The UFO Singularity (17 page)

“Humans From the Sky.” Artwork by Caleb Hanks.

Within twenty five years our own biological science will be able to reliably alter the genetic characteristics of human beings. We will create enhanced humans adapted to special conditions, such as life in outer space. Wouldn’t we expect the UFO occupants to do the same, rather than adopting the human shape which is far from representing the biological optimum?

—Dr. Jacques Vallee,
Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

T
hroughout the last several decades, a number of well-respected scientific minds have come and gone, grappling amid footholds along the slippery slope that constitutes modern ufology. James E. McDonald, noted meteorology professor and senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics, was no exception to this intrepid bunch. In 1969, he presented a report to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he leveled his feelings behind the reasonable advocacy for there being an extraterrestrial component underlying some UFO reports. McDonald advised:

Present evidence surely does not amount to incontrovertible proof of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. What I find scientifically dismaying is that, while a large body of UFO evidence now seems to point in no other direction than the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the profoundly important implications of that possibility are going unconsidered by the scientific community because this entire problem has been imputed to be little more than a nonsense matter unworthy of serious scientific attention.
¹

McDonald had no doubt been directing this complaint, at least in part, at the infamous University of Colorado UFO Project, better known as the Condon Committee,
which had effectively shredded any air of respectability UFOs may have maintained in the eyes of the scientific community at large during the late 1960s. Despite the façade of “science” supposedly underlying the entire affair, history shows that the Condon Committee, which
did
end up having a tremendous influence on the way UFOs were perceived by official institutions in the years that followed, had been guilty of a number of gross preconceptions by its members. A fine example of this had become public knowledge by as early as February 1967, when Edward Condon was quoted by the Elmira, New York,
Star-Gazette
during a speaking engagement stating that his “attitude right now is that there’s nothing to (UFOs), but I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.”
²

This was further compounded by later revelations that Robert J. Low, the Condon Committee’s project coordinator, had argued early on that the subversive use of misdirection and carefully orchestrated deception of the public with the Committee’s “investigation” might be beneficial. To borrow Low’s own words, which appeared in a memo he authored on August 9, 1966, titled “Some Thoughts on the UFO Project”: “The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.”
³

This so-called “trick,” as outlined by Mr. Low, was obviously self-serving—or, at the very least, aimed at serving
somebody’s
ulterior motives—as was indicated later in the same memorandum: “I’m inclined to feel at this early stage that, if we set up the thing right and take pains to get the proper people involved and have success in presenting the image we want to present to the scientific community, we could carry the job off to our benefit.”
⁴

So disheartening were Low’s words, illuminating the intended purpose of the Condon Committee as a vehicle for widespread deception, rather than one for unbiased scientific inquiry, that the late Arthur Koestler wrote of the affair that

[t]he Low memorandum can only be viewed as a deliberate act calculated to deceive; to deceive first the scientific community, and, through them, the public at large. I know of no modern parallel to such a cynical act of duplicity on the part of a university official.… By the writing of such a document, the integrity of the entire project was shattered in advance.
⁵

Despite the grossly unscientific hijinks that can be directly attributed to the Condon Committee and their “analysis” of the UFO mystery, the scope of the present argument is not to try to lift the frayed remains of a plausible extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFO activity from the proverbial ashes. Nor does this author, in fact, advocate the idea that the UFO problem can be entirely constituted by any singular, wild theory such as aliens visiting from
space (or any other sole, all-inclusive explanation one may hope to present for the phenomenon). However, with regard to technological Singularity, a number of concepts are worthy of being addressed here when it comes to the potential for alien life existing elsewhere in the universe, and to date it seems there is very little—if any—honest dialogue underway where the participants are willing to addresses such things. The guilt lies not just among the Transhumanist thinkers, but also their cousins among the UFO community. I’m certain that, by referring to these two camps as “cousins,” I have elicited a few cringes already. However, should this dialogue I propose ever truly be allowed to begin, I suspect that the differences between these two seemingly disparate schools of study would be rendered fewer in number than most would expect.

A few key points need to be addressed here right off the bat. Namely, if Kurzweil and his fellow Singularitarians are correct in their estimates with regard to technological advances that will occur here on Earth throughout the next several decades, it is curious, then, that some alien race has not achieved these already—or have they? However primitive our species might be in comparison to an alien race that came to visit us, in the event that some advanced society
had
undergone a Singularity similar to that which Transhumanists forecast for the coming decades, we likely would still be capable of perceiving at least a few limited aspects of this technology and its presence. Perhaps this could occur even in lieu of facing the burden of traveling all the way to Earth for ongoing
visitation; this would especially be the case if they
did
use their technology to begin exploring and colonizing distant regions of space (which, to no one’s particular surprise, is something that is often incorporated into the mythos surrounding different interpretations of eventual Transhumanism, as well as extraterrestrial life). Thus, we are left to ponder a few different alternatives:

1. Today, although we cannot rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial life existing elsewhere in the Universe, there is still very little verifiable scientific evidence that shows us proof of alien beings visiting Earth. This fundamental viewpoint has been shared by a number of credited and credentialed UFO researchers throughout the years, including the likes of J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee. In other words,
we cannot cite any existing proof that directly correlates UFOs and their activity with a presumed extraterrestrial intelligence.
With the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial activity occurring close enough to be observed by us, we could assume that the Singularitarian view may be essentially wrong, or perhaps severely limited, when applied to how an alien race might progress through their own stages of technological advancement. In essence, we assume that the methods and expected rate of progress among an alien civilization, as well as the various environmental influences on this progress that an alien world
might present, would occur on a basis that is similar or identical to our own (thus we evoke aspects of Brandon Carter’s
Anthropic Principle
). If a valid conundrum
did no
t arise from the logical fallacies presented here, then we would not be burdened by such absence of evidence for extraterrestrials, in the midst of otherwise valid phenomenon such as the UFO problem.

