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The weird thing about UFO lore is the idea that a super-advanced civ would be roaming between the stars in large spinning hubcaps. Or weird glowing orbs. I'm w
by TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
The weird thing about UFO lore is the idea that a super-advanced civ would be roaming between the stars in large spinning hubcaps. Or weird glowing orbs.
I'm willing to believe it's a big galaxy and we have NFI what's going on out there.
But UFO mythology seems very human-scale and not so alien at all.
- consumer451 3y agoIt's techie deism for the modern day.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoHuh. "Simulation theory" is almost indistinguishable from classical deism, if you squint.
- consumer451 3y agoIt is absolutely that! see my previous rant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33580896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33580896 I think that maybe I get really worked up about this because I am still pissed off that Santa Claus wasn't real, or at least that I once believed he was. I am not being facetious.
- moron4hire 3y agoIt's always weirded me out how many ostensibly Christian households teach their children about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc, and let the kids think they are real. Do they not realize they are sewing the first seeds of doubt the children will have in their household religion?
- graemep 3y agoI think the "ostensibly" has a lot to do with it. I am Christian and never told my kids Santa Claus was real. On the other hand there is no harm in stories. I also do not want my kids to believe something just because I believe it. They should think for themselves and to do otherwise it is dishonest. I do agree it is sometimes odd. I found myself trying to explain to a bewildered Sikh guy on Twitter why British society gets upset when people tell kids that Santa Claus is not real but is fine with people telling kids that Jesus is not real.
- consumer451 3y agoHmm, I wonder if it serves a societal purpose. As far as I can remember, catching my parents in "the big Santa lie" was the first time that I realized that adults are full of crap. This is a valuable lesson, right? But I felt so betrayed! It was the beginning of my journey into fact-based reasoning, naturalism, etc. I distinctively remember thinking: I will never believe in magic again! I started asking too many questions at catholic Sunday school, and the Sunday school teacher and I decided it was best that we part ways. I am over 40 now, but this is such a strong and important memory. I am still a little pissed off about it. This is hilarious, and maybe a bit profound.
- 127361 3y agoAnd how deceiving children is normalized in society, together with even worse forms of mistreatment. Because children are low status and can't fight back, adults and society in general can get away with doing all sorts of unjustified nasty things to them. That no adult would ever tolerate. It really is a dominance hierarchy there, something we expect from animals. People are supposed to be better than that.
- Slow_Hand 3y agoThat’s certainly what happened to me. I can’t recall ever believing in Santa whole-heartedly and the knowledge of it’s falseness was a foot in the door to question everything else. Strangely my brother was far, far older when my mother and I had to convince him that Santa was not actually real. She was afraid that kids at school would make fun of him if we didn’t pop his bubble first. I’m not sure what to make of that difference in belief between my brother and I.
- graemep 3y agoI think your comparison with Greek gods is unfair. I would say Descartes is a better parallel. In fact it is just a recasting of his ideas. It is not science, but it is perfectly respectable philosophy.
- consumer451 3y agoCan you please explain why the Greek god comparison is unfair? I used it because they used their latest tech, as does alien simulation theory.
- graemep 3y agoThere was no technology involved, only observation. Did the Greeks believe their myths that literally? It is very hard to know how ancient people's interpreted stories like that unless you have an in-depth knowledge of the culture. I do not, but its a question worth asking - particularly about a culture that produced so many naturalistic explanations for things. Even if you are right and they did believe it literally it is still the opposite of the simulation theory. It is accepting the first explanation that comes along, without applying doubt, whereas simulation theory is based on extensive doubt of even your immediate senses - exactly the same as Descarte's line of thought.
- viraptor 3y agoIt's it really that though? Deism involves some god and worship normally. I'm happy to say "that's a cool theory and if we experimentally confirm some quantisation of our universe, that's not the most stupid explanation to think of", while still rejecting any idea of deism or thinking I need to "do anything" about that fact. I mean, the creator can be strictly just that, like I'm not a god of my breakfast every day.
- bluesounddirect 3y agoSanta Claus was a mushroom https://www.ffungi.org/blog/the-influence-of-hallucinogenic-mushrooms-on-christmas https://www.ffungi.org/blog/the-influence-of-hallucinogenic-... As a husband of a Sami woman , I wonder when my kids will make the connection that the elves look oddly like the people from the old country .
- mrtksn 3y agoThis doesn't even have to be a metaphor, there are literal cults based on literal aliens. Some of them are quite large and influential. The non-organised ones though, I think make people feel good for themselves by either making them feel important(advanced civilisation came across the universe for me) or reassured (it's going to be alright, the universe works as expected - no funny business)
- 01272024 3y agoDon't be so quick to dismiss claims. In this case, it's very real, and you're doing yourself a disservice by asserting otherwise without searching. I know for a fact that it's real. I spent about a year outside in Colorado, and saw several objects beyond explanation. Most are small and hard to see unless you know to look in the darkness of the sky between the stars. A couple put the fear of God into me - so big that they were the size of my two outstretched hands against the sky. Spheres cloaked against clouds in the night sky. Incomprehensibly large Y-shaped craft studded with what look like stars. Military-looking craft silently soaring directly above. Who knows if they're alien or manmade.. but whether you believe it or not, they're in the sky every night.
