Re gaining a better model of reality, we have three fundamental tasks: (A) collecting data, (B) elaborating theories that can explain data, and (C) finding matches between data and theory.
You've said all this before, and maaaybe if UFOs are actual aliens you have the most likely explanation. But come on, the far more likely reason we see UFOs only in blurry form is that if we saw them more clearly we would be able to identify them as something mundane.
If the aliens really wanted to impress us with their mysterious power, they have far better ways to do so than, "show up, but only as blurry dots too far away to make out." They could put their mothership over NYC where everyone can see it. Everyone would be extremely impressed and scared. They could push km-scale asteroids at Earth only to deflect them away at the last second, as a warning of their capabilities. Once it became clear that humans have no defense against them, human leaders would be willing to listen to their demands.
The argument is reminiscent of arguments for God. "You just have to have faith. No, he won't show himself, except in ways indistinguishable from hallucinations or mundane sequences of events."
Everything we see that is new we first see in a burry form.
Your suggested strategies for them would reveal a lot more about them than the strategy I suggest. If they are very worried about how much they reveal, they'd seek min revelation strategies.
"Everything we see that is new we first see in a blurry form"? Not the case. The first person to see a gazelle probably didn't see a blurry gazelle. Even when something does appear blurry at first, if we see it *enough* times, and it's in the same spatial area as we are (i.e. not astronomy), then we're bound to see it up close a few of those times.
By your estimate we've seen UFOs 100,000 times and they're still all blurry. There was plenty of opportunity to see them up close in more detail if they were spacecraft. That we haven't, implies either the obvious - they're blurry because if they were closer we'd know what they are and dismiss them - or some very strange campaign on the part of the aliens to keep track of every camera that could possibly spot them and always stay just out of clear imaging range.
Why would the aliens be worried about how much they reveal? It's assuming a lot about them. Non-interventionist aliens wouldn't be seen at all. Interventionist aliens wouldn't care. You have to assume they occupy some strange middle ground.
Here's an alternate hypothesis. The aliens are doing the equivalent of speaking in riddles. They're waiting for some clever person to draw a chart of all recent alien sightings by geographic location, convert to latitude and longitude, write out every third digit, and apply a simple cypher to the result. The first person to discover the hidden message wins a prize. It's an alien game show. Seems about as likely as your hypothesis that they're semi-skittish aliens trying to impress us into obeying rules they won't tell us (and, so far, failing at it).
In the interest of charity, I think a plausible explanation for why we see them - but only blurry - is that they are indeed trying to hide from us while observing us, but just aren't perfect at it. They do track where our aircraft, telescopes, and people are, and stay away from those areas, but they might not know the exact specs of all of our cameras, or staying away from *all* cameras would prevent them from observing what they want to observe.
This would imply that either their tech isn't that much more advanced than ours, or that they are limiting their tech. Either is possible. Even if they have ten million years on us, that doesn't necessarily mean they can do magic; humans might be closer than we think to the ceiling of what is possible under the laws of physics.
I came here to say much the same thing. I was just figuring they could leave some obviously artificial structure in an orbit somewhere near the edge of the solar system. Perhaps in a position to track and destroy anything that we try to send out of the solar system. That would send a very clear anti-colonization message.
Fifty years from now Space X launches hundreds of super-duper advanced probes in order to explore nearby solar systems. Using the one weird trick developed in that time a probe is able to get from here to Proxima Centauri in only a thousand years instead of the six thousand it would normally take and we decided it's worth it. The probe is outfitted with all of the most advanced planet-exploration measuring gadgets and beam-back-information whosits money can buy. We're going to get our first serious examination of an exoplanet and we want it to be as thorough as possible.
Probe-1 arrives at Proxima Centauri a little beat up from journey but still functioning fine. It dips below the clouds on the first planet in the system and starts poking around and (holy shit!) there's a whole civilization there. It's not nearly as advanced as ours - they've got muskets or catapults or what-have-you - but they're there and they're conscious. To them our probe moves at impossible speeds and is inconceivably advanced and they start tossing spears at it or at least trying to get as good a look at it as they can.
We didn't really build much in the way of stealth technology into this thing, and certainly no military capabilities - it's a probe, not a drone strike. Hell we don't even have direct control over it. Sure it's built to last and moves so much faster than their horses that to their minds it just vanishes, but it's not meant to keep evading attack - in fact it's not meant to leave the planet at all. Like most of our space exploration equipment it's supposed to just keep beaming back stuff until it gives up the ghost. Eventually the thing crashes in front of a Centaurian.
Maybe the UFOs are something like that. Probes sent by a civilization more advanced than ours - and by now, maybe far more advanced than ours - but shot in our direction ages ago.
There is very likely life elsewhere in the universe, and perhaps even in our Solar System, but nearly all of it (99.999… (keep going!)…%) isn't intelligent (much like nearly all life on Earth). Most of the already terribly-rare intelligent life never even begins to build a civilization (consider, for example, those very intelligent dolphins and elephants, here on Earth). Most of already super-rare civilization-building intelligent life dies out, never achieving space travel or even generating pitifully-weak radio transmissions. Advanced intelligent technological societies are so incredibly rare, that there may be only a handful (or less) in a galaxy the size of ours, despite its (possibly) more than one hundred billion stars. Thus, we could very easily be tens of thousands of lightyears away, or even more, from the nearest one. Traveling even one lightyear is remarkably difficult and painfully beyond our current technology. Even communicating, at a painfully-slow data rate, over a distance of merely one lightyear is surprisingly difficult. We just might be able to do it, but only with great effort and expense. Yet communication is vastly, vastly easier than travel. Two conclusions: (1) we will first have some communications (radio, optical, or similar) with advanced aliens long, long, long before any of those aliens actually visit any of us (or we visit them), and (2) since we don’t have any confirmed communications yet, we surely don’t have any visitors either. The photos/videos and other records of “aliens” are variously fuzzy and indistinct because they are not actually proof of anything. It’s not like clearer records don’t exist; rather, all those many, really-clear records are clearly NOT aliens! Aliens are just like the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot (which, if you think about it, rather sadly have arguably more evidence to support their existences, even though we all -- and quite rightfully so! – generally dismiss those reports as nonsense). I’ve seen the arguments here about advanced civilizations spreading across galaxies in a hundred million years, via advanced self-replicating robotics. Oh really? Are you so sure they aren’t still working on how to figure out how to actually travel beyond more than a light year or so? After all, so far they don’t seem to have overcome the much simpler problem of generating communications, in our direction, that nicely exceed the signal to noise ratio when arriving at our radio telescopes. Frankly, I think you are unjustifiably overestimating alien capabilities and that doing so provides you with an enjoyable playground for your civilizational social theories. And these theories are indeed very interesting! But the simpler "all the advanced aliens are too far away" theory (yes, boring as it is) is by far the safest bet to match reality, in my view.
