Encounters

So, I just watched a new show titled Encounters on Netflix, and it's got me thinking about UFOs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fascinated by the concept, and love to watch both fictional entertainment and speculative documentaries on the subject, because I have a curious mind. But I don't believe in UFOs. Which is to say, of course people experience unidentified aerial phenomena, but I remain skeptical that any of it ties to extraterrestrial intelligence, in the absence of any kind of convincing scientific evidence, which as yet remains out of our grasp. Pretty much the same way I approach religion.

We don't understand everything in the universe - not by a long shot. But we can make educated guesses about certain things, and the claims people make about aliens in spaceships clandestinely visiting Earth far exceed a rational analysis of the empirical evidence available to us.

There could be other intelligent life out there in the vast reaches of the cosmos - scientifically, it's not impossible. And even though it may be rare, on an astronomical scale, who knows? It could even be likely. Whether it's even possible for them to visit us, assuming they can find us and have the desire to make contact, considering the cosmic scale of both space and time, is another question entirely.

In the even more vast expanses of the human imagination, it may even be plausible - though not probable - for alien life of some kind to visit us in a manner demanding and capable of the utmost secrecy that documented encounters would require in order to be interpreted in this way. That said, like with extraordinary claims of religious phenomena, Occam's Razor instructs us to pick the simplest explanation that fits the data available to us.

It's not that my mind is closed to any reality that is unfamiliar to me. If a flying saucer landed tomorrow, and a green-skinned, one-eyed, tentacled monster gave a speech in a national address standing next to the president, or if impossible ships with impossible weapons started devastating the planet and enslaving mankind, I wouldn't reject what was going on before my very eyes. There just needs to be verifiable evidence for it first.

Consider how illogical it is for a society, having recently struggled through a pandemic, to be skeptical of what science tells us about how germs behave, while simultaneously defending the outrageous belief that the presence of flashing lights in the sky proves that our government is talking to beings from beyond the stars. On second thought, maybe those two superstitions are linked.

I don't doubt the visceral feelings and sometimes traumatic emotions that people endure. But I know a little something about how little our brains can be trusted to accurately interpret our sensory perceptions, and it's not solely because I took a few courses in psychophysics in college. I was able to experience it firsthand, during an isolated bout of sleep paralysis that occurred 17 years ago, in which I was convinced that I was awake, and that there was a malevolent humanoid figure beside my bed - until I opened my eyes to an empty room. It was the most terrifying moment of my life, but though I would not want to repeat it, I consider myself lucky to have experienced it once, as a powerful demonstration of the fundamental fallibility of human consciousness.

What I'm saying is, it's possible to remain skeptical about UFOs, while still being sensitive to the accounts of people who claim to have seen them. There are more stances than outright denial and unwavering belief - and, as always, the truth is most likely to lie somewhere in the middle. The way I see it, there are a number of different possible interpretations of any given UFO sighting (or abduction encounter). They're not all going to have the same explanation. Ranging from the least sensitive to the most outrageous, this is what immediately comes to mind:

Possibility 1: The Lie. There was no encounter. Either the witness knows this, and is engaging in willful deception, or has been made to believe - perhaps through the power of suggestion, or a fault of memory - that it happened. This interpretation isn't very sensitive to the witness' perspective (#BelieveTheAbductee, anyone?), but it has been known to happen.

Possibility 2: The Hallucination. There was some form of encounter, but only in the witness' mind. It is the nature of the event that has been misinterpreted, rather than the fact of an event occurring. For example, during my bout of sleep paralysis, there was nobody standing beside my bed, but it sure as hell felt like there was.

Possibility 3a: The Hoax. There was an encounter. However, it has a man-made explanation, and was executed as a prank - either with the witness' knowledge or not.

Possibility 3b: The Weather Balloon. There was an encounter, and it has a man-made explanation. The witness has merely misinterpreted a fairly normal phenomenon. I daresay this is the most common explanation for an alleged UFO sighting, especially among people not overly familiar with the appearance and behavior of aircraft.

