UFOs and Status

Status seems pretty central to the UFO phenomena.

For example, reports have been filed on well over 100K encounters worldwide so far, but most of the books & movies on the topic focus on the same few cases. These cases are chosen in part for having more witnesses, detail, and physical evidence. But they seem especially chosen for having prestigious witnesses and locations. Seen by police or military workers, especially pilots. At military bases, especially housing nukes. These same books and movies are most eager to interview sympathetic people who are very high status, such as heads of state.

Similarly, many ancient legal systems had formal rules relating status to whose legal testimony to believe. And the social status of witnesses matters greatly today in court, even when there are no explicit rules requiring this.

Apparently most who witness UFOs as part of their job don’t report them, fearing reputation consequences. Because UFO fans are widely seen as very low status, at least among cultural elites. Similarly, organizations like police, militaries, airlines, and airports don’t want to be associated with such events, and so discourage reports by members. Unless some outside monitoring system discourages it, such orgs probably simply destroy such reports when they can.

When high officials have been asked privately why they would be reluctant to publicly admit to UFOs, they consistently say that the public rewards them for projecting ability and knowledge re their topic areas. UFOs require them instead to admit that they don’t know, and that there may be other parties around far more able than they. This effect is larger for police and militaries, compared to other agencies. And it is largest for the United States, at least during the period when it has been nearly the world’s dominant military power.

This all fits with several other militaries around the world releasing their UFO reports, long before the US has considered doing so. And it predicts that coming US release will be minimal, at least compared to the data the US could have and may have been collecting.

As a mildly elite academic, I can directly feel the status hit. If UFOs have an exotic intelligent cause, then we as a species have a lot less freedom than we thought to direct our destiny. And our governments, elites, and academics can do less to protect or inform us.

Yes, we might fund more UFO research, but I honestly don’t see the evidence situation changing that much for the indefinite future. Given how much data we already have, I don’t see more funding changing the overall data situation that much. These aren’t events you can seek out; you have to wait for them. And if there are intelligent exotic UFO causers here, they are clearly not eager to clearly show themselves.

And as long as the data situation remains ambiguous, I expect academic elites to remain adamant in dismissing exotic explanations. They’ll probably divert most funding they get on this topic to other topics they respect more. It will be hard to make much intellectual progress here, and those who do will be consistently slighted by academic elites. Even if society comes to accept UFOs more as a legitimate topic of investigation, elites will make very sure that the people who have so far championed this cause will not get more respect. Instead funding and respect will go to existing elites who deign to touch on the topic, at least from acceptable angles.

Status effects may even help explain some key features of UFO behavior. For example, among humans today, the response to an aggressive physical attack usually depends on how strong is the attacker relative to the defender. (The strengths of both sides’ allies are usually included in this calculation.) When the attacker is much stronger, the usual response is submission. And if they have similar strength, then the defender is likely to react vigorously.

However, if the attacker is far weaker, like a toddler attacking an adult, the usual response is to signal one’s strength by easily deflecting the attack, with little harm to either side. And in the reports I’ve read, this seems to be the usual reaction of UFOs to human attack: easy deflection. Which seems to signal their awareness, intelligence, abilities, and status stance. Maybe they sometimes let us seem them just so they can dis us in this way.

Status effects might even explain their lack of communication. (If they exist, of course.) Often small nations are eager to “enter into talks” with big nations just for the status bump this gives; “they take us seriously, and include us among those who must be consulted”. Conversely, the ultimate status dunk is to refuse to talk to or about someone; you act as if they are as worthy of this as a gnat. Might this explain the otherwise-puzzling lack of direct communication from intelligent exotic causes of UFOs?

A perhaps related and more ominous possible reason for their lack of communication is that they expect this to lead to us asking them some awkward questions. About our history, their expectations about us, their previous behavior toward us, their future plans regarding us, etc. Often the simplest way to avoid having to answer awkward questions is simply refusing to talk. Maybe how they plan to treat us reflects their view of our relative status, and we might not react well to hearing this.