As much as I would like to find out there are aliens among us, I don't think there are. But I'm hopeful enough that I watched the interview with David Grusch. Before watching the interview, I was suspicious of the story because of my general skepticism toward alien visitation. I didn't know whether he was deceiving or was himself deceived, though. In clips I saw before the full interview, I got the impression that he hadn't seen any evidence of aliens himself. He was getting all his information from other people. But now, having seen the full interview, I think it's more likely that he's lying than that he believes what he's saying and is just duped.
First, there's just a vibe I get from his manerisms and the way he talks that gives me a subjective feeling that he's lying. I used to put no confidence in this sort of thing until experience taught me that when my gut tells me something about somebody, it's usually right. Of course it's a stronger impression with some people than with others, and in his case, my gut wasn't screaming that he's lying. It was just elbowing me that he's lying.
Second, he engaged in a little psuedoscientific non-sense during the interview. At the 7:50 mark, he appeals to his physics background to raise the possibility that they could be interdimensional beings. He says, "I couch it as somebody who studied physics where maybe they're coming from a different physical dimension as described in quantum mechanics. We know there's extra dimensions due to high energy particle collisions, etc., and there's a theoretical framework to explain that, yeah." The theoretical framework he's probably referring to is string theory (or M theory) because that's the only viable theory in physics that involves extra dimensions. In the most current version of string theory, there are ten spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. We only see three spatial dimensions because the others are all compactified. Individual strings can vibrate within the extra dimensions, which is what gives particles their properties, but you couldn't have a whole civilizations living in them with living beings that could travel back and forth between those dimensions and ours. That makes no sense within string theory. It treats these extra dimensions as if they are different three dimensional realms like ours that a being could living in and be separate from our three dimensions. That is the stuff of science fiction, but it has no relationship to real physics, not even string theory. But worse than that, his claim that we know there's extra dimensions due to high energy particle collisions is flat out false. There's no evidence at all that string theory is true other than its internal consistency and its prediction of gravity, and there have been no studies at CERN or any other collider showing anything at all about extra dimensions. This is all psuedoscientific nonsense, and I think the fact that he appeals to his own study of physics to make these claims shows that he's lying.
Third, he used words (or tried to use words) that are obviously not part of his usual vocabulary. This shows that he's pretentious. He's trying to come across as more intelligent, professional, and authoritative than he really is. I'm always a little suspicious when people behave that way. I'll give some examples. At one point, he talks about aliens being interested in our nuclear weapons, and he says they wanted to see how far we had advanced in our "fizzle" technology (18:50). He probably meant fission technology. Fizzle is what they call it when a nuclear bomb underperforms, so "fizzle technology" is nonsense. At another point he said, ". . .true nonprosaic UAP situation could be constrived as, you know, a provocation. . ." (32:00) Constrived isn't a word. He probably meant to say "construed," but he got it mixed up with "contrived." He came across as pretentious in his word choices throughout the interview, and the whole thing just raised my suspicions about his honesty.
Pretentiousness is something I've noticed with some Christian apologists, too. I noticed it a lot with Ravi Zacharias. It isn't just speaking intelligently or with a good vocabulary. William Lane Craig speaks intelligently, but he rarely strikes me as pretentious. It's hard to put my finger on it, but I recognize it when I hear it. It comes in unnecessary word flourishes or obscure word choices when more common words work just as well or better. People sometimes say things like "constrived" when they're trying too hard.
Pretentiousness has its place, though. If you're writing poetry or some literary masterpiece or you're trying to get published or noticed, it makes sense to be a little pretentious. In those cases, you're trying to dazzle or impress. But if you're just trying to communicate information, the object should be clarity over other considerations, and too many times I've seen people sacrifice clarity in an effort to appear intelligent, sophisticated, or authoritative. It's especially noticeable when somebody tries too hard and doesn't fully understand the words they're using.
To be fair, though, there's at least one thing that counts in favour of Grusch's honesty. Allegedly, he testified under oath about these things. So, he put himself at risk of some kind of prosecution if he's caught lying. That does count in his favour. It's not enough to convince me, though, because I don't know what he actually said under oath. I just saw the interview. He wasn't under oath during the interview. For that matter, I'm not certain he testified under oath. I only heard that he did. I suspect he probably did because he does seem eager to have Congress or somebody look into these things. At the very least, you'd think he'd be willing to testify under oath.
I'm not saying that I know, am uttelry convinced, or that I'm absolutely sure that Grusch is lying. I think he's probably lying, but I could be wrong. That's all I'm saying.