Possibility 3c: The Stealth Jet. There was an encounter, and it has a man-made explanation. However, the witness' confusion is justified, because it involves experimental technology. For obvious reasons, an explanation is unlikely to be forthcoming, and other possibilities may be proffered (especially Swamp Gas or The Weather Balloon) to defer speculation.

Possibility 4a: Swamp Gas. There was an encounter, and it has a natural explanation. The witness has merely misinterpreted a fairly normal environmental phenomenon. However, in many cases, there may simply not be enough evidence (especially if all we have to rely on is witness testimony) to provide a satisfactory explanation.

Possibility 4b: Ball Lightning. There was an encounter, and it has a natural explanation. However, the witness' confusion is justified, because it involves an unexplained environmental phenomenon. The fact that science has yet to provide an explanation does not mean it is truly supernatural.

Possibility 5a: The Flying Saucer. There was an encounter, and it involves some form of extraterrestrial intelligence. The technology is so far beyond our understanding, that it will be a long time before we can adequately explain it.

Possibility 5b: The Chariot. There was an encounter, and it involves a truly supernatural phenomenon that defies logical explanation, whether it be extradimensional beings, or some kind of spiritual manifestation (e.g., angels, or human souls).

Allow me to conclude with a quote from the series, followed by a few lingering remarks:

"What the story's about is that re-enchantment of the environment. People used to believe in all kinds of weird stuff. In modern times, we don't believe in those kinds of creatures, but... weird stuff is still here. Obviously, there's something - whether it's in here in the landscape, or in people's minds - they're having the same sort of weird experiences, but they're expressing them in the pop culture of the time. Whether it was supernatural, or natural, something happened that literally changed people's lives. And that, in itself, to me, is what's important."

- David Clarke, Journalist

---

I mean, even if it were true that the universe is teeming with life, either there would be observable evidence of that, or its reach or our understanding wouldn't enable us to observe it. In that case, it makes little difference what people believe. We can keep an open mind, in anticipation of the future advent of further evidence, without tying ourselves to beliefs that aren't corroborated by observable reality. And there's nothing wrong with that approach. In fact, it can be very dangerous to believe in things that are not backed up by empirical evidence.

As an example, germs existed before man discovered them. And though it would have benefitted us to have behaved as though germs existed before we had evidence enough for us to understand them, I wouldn't expect man to have done so. Because without evidence, how could we have known that germ theory (if anybody had even conceived of such a thing) - and not miasma or "bad humors" - was a true and accurate representation of reality?

If we blindly follow the wrong theory out of some arbitrary decision, instead of whichever is the best one our current knowledge offers us, then we'd be in trouble. This is exactly how religious faith leads us astray, by artificially inflating our confidence in the myths we've chosen, while blinding us to a reality the complexity of which is often hard to parse initially, but is constantly being rendered in greater resolution by the magnifying glass of science (the use of which religion often objects to).

There's nothing - except the evidence we're able to collect and interpret - to tell us which among all possible paths is true. And that's what science does, performed correctly. It doesn't have faith, it doesn't have bias. Humans have these things, and they sometimes taint their experiments with it, but science itself remains pure. It evolves as our understanding evolves, and always reflects reality to the best of our ability to perceive and interpret it. Or else it isn't science, and it needs to be replaced by science.

---

Like, people claim a relationship between UFO activity and nuclear power, and you don't think that it might have something to do with splitting atoms and the ionization of the atmosphere? Even if it's a phenomenon we don't currently understand, it's a heck of a lot more plausible than immediately jumping to "extraterrestrial entities are monitoring the progress of our technology."

Also, like, of course the FBI, the CIA, and other national security agencies are going to be monitoring unexplained aerial phenomena. It's partly their job. That doesn't mean there's a conspiracy to cover up contact with an alien culture. But if they're dodgy about transparency, it's because much of what they do is confidential, and if they can't explain something, it's better to keep it under wraps. You don't want the people you're protecting thinking you can't do your job, and you don't want your enemies to know what your limitations are, either.