I'm interested in why this is more likely than the following scenario:
1. UFOs are (probably) from relatively nearby and not dramatically more advanced (no FTL / ems / AGI).
2. They sent robotic probes here to learn about us.
3. These probes 'make mistakes' and get seen - their programmers lacked information before sending and they are hard to update remotely due to rapid development here and distance.
4. We have not been colonised because the universe is large and we are interesting - i.e. the aliens may be mostly living in space by now anyway and their key input might simply be hydrogen.
The biggest flaw in the above I can see is 'why would two civilisations cross trajectories at such similar points given the size / age of the universe?' However this clearly depends on how long civilisations last - if most are short lived (either due to self destruction or colonisation / absorption) then I don't think the prior probabilities have to be that low.
Given the relative simplicity of the explanation for observed events - error of a kind we are quite familiar with - I tend to favour this view over yours. Why am I wrong?
You have to posit that civs near our level or above keep repeatedly appearing and then dying fast, without either killing off their planet entirely, or ever advancing to higher levels.
I'm having trouble following the logic chain of many of your statements. For instance:
#1. "...We must thus conclude that either no part of them has any inclination whatsoever in that direction, or that their civ has coordinated around an anti-colonization “rule” that prevents such activity." Why must we conclude either? Perhaps they view us as ants? We don't have an "anti-colonization" rule against ants, yet many ants would look at us as super powerful beings who seemingly have no interest in disturbing them.
#2. "Especially as a simple safe robust persuasion strategy that could be approved by their civ’s home authorities re a risky might-go-rogue expedition from there to here?" The strategy you're describing doesn't seem simple, safe, nor robust. It seems convoluted, complex, and likely to fail. Indeed, it seems almost ridiculously implausible. Why don't they stick a big sign on Mars saying "Please never leave the solar system. Sincerely, your powerful alien brothers"? Seems far simpler and more robust to me.
#3. "...but not revealing more details which might make us hate them." This is extremely vague but seems to be doing a lot of work. What would make us hate them? Why would a simple "don't leave the solar system?" Or "stop fighting expansionist wars" message involve revealing more details? I really don't follow here.
#4. "And if their carrot plan doesn’t work, and enough parts of us do start to sufficiently defy their anti-colonization rule, they probably have a stick plan in reserve. Which we won’t like." So at no point do they find a middle ground of leaving a clear message instead of vague, innocuous ship sightings? I have to admit, for an extraordinarily smart species they don't seem very bright.
Why not go with Occam's Razor here that there probably aren't aliens on Earth?
They should be able to figure out that we are ants that might soon be as gods. Your sign strategy is not as simple as you think; what language would they write it in? I don't claim that they might not reveal more before "pushing the button". Just that that isn't their first move.
Re: ants as gods, I don't follow. How are we soon to be gods? We don't seem near distant interstellar travel, fully artificial/simulated being, or the other things you're positing that the aliens can do. Further, if we were, how does it then follow that this non-communication strategy is the best way to interact with us?
Re: language, how about English? Mandarin? Spanish? All of the above? Again I don't understand what angle you're going for. If it's that the aliens can't learn our language, I must question how they can have so much technological advancement but can't make sense of our textbooks?
Re: #4 "So at no point do they find a middle ground of leaving a clear message instead of vague, innocuous ship sightings? I have to admit, for an extraordinarily smart species they don't seem very bright."
Robin does not claim anything of the sort. I would assume they might do that as well.
However, if it were indeed the case that no middle ground exists, I might use your ant analogy to try to explain that. Let us assume ants, and perhaps also termites and some other insect species were in the process of developing technology which we would then be worried about. We do not understand ant and other insect language well enough to reliably communicate clear, complex messages to them, although we know a lot about them. How exactly should we then present this clear message in ant or other insect language to prevent them from trying to colonize?
I'm assuming that we will not be able to decipher ant or other insect language well enough to just "say it out loud" in this thought experiment. Were that the case, that would also be the case for the assumed aliens - and then they would have already contacted us using our language, which they haven't done. We would then need to interpret the lack of such a message as them not having been able or willing to do this, for one or other reason, as long as we are talking in the context of the explanation "UFO:s as aliens".
As for Occam's razor, why, that is indeed what Robin is trying to do here re: UFO reports. If the strongest version of "UFO:s as aliens" does not please you, feel free to offer a stronger version, or engage Robin on why the strongest version of some alternative explanation (hoaxes, hallucinations, secret human orgs/tech) seems more likely to you.
I interpret Robin differently: any and all middle grounds can be seen as going under either the carrot or the stick.
At the extreme poles, we would have 1) aliens not giving any sign whatsoever, leaving us to realize it by ourselves that they might exist and that we should likely not try to colonize. And 2) aliens exterminating humanity.
One possible middle ground might then be what Robin posits here. Another could be to show an overwhelming military power in order to subjugate humanity. I would read this as going under "a stick plan in reserve".
A plausible explanation is that they're observing us and trying to be stealthy and avoid our cameras, but just aren't perfect at it so we see them sometimes, albeit poorly. Just because they may be a million years ahead of us doesn't necessarily mean they are gods. Perhaps humans aren't that far away from them, technologically. Or perhaps the aliens intentionally limited their own tech level to avoid rebellion problems.
Why are they observing us? Maybe they're zoologists/planetary scientists. Maybe they're military scouts.
Re: #2 "The strategy you're describing doesn't seem simple, safe, nor robust. It seems convoluted, complex, and likely to fail. Indeed, it seems almost ridiculously implausible. Why don't they stick a big sign on Mars saying "Please never leave the solar system. Sincerely, your powerful alien brothers"? Seems far simpler and more robust to me"
The phenomenon Robin is trying to explain is UFO:s, and this post outlines an explanation for UFO:s as aliens. The sign on Mars, which indeed would be easy to understand, doesn't exist, whereas UFO reports exist. Robin presents this hypothesis as an explanation for "UFO reports as aliens". No matter how convoluted it might seem, it seems like the best explanation for "UFO reports as aliens" to me as well - feel free to offer an alternative. Note that Robin does not assume in this post that "UFO reports as aliens" is true, but simply presents an effort to formulate the strongest version of "UFO reports as aliens".
