We are skeptics therefore we are skeptical of things that there is little or no evidence for. We do not claim that such things are impossible but we do claim they are extremely unlikely and as of yet there is no quality evidence to establish their existence. But what if there was and what if it was YOU who found the undeniable proof?
Which would you rather discover a little green man from a far-away land or the elusive Bigfoot and why? Would you keep him (or her) hidden as a pet? Would society be better or worse off because of your discovery? Would you allow your discovery to catapult you into fame or would you just shake hands (or paws) and go your separate ways?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
I want to find the mythical extraterrestrial dimension hopping bigfoot. I would shoot it through the forehead put it in a freezer and sell tickets for people to view the body. I would never allow any scientists to exam the corpse because they would steal the body and never give it back. I would use it as a lure to capture more bigfeet when they came to look for their missing friend and hold them hostage until they gave me the technology to travel between dimensions and then I would get in touch with the hypercube guy and we would travel through lots of different deminsions until I landed in dimension prime the begining dimension that all other dimensions came from and I would be super rich
The obvious choice is the alien robot bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=six+million+dollar+man+bigfoot&aq=f
I’d rather find the little green “man” and find out all of his secrets on space travel, and probably immortality too. I doubt that I would have the capability to keep such a superior creature as a pet, but I would prefer to advertise it anyway and become famous while making society a better place.
The green man would be far superior to big foot. Finding a big ape like creature is something you can do in any town in the world. Finding a little green man is something you can’t even do in Ireland.
I’d try and get the little guy to lend me his ride then I could you know pop down to kono’s surf cafe for my breakfast, hit big pink’s for lunch and then have dinner in that place i went to in koh samui that i forgot the name of. – WIN
I’d rather find a little green man. I’m guessing they’d smell better.
I would probably pick the little green guy because a Bigfoot wouldn’t fit in my apartment.
I would love to find an alien lifeform, and study it! I wouldn’t say no to fame but mostly I’d want to learn about it.
I’d hope the little green man was a leprechaun. I could use a pot of gold.
And I’d suspect the hairy creature was Robin Williams and invite him for lunch.
LGM, definitely. Bigfoot, BTDTGTTS. Making up a new Internet acronym that doesn’t return thousands of hits on Google, priceless!
Seriously, intelligent alien lifeforms would be a far more important discover than finding just another hominid. We don’t even know if life exists anywhere else in the universe than here on Earth. We definitely don’t know if multicellular life exists elsewhere, and we’ve never found the slightest evidence for alien intelligent life. Triple WIN.
Little green men have far more implications for life and the universe than finding some other relatively boring, yet elusive, primate. No contest.
I should love to meet a little green man from far away lands.
I already live in the middle of no where,so we could spend time learning from each other with out him being in any eminent danger.
After our visit I would ask him to please draw the solution to the BP oil debacle, how to end hunger and how to end violence.
I would insist he return from whence he came, as we all know what happened to E.T.
I would not tell a soul except my beloved ,as he keeps secrets forever.
Besides little green men don’t play on major sports teams, nor do they have breast implants,so the U.S. media would have little if any interest in him =)
As someone who wants to go into primatology, my selfish answer is ‘bigfoot’. My career would be made in a day.
But the potential technological advancements that would come from finding a LGM are just too attractive to turn down.
@Kimbo Jones: I’m with you. We already know that there are a bunch of primates on this planet. While finding one more (that isn’t long extinct) would be really cool, the implications of hanging with ET are far, far greater. Just watching creationists try to mangle logic even worse than normal would be worth it.
As far as fame goes… meh. I don’t really want to be famous. Seems like such a hassle.
Unless of course if finding a bigfoot means I’d get to meet John Lithgow. That might be worth it.
I’m convinced that when the little green men show up we can change our name from human beings to hors d’Å“uvre’s. I’ll take the smelly big guy and hope he has some Wookie charm.
@James Fox: COTW FTW
Even so, I’d like the LGFolk (men seems awfully anthrocentric don’t you think?). I want to know what’s “out there”
You know what, I’m going to give Bigfoot a little love here ’cause nobody seems to understand how a meeting the the LGM would actually go.
Let’s say you meet the LGM. You’re probably thinking, “Cool! I’ll be famous or smart or immortal”. Meanwhile the LGM is thinking, “As if.” Then he’ll dis you with his vastly superior intellect, point out that he anal-probed your momma, and then disect you.
With BigFoot, your dignity can remain intact and you are very likley to survive an encounter with the famously shy Sasquatch. Plus, as we know from countless studies, Bigfoot doesn’t poop. Ever. Tha’t s a big plus if you plan on keeping him as a pet.
LGM, definitely, for all the reasons given. But, LGM or Bigfoot, the motivation to keep it as a pet is directly proportional to the ease of teaching it to use the bathroom. Smelly I’m not worried about. That’s what scented candles were invented for, isn’t it?
Instead of copying Kimbo Jones‘ post outright I’ll just add a “me too”.
I have no fear of malicious interstellar travelers.
@Kimbo Jones: Ayup. I’d far rather have proof that life exists outside of Earth (or, perhaps even weirder, life on Earth not related to any other life on Earth) than a large, hairy, primate. I AM a large hairy primate. To find Bigfoot, I go down the hall and interrupt my brother’s World of Warcraft session.
@SkepLit: COTW for pointing out my mother’s repressed memories.
@Bjornar:
@Mark Hall: I’ll be fine with the LGM when it’s us showing up on their door step (probes in hand or not is up to you).
@DataJack: My option at least offers some interstellar comeuppance.