Let me say something about my skepticism that aliens are visiting us. First, I don't claim that it's impossible. I just think it's highly unlikely for a few reasons.
I used to think it was nearly impossible that aliens have visited us becasue of an argument I used to have. The only reason a civilization would go to the enormous trouble of singling out another solar system among the billions that exist in our galaxy is if there were something that set it apart, and about the only thing that would set one apart is if it had life (especially intelligent or advanced life) on it. The only way aliens could know there was intelligent life on our planet was through our radio waves. The farthest our radio transmissions could possibly have traveled by now is 100 light years. The fastest anybody could possibly travel is near light speed. So the farthest any aliens who visit us could be is 50 light years away. That gives 50 years for our radio signals to alert them that we were here, and another 50 years to travel here. But realistically, our early radio waves are too weak to be detected 50 light years away, and realistically there's probably no aliens near us that could travel at nearly the speed of light. So realistically, any aliens visiting us are probably no more than 20 light years away, which is still generous. A civilization capable of traveling that distance would surely have more radio signals than we have, and since we've searched the skies for decades and haven't detected any alien radio signals, they're probably not within 20 light years of us.
This argument isn't nearly as strong as I originally thought because there are other ways for aliens to detect us than radio waves. They could detect life on our planet through spectroscopy. We are developing telescopes that can take the light that shines from a distance star, through the atmosphere of one of its planet, to a prism or something, breaking that light into its separate wavelengths. By looking at the spectrum, we can figure out what the atmosphere of that planet is made of since different chemicals absorb specific wavelengths of light. This could, potentially, allow us to detect life on other planets since organic life can release chemicals into the atmosphere that aren't produced any other way than by organic processes. With a more powerful telescope, we could do these observations for more and more distant stars. So it's possible life was discovered on our planet as much as a billion years ago by a civilization as much as a thousand light years away. Any aliens living closer than that might have time to reach us. It could be that aliens have been visiting our planet for millions of years.
But I'm still very skeptical. I think my argument was right that aliens wouldn't attempt to come here unless they had some really compelling reason to do so and that the knowledge of life here (or at least the high probability of life here) is about the only thing that could single us out. Well, there's that and proximity. If there were life in the Proxima Centauri system, they might send probes here just because we're nearby.
One reason I'm skeptical is because I think life is probably rare in the galaxy, and intelligent advanced life comparable to our own is vanishingly rare. The reason I suspect life in general is rare is because of the difficulty scientists have had in figuring out how we got from simple organic compounds, to self-replicating RNA, to fully formed cells. I suspect the difficulty is because it was a fluke, unlikely, extremely rare series of events. Besides that, it seems to have only happened once on our planet. Or if it did happen more than once, none of the other lines of transmission have survived.
Some people say the fact that it happened so early on our planet shows that it's not an unlikely event. I used to think that was a good argument, but I don't anymore. The fact that life started very early on our planet might be an observer selection effect. It took four billion years to go from single celled organisms to intelligent human beings. If it's normal for intelligent life to take that long to develop, then life would have to start early on any planet that has intelligent life. If life started too late, then there wouldn't be enough time for intelligent beings to evolve. At the very most, we've only got about a billion more years before all life ceases to exist on this planet because our sun is getting hotter and brighter all the time. So if life started three billion years ago instead of four billion years ago, intelligent life would never have evolved on our planet. So any planet with intelligent life comparable to our own might have to be a planet where life happened to start early. The fact that life started early on our planet, then, might be due to an observer selection effect rather than because it's easy or likely for life to arise from simple compounds.
So I suspect that life in general is rare in the galaxy. If there is life all over the galaxy, the vast majority of it is probably just single celled life. It took three billion years on our planet to go from single celled life to multicellular life. The jump to multicellular life must have been an extremely unlikely event. The unlikelihood of it is bolstered by an argument I've heard from Paul Scott Pruett and others about how rare functional sequences of amino acids are compared to non-functional sequences of a given length, like the average size of a protein molecule. So I suspect that the jump from single celled organisms to multicellular life is also rare on other planets.
There are a long series of unlikely events that happened on our planet that resulted in our being here. I don't want to go into those details because this post would be too long if I did. I just want to say that given hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, it might not be impossible that it's happened more than once. Even so, I still think exo-planets containing intelligent life would be few and far between. So it is highly unlikely that there's another advanced civilization near enough to make traveling here feasible.