Okay. I may have missed it, but I don't see anything in the post indicating that Robin himself thinks the explanation is unlikely (or that he doesn't believe it to be true). I assume since Robin liked your comment this is indeed the case, but I don't see anything in the essay indicating that.
The problem is in my opinion, the explanation is so implausible that nearly anything else would be a satisfying alternative. Maybe the aliens are scouts briefly appearing but our atomsphere is toxic to them so they have to leave after a few seconds? Maybe they're voyeurists who get off on duping people? Maybe they just need to collect small amounts of air as it's a precious resource on their home system? Really, it could be anythgin.
"Let's send a near imperceptible anti-colonial message via appearances that are also not able to accurately be recorded" seems as unlikely to me as any of these. If anything, it seems even more absurd as it doesn't seem to make logical sense as a behavior path (as I outlined in my first comment).
"Okay. I may have missed it, but I don't see anything in the post indicating that Robin himself thinks the explanation is unlikely (or that he doesn't believe it to be true)."
Robin outlines a working hypothesis on the premise that UFO:s are indeed aliens; in doing so, he doesn't so much argue for its relative probability (although I guess he must think it's significant enough to warrant his attention) as just to present a strong version of "assuming UFO:s as aliens, then what?".
"The problem is in my opinion, the explanation is so implausible that nearly anything else would be a satisfying alternative."
As said, feel free to engage him if you think that's the case. I think you will need a lot more space than this comment section to do that, however.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy (a crime to which I'd humbly confess): I've followed Robin's writing for years, and one thing I've learned is that he's very articulate, and that he takes into account much more than what he explicitly says out loud. This is of course mostly due to time and volume constraints: for example, presenting each and every one of your examples (and more) individually and then arguing why he doesn't find them as plausible as his version would take so much space as to occupy an entire book - whereas the point was to simply outline the version of "UFO:s as aliens" he thinks is the strongest (not second strongest or the weakest).
If, however, you absolutely believe it to be the case that what Robin presents here is just another weak version of "UFO:s as aliens", I highly recommend you to engage him in even slightly longer form. He might then respond and explain why he disagrees with you - or, if you're convincing or present arguments or data he in fact hadn't considered, he might even change his point of view. This would be a great honor, in my opinion.
Re: #1 "Why must we conclude either? Perhaps they view us as ants? We don't have an "anti-colonization" rule against ants, yet many ants would look at us as super powerful beings who seemingly have no interest in disturbing them."
A sufficiently developed civ with very advanced tech, assuming it is willing to colonize and exploit its surroundings, should likely transform its environment in some obvious ways which we, being smarter than ants, should be able to witness, document and understand. The least we should witness is some heat signature from activity reducing local entropy at the cost of increasing surrounding entropy, due to the second law of thermodynamics. Instead we witness nothing at all, save for UFO:s.
If I've understood somewhat correctly, this leads Robin to conclude that either no such advanced aliens exist, or that they don't intend to colonize (which then needs to be explained), or that their abilities have decayed.
You're assuming the aliens are still alive. It's also possible that they went extinct long ago, with the UFOs that we "see" being just robot probes with simple instructions to observe, avoid direct contact, and nothing else. Basically a high-tech version of the mars rover.
This would make sense with there being some sort of great filter that inevitably wipes out intelligent species. Perhaps their TFR simply declines to zero. It would also align with the "doomsday argument" that it's highly unlikely we are one of the first humans, so we're probably somewhere in the middle, so there probably won't be a whole lot more humans in the future.
"You're assuming the aliens are still alive. It's also possible that they went extinct long ago, with the UFOs that we "see" being just robot probes with simple instructions to observe, avoid direct contact, and nothing else. Basically a high-tech version of the mars rover."
The possibility of independent, perhaps self-replicating / self-repairing drones remaining long after their intelligent creators have perished seems believable to me as well. Interested on whether Robin has anything to say about this.
UFO sightings seem to form clusters around Air Force bases, and nuclear facilities. With both that in mind as well as the plot of Three Body Problem fresh in mind, I can’t help but ponder that IF these UFOs are of alien origin, what if they are early emissaries sent ahead of a larger, slower traveling colonizing group? What if they have been sent ahead to act as stewards of a hospitable planet to ensure the current occupants don’t contaminate it with 10,000 years of radiation and ensure it stays hospitable to life so that the trailing group didn’t make a trip across the cosmos in vain.
It seems a bit anthropocentric or even primitively quaint to propose that interstellar alien visitors might share similar objectives and thought patterns to Homo Sapiens. This is where I always get stuck with these theories. It's entertaining though, so I appreciate this writing anyway.
I think this is a good point, but do note that Robin points out that status hierarchies and colonization ("will to power", one might put it) are very ubiquitous across all biological life. Using a version of the cosmological principle and some understanding of the principles of evolution, we might and perhaps even should then assume that most other life is biological as well, and that that biological life resembles biological life on Earth. In fact, assuming we are some very special case in this sense seems very anthropocentric to me. Much more likely should be that principles governing biological life and evolution on Earth resemble principles governing biological life and evolution elsewhere, as well.
Thanks again for the blog. I'm with Berder. Why are these supposed aliens consistently over decades revealing themselves just enough to leave vague hints that they visited, just enough to convince you Robin and a few others that they are real and leave the rest of us skeptical. If they are so advanced they should decide already if they want to remain covert, or want to land here and introduce themselves or enslave us or do whatever it is they want to do here. The subject is taboo for a rational reason - Occam's razor would say that so far all the evidence is much more easily explained by optical illusions and the like than by distant super-intelligent aliens teasing us with marginal hints of their existence from time to time.
If I were a million years more advanced than humanity, I would migrate to the center of the galaxy and build a dense civilization around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. There is more free energy available there (via the Penrose process) than has been emitted by all stars in the Milky Way since its formation. As an information-based society, perhaps living in a virtual reality of some kind, I would want to be small, not large.
