Monday, January 22, 2007

If we're dealing with aliens -- regardless whether or not they originate in space or on Earth -- maybe their clumsy, oblique interactions with us can be explained if they're endowed with intelligence but devoid of sentience. They could have taken an evolutionary route that bypassed awareness entirely, or they could have achieved a form of sentience only to lose it, perhaps by recklessly merging with their machines.

"Ufonauts" are often described as behaving in a military or insect-like manner, even moving in lockstep. Maybe they're interested in us because we're aware in a way they aren't, and they're determined to acquire our capacity for self-reflective thought in order to communicate with us. In essence, our interaction with the UFO intelligence could be a dialogue with a complex but myopic machine. Maybe "they" have never encountered a species like us and are genuinely baffled -- insofar as a distributed computer can be "baffled."





Ardent Singularitarians will doubtlessly point out that our brains are effectively distributed computers, in which case the aliens, if they're here, should possess sentience even if mechanical. But a sophisticated intelligence doesn't necessarily need to be aware of itself to perform a task. If we're observing beings created by someone or something else, sentience might have been deliberately excluded from their repertoire for fear of losing control of a useful tool.

Our visitors seem both wildly sophisticated and limitlessly stupid. If they're collectively lacking what we commonly term "spirit," it might be possible to resolve this seeming paradox.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like where your going with this.

Mac said...

Brent--

Me too! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Mac, are you talking about them having some sort of "hive mentality" perchance?

Mac said...

Katie--

Exactly! I was even going to use the "H" word but neglected to do so.

Anonymous said...

this is being linkdumped here and there, good for you. And I've never heard this hypothesis before, so double good for you.

Paul said...

So... does this mean that politicians are aliens?

Mac said...

So... does this mean that politicians are aliens?

I thought that was a given.

Erich Kuersten said...

I like it. This dovetails with my speculation that aliens feed on our souls and human suffering, that instead of the "sadistic/masochistic" response of empathy or sociopathy, they have something else, like to them our "essence" is akin to what electrical currency is to us... which is akin to the Bob Lazar "soul farm" concept or the Matrix thing about using humans as batteries. That's why they instruct the church to use its power to fight against women's rights (abortion means less wattage) and to breed freely without regard to the surrounding ecological system (pollution brings misery which means higher wattage)

Anonymous said...

This is so speculative that it borders on mental masturbation.

Happy circle jerk!

Anonymous said...

Is this a "one size fits all" hypothesis?

I suspect that there may be more than one species of "visitor", as descriptions vary and they are often seen to be working in cooperation with one another - John Velez's drawings of little cloaked entities and the more common Grey on the NOVA website come to mind...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/johnvelez.html

As you mention, some do seem to demonstrate a hive or organized mentality. Would be interesting to see whether those that do also seem to be garbed in 'uniform' as well. Might it possibly be a social structure or do you suspect it rather more instinctual?

Anonymous said...

hilarious
sorry, but simply hilarious

please go get a life, all of you, there are many actually USEFUL things you could be doing for society...maybe

Anonymous said...

The hive mind idea is interesting but I don't know how it would work on a technological scale. That's like saying that ants in time could travel in space. I don't think a hive mind could progress past the purpose of its own survival.

omnip0d said...

Using this hypothesis, it wouldn't be unthinkable to believe that the beings that are visiting us are, in effect a synthetic slave race, created to explore and collect information from around the universe/galaxy without putting indiviuals at risk.

Risking a sentient individual's life may be inherently, well, risky. A sentient and thinking being is, without personal doubt, much more capable of creating and advancing ideas and technology.

omnip0d said...

Jonah, i would say this hints strongly at societal structure. They could have races specifically "designed" for their specific purpose. Restricting free-thought to certain segments of society would have undeniable advantages when it comes to social control.

Eric said...

Brian is right. The intelligences ultimately responsible for the UFO phenomenon wouldn't put themselves in harm's way. They have more important things to be doing, or maybe have evolved past even being curious. What we witness is the behavior of their creations, purpose-built or -bred for data acquisition and space exploration. Extrapolate from our own space program -- the Spirit rover would seem like a weird mix of intelligent and stupid too.

Anonymous said...

"Our visitors seem both wildly sophisticated and limitlessly stupid."

Perhaps, just like the creatures they are observing, no?