- consumer451 3y agoI have seen slightly weird things in the sky. But to assume that they are an advanced technological species is not an assumption that I can jump to. I always found a much more plausible explanation. For 15 years, I lived near a NOAA station which launched balloons, but I didn't know that at first. They launch one right at sunset, every day. When it hits the sun at 1000 feet, it looks pretty darn crazy! Sometimes there were shadows from low clouds blocking the sunset, and the balloon would only get lit up at >10,000 feet, and it would "jump" in different directions due to high altitude wind sheers. I was very disappointed when I learned that truth.
- 01272024 3y agoI agree, assuming it's aliens is a huge stretch. I can only say that aerial vehicles hundreds of meters across are silently traversing the sky. I hesitate to say it's manmade or otherwise. I'd have to see it to believe it. And while I'll concede that there are bizarre phenomenon of weather and lighting that can occur (google "crown flash"), the "Y" ship I saw was 5 full moons in width and absolutely, assuredly there. On a side note, these objects also have the ability to "come out of" and "return to" the night sky. It's as if a spotlight were pointed at one area of the sky, and the craft unintentionally crossed the path. They come from nothing, and they return to nothing, within about 15 seconds. It's hard to explain. Anyways, nothing personal if we don't agree on the matter. I know HN is based on hard evidence and logic, I can't provide either. But it's good to keep an open mind and keep looking for answers.
- bawolff 3y ago> between the stars in large spinning hubcaps Although it is quite a coincidence that the spinning hub cap ufo sightings seem to be much more common during time periods when things like the avrocar were being tested.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoMost human mythology is human-scale and not very alien. Pretty much all "gods" act like people, just with extra magical power.
- 127361 3y agoSpot on, and one god has been described as having symptoms of mental illness too. I also wonder how many "prophets" in religion were actually suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_of_Jesus And if you criticized this ridiculous mythology, you were persecuted and shunned.
- gloryjulio 3y agoNice summary, I will steal this quote
- deadbolt 3y agoI'm trying to think of any mythology which wouldn't be considered human-scale, like you describe, and can't really think of any at all. Do you have any thoughts on some outliers as far as mythology goes?
- tiahura 3y agoAnd have nothing better to do than fly around the US Southwest until they have engine trouble.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- krapp 3y agoBefore flying saucers became pop culture, people reported "phantom rocketships" or literal sailing ships in the sky. When people claimed to encounter the aliens in such craft, they would claim to be from Venus or Mars, until it became common knowledge that neither Venus nor Mars contain advanced life. Once the "greys" became popular, everyone reported greys. Before that, aliens were far more diverse in appearance (notwithstanding the common appearance of "space white people".) If you study accounts of alien encounters and abduction, none of the technology abductees report seems extremely advanced, much less alien. Recognizable computers with buttons and dials. Levers. The aliens never bother to offer any equations or technical diagrams to prove their technology. In the whole centuries-long span of avowed alien encounters, no one has ever come away with anything we didn't already know. Of course, one could say the same thing about prophecies and Nostradamus. Encounters with angels, or demon summoning. Always just a hall of mirrors, always maddeningly subjective, never anything to hang one's hat on. Even in the very first recorded modern abduction scenario, Betty and Barney Hill, the aliens gave Betty a book to take with her. Evidence! Oh, but later another alien just look it back. Womp womp. Oh but there's a star map. Oh wait, it turns out it doesn't stand up to actual scrutiny. It's just dots and circles on a piece of paper, and so simple one wonders why an advanced civilization would even find it useful. And here we are in 2024 being told about city-sized craft and black pyramids and "non human biologics" and still not a damn bit of proof. And even with the weird outliers like the Falcon Lake incident or the Phoenix lights or Shag Harbor, where there is evidence of something weird or multiple eyewitnesses (not that that necessarily means anything,) things still don't make sense. Tell me how the Falcon Lake UFO makes sense. The witness looks like he pressed a waffle-iron against his chest because the UFO (allegedly) hit him with its weird grid of exhaust ports before taking off. The technology being described is both advanced and ridiculously quaint, as it so often is. The thing reported by Japan airlines 1628 - a weird spinning cylinder covered in flaming tubes and random lights. Obviously not Venus unless the pilot was deranged (which can't be taken off the table,) but if not, then what? You'd be surprised just how many UFOs seem to incorporate flames and rockets and that vanish in bursts of sulfur and flame as if they were demons returning to Hell. Almost as if they draw from the same subconscious archetypes. None of it makes any sense if taken at face value, and so much of it is obviously folklore, as it follows the structure of folklore.
- 3y ago
- gfodor 3y agoCorrect - but also sufficiently alien that you should consider a scenario where we have a sibling species here on Earth with us.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoAlien civilizations almost certainly wouldn’t be traveling between the stars in ships. In the unlikely event that aliens are in our solar system, it would make tons more sense to assume they got here via a Bracewell-Von Neumann probe. At which point any “spinning hubcaps” would just be vehicles for exploring the planet and taking samples. (No I don’t believe there are aliens here, but I like my sci-fi to be realistic.)
- cyanydeez 3y agoI'm not willing to believe any intelligent life is coming here because the timescale and physics are basically insurmountable. until demonstrated otherwise, it's indistinguishable from magic or religion.
- Cyberthal 3y ago[dead]
- Unbefleckt 3y agoNot necessarily, we don't observe UFOs in the solar system or beyond, they're almost always seen around earth. Besides the obvious explanation for this I always imagined that if they were alien they would be time machines or interdimensional machines given that people report meeting biological life from within. But again, I think we see UFOs on earth more than in space because they're sadly not alien.