If I visited Earth-like planets it would not be to colonize, because there are no resources I would want. It would be to learn. But I certainly wouldn't be so inept as to allow myself to be seen.
Hey Robin, I just listened to your interview with Martin Willis. Fascinating stuff. Yet there are some nagging thoughts.
If aliens were here to keep us from expanding out to the rest of the universe, right now we seem pretty far from even getting beyond our solar system, plus sabotaging ourselves at every turn, possibly leading to our own self-destruction way before we would have the capability.
So why would they be concerned with us colonizing the universe? Would AI possibly have something to do with it? Your thoughts may differ on how we’re progressing on that front, but recently it’s come to the attention to many of us that behind closed doors is an AI arms race, with superintelligence much much more further along than we realized. The scenario playing out how in the next few years, everything will change somewhat quickly and we’ll all maybe end up dying soon after (I hope this is wrong, of course). With that kind of advancement, space (or other) travel capability could also become greatly advanced (either by us or by our replacements).
I myself throughout my life have seen a couple of UFOs that weren’t just some light in the sky or blurry image. It’s led me to conclude that, along with other accounts down through history, that we are being observed by something outside the ordinary.
Which leads to another thought: if non-delusional sightings of flying objects or encounters with otherworldly beings goes back to ancient times, why have they played this “game” with us for so long, before we even had a grasp of basic science? If they wanted to keep us here, that is? To early on condition us to this “domestication” you speak of? So long ago, all they would have accomplished would be to inspire or reinforce certain religions. I guess that would be part of the domestication. To keep us from progressing too quickly? Religious (or even dogmatic) thought usually impede progress on multiple fronts. And presently, it’s even led some to conclude the opposite of inspiration: that these “aliens” are demonic entities posing as beings from other worlds.
Could be just answering some of my own questions here. I dunno, it’s confusing lol
I’ll try to read some of these other comments anyway and see what others are thinking.
Hanson repeats a frequent claim that we have not seen any evidence of advanced civs with a massive technological footprint in our galaxy, therefore they do not exist. But is it actually true? If our galaxy had 1000 advanced technological civilizations with megastructures, would we have seen any by now?
He writes: "... First, compared to familiar UFO activity showing amazing abilities, we don’t see remotely similar levels of nearby UFO-like colonization, development, or resource extraction activities. ...
Second, we don’t see any evidence of advanced civs, or any form of life actually, anywhere beyond Earth in the observable universe."
Then he jumps to the conclusion that there are no advanced civilizations which extract resources and expand at a massive scale. But how do we know that?
My understanding is that so far all SETI efforts were about looking at a few thousands exoplanets to figure out whether they could have what we currently think are conditions for biological life. Even assuming that the life stays purely biological and does not leave the planet it originated at (very dubious), we have barely scratched a surface. We do not seem to possess technological means to discover advanced civilizations.
I know little about SETI efforts. But it seems to me that we have not even started looking at our galaxy. And then we jump to conclusions that there is nobody there. It reminds me of a primitive who have not traveled beyond a neighboring village and thinks that he have seen most of the world.
But are we really good at (A) data collection? UFO enthusiasts seem to be excited about or seem to give credence to all UFO sightings as opposed to weighing certain sightings more heavily and investigating them. Surely in the UFO community there are rich people who can spend money investigating two or three incidents they think are the most plausible. So where are they? To the extent there are, they are cheap Discovery TV like shows.
From what I can tell the two major UFO sightings in 2004 deserve special scrutiny or interest.
In March of 2004, Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over the Gulf of Mexico. In November 2004, we have the USS Nimitz footage aka as the Tic Tac UFO footage which was taken off the coast of southern California. Both the US and Mexico military captured footage of the UFO on the FLIR cameras. Pilots from both the militaries claim they made visual contact with the UFOs.
So two incidents from the US and the Mexican military. Both of them in 2004 separated by eight months. Both captured footage of the UAPs from their FLIR and have subsequently been released to the public by US and Mexican governments. Both of them are geographically close enough – one was off the coast of California and the other in the Gulf of Mexico.
Seems like if we (I mean we as humans) were serious about discovering if the UFOs are aliens we would start here. Why hasn't a rich UFO enthusiast done something crazy like investigating these two incidents? Why hasn't a rich guy spent money on putting toger a team of tracking those who saw them and getting their accounts on deep background with a financial incentive so they don't break any military classification laws. Why hasn't some rich UFO enthusiast spent money on on something crazy like deploying CCTV cameras near the coast of San Diego and Campeche where they were spotted to find such UAPs again?
Thank you for putting all this intellectual effort into crafting the most plausible Advanced Aliens theory of UFOs. The resulting account seems to me so implausible as to confirm my prior dismissal of the theory, leaving the UFO phenomenon as mysterious as ever.
There are habitable planets within 25 light years of Earth. Thus aliens do not need to be a hundred million years (in human terms) more advanced than us. They need to be 25 + date of first sighting years + add a century for good luck ahead of us.
I have a very plausible reason why the aliens do not reveal themselves to us. It is not related to any of the feeble excuses why the Big Guy or Big Thing or whatever in the sky does not reveal xitself to us. Earth is a training planet. This is where the Galaxial Empire sends its space cadets for basic field experience in observing, abductions and the like, their mantra being take nothing but observations, leave nothing but anomalies. Because they are fresh out of boot camp sometimes they make mistakes and allow themselves to be seen.
Yes, but cut that down from 14 to 1 giga-ans because it is overwhelmingly probable that nearby solar systems formed at the same time as ours. From the lifecycle of Earth we know that it takes about 4 billion years from formation for a planet to be able to support the most basic lifeforms. Then it takes a few hundred million to liberate enough free oxygen for anything larger than a trilobyte. I agree totally in the concept of a civilisation window. Ours is only six thousand years old. On other planets civilisation may have come and gone, whether from a self-created catastrophe or coming from the cosmos. But who says that aliens have to be organic? Humanity will likely only be around for another century at most, before the bots take over; particularly attractive or cute humans may be kept by the robots as pets, be neutered and euthanased.
You've said all this before, and maaaybe if UFOs are actual aliens you have the most likely explanation. But come on, the far more likely reason we see UFOs only in blurry form is that if we saw them more clearly we would be able to identify them as something mundane.
