, not merely from "nothing"?
APK
P.S.=> My "best guess" on that account is this: Nothing REALLY "new" was created out of "nothing" during particle collisions & new elements appearing to be added to the periodic table... it's only being made from EXISTING elements, because the same amount of material &/or energy is the same since the start of the universe and the universe is a closed system per the law of conservation (matter cannot be created or destroyed), so nothing really "new" is possible (since it would have to be created out of nothing).
(& that's always been my question(s) here, & based on the set of points numbered 1-4 enumerated above (as the facts/constraints/conditions we all operate under anyhow too))... apk
Had any dolphins disappeared yet?
See subject-line (I even picked up a new thing or two, such as the "ghost in the machine" unhiding itself, this Higgs Boson which I have heard of & sounds like what "MESONS" are supposed to do, keep matter together/trapped, as you said this Higgs Boson field does to energy (which is, matter, albeit in another state of transition-form), so this makes my bookmarks/favs as well).
You provided that which I asked for. Thank you Vincent.
APK
P.S.=> See the film GATTACA if you haven't... apk
Seriously? Our ambassador to aliens is named M.Othman? Like the MOTHMAN?
We are already here, folks!