NASA finds Titan's lakes may be creating vesicles with primitive cell walls

This feels very cynical, but what incentive does NASA have to do research showing alien life is not very likely in our solar system?

Regardless of incentives I think this is some of the most important research they should be doing. As a species we need to get a better understanding of the probability of life on other planets and therefore a better understanding of fermi's paradox in case the dark forest theory is correct. So if NASA has an incentive to discover potential pathways for extraterrestrial life... great!

A non-trivial faction of our government has been teasing knowledge of some sort of non-human intelligent lifeform (that word isn't considered precisely accurate) on EARTH.

This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real. You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to, but, if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op with vague parameters and goals, our entire system of government is basically forfeit.

I realize this is difficult to deal with but it's a pretty well-established fact at this point.

We don't need to go anywhere for this information.

> You can think they [...] aren't credible

I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us. Congress people believing falsehoods is nothing new.

Non-human intelligence sharing the planet with us is a mundane explanation. It's a completely trivial possibility in the vastly expansive fields of biology and physics. Earth is known to host extremely complex life and is the only known planet to do so. To look for unknown forms of life one need only look at their feet. Bacteria was a previously unknown, extremely expansive form of life on Earth.

We unlocked the secrets of the atom and gained within it the capability of ending all life on earth trivially. Other secrets being locked behind physics isn't a radical speculation. In fact, it's surprising that we haven't really seen any since.

Before we had the instruments to observe them directly we could theorize about the existence of bacteria because we could indirectly observe them through their effects on our biology and even their macroscopic effects on populations, effects that had no better explanations. I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence", whether they supposedly dwell in the depths of the ocean, the Earth's crust, Titan, or anywhere else in the universe. SETI has been listening for ~60 years and hasn't heard a peep from any of the billions (trillions?) exoplanet's worth of radio signals that could have reached us in that time.

The available-to-me evidence suggests that technologically advanced species are exceedingly rare, and the only such species we're aware of emits an overwhelming number of artifacts that would serve as evidence for its existence, so it would be very much not mundane to discover that another one has been living under our noses this whole time.

I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.

>I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence"

This is precisely the point. You aren't aware of these mysteries, despite the earnest attempts of many to bring them to your direct attention.

There is no longer any attempt to hide the mysteries categorically, so this lack of information is now on you.

>I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.

Yes, that's why the correct scenario is wide declassification of the premises that are asserted in this regard, i.e. to make general knowledge of unidentifiable phenomena which have no definitive known cause or origin, communication with these entities, capture of their technology, etc. All of these things could be explained by various competing theories, some of them "simple" (funny how Occam's razor is always just what I prefer), but this information, which has been trickling out from credible sources, needs to be brought into the public space and then we get to decide what it implies or doesn't imply.

Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.

> Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.

OK, I get that you're a cryptozoology/"aliens walk among us!" kinda person, but...

A lack of evidence against a theory is never evidence for the theory. It's very hard to prove a negative.

Curious that you immediately descend into partisan thought short-circuiting and now that that didn't work, you come up with a new angle.

The person you're replying to wasn't the one who invoked what you call "partisan thought short circuiting," (which, I have to say, reads a lot like parody). It was me. Occam's razor is not at all about "what I prefer" and is entirely about preferring theories with evidence over those that are lacking (instead of inventing new theories to explain away the lack of evidence).