If the aliens really wanted to impress us with their mysterious power, they have far better ways to do so than, "show up, but only as blurry dots too far away to make out." They could put their mothership over NYC where everyone can see it. Everyone would be extremely impressed and scared. They could push km-scale asteroids at Earth only to deflect them away at the last second, as a warning of their capabilities. Once it became clear that humans have no defense against them, human leaders would be willing to listen to their demands.
The argument is reminiscent of arguments for God. "You just have to have faith. No, he won't show himself, except in ways indistinguishable from hallucinations or mundane sequences of events."
Everything we see that is new we first see in a burry form.
Your suggested strategies for them would reveal a lot more about them than the strategy I suggest. If they are very worried about how much they reveal, they'd seek min revelation strategies.
"Everything we see that is new we first see in a blurry form"? Not the case. The first person to see a gazelle probably didn't see a blurry gazelle. Even when something does appear blurry at first, if we see it *enough* times, and it's in the same spatial area as we are (i.e. not astronomy), then we're bound to see it up close a few of those times.
By your estimate we've seen UFOs 100,000 times and they're still all blurry. There was plenty of opportunity to see them up close in more detail if they were spacecraft. That we haven't, implies either the obvious - they're blurry because if they were closer we'd know what they are and dismiss them - or some very strange campaign on the part of the aliens to keep track of every camera that could possibly spot them and always stay just out of clear imaging range.
Why would the aliens be worried about how much they reveal? It's assuming a lot about them. Non-interventionist aliens wouldn't be seen at all. Interventionist aliens wouldn't care. You have to assume they occupy some strange middle ground.
Here's an alternate hypothesis. The aliens are doing the equivalent of speaking in riddles. They're waiting for some clever person to draw a chart of all recent alien sightings by geographic location, convert to latitude and longitude, write out every third digit, and apply a simple cypher to the result. The first person to discover the hidden message wins a prize. It's an alien game show. Seems about as likely as your hypothesis that they're semi-skittish aliens trying to impress us into obeying rules they won't tell us (and, so far, failing at it).
In the interest of charity, I think a plausible explanation for why we see them - but only blurry - is that they are indeed trying to hide from us while observing us, but just aren't perfect at it. They do track where our aircraft, telescopes, and people are, and stay away from those areas, but they might not know the exact specs of all of our cameras, or staying away from *all* cameras would prevent them from observing what they want to observe.
This would imply that either their tech isn't that much more advanced than ours, or that they are limiting their tech. Either is possible. Even if they have ten million years on us, that doesn't necessarily mean they can do magic; humans might be closer than we think to the ceiling of what is possible under the laws of physics.
I came here to say much the same thing. I was just figuring they could leave some obviously artificial structure in an orbit somewhere near the edge of the solar system. Perhaps in a position to track and destroy anything that we try to send out of the solar system. That would send a very clear anti-colonization message.
Fifty years from now Space X launches hundreds of super-duper advanced probes in order to explore nearby solar systems. Using the one weird trick developed in that time a probe is able to get from here to Proxima Centauri in only a thousand years instead of the six thousand it would normally take and we decided it's worth it. The probe is outfitted with all of the most advanced planet-exploration measuring gadgets and beam-back-information whosits money can buy. We're going to get our first serious examination of an exoplanet and we want it to be as thorough as possible.
Probe-1 arrives at Proxima Centauri a little beat up from journey but still functioning fine. It dips below the clouds on the first planet in the system and starts poking around and (holy shit!) there's a whole civilization there. It's not nearly as advanced as ours - they've got muskets or catapults or what-have-you - but they're there and they're conscious. To them our probe moves at impossible speeds and is inconceivably advanced and they start tossing spears at it or at least trying to get as good a look at it as they can.
We didn't really build much in the way of stealth technology into this thing, and certainly no military capabilities - it's a probe, not a drone strike. Hell we don't even have direct control over it. Sure it's built to last and moves so much faster than their horses that to their minds it just vanishes, but it's not meant to keep evading attack - in fact it's not meant to leave the planet at all. Like most of our space exploration equipment it's supposed to just keep beaming back stuff until it gives up the ghost. Eventually the thing crashes in front of a Centaurian.
Maybe the UFOs are something like that. Probes sent by a civilization more advanced than ours - and by now, maybe far more advanced than ours - but shot in our direction ages ago.
There is very likely life elsewhere in the universe, and perhaps even in our Solar System, but nearly all of it (99.999… (keep going!)…%) isn't intelligent (much like nearly all life on Earth). Most of the already terribly-rare intelligent life never even begins to build a civilization (consider, for example, those very intelligent dolphins and elephants, here on Earth). Most of already super-rare civilization-building intelligent life dies out, never achieving space travel or even generating pitifully-weak radio transmissions. Advanced intelligent technological societies are so incredibly rare, that there may be only a handful (or less) in a galaxy the size of ours, despite its (possibly) more than one hundred billion stars. Thus, we could very easily be tens of thousands of lightyears away, or even more, from the nearest one. Traveling even one lightyear is remarkably difficult and painfully beyond our current technology. Even communicating, at a painfully-slow data rate, over a distance of merely one lightyear is surprisingly difficult. We just might be able to do it, but only with great effort and expense. Yet communication is vastly, vastly easier than travel. Two conclusions: (1) we will first have some communications (radio, optical, or similar) with advanced aliens long, long, long before any of those aliens actually visit any of us (or we visit them), and (2) since we don’t have any confirmed communications yet, we surely don’t have any visitors either. The photos/videos and other records of “aliens” are variously fuzzy and indistinct because they are not actually proof of anything. It’s not like clearer records don’t exist; rather, all those many, really-clear records are clearly NOT aliens! Aliens are just like the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot (which, if you think about it, rather sadly have arguably more evidence to support their existences, even though we all -- and quite rightfully so! – generally dismiss those reports as nonsense). I’ve seen the arguments here about advanced civilizations spreading across galaxies in a hundred million years, via advanced self-replicating robotics. Oh really? Are you so sure they aren’t still working on how to figure out how to actually travel beyond more than a light year or so? After all, so far they don’t seem to have overcome the much simpler problem of generating communications, in our direction, that nicely exceed the signal to noise ratio when arriving at our radio telescopes. Frankly, I think you are unjustifiably overestimating alien capabilities and that doing so provides you with an enjoyable playground for your civilizational social theories. And these theories are indeed very interesting! But the simpler "all the advanced aliens are too far away" theory (yes, boring as it is) is by far the safest bet to match reality, in my view.
