...or, bring your leader to us

 

The Washington Post had an article --- a highly skeptical one --- about UFOs, yesterday.

UFO Mania Is Out of Control.  Please Stop.

by Joel Achenbach

------------------ [excerpt] ------------- The lack of resolution to the UFO debate appears to be built into the inquiry.  The subject is interesting only to the extent that the phenomena under scrutiny remain mysterious --- and therefore outside the normal boundaries of logic, journalism and science.

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some of the Reader Comments:

^  The real aliens are just kicking back while their drones survey the situation and scare the humans.

^  Aliens made him write this to throw us off the scent.

^  "We have come for Donald, his mission is complete.  He has destroyed all common sense and intelligence in this place, the United States.......we will drop him in the land of China next....."

^  Maybe the weird things we have observed are semi-autonomous probes.

^  I hope one of them is NOT my ex-mother-in-law.

^  When is the last time you tried to talk to ants, and why would we?  Sure, a few scientists might want to, but most people find ants irrelevant or irritating.

We are the ants on the surface of the planet.

        That "they" (if these aliens do exist)  would want to communicate with humanity might not be reasonable thinking.  What would any very, very advanced civilization gain?  Can we, with our limits, even understand anything they are or want?  Do they even have goals or wants as we understand the concepts?

        We don't know anything about these things.

        Everything else is the same thinking:  "I see lightning, must be the gods.  I just proved I am right."

        We don't know anything, of any sort, about these things.

^  Extremely well thought out article.  However, I don't necessarily agree that "UFOs are a distraction".  For me, the idea of it all is more of an escape.  Much like the movies I watch, the books I read, the games I play, the music I listen to, pondering the possibility of other civilizations existing beyond ours is a breath of fresh air for me.  

        In fact, this recent "flap" has been the catalyst for some truly amazing conversations of late.  Then again, I approach the subject from a place of hope and not one of fear.  I'd like to think if anything could bring us all together, it'd be something altogether not us.

Either way, great job here.

^  It took a mere 120 years for us to go from powered flight to sending a semi-autonomous probe to another planet.  That is a blink of an eye, really, on the time scale of our galaxy.  We did it, it is completely plausible that someone sent a probe to our solar system.

An AI-based probe solves the problem of super long space flights.  It just turns on and phones home when it arrives. ... There is no green tentacled aliens in there driving.

I don't have the answer.  I just think that this is an important scientific problem.  And we should devote resources to observation and cataloguing of these things.  It is the first step to finding out what they are.

The data does not make any sense.  Which is a GREAT thing in science.  Let's gather some more data and figure this out.

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