Reply #54: I'm not aware of any natural limit for victims of a hoax.

[immoderate]

Here's the way I analyze it.

These super futuristic civilizations, perhaps many of them, develop in various star systems, by evolutionary processes we are aware of, except they are millions, or billions of years ahead of us.

Since they are very advanced, they have long ago gone through the stages of technology that we are first embarked upon. They have harnessed electromagnetism with radio and television, nuclear power, interstellar travel, etc. In each of these stages they will broadcast energy. And to populate and have commerce between stars, we're talking about hhuuuueeeeggggeee amounts of energy. These signals carry on infinitely at the speed of light.

If one of these civilizations discovered star travel a million years ago, and they are one million light years away, then the effects of their activities are reaching us now. If they started a billion years ago, and have colonized galaxies, then their activities would be even more apparent. Multiply this by possibilities in millions of billions of galaxies.

Now, why can't we detect them? Oh, they have mysterious ways that we never dreamed of. You mean they never discovered radio and television? And they invented ways to shield a nuclear explosion before they invented nuclear reactions? After a while you have to build in a whole system of far-fetched assumptions to justify other far-fetched assumptions.

And so they are alternate energy, alternate matter, invisible to us and our scientific detectors throughout space, and they blow it over Mexico City?!

But if I say a million people and their video cameras were fooled by say, some holographic image -- that's impossible?

--IMM