The Illogic of the Crashed ET Spacecraft Meme

The subject of Roswell and Project Mogul came up in correspondence today, and in my reply I wrote the following, which is pretty much my statement when it comes to the so-called "Roswell Incident":

It doesn't really matter to me whether Mogul was the cause or not. I'm sure that something like it, i.e. something prosaic, was what happened, for reasons I'll set out below. I've always thought that the mistake the USAF made was trying to explain away the Roswell "Incident" with a positive alternative, when any debater will tell you that if you're on the negative side of an argument all you have to do is take apart the side being put forward by the affirmative, in this case by the ET crash supporters. Once you offer an alternative, in this case Mogul, it puts a burden of proof on you that was not otherwise there, and takes some of that burden from where it belongs, i.e. on the shoulders of the crash proponents, who have singularly failed to prove their case, despite having over 30 years at it now.

Here are the reasons why I am completely convinced that there was no ET crash.

1. If aliens had sufficiently advanced technology of the kind that would permit travel between the stars (and I've talked to enough scientists to know just how mind-blowingly advanced this would have to be, Stan Friedman and his nuclear rockets balderdash notwithstanding), then it beggars belief that they would crash in spaceships that looked like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie once they got here (much less crash multiple times, as some posit, including Stan).

2. However, allowing for the infinitesimal possibility that Murphy's Law applies to super-advanced aliens, it beggars belief that they would just leave the remains of the ship and their dead comrades to be found by beings who, as Stan puts it, were here to observe us because we might be dangerous someday soon. After all, they were supposedly in New Mexico to monitor nuclear testing and so forth... so how can we be asked to believe that they would let we warlike creatures have their technology? The logical answer is that we can't believe that, because the very reason the crash proponents suggest for the aliens being in New Mexico in 1947 (as opposed to some place like Iceland, or India) is the very reason why the aliens would clean up their mess before we could snag it... and if they had the ability to get here from another star system, then they would certainly have had the ability to collect or vaporize the wreckage.

3. However, allowing for the equally infinitesimal possibility that the aliens are fools, and let us have the technology in the idea that we would never understand it, then it beggars belief yet again that the United States government could have maintained what must be such a vast conspiracy to this day to keep it all quiet. I'm sorry, but that doesn't wash any more than the notion that BushCo. pulled off 9 / 11 as an inside job. Yes, there are conspiracies and cover-ups, and yes, they can be kept for a very long time, but history tells us that the reason they are kept for a very long time successfully is that they are always confined to only a few people. As soon as you start expanding the circle of knowledge, then the wheels fall off. Of course, conspiracists fall back on the old "the information compartmentalized, and only a super small cadre know the complete truth," but that's ludicrous. Even if you knew a portion of the truth, most people would be able to figure out the big picture eventually. And sooner or later if more than a couple people were involved, even at lower levels, some peon would leak something, as Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg and the Rosenbergs all showed, that would have verifiable documentation to back it up.

But as I can't get past either point 1 or 2, I never really have to worry about point 3. I merely include it as an exercise in logic. And don't ask me to consider the absurd notion that the aliens staged the entire thing as a "test" or some kind of "counter intelligence" operation. That's like saying you have a dragon, but when people come around to see your dragon you explain to them that he's invisible to everyone but you. It's the ultimate in wish fulfillment excuses for something that does not withstand logical scrutiny.

What confounds me is that a lot of smart people have gotten lost in the weeds around the crashed flying saucer meme, when what they really needed to do was just apply some basic common sense and think the proposition itself through logically.

Paul Kimball

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Alien vs. Human Intelligence

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the almost certain differences between us and any advanced alien / extraterrestrial intelligence we may encounter.

Paul Kimball

God vs. ET

In the campaign for President that is underway south of the border right now, it seems that none of the remaining candidates can go a single day without religion being injected into the conversation in some way, shape or form, even if subliminally. The latest brouhaha, which involves Senator Barack Obama's pastor, is a good case in point, as was Mitt Romney's pandering to the Christian right, who were suspicious of his Mormonism. The candidacy of Mike Huckabee was all about religion, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

Contrast this with the question of UFOs and ET. To the best of my knoweldge, it was only brought up once - when Tim Russert asked Dennis Kucinich his UFO sighting in a debate, and Kucinich replied that he had indeed seen a UFO, and then proceeded to apply any number of apologetic caveats.

Ask someone about UFOs, or ET, and people start to get embarassed. Ask them about God, and they stand up tall and take the question seriously. Indeed, they will often bring it up themselves.
It's not that there is anything wrong with religion - I'm a healthy but hopeful agnostic on the question of whether or not there is a God. It's also not that there is anything inherently right about asserting that ET has visited planet Earth - I'm a healthy but hopeful agnostic about that as well. The problem comes from the fact that one of these propositions is treated far more seriously than the other, and it's not the one for which there is actual evidence from the modern era.

When Hillary Clinton, or John McCain, or Barack Obama talk about God and how important He is to them, they are talking about a concept that cannot be proved in any rational way. Religion is a belief based on ancient stories that have been changed over the centuries in ways that would probably make them unrecognizable to the people who were actually there at the time. If I were to try and prove the existence of God to a jury of twelve reasonable people beyond a reasonable doubt, I couldn't do it. I seriously doubt anyone else could. It would still be a tricky proposition to do on the less onerous civil standard of the balance of probabilities.