@Mark Hall:
COTW
In my opinion, I actually think Bigfeet are more likely then LGM, as I think interstellar travel is not possible. FTL travel is not attainable, and slower than light speeds make moving between the stars pointless, for both practical and technical reasons. That being said, I would like it to be LGM, so they can prove me wrong.
It’s my theory that Big Foot is a LMG. My evidence – Star Wars. Clearly the BF is a wookie. And also there was a 6 million dollar man episode that clearly proved he was an alien. (if I remember right) So now that I have carefully placed all the relevant data out there, all you skeptics must accept the truth!
Ha.
I offer this up from Stephen Hawking:
“Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News”
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has repeated his long-held belief that intelligent aliens are likely to exist, and that a visit by them to present-day humanity would probably have unfortunate consequences for us.
Full article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/26/hawking_aliens_warning/
@DataJack:
What if LGM have extremely long lifespans, so that interstellar travel doesn’t seem slow to them?
Also, I thought the correct plural of Bigfoot is Bigfoots rather than Bigfeet, sort of like how the plural of mongoose is mongooses rather than mongeese. Great, now we’ll have to find two of them just to clear up this grammatical issue.
@DataJack: When the LGM arrive they’ll have bad ass exoskeletons, an amoral uber-productive hive mentality, and the ability to be frozen for millennia and wake up at snack time. We’re doomed!!
Let’s look at this logically shall we?
Bigfoot is probably a dumb beast who could eat your face off. That’s bad.
The LGM is notorious for bending humans over and taking measurements from the inside…in a rude and unfriendly way. That’s really bad.
Now, if BF tried to eat my face off, I could whip out my WWII surplus bazooka and he’s toast. That’s a good thing.
My bazooka would do me no good on the LGM cause they got like force fields and shit. I’m probed whether I like it or not. That’s really bad.
On the other hand, the NorthAm Yeti might be tasty. Of course I would have to buy a freezer to put in the garage. That’s bad.
And of course, the LGM could turn out to have an Awesome LGW…I’m thinking green women from Star Trek here…gettin my hands on one o them might be worth a little probing. If it was done with finesse…and consideration…with a REALLY small probe….
fogedaboutit…I’ll go with BigFoot…
LGM, because I don’t like the “Messing with Sasquatch” commercials. Yay reasoning!
@catgirl: I certainly want to be wrong about interstellar travel, but I don’t think I am. It will take tens of thousands of years just to get to one’s nearest neighbors. Even in a universe teeming with life, Drake’s equation seems to indicate that advanced civilizations would more likely be hundreds of thousands of years apart.
These creatures would have to have lifespans that rival the lifespan of our species. Also, what would their motive be? Why send ships filled with folks away forever to a place that you cannot know can even support them?
Now, I do believe that once a civilization gets wealthy (in terms of power generation) and bored enough, they might possibly send unmanned (un-aliened? un-LGMed?) probes. But these would not arrive at their destinations and start transmitting data back for generations.
For example, we are getting better at detecting exo-planets all the time. Say in a year or two, we detect a planet within 20 light years that is Earth-sized, in the habitable zone, and has H2O, O2, and C02 in its atmosphere. That planet has life on it. Are we then going to spend tens of billions of dollars building a space ship that will arrive at that planet – if nothing goes wrong – in 40 thousand years? I would like to say yes, but I think the answer is no.
I hate the vast distances of space.
Also, I believe the correct plural of Bigfoot is “more than one guy in a bear suit” :)
Any little green man worth his salt would give that bigfoot a foot-flip.
@DataJack: COTW for: “Also, I believe the correct plural of Bigfoot is “more than one guy in a bear suitâ€
Ha!
@B Hitt: Ha! Nice call back!
Oh, that’s easy. Bigfeets are almost certainly edible by humans. Whereas, little green men are quite probably poisinous , being green and all.
So, Bigfeets it is.
Yum!!!
-S
The Little Green Man, of course! Just look at his dapper mustache!
I’d ask him for all his mustache-grooming tips and then try to find out why they’ve stayed hidden for everyone except midwestern kooks for all this time.
The Bigfoot isn’t necessarily anything special. If I were a foot taller, I’d probably get mistaken for one if I were to traipse around the forests of Oregon in the buff (as one does).
All things being equal I’d prefer Nessie, but since that isn’t an option i’ll go with bigfoot. I’ve long had the fanciful notion that should there be any evidence of BF’s existence, it would turn out that BF is actually a tribe of some kind of primitive hairy human – that would explain the lack of such things as dead bodies (which they would burry), and evidence of habitation (any signs of habitation found would be mistakenly attributed to somebody’s camping trip).
As to what i would do… human or animal, if i were to find incontrovertible evidence of BF’s existence, I would destroy it and send BF on his way. Same goes for Nessie for that matter. As much as I love science, I don’t have a lot of respect for the things that are done to animals in the name of science.
I too think interstellar travel is unlikely to be feasable, except possibly the building of arkships by a determined, cooperating civilization. But if it’s possible, in the arkship way and the SF way, I’m certain it requires a ton of energy, and that any civilization capable of using it uses asteroid and interplanetary resources. Planets are big-ass gravity wells that may have the resources you need to get off them, but I don’t think it makes sense to go back for more once you’ve gotten interstellar capabilities.
No doubt. Bigfoot. Clearly it is here already and not doing much harm. Finding an extraterrestrial would mean that an outsider was aware of our presence and we don’t have awareness of them. We’re then primed to be mined, pillaged, raped and plundered as they see fit. I’ll take my chances with skunk ape.