I'm interested in why this is more likely than the following scenario:
1. UFOs are (probably) from relatively nearby and not dramatically more advanced (no FTL / ems / AGI).
2. They sent robotic probes here to learn about us.
3. These probes 'make mistakes' and get seen - their programmers lacked information before sending and they are hard to update remotely due to rapid development here and distance.
4. We have not been colonised because the universe is large and we are interesting - i.e. the aliens may be mostly living in space by now anyway and their key input might simply be hydrogen.
The biggest flaw in the above I can see is 'why would two civilisations cross trajectories at such similar points given the size / age of the universe?' However this clearly depends on how long civilisations last - if most are short lived (either due to self destruction or colonisation / absorption) then I don't think the prior probabilities have to be that low.
Given the relative simplicity of the explanation for observed events - error of a kind we are quite familiar with - I tend to favour this view over yours. Why am I wrong?
You have to posit that civs near our level or above keep repeatedly appearing and then dying fast, without either killing off their planet entirely, or ever advancing to higher levels.
Agreed. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but I think the 'ever advancing' option is likely. If so, we will likely find out soon.
I'm having trouble following the logic chain of many of your statements. For instance:
#1. "...We must thus conclude that either no part of them has any inclination whatsoever in that direction, or that their civ has coordinated around an anti-colonization “rule” that prevents such activity." Why must we conclude either? Perhaps they view us as ants? We don't have an "anti-colonization" rule against ants, yet many ants would look at us as super powerful beings who seemingly have no interest in disturbing them.
#2. "Especially as a simple safe robust persuasion strategy that could be approved by their civ’s home authorities re a risky might-go-rogue expedition from there to here?" The strategy you're describing doesn't seem simple, safe, nor robust. It seems convoluted, complex, and likely to fail. Indeed, it seems almost ridiculously implausible. Why don't they stick a big sign on Mars saying "Please never leave the solar system. Sincerely, your powerful alien brothers"? Seems far simpler and more robust to me.
#3. "...but not revealing more details which might make us hate them." This is extremely vague but seems to be doing a lot of work. What would make us hate them? Why would a simple "don't leave the solar system?" Or "stop fighting expansionist wars" message involve revealing more details? I really don't follow here.
#4. "And if their carrot plan doesn’t work, and enough parts of us do start to sufficiently defy their anti-colonization rule, they probably have a stick plan in reserve. Which we won’t like." So at no point do they find a middle ground of leaving a clear message instead of vague, innocuous ship sightings? I have to admit, for an extraordinarily smart species they don't seem very bright.
Why not go with Occam's Razor here that there probably aren't aliens on Earth?
They should be able to figure out that we are ants that might soon be as gods. Your sign strategy is not as simple as you think; what language would they write it in? I don't claim that they might not reveal more before "pushing the button". Just that that isn't their first move.
Re: ants as gods, I don't follow. How are we soon to be gods? We don't seem near distant interstellar travel, fully artificial/simulated being, or the other things you're positing that the aliens can do. Further, if we were, how does it then follow that this non-communication strategy is the best way to interact with us?
Re: language, how about English? Mandarin? Spanish? All of the above? Again I don't understand what angle you're going for. If it's that the aliens can't learn our language, I must question how they can have so much technological advancement but can't make sense of our textbooks?
Re: #4 "So at no point do they find a middle ground of leaving a clear message instead of vague, innocuous ship sightings? I have to admit, for an extraordinarily smart species they don't seem very bright."
Robin does not claim anything of the sort. I would assume they might do that as well.
However, if it were indeed the case that no middle ground exists, I might use your ant analogy to try to explain that. Let us assume ants, and perhaps also termites and some other insect species were in the process of developing technology which we would then be worried about. We do not understand ant and other insect language well enough to reliably communicate clear, complex messages to them, although we know a lot about them. How exactly should we then present this clear message in ant or other insect language to prevent them from trying to colonize?
I'm assuming that we will not be able to decipher ant or other insect language well enough to just "say it out loud" in this thought experiment. Were that the case, that would also be the case for the assumed aliens - and then they would have already contacted us using our language, which they haven't done. We would then need to interpret the lack of such a message as them not having been able or willing to do this, for one or other reason, as long as we are talking in the context of the explanation "UFO:s as aliens".
As for Occam's razor, why, that is indeed what Robin is trying to do here re: UFO reports. If the strongest version of "UFO:s as aliens" does not please you, feel free to offer a stronger version, or engage Robin on why the strongest version of some alternative explanation (hoaxes, hallucinations, secret human orgs/tech) seems more likely to you.
Robin says: "And if their carrot plan doesn’t work... (then) they probably have a stick plan in reserve".
So yes, he claims exactly that. Nowhere does it mention any potential middle ground.
I interpret Robin differently: any and all middle grounds can be seen as going under either the carrot or the stick.
At the extreme poles, we would have 1) aliens not giving any sign whatsoever, leaving us to realize it by ourselves that they might exist and that we should likely not try to colonize. And 2) aliens exterminating humanity.
One possible middle ground might then be what Robin posits here. Another could be to show an overwhelming military power in order to subjugate humanity. I would read this as going under "a stick plan in reserve".
A plausible explanation is that they're observing us and trying to be stealthy and avoid our cameras, but just aren't perfect at it so we see them sometimes, albeit poorly. Just because they may be a million years ahead of us doesn't necessarily mean they are gods. Perhaps humans aren't that far away from them, technologically. Or perhaps the aliens intentionally limited their own tech level to avoid rebellion problems.
Why are they observing us? Maybe they're zoologists/planetary scientists. Maybe they're military scouts.
Re: #2 "The strategy you're describing doesn't seem simple, safe, nor robust. It seems convoluted, complex, and likely to fail. Indeed, it seems almost ridiculously implausible. Why don't they stick a big sign on Mars saying "Please never leave the solar system. Sincerely, your powerful alien brothers"? Seems far simpler and more robust to me"
The phenomenon Robin is trying to explain is UFO:s, and this post outlines an explanation for UFO:s as aliens. The sign on Mars, which indeed would be easy to understand, doesn't exist, whereas UFO reports exist. Robin presents this hypothesis as an explanation for "UFO reports as aliens". No matter how convoluted it might seem, it seems like the best explanation for "UFO reports as aliens" to me as well - feel free to offer an alternative. Note that Robin does not assume in this post that "UFO reports as aliens" is true, but simply presents an effort to formulate the strongest version of "UFO reports as aliens".