UFOs as ET? I still couldn't do it beyond a reasonable doubt, nor could anyone else (hence the healthy agnosticism), but I would have a much better case, in terms of evidence, on the civil standard, than I would with God. For one thing, the evidence is fresher (Book of Luke vs. RB-47, for example). I could definitely prove that UFOs are an unexplained objective phenomenon; I think I could even swing the majority of a jury in favour of the proposition that at least some of them were likely extraterrestrial spacecraft.

This is why I have some sympathy for the exopolitics types, even though, as with people who believe in God, I think they have it wrong. They look around and see a world where in most countries religion goes hand in hand with political power, none more so in the democratic world than in the supposedly secular American republic (somewhere Thomas Jefferson is spinning in his grave). And yet they sit at the fringes of polite society, despite the fact that they can make a stronger case for their belief system than the religious people can.

Honestly - St. Paul on one hand, and, say, Philip Corso on the other hand. Is there really a difference between the two, other than two thousand years, and the fact that Corso was properly vetted?

Paul Kimball

Truth Embargo? Good!

You often hear pro-ETH UFO researchers in the West state something along the lines of, "It's time to end the cover-up of the ET presence on Earth - it might have made sense 60 years ago, but we're a more mature society now, and we could handle the news". Stan Friedman has said words to that general effect at almost every lecture I've ever heard him give, for example.

I think that they're wrong. I think if we were really faced with certain proof of the existence of ET (like a flying saucer landing on the White House lawn), things would pretty much go to hell in short order. The view that things would be just fine (a few hiccups, perhaps, but we would adjust quickly) is informed by an educated, middle to upper class, very Western way of looking at the world - in other words, guys like Stan. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the planet's population is not educated to the degree someone like Stan is, and they're not members of the middle or upper classes, and they don't live in the relative comfort (both physical and ideological) of postmodernist and largely secular Western society.

The view of people like Stan that we're ready for the knowledge of ET's existence (should ET exist and be here) is also at odds with human history, where every time an advanced society came into contact with a less advanced society, there was chaos, with the end result that the less advanced society suffered greatly as a result of that contact.

I think Stuart Miller, in a recent post at his blog Alien Worlds Magazine, hits upon the more likely outcome. Here is an excerpt:

My opinion is that there would be substantial elements of world wide hysteria which couldn’t be ignored, for it would inevitably impinge on the calmer elements. The most un-endearing quality within the psyche of the human spirit is arrogance. Our world is full of strutting little despots, be it militarily, politically, administratively, the religious realm, or even in our personal lives. People full of their own self importance and power, without humility or empathy, who would seize the opportunity to terrify and manipulate. Martial law in some quarters would be a real possibility. After all, this would be an event of a life time. [Full article here]

Bingo - and as Stuart notes later in the column, this is what would probably happen if we just got a signal from SETI. It would be far worse if ET was actually here, and even worse again if ET was hostile.

Guys like Steven Bassett talk about a "paradigm shift" should the "truth embargo" ever be lifted. They're absolutely right, but for the wrong reasons. They see a sunnier future for humanity - a leap into a brave new world, where we would happily walk hand in hand with our space brothers and sisters, and all would suddenly be fine on Planet Earth.

Like Stuart, I see a different result, because I've spent years studying the world and its people, not as we might like them to be, but as they actually are. If the "government" is really covering up the "truth" about an ET presence here on Earth, I say "good - keep it up". Because as I look around, the truth is that we're not ready for it. We're not even close. And to reveal it now would be as disastrous as it would have been sixty years ago - perhaps more so.

We don't need alien "gods" to come down and solve all of our problems - we need to solve them ourselves. Only then, when all people are capable of seeing the world like Stan Friedman sees it will we be ready for First Contact, with any ET species, either here or "out there".

If ET really does exist, and is smart enough to get here from there, and is as benevolent as some people think, then I'm pretty sure they see things the same way I do, and that's why they choose not to reveal themselves. And if they aren't that benevolent, and resemble more an ET version of Cortez, then eventually we're all screwed, aren't we?

Does this mean that people should stop investigating UFO cases? No. Does it mean people should stop writing and talking about UFOs? Of course not. Because at the moment, the idea of ET UFOs are like the idea of God - maybe they exist, maybe they don't, who can say? You can believe if you want, or not. You can believe in one type of alien, or another, or none at all. You can explore other theories if you want. You can ignore the whole subject, as the vast majority of people do. You can even pretend that you're practising "citizen diplomacy" with aliens if you want. To each their own.

You can even pester the "government" for the "truth", but you'll find that it's a pretty futile slog, because they either don't know the "truth" (which is the far more likely answer, in my opinion), or, if they do and the truth is "ET is here", they aren't going to reveal it, for the reasons outlined above.

Good reasons.

Paul Kimball

The Singularity & ET - Is "It", and are "They", near?

If even ten per cent of what Kurzweil predicts happens in our lifetimes, we're in for a wild, wild ride!

As it relates to UFOs, however, given where we may soon be going (or we may already be there), do you really think aliens hundreds, or thousands, of years more advanced than us are visiting Earth as biological entities?

It just doesn't make sense. AI? Possibly. Biological beings? Hard to believe.

In the end, it might not matter. But consider this - in terms of "contact", what if the "aliens" are simply waiting for us to take the leap - not into space, but into our own future, where we become like them?

The more one stops to think about it, the very notion of extraterrestrial biological entities visiting us borders on the ridiculous when compared with the prospect of some form of AI.

Food for thought.

Paul Kimball