2. Alternatively, reports of UFO craft may indeed represent a post-Singularity form of technology that is visiting Earth, and despite the lack of scientific “proof” for the extraterrestrial connection, my earlier assessment that at least
certain
aspects of this supposed technology could be recognized as such by humans would be vindicated. Case in point, the wealth of data already obtained regarding UFO craft and their mysterious activities, though often dismissed by the scientific community, could nonetheless constitute evidence of a technology that is far more advanced than our own. This also brings to mind the notion that a highly advanced alien technology could easily remain partially, or even wholly invisible to us, and perhaps largely due to a sheer lack of interest in establishing “contact” with our species (more on this a bit later).

3. Finally, there simply may be no advanced civilizations other than our own in existence; or if there are, humanity must be the most highly advanced among them at present, and hence
we see no overt evidence of advanced forms of technology that exist elsewhere in the universe. This is perhaps the
least likely
potential with regard to understanding extraterrestrials and presumed processes of evolution, scientific advancement, colonization, and eventual contact with other intelligent civilizations. This would also imply that all observable UFO phenomena must be either of terrestrial origin, or perhaps some variety of inter-dimensional phenomena.

The prolific reader of available UFO literature will no doubt also take into consideration such things as shadow government cover-ups, efforts to conceal and suppress certain technology, and other conspiracy theories that, if they are true, might hinder or impede access to the
whole truth
behind UFOs. These, of course, are all as worthy of serious consideration as any theory regarding extraterrestrials and their possible origins; however, because by their nature these would involve secrecy, the result would be the obvious ignorance on part of individuals like you or me with regard to exactly what kinds of information may have effectively been concealed. Hence, I’ve omitted the conspiracy angle here, working on the assumption that we are left to reason primarily with whatever information relating to UFOs we
do
have full access to at present.

Coming back to the second point expressed in my preceding series of possibilities, there is the realistic potential that any highly advanced technology, exceeding our own by hundreds or thousands of years, might be
capable of operating in ways that would fall well outside the limitations of what humans can perceive. Carl Sagan, speaking before the Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) Congress in 1971, summarized the issue thusly:

We have only to consider the changes in mankind in the last 10
⁴
years and the potential difficulties which our Pleistocene ancestors would have in accommodation to our present society to realize what an unfathomable gap 10
⁸
to 10
¹⁰
years represents, even with a tiny rate of intellectual advance. Such societies will have discovered laws of nature and invented technologies whose applications will appear to us indistinguishable from magic. There is a serious question about whether such societies are concerned with communicating with us, any more than we are concerned with communicating with our protozoan or bacterial forebears. We may study microorganisms, but we do not usually communicate with them. I therefore raise the possibility that a horizon in communications interest exists in the evolution of technological societies, and that a civilization very much more advanced than we will be engaged in a busy communications traffic with its peers; but not with us, and not via technologies accessible to us. We may be like the inhabitants of the valleys of New Guinea who may communicate by runner or drum, but who are ignorant of the vast international radio and cable traffic passing over, around and through them.
⁶

Indeed, Sagan felt that extraterrestrial communication may likely occur on a level of advancement that would be largely imperceptible to humans. Speculating further, we might surmise that there is an entire host of different activities ET could choose to engage in, which nonetheless may be taking place all around us in the invisible realm that extends beyond the reach of what humans can perceive.

In addition to his theories about the perceptible realms of communication available between humans and other intelligent civilizations, Sagan was also a proponent of the famous Drake Equation, which addresses the likelihood for existence of advanced alien races elsewhere in our universe. Professor Frank Drake proposed the model for this in 1961, around the same time that would serve as the genesis for the ongoing SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programs of today, having utilized principles of radio astronomy with the intention of contacting other civilizations like our own. Sagan often referenced Drake’s Equation in his various books and television appearances, where he used it as a plausible model applied to the search for intelligent alien life.
⁷
There are, however, at least a few problems with the Drake Equation and the limitations it implies with regard to how life might advance and grow into a technological civilization on a distant planet. For instance, the Drake Equation supposes that many civilizations (if not a majority of them) would potentially destroy themselves once they become technologically proficient, through the use of such things as
nuclear weaponry. This reflects, perhaps, the eminent concern over mutually assured destruction that existed during the Cold War years, something that also became key to Sagan’s ideology at the time. But taking into consideration the varieties of life forms that might come to exist, especially in distant parts of the known universe, would there not be a potential for vast differences in the ways such an alien species would think and operate? By projecting our inherent humanity into the equation, we might be overlooking a number of circumstances that could prevent the sorts of ordeals and issues that have become paramount to our survival here on Earth.