This also goes for #3.
Okay. I may have missed it, but I don't see anything in the post indicating that Robin himself thinks the explanation is unlikely (or that he doesn't believe it to be true). I assume since Robin liked your comment this is indeed the case, but I don't see anything in the essay indicating that.
The problem is in my opinion, the explanation is so implausible that nearly anything else would be a satisfying alternative. Maybe the aliens are scouts briefly appearing but our atomsphere is toxic to them so they have to leave after a few seconds? Maybe they're voyeurists who get off on duping people? Maybe they just need to collect small amounts of air as it's a precious resource on their home system? Really, it could be anythgin.
"Let's send a near imperceptible anti-colonial message via appearances that are also not able to accurately be recorded" seems as unlikely to me as any of these. If anything, it seems even more absurd as it doesn't seem to make logical sense as a behavior path (as I outlined in my first comment).
"Okay. I may have missed it, but I don't see anything in the post indicating that Robin himself thinks the explanation is unlikely (or that he doesn't believe it to be true)."
Robin outlines a working hypothesis on the premise that UFO:s are indeed aliens; in doing so, he doesn't so much argue for its relative probability (although I guess he must think it's significant enough to warrant his attention) as just to present a strong version of "assuming UFO:s as aliens, then what?".
"The problem is in my opinion, the explanation is so implausible that nearly anything else would be a satisfying alternative."
As said, feel free to engage him if you think that's the case. I think you will need a lot more space than this comment section to do that, however.
At the risk of sounding like a fanboy (a crime to which I'd humbly confess): I've followed Robin's writing for years, and one thing I've learned is that he's very articulate, and that he takes into account much more than what he explicitly says out loud. This is of course mostly due to time and volume constraints: for example, presenting each and every one of your examples (and more) individually and then arguing why he doesn't find them as plausible as his version would take so much space as to occupy an entire book - whereas the point was to simply outline the version of "UFO:s as aliens" he thinks is the strongest (not second strongest or the weakest).
If, however, you absolutely believe it to be the case that what Robin presents here is just another weak version of "UFO:s as aliens", I highly recommend you to engage him in even slightly longer form. He might then respond and explain why he disagrees with you - or, if you're convincing or present arguments or data he in fact hadn't considered, he might even change his point of view. This would be a great honor, in my opinion.
Re: #1 "Why must we conclude either? Perhaps they view us as ants? We don't have an "anti-colonization" rule against ants, yet many ants would look at us as super powerful beings who seemingly have no interest in disturbing them."
A sufficiently developed civ with very advanced tech, assuming it is willing to colonize and exploit its surroundings, should likely transform its environment in some obvious ways which we, being smarter than ants, should be able to witness, document and understand. The least we should witness is some heat signature from activity reducing local entropy at the cost of increasing surrounding entropy, due to the second law of thermodynamics. Instead we witness nothing at all, save for UFO:s.
If I've understood somewhat correctly, this leads Robin to conclude that either no such advanced aliens exist, or that they don't intend to colonize (which then needs to be explained), or that their abilities have decayed.
You're assuming the aliens are still alive. It's also possible that they went extinct long ago, with the UFOs that we "see" being just robot probes with simple instructions to observe, avoid direct contact, and nothing else. Basically a high-tech version of the mars rover.
This would make sense with there being some sort of great filter that inevitably wipes out intelligent species. Perhaps their TFR simply declines to zero. It would also align with the "doomsday argument" that it's highly unlikely we are one of the first humans, so we're probably somewhere in the middle, so there probably won't be a whole lot more humans in the future.
"You're assuming the aliens are still alive. It's also possible that they went extinct long ago, with the UFOs that we "see" being just robot probes with simple instructions to observe, avoid direct contact, and nothing else. Basically a high-tech version of the mars rover."
The possibility of independent, perhaps self-replicating / self-repairing drones remaining long after their intelligent creators have perished seems believable to me as well. Interested on whether Robin has anything to say about this.
UFO sightings seem to form clusters around Air Force bases, and nuclear facilities. With both that in mind as well as the plot of Three Body Problem fresh in mind, I can’t help but ponder that IF these UFOs are of alien origin, what if they are early emissaries sent ahead of a larger, slower traveling colonizing group? What if they have been sent ahead to act as stewards of a hospitable planet to ensure the current occupants don’t contaminate it with 10,000 years of radiation and ensure it stays hospitable to life so that the trailing group didn’t make a trip across the cosmos in vain.
This is the best theory I've read so far. Also if you can, please do read my comment on the two 2004 incidents.
It seems a bit anthropocentric or even primitively quaint to propose that interstellar alien visitors might share similar objectives and thought patterns to Homo Sapiens. This is where I always get stuck with these theories. It's entertaining though, so I appreciate this writing anyway.
I think this is a good point, but do note that Robin points out that status hierarchies and colonization ("will to power", one might put it) are very ubiquitous across all biological life. Using a version of the cosmological principle and some understanding of the principles of evolution, we might and perhaps even should then assume that most other life is biological as well, and that that biological life resembles biological life on Earth. In fact, assuming we are some very special case in this sense seems very anthropocentric to me. Much more likely should be that principles governing biological life and evolution on Earth resemble principles governing biological life and evolution elsewhere, as well.
Thanks again for the blog. I'm with Berder. Why are these supposed aliens consistently over decades revealing themselves just enough to leave vague hints that they visited, just enough to convince you Robin and a few others that they are real and leave the rest of us skeptical. If they are so advanced they should decide already if they want to remain covert, or want to land here and introduce themselves or enslave us or do whatever it is they want to do here. The subject is taboo for a rational reason - Occam's razor would say that so far all the evidence is much more easily explained by optical illusions and the like than by distant super-intelligent aliens teasing us with marginal hints of their existence from time to time.
If I were a million years more advanced than humanity, I would migrate to the center of the galaxy and build a dense civilization around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. There is more free energy available there (via the Penrose process) than has been emitted by all stars in the Milky Way since its formation. As an information-based society, perhaps living in a virtual reality of some kind, I would want to be small, not large.
