Alien Dreams: The long history of speculation about extraterrestrials
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Pre-flight, some were convinced that Martians were building canals or Mars, right as canals were being built to facilitate shipping, the prominent technology of the day.
Now, some are convinced that aliens are sending small crafts and probes to study our planet, right as we’re sending small crafts and probes to study other planets.
And before modern technology, mythological creatures were human-like or animal-like, which was the pinnacle of intelligence in our pre-tech world.
A friendly gentleman asked what the drunk was looking for. “My keys”.
The gentleman replied “and did you loose them under this lamppost?”
“No, but that’s where the light is”
That every mythology, magical treatise, and religious, occult, or otherwise spiritual experience, UFO experience, etc, are all aspects of reality tuned to the capabilities of our perceptions.
The running theory being that they're all the same thing, but rather incorporeal—based on yet-unknown physical principles involving consciousness or the larger reality we reside in and either manifesting from our own consciousness or another consciousness outside of material reality.
Of course, such a theory—while fantastical and exciting—is a pretty clever catch-all.
Catch up on any modern UFO reading and that's where it all points. And probably fairly, given the kinds of endeavours various defence agencies and their investigations. I think it also follows Jacques Vallée's theories, but I haven't actually read any of his books or papers. I'm intrigued, but not enough to wade too deeply.
There are blog posts and online-forum-wiz expoundings galore.
The idea that it is all essentially a projection/emanations from a singular core consciousness (a la gnosticism or neoplatonism) is not unexplored, nor contradictory to your own statement.
That's why it's clever; as a theory it can virtually explain anything. It just requires a level of faith on par with any other belief system.
If we had the technology for it, I would no longer be humanoid. In fact, I'd treat it as an artistic venture to become something completely unbefore seen. And perhaps change with some frequency, just for kicks.
By Bayesian logic, this says ominous things about the expected value of how long humanity will remain on the planet...
Consider also reading about the Fermi Paradox : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
It really makes me dizzy every time I take some time to wonder about it...
But, either way, both are awesome and related. My intro was a discussion panel Seti did in the early 2000's - ~'where is ET?'
The conclusion at the time was effectively that the ticket to earth was way too expensive.
The only exception I saw were the videos released by the government agencies, they are actually interesting.
So, with too few people able to suspend belief and buy into claims of alien abduction without proof from their phone, no one really makes that claim anymore.
Maybe that's not what the GP was getting at but that's how I read it...
Don't trust everything you hear.
We might be 1,000 years or more away from fully colonizing our own solar system before it’s worth a long, dangerous journey to another star.
And we tend to define life in a very terrestrially and DNA-specific way, despite we don't mention it explicitly.
My favorite are the pointless arguments about whether viruses are alive or not. As if "it's alive" is some objective property of a thing. It's not. It's a word we made up.
Maybe the Moon is conscious for all we know. We know almost nothing.
As for effective communication and interaction with aliens, it'll most likely require cybernetics and genetic engineering.
The idea humans will colonize the universe is very naive. We're Earthlings. We're extremely fragile outside very specific conditions on this very specific planet. To live successfully outside we'll have to change a lot.
Sure, technically whatever that ends up being we can still call "humans" but it won't look like humans do right now, that's for sure.
If aliens turn up, everyone will be too busy worrying about aliens to care about some prediction being wrong.
What I see is bunch of arbitrary capabilities, that we decided sum up to being life.
"the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death."
Technically if we decide to INTERPET this leniently, then phenomena like crystals and fire would qualify as life. So would viruses.
Yet, it also says "the condition that distinguishes from inorganic matter", and those are not "organic matter".
And what is organic matter? Well... that happens to be defined as carbon-based DNA/RNA coded proteins. That's QUITE specific to earthlings.
That's because, I believe, cosmically connected societies are, essentially, floating planet sized brains. Their living beings are basically the cells of this organism, and networks of roads, data lines and such are the connective tissue linking the neurons that exist as beings of that planet.
