Their usefulness extends as far as encouraging people to do more research into a given topic based on the possibility they may have introduced some hacked/hidden info the public didn't know about before.

That's it...

Pretty much.

"What if our God/s are just tourists pissing on the side of the road?"

Pretty much. The Easter Islanders cut down all their trees to build more Moai (those big face statues) - leaving them ****ed.

If people on a small island can't band together to figure out they need to conserve a valuable resource - how are a bunch of different societies on earth going to do it?

Posited by the History/Hitler/Aliens channel...

The one that made me really say "huh...now that makes a lot of sense in a horrifying sort of way" was:

And look at that on a planetary scale; it checks out. We think primates are fun because they look like us and can't use guns yet. But the absolutely millisecond that gorillas presented a true existential threat to humanity, we'd wipe those !@#$ers off the planet. And why? Because we were first, we're at the top of the heap and we're disinclined to lose that status. Since they're no real threat to us, we're all good. But the moment they demonstrate human-level reasoning, we'll get 'em gone before they put an army together.

You think we'll ever reach a point where other creatures on this planet are capable of speaking to us in our native tongues? Oh hell no - we'll wipe them out well before they advance to that stage because we're not going to let them get anywhere near our perch.

Yeah I've read that before. Still crazy to me and. It sure what I believe.

I tend to think there's a shitload abundance of superior advanced shut out there

The most effective ruling philosophy was already determined almost a century ago.

What if you apply "1984" to a galactic scale?

What if most of all that is exists as a natural preserve and the few than can reason are just conditioned to love big(er) brother?

This could include religion as we know it and motivate a global culture to a predetermined end.

It's an interesting thought experiment...

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LMAO oh my god I need one of those!

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There's a good chance we won't last long enough to find a way to leave the solar system. We need to advance to a point where we can make something like the Alcubierre drive actually work.

This topic is truly one of religious fervor.

There is no middle ground.

Grandma Pawtucket's cow WAS abducted by the aliens and they carved ole' Bessy up.

Dr. Knowledge says there's no life anywhere else in the universe. It is sterile.

If you entertain the idea you get lumped in with Grammy Pawtucket.

If you are skeptical (meaning requiring more evidence and reluctant to jump to a conclusion) you get lumped in with Dr. Knowledge.

I think they've been here and or are here. If they're that advanced, they could do it without our knowledge

I am firmly in the "the human mind simply cannot grasp just how unbelievably large the scale we're operating on here is" camp. And then throw in the whole 3 dimensional thing (which the human mind has a notoriously hard time conceptualizing) and you start to understand that even if we're looking for the right things and with the right tools, the odds of us looking at the right place and at the right time are almost infinitesimally small.

When people say "Man, how hard could it actually be to find Planet 9?" and then you listen to someone smart explain EXACTLY how hard it can be and why there's a really good chance that we just never find the thing even though we can see its wake, you get just an inkling of an understanding of the void we're dealing with.

These scales are just so far beyond our comprehension that it makes me think that A) it's virtually impossible that life doesn't exist SOMEWHERE but B) it's nearly as unlikely that we'll find it or it us over any appreciable timeline.