If I visited Earth-like planets it would not be to colonize, because there are no resources I would want. It would be to learn. But I certainly wouldn't be so inept as to allow myself to be seen.
Hey Robin, I just listened to your interview with Martin Willis. Fascinating stuff. Yet there are some nagging thoughts.
If aliens were here to keep us from expanding out to the rest of the universe, right now we seem pretty far from even getting beyond our solar system, plus sabotaging ourselves at every turn, possibly leading to our own self-destruction way before we would have the capability.
So why would they be concerned with us colonizing the universe? Would AI possibly have something to do with it? Your thoughts may differ on how we’re progressing on that front, but recently it’s come to the attention to many of us that behind closed doors is an AI arms race, with superintelligence much much more further along than we realized. The scenario playing out how in the next few years, everything will change somewhat quickly and we’ll all maybe end up dying soon after (I hope this is wrong, of course). With that kind of advancement, space (or other) travel capability could also become greatly advanced (either by us or by our replacements).
I myself throughout my life have seen a couple of UFOs that weren’t just some light in the sky or blurry image. It’s led me to conclude that, along with other accounts down through history, that we are being observed by something outside the ordinary.
Which leads to another thought: if non-delusional sightings of flying objects or encounters with otherworldly beings goes back to ancient times, why have they played this “game” with us for so long, before we even had a grasp of basic science? If they wanted to keep us here, that is? To early on condition us to this “domestication” you speak of? So long ago, all they would have accomplished would be to inspire or reinforce certain religions. I guess that would be part of the domestication. To keep us from progressing too quickly? Religious (or even dogmatic) thought usually impede progress on multiple fronts. And presently, it’s even led some to conclude the opposite of inspiration: that these “aliens” are demonic entities posing as beings from other worlds.
Could be just answering some of my own questions here. I dunno, it’s confusing lol
I’ll try to read some of these other comments anyway and see what others are thinking.
I very much like the argument and generally agree.
To contribute to your point, the most visible UFO activity being around nuclear bases could play to this anti-aggression message.
Subscribing now!
Hanson repeats a frequent claim that we have not seen any evidence of advanced civs with a massive technological footprint in our galaxy, therefore they do not exist. But is it actually true? If our galaxy had 1000 advanced technological civilizations with megastructures, would we have seen any by now?
He writes: "... First, compared to familiar UFO activity showing amazing abilities, we don’t see remotely similar levels of nearby UFO-like colonization, development, or resource extraction activities. ...
Second, we don’t see any evidence of advanced civs, or any form of life actually, anywhere beyond Earth in the observable universe."
Then he jumps to the conclusion that there are no advanced civilizations which extract resources and expand at a massive scale. But how do we know that?
My understanding is that so far all SETI efforts were about looking at a few thousands exoplanets to figure out whether they could have what we currently think are conditions for biological life. Even assuming that the life stays purely biological and does not leave the planet it originated at (very dubious), we have barely scratched a surface. We do not seem to possess technological means to discover advanced civilizations.
I know little about SETI efforts. But it seems to me that we have not even started looking at our galaxy. And then we jump to conclusions that there is nobody there. It reminds me of a primitive who have not traveled beyond a neighboring village and thinks that he have seen most of the world.
But are we really good at (A) data collection? UFO enthusiasts seem to be excited about or seem to give credence to all UFO sightings as opposed to weighing certain sightings more heavily and investigating them. Surely in the UFO community there are rich people who can spend money investigating two or three incidents they think are the most plausible. So where are they? To the extent there are, they are cheap Discovery TV like shows.
From what I can tell the two major UFO sightings in 2004 deserve special scrutiny or interest.
In March of 2004, Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over the Gulf of Mexico. In November 2004, we have the USS Nimitz footage aka as the Tic Tac UFO footage which was taken off the coast of southern California. Both the US and Mexico military captured footage of the UFO on the FLIR cameras. Pilots from both the militaries claim they made visual contact with the UFOs.
So two incidents from the US and the Mexican military. Both of them in 2004 separated by eight months. Both captured footage of the UAPs from their FLIR and have subsequently been released to the public by US and Mexican governments. Both of them are geographically close enough – one was off the coast of California and the other in the Gulf of Mexico.
Seems like if we (I mean we as humans) were serious about discovering if the UFOs are aliens we would start here. Why hasn't a rich UFO enthusiast done something crazy like investigating these two incidents? Why hasn't a rich guy spent money on putting toger a team of tracking those who saw them and getting their accounts on deep background with a financial incentive so they don't break any military classification laws. Why hasn't some rich UFO enthusiast spent money on on something crazy like deploying CCTV cameras near the coast of San Diego and Campeche where they were spotted to find such UAPs again?
Thank you for putting all this intellectual effort into crafting the most plausible Advanced Aliens theory of UFOs. The resulting account seems to me so implausible as to confirm my prior dismissal of the theory, leaving the UFO phenomenon as mysterious as ever.
There are habitable planets within 25 light years of Earth. Thus aliens do not need to be a hundred million years (in human terms) more advanced than us. They need to be 25 + date of first sighting years + add a century for good luck ahead of us.
I have a very plausible reason why the aliens do not reveal themselves to us. It is not related to any of the feeble excuses why the Big Guy or Big Thing or whatever in the sky does not reveal xitself to us. Earth is a training planet. This is where the Galaxial Empire sends its space cadets for basic field experience in observing, abductions and the like, their mantra being take nothing but observations, leave nothing but anomalies. Because they are fresh out of boot camp sometimes they make mistakes and allow themselves to be seen.
In universe that is 14Gyr old, it would be a crazy coincidence for a civ to appear nearby almost exactly when we do.
Yes, but cut that down from 14 to 1 giga-ans because it is overwhelmingly probable that nearby solar systems formed at the same time as ours. From the lifecycle of Earth we know that it takes about 4 billion years from formation for a planet to be able to support the most basic lifeforms. Then it takes a few hundred million to liberate enough free oxygen for anything larger than a trilobyte. I agree totally in the concept of a civilisation window. Ours is only six thousand years old. On other planets civilisation may have come and gone, whether from a self-created catastrophe or coming from the cosmos. But who says that aliens have to be organic? Humanity will likely only be around for another century at most, before the bots take over; particularly attractive or cute humans may be kept by the robots as pets, be neutered and euthanased.