At some point in our future, we'll all be a unified race of people working towards not only the betterment of the planet, but towards the ability for this giant floating spherical brain to reach out to other giant floating spherical brains using methods of communication that can only exist at the planetary scale.
By that time, humanity will be unrecognizable for us. People would be as different from normal folks now as those on the autistic spectrum are. We're evolving, the planet is evolving, and on the cosmic scale, it's the only logical explanation for why the universe seems empty: it's not that there aren't other civilizations, it's that they're essentially so different in scale from us when they reach the galactic phase of growth that we will not be able to tell the difference from a planet-sized brain and a regular planet.
Additionally, the size of the cosmos hammers home the idea that ant-sized being such as ourselves hoping to navigate the universe is simply silly and we shouldn't be much concerned beyond our solar system for a good million years or so.
We can pick this UFO thing back up when we're all one unified peoples across the globe with a single purpose. I will additionally bet that there's about a 99% chance that such a society would be ruled by computer overlords. I'd be OK with that, actually, as we've REALLY fucked things up using people as leaders, recently. I cannot imagine saying that 20 years ago, but here we are.
This will all probably start to happen in earnest (these changes to humanity, I mean) sometime after we install dictators to deal with the climate change problems which we allowed to get utterly out of control to a point where the only solution will be utter dictatorships and violence and instant death for anyone who damages the planet. It'll REALLY suck, but we will hopefully come out the other side with fewer opportunities for greedy people to direct entire civilizations to memorialize their greatness in blood.
I am pretty sure scientists do research that involves laying down and pheromone trails. So, to the extent ants can talk, we have interest in talking to ants. You're making the unfounded assumption that aliens would treat humans like a small and unrepresentative sample (Victorian nobility?) of humans treat other humans.
Although there are many anthills we don't talk to, that is because each anthill of the same species would say the same thing. There is only one human anthill, so that objection does not apply.
Do you think we wouldn't be trying to actually communicate with ants if we found a viable way of doing so?
Alien races that see us may find us intriguing, but Douglas Adams did explain this sort of stuff in fantastic ways, for example, when humanity missed the Dolphins' last message to Earth and interpreted it as a really neat triple somersault.
So, yes, maybe gorillas and ants and dolphins are trying to speak with us, but we're not trying to have those conversations. We're having the "Do you want a banana?" conversations.
What people think of when they think of UFOs is diplomatic relations between two cultures. And I am saying that, cosmically, we could no less have a diplomatic relationship between a human society and a cosmically traveling giant brain society than could a person establish diplomatic ties with an oyster. The frames of reference are simply not there to even communicate in a meaningful, cultural way beyond Pearls.
So, maybe I am wrong and the giant brains are reaching out and do want to talk to us, but maybe they speak with asteroids and quarks and we cannot even begin to understand what they want. We're too busy deciding which ant is the correct, one true ant to lead us all.
I would say that planet earth resembles a living brain far more than it resembles a stagnant rock.
I can only imagine, if such a posited earth-brain exists, that its entire functioning would be to continue functioning while it reflects upon its own existence and trying to understand its environment with what information it gathers.
And if we're a part of that earth-brain then our effects are its effects.
I wonder how a psychologist might diagnose such an earth-brain in its present condition... anxious, self-destructive, but not without redeeming qualities, and trying to reach out for connection just the same...
If I had to bet though, I’d say that alien life is even more diverse than life on earth since it would necessarily involve multiple origins both natural and artificial.
Didn’t work out, but with today’s technology it might be more possible.
> I believe
There are a whoooooooole lot of assumptions being made here that don't seem to based in any kind of physical reality
This will all probably start to happen in earnest (these changes to Germany, I mean) sometime after we install a dictator to deal with the economic and foreign relations problems which we allowed to get utterly out of control to a point where the only solution will be utter dictatorship and violence and instant death for anyone who damages Germany. It'll REALLY suck, but we will hopefully come out the other side with fewer opportunities for greedy people to direct entire civilizations to memorialize their greatness in blood.