The ETH has been under pressure for a long-time. The biggest problem is that the more data we have (especially when we can see the geographical and temporal variations) the less easy it is to fit to the idea that space travellers are dropping by in their fancy flying saucers (how we look back to the simplicity of the early, Contactee era with a misty eye). We also have reports of contacts with "aliens" going back centuries (along with other "ascended" masters) and beyond that a range of other entities, suggesting the real possibility that these aliens are just new masks worn by an age-old phenomena.
Readers who've followed this blog since '06 might recall my own disillusionment with the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis.
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5 comments:
And, of course:
"The good thing is that a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that something is wrong with the ETH. Equally, Jacques Vallee's concerns and ideas have percolated through the Fortean community sparking others, like the Paranormal Brat Pack, to come up with new ideas and theories."
The review I mention also quotes from you (and some other Brat Packers ;) ).
I’m not willing to discard the ETH altogether at this point. There’s plenty of strangeness to go around and still include the ETH.
I can imagine a highly advanced intelligence not bound by a body in the sense we use the term. Instead, what if the body that housed the intelligence was a machine, self sufficient, self-powered, and even self-replicating. Time and distance might take on new meanings to such a being. The mind and the machine could be inseparable. This being, or these beings could wonder the universe for eternity, continuously adding to their body of knowledge.
I would finally suggest that this could be a type of life form we ourselves may be evolving toward. I’m just saying!
Michael
The alien contact hypothesis is just "alien" enough in its scope of experience to be plausible. An alien civilization capable of traveling here, would be old, unusual and advanced to the point of what we might interpret as magic. That high level of understanding could and probably does bleed into their very biology and state of existence. Our definitions of them will always fall short because we simply can't grasp the long view of their development.
I think its great to launch coffee shop thought experiments on the subject but not to the point of completely side stepping what is actually known (and even admitted to by FOI sources). Of course there is always a chance that other phenomenon have some crossover here. There's room for all of it on some level.
-Denny
I'm not about to suggest that the ETH must be cast aside. I write about the possibility that we could be dealing with an ancient interstellar machine intelligence in "Darklore Vol. II" as well as here on Posthuman Blues.
I'm frequently misunderstood on this (no surprise - most people in ufology have no interest in anything other than their own opinions). I have consistently stated that I personally find the ETH to be the most plausible of the non-terrestrial, paranormal answers to the UFO enigma. My beef is with the ETH as ETFact group, like Stan Friedman, or the exopols, who accept it as a proven fact.
Paul
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