But let's suppose there is or has been an intelligent species within 10 light years of us. There are still a lot of filters that might prevent them from ever coming here. One is the question of how long intelligent civilizations usually last. It seems like the longer ours lasts, the more likely it starts looking like we're going to destroy ourselves through nuclear war or destroying the planet through exploitation. There's also natural disasters that cause mass extinctions. We've had several mass extinctions on our planet. So it's hard to say how long intelligent species last on average and whether any would last long enough to develop the technology needed for interstellar travel. Even if a species isn't wiped out, they could be seriously set back. Our civilization becomes more and more fragile the more we rely on electricity and satelites. If we had a coronal mass ejection like the Carrington event today, it would cause far more damage to society than it caused in the 1850's, and it seems like it's just a matter of time before that happens.
Distance is a huge obstacle to any species wanting to travel to other solar systems. Unless they can travel near the speed of light, there's not much hope of getting anywhere within one lifetime. You can imagine intergenerational ships to overcome this problem, but that has problems of its own since energy, food, and resources have to come from somewhere. Plus, it has to be worth it to the passengers, and they better hope their ship doesn't break down on the way. The technology needed for something like that isn't just a few years away. It's probably thousands of years away. It's a major undertaking.
There are obstacles in space, too. Two of the biggest are radiation and rocks. The James Webb Space Telescope was hit by a grain of sand or something shortly after it deployed. Space debris is everywhere, and it's traveling super fast. You would have to travel super fast to get to another solar system in a reasonable amount of time. A small pebble could destroy your ship at that speed. Any ship that hopes to overcome the radiation and particulate matter on a long space voyage would have to have some massive and very powerful shielding.
It is theoretically possible to overcome all these obstacles, of course, but each obstacle makes it less and less likely that aliens have ever visited earth. I'm open to the possibility of aliens being here, and a part of me really hopes they are and that we'll find out for sure because that would be extremely cool. But I'm just very skeptical.
As far as the videos and things about aliens that have come out in the last few years, I've seen Mick West's attempts at explaining them, and I find all his explanations so convincing that it's safe to say in most case he proved that they are not aliens or highly advanced aerial spaceships of some kind. I'm not a UFO junky, so I haven't looked at everything that's out there, but I suspect what I haven't seen is probably just more of the same. Maybe some of it still defies explanation, but that doesn't mean it's aliens. It just means we don't know what it is.
I want to say one more thing just to be fair. There's this argument I've been hearing from other skeptics that goes something like this: It is unbelievable that an alien civilization so advanced that they could visit our planet would crash as much as David Grusch and others say they have. I think that's a poor argument for a couple of reasons.
First, the more difficult it is to complete a mission, then more failures we should expect there to be. When we advanced to the point of being able to drive cars instead of using horses and buggies, we starting having more accidents, not fewer. Traveling to Mars requires the most advanced technology we are capable of, yet half of all Mars missions end in failure. So the failure rate seems to go up as technology advances and as we attempt more and more difficult missions. A mission to another solar system is agreed by all to be extremely difficult, so why shouldn't we expect failures on the part of anybody who tries it? If we sent a thousand probes using solar sails to Proxima Centauri, should we expect that just because we were able to get there that we should also be able to land them all safely? Of course not. We shouldn't expect to land any of them at all. We should rather be lucky that a fraction make it there just to take some pictures before crashing or ending up in orbit somewhere.
A second reason I don't think the too-advanced-to-crash argument is a good argument is because without knowing how many aliens visitors we actually have, we have no idea what the crash rate is. 12 out of 50 is a much higher crash rate than 12 out of a million. If we grant that aliens are here, then we also have to grant that they have some kind of cloaking capabilities since they are so elusive. If they have some way of hiding, there could be millions for all we know, and 12 crashes is an extremely low crash rate. I see no reason to think any degree of technological advancement would give a species an infallible flying record.
Another bad argument I've heard from more than one skeptic is that a species advanced enough to travel here would be uninterested in visiting because we are so primitive that we are like ants to them. That's a terrible argument. We are planning to send probes to Europa and Enceledus in the desperate hope to find mere microbial life. Finding anything comparable to ant life would be wildly exciting. So even if we were like ants to another species, that doesn't mean we would be uninteresting to them. Also, the fact that they were more technologically advanced than us wouldn't mean they were any more intelligent than us. If we discovered something like cave men in the Proxima Centauri system, you can bet that we'd be pouring all our scientific and engineering efforts into sending a probe there to have a closer look.
I guess that's about all I have to say about alien stuff. I also think the incident in Las Vegas was a hoax that got out of hand.
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