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Makes me wonder what the psychology and politics of anti-extraterrestrial beliefs and rules are. It's very plausible other beings exist, but what necessary axio

Makes me wonder what the psychology and politics of anti-extraterrestrial beliefs and rules are. It's very plausible other beings exist, but what necessary axioms disintegrate if a society comes to believe in aliens, and why is it important to isolate and shame people who suspect it? I can see how our dominant moral systems are rooted in the idea of human primacy and a single One supreme being. Recognition that we can appeal to super beings to intervene on our behalf could arrest our evolutionary intellectual development by causing our civilizations to optimize for pleasing said beings, instead of organizing ourselves to elevate human minds that enable a more natural and free evolution for our species. There may be some evolutionary rule about life where a species only evolves along degrees of freedom and our development becomes arrested when we optimize for the constraint of appealing to the discretion of super beings, sort of like domesticated animals vs. wild ones. To adapt to co-existing with a technologically advanced species, you would need a conceptual or moral degree of freedom and agency beyond them, which made peaceful and free co-existence possible, and provided some basis for principled equality of life. (an agreement on a One god whose will has been revealed them as well would go a long way, and as an idea, could secure our ability to evolve independently of our advanced co-habitants. This may be the rational evolutionary case for monotheism, as a necessary condition for moral agency across significant differences.) The most obvious consequence of introducing a new super being species would be how we would organize ourselves and relate to each other around them, and not just find increasingly subtle ways to murder each other to secure their favoured status. If humans forfeited our moral agency by optimizing for becoming subjects of these super beings, we would be putting responsibility on the super beings to govern us, and arrest our own evolutionary development. Maybe the anti-extraterrestrial people have a deeper understanding of this. Or they just recognize, maybe the arrival of such a species would irreconcilably polarize us all between those who could sustain their own moral agency in the face of a superior power, and those who give it up to optimize for material animal ingroup security, and the ensuing war would wipe us all out - or the aliens would do it for us. Maybe it will take another couple hundred years for them to really arrive as we're not quite fully baked from an evolutionary perspective, and we need to be on average more intelligent than we rather obviously are now. I'm sure they laugh at our nuclear energy use and social media as being the civilizational equivalent to trepanation though. I wonder what their jokes are like.

the_af 5y ago
I don't know that such a thing as "anti extraterrestrial" belief exists. Here's two beliefs/points of view that are compatible: 1. There's a very high chance there's life out there in the universe. There may even be intelligent life, too. 2. It's unlikely extraterrestrial intelligent life will be able to reach Earth. Most reports of UFOs are either made up bullshit or the human brain finding patterns where there are none. Or simply classified military tech. Or people craving attention. Not one person that laughs at fake accounts of alien abduction and probing does this because they are afraid of coexisting with alien intelligence. Instead, they do it because fake accounts of alien abduction are hilarious.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  Regarding whether the anti- view exists, two points. The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them. The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias. As an experiment, let's see if this comment comes back to bite me. We know from other disciplines that extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence at all, so I'd speculate it's probably inappropriate to mock the lived experience of people who identify as alien abductees. The OP paper describing the implied necessary physics of unrelated reports makes me think it might be time for a university to create an spacefaring humanities program as an extension of gifted programs, which includes physics and math, engineering, biology, anthropology, theology, philosophy and ethics, or even to include it in the core curriculum of public schools. It's not like they would learn to believe anything dumber than what has already been taught in schools over the last century, and at least a spacefaring humanities curriculum would equip generations with tools for what seems now like an inevitability.
  - the_af 5y ago
    > The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them. This is a telltale symptom of quacks and cranks. "My truth is being suppressed". The more normal explanation of superiors telling someone to shut up is either because it's top secret information about military tech or plain old bullshit. Only quacks come to the conclusion that "they want to shut me up". In fact, it's one of the items in the crackpot index. > The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias This has trivial counterexamples: SETI exists and it's a real scientific undertaking, if low priority. There's also the search for extraterrestrial life (either existing or traces of past life) in Mars. None of these are met with scorn. But also, as a sibling comment mentioned: UFOlogy is the realm of woo. Therefore, before making assertions about ET life you must have really solid evidence and the patience to weather the association with woo and quackery, but this is not an anti-ET stance, but rather an anti-woo one. Who wants to be associated with some weirdo claiming he was sexually abused by space aliens? But if you have solid proof of real phenomenon, instead of shaky footage and unreliable witnesses, it would be a major scientific achievement.

the_af 5y ago

I don't know that such a thing as "anti extraterrestrial" belief exists. Here's two beliefs/points of view that are compatible: 1. There's a very high chance there's life out there in the universe. There may even be intelligent life, too. 2. It's unlikely extraterrestrial intelligent life will be able to reach Earth. Most reports of UFOs are either made up bullshit or the human brain finding patterns where there are none. Or simply classified military tech. Or people craving attention. Not one person that laughs at fake accounts of alien abduction and probing does this because they are afraid of coexisting with alien intelligence. Instead, they do it because fake accounts of alien abduction are hilarious.

motohagiography 5y ago
Regarding whether the anti- view exists, two points. The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them. The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias. As an experiment, let's see if this comment comes back to bite me. We know from other disciplines that extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence at all, so I'd speculate it's probably inappropriate to mock the lived experience of people who identify as alien abductees. The OP paper describing the implied necessary physics of unrelated reports makes me think it might be time for a university to create an spacefaring humanities program as an extension of gifted programs, which includes physics and math, engineering, biology, anthropology, theology, philosophy and ethics, or even to include it in the core curriculum of public schools. It's not like they would learn to believe anything dumber than what has already been taught in schools over the last century, and at least a spacefaring humanities curriculum would equip generations with tools for what seems now like an inevitability.
- the_af 5y ago
  > The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them. This is a telltale symptom of quacks and cranks. "My truth is being suppressed". The more normal explanation of superiors telling someone to shut up is either because it's top secret information about military tech or plain old bullshit. Only quacks come to the conclusion that "they want to shut me up". In fact, it's one of the items in the crackpot index. > The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias This has trivial counterexamples: SETI exists and it's a real scientific undertaking, if low priority. There's also the search for extraterrestrial life (either existing or traces of past life) in Mars. None of these are met with scorn. But also, as a sibling comment mentioned: UFOlogy is the realm of woo. Therefore, before making assertions about ET life you must have really solid evidence and the patience to weather the association with woo and quackery, but this is not an anti-ET stance, but rather an anti-woo one. Who wants to be associated with some weirdo claiming he was sexually abused by space aliens? But if you have solid proof of real phenomenon, instead of shaky footage and unreliable witnesses, it would be a major scientific achievement.