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. While a half century ago (B) was king, now (A) is king; (C) has always been neglected.
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."
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Given essentially infinite resources in the universe (or at least a large amount of readily available resources in our light cone) it seems unlikely that an elaborate containment strategy would need to be employed. Knowledge would be the only currency of interest.
Curiously should aliens be choosing to remain hidden and not help humans to reduce suffering and the suffering of other conscious entities on earth they would have to be highly unethical aliens. What would explain the ethical lapse?
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."
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Given essentially infinite resources in the universe (or at least a large amount of readily available resources in our light cone) it seems unlikely that an elaborate containment strategy would need to be employed. Knowledge would be the only currency of interest.
Curiously should aliens be choosing to remain hidden and not help humans to reduce suffering and the suffering of other conscious entities on earth they would have to be highly unethical aliens. What would explain the ethical lapse?