The UFO Singularity (20 page)

In early 2012, I shared a similar conversation along these lines with researcher Nigel Kerner, author of the book
Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls: The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper with Humanity
. Like Turchin, at various times I had seen that Kerner had theorized in books and articles about how certain aspects of the UFO enigma could be related to intelligence we would expect in the advent of a technological Singularity. And although my own logical pursuits regarding UFOs differ
from Kerner somewhat, particularly on the grounds that he relates UFOs and alien abduction phenomenon almost entirely to the physical presence of “grey aliens,” there are still many similarities between our philosophies. For instance, Kerner believes that the so-called greys are the result of beings that have essentially
manufactured
aspects of themselves; in essence, they are immortal, but rendered soulless via the tampering that led to their present state as “biomachines.”
⁸
The similarities between this concept, paired with the near-religious undertones of “eternal life” found among some of the Singularitarians today, are worth noting, of course. Also worth noting is the fact that, whether or not all (or any) UFOs represent extraterrestrial intelligences visiting Earth, I still would surmise that such things as distance space colonization and exploration would be virtually impossible, in the absence of technological applications on par with what we already envision for a technological Singularity.

During an interview I did in early 2012 with Kerner and his colleague John Biggerstaff, PhD, a professor of cell microbiology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Kerner expressed his troubled feelings on the matter of Transhumanism and Singularity. Needless to say, his views on the matter wouldn’t be very encouraging to proponents of Singularity, because Kerner’s general feeling is that the same processes which led to the greys as we know them are promised to humans, just as well, in the event that we give ourselves over to the sort of soul-hacking self-manipulations promised within Transhumanism.

According to Kerner
⁹
:

The following is from a personal interview with Nigel Kerner and John Biggerstaff, January 14, 2012. All italics are author’s emphasis.

I’m sure millions will buy into the technological Transhumanism thing because so much will be promised through it. Kurzweil and his Singularity are blood-wrenchingly cold, in terms of its prospects with the human race as I see it. It’s a terrifying prospect, really. The most important thing to me is that each one of us guards
preciously
all the things that make us totally natural. The moment we put into that anything where our own auspices of control over ourselves is compromised by someone else, we have a big problem. We don’t become ourselves…we are
something else.
Therefore, I believe our soul, in those terms of reference, ends.

I’m not objecting to
natural
beings in the universe. Beings that come with souls, and with information systems that are natural. What I find so terrifying is the premise of beings that are
synthetic orders of created being,
that can be sent out there, and that can create mayhem, if you like, within the natural orders of existence.

Kerner went on, discussing the dangers associated with control such nonhuman intelligences might enact, and not merely as a result of the problems rooted in Transhumanism, but looking ahead to the potential for humanity’s control at the hands of intelligent extraterrestrial beings as well.
Using lab rats as an analogy, Kerner noted how, up until the time they are euthanized for purposes of scientific study, these animals are generally able to lead very happy lives that are free of want or worry. Worst of all, perhaps, is the fact that they are largely unaware that they are being kept alive and healthy for mere purposes of control—and a control system that ultimately plans for their demise. “If we are lab rats,” Kerner said, “then who is big enough to tell us we are?”
¹⁰

“Also, they are hiding,” Kerner noted of this potentially dangerous intelligence, “and that’s the thing that tells me this is an agenda, a
hidden
agenda, that is not for our benefit.”
¹¹

Perhaps Kerner is right; whatever the intelligence is behind UFOs, it doesn’t seem too taken with the idea of coming right out and making introductions. Could it indeed be that extraterrestrial intelligences—or for that matter, any variety of conceivable nonhuman intelligence that may eventually interact with us—would literally end up posing the greatest-ever single threat to humanity, as proposed by the likes of Turchin, Kerner, and others? Despite their differing viewpoints regarding Transhumanism and Singularity, both Kerner and Turchin warned of the inherent dangers associated with our technological “coming of age,” especially in the event that other more advanced intelligences are already here in our midst. Perhaps, given the scope of the present discussion, a careful examination of the dangers associated with such things as Active SETI research, as well as the potential for malevolent technological forces
at work within our universe, is not just timely. If anything, these may also be integral to understanding our own progress as an emerging technological civilization, and one on the cusp of tremendous and radical changes we may begin to accumulate in only the next few years. And yet, when we look beyond the intellectual confines that cosmology (or even most ufology) tends to impose, we nonetheless find a very different viewpoint toward the ongoing search for nonhuman intelligence, and, not surprisingly, the views held by “the other camp” are far less accepting of the extraterrestrial idea on the whole.

Evolutionist Ernst Mayr detailed a number of these qualms as far back as 1979, during a conference themed around the SETI endeavors dubbed “Extraterrestrials—Where Are They?” Mayr pointed out that the extraterrestrial hypothesis essentially rested on what he called “a flawed understanding of evolution as a deterministic process.”
¹²
In Mayr’s own words, taken from the conference’s proceedings:

When one looks at [proponents of the SETI project’s] qualifications, one finds that they are