"Perhaps these air-breathing, radiation-sensitive bundles of unstable carbon compounds had no right beyond the atmosphere; they should stick to their natural homes - Earth, Moon, Mars. Some day the real masters of space would be machines, not men"
Arthur C. Clarke - A Meeting With Medusa, 1971
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"We are dealing with a scenario in which if those things that people are observing are aliens who wish to be observed they can settle the question any day they want to."
- Bret Weinstein suspending his suspension of disbelief
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I checked in on some YouTube channels this week, and both Bret Weinstein and Tunderf00t are talking about UFOs, so apparently that's in the news again? Yet again? And again and again? Somehow? Presumably spurred by the whole Chinese spy balloon storm in a teacup? Which of course didn't stop fifty million conspiracy nuts rehashing the usual UFO! UFO! UFO! jabber and waving declassified air force lunch menus around with ponderous import.
Weinstein's interview's a relatively confused, dull string of noncommittal random physics jargon and name dropping amounting to very pointedly <not> discussing the topic of extraterrestrials, until late in the show when he
1) notes the intelligentsia's skepticism toward conspiracy theories may itself be exaggerated, which is a fair point, albeit still moot in the absence of evidence
2) asks one obvious question: why do UFO true believers keep bitching at the U.S. government to release more information, as if said government could do anything to stop nigh-omnipotent galaxy-hopping space gods from talking to us if they really wanted to?
- and then veers into more general conspiracy talk.
Thunderf00t's rant at least included the words "mass hysteria" and showed how easily some supposed video "evidence" can be duplicated as the usual lens flares, focus failures, random windblown grit, etc.
But more than that, every time the topic comes up I keep meaning to point out UFO sightings / theories are a form of mass hysteria from seventy years ago, which has never outgrown WW2-era technological precepts, when spaceflight meant rocket-men with diving bells strapped to their heads jetting about from planet to planet hefting knock-off Smith&Wesson laser six-shooters. Meanwhile:
- Most have noted the average smartphone has orders of magnitude more features, capacity and utility than a Star Trek communicator.
- By the end of the cold war first strike was already redefined as computer-guided, rovers are roving Mars and drone warfare is now gradually taking over the skies.
- Your phone's camera knows your face better than you do.
- Human-made telescopes are starting to photograph objects across galaxies.
If that's our level of miniaturization, teleoperation, AI and telescopic refinement, what do you think these would be for an entity which, from our perspective, can do the impossible by breaking the light speed limitation? What makes you think they'd be using such primitive means of data collection as flying around our atmosphere? What's next, smoke signals? The very notion that some biologically evolved alien species would need to bodily travel to our planet in the equivalent of an intergalactic tour bus in order to observe us is absurd. Much less that it would come all this way just to get a flat tire or run out of gas and get caught by a bunch of monkeys in farting tin cans. If any extraterrestrial intelligence were observing us, it could probably do so from Neptune's orbit via an object no bigger than your fist, or sprinkle our stratosphere with self-destructing nanotech recorders or fuck it, fMRI our brains all the way from Andromeda.
Nothing advanced enough to reach us would need leave any trace detectable by some adrenaline junkie flying a fighter jet, much less some hick with a cellphone.
Not to mention anything that advanced would have long shed any trace of impractical, primitive biological evolution and would have no more interest in contacting apes than you do in inviting your amino acids to a Zoom conference. We are beneath contempt.
If they wanted to talk you'd be powerless to ignore them.
If they don't you'll never know it.UFOlogy is just quasi-religious make-believe.
Help is not coming.
Deal.
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