ALIENS

Self-published essay, Feb. 28

I get hit with the question/assertion of aliens a lot. It continues to come up, and it seems many people actually believe this nonsense. I never ask, “How do you know that?” Or “What proof do you have?” The reason I don’t is because I know they cannot substantiate such claims. They just “know.”

Let’s think this through. We can see with our best telescopes 13 billion light years away. That’s pretty far. And a race of beings that physically visited Earth would have had to travel farther than that. This means that this race of beings possesses technology that Hollywood couldn’t even make up.

The distance to the moon is 240,000 miles. The distance to Mars is 80 million miles. A light year is 5.8 trillion miles. So, this race of beings is traveling more than 75 trillion miles. Now, you guess what kind of technology they’re using. Because your guess is just as good as anyone else’s.

So, why … why would such a society of beings make the trip?? Why would they come here? Let’s say I’m too dumb to figure it out. Let’s say they have indeed come here.

Okay, this group of beings travels more than 75 trillion miles—using technology that makes us look like cavemen—and they come here and what? They demonstrate incompetence? They crash in the desert and get picked up by the US government. Again, let’s say that’s true. The US government now has possession of the spacecraft that was used by this group of beings. Would members of the government know what to do with this technology? They would not even know what they were looking at.

Imagine traveling in a time machine back to the fifteenth century. And you drop off an iPhone. So, now people in the 1400s have our technology! Would people from the 1400s know how to reverse engineer an iPhone? No, they would not. They would stare at it blinking and assume it was witchcraft or something. They would not be like, “Ah ha! Now we possess the power of the internet! Hello, Tinder! Hello, Snapchat!”

Let us assume you want to make contact with the baboons at the zoo. Why would you do this? Doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that’s what you wanted to do. Would it not be in your best interest to find the smartest baboon? Of course it would. Would you seek out the dumbest baboon?

So, why when aliens come to Earth do they tend to reveal themselves to a guy with tin foil on his head living in an Airstream trailer in the middle of a bean field?

Why do aliens not land at MIT? Or Stanford? Or Cambridge? Or CalTech? Why has Noam Chomsky never reported aliens walking into his office? Or Roger Penrose? Or Stephen Hawking when he was alive?

The beings who supposedly visit Earth—for no discernible reason—can easily observe us from afar. They could effortlessly scan the entirety of our internet, learn our languages, and gather some detailed intelligence. They would quickly determine that (compared to them) we are not very advanced. This might also explain why neither Isaac Newton nor Galileo reported any such sightings.

Conspiracy theories are fun. One gets to feel smart and know the “real truth” (cue spooky music) at the low cost of nothing. You don’t have to read or know anything. This is very attractive. We didn’t land on the moon. The Titanic didn’t really sink. 9/11 was an inside job. The Earth is flat. Bill Gates is trying to control your mind. As are the chemtrails.

One thinks of something Cicero said in the first century BC: “Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads.” Y’know, the kind of people aliens travel 75 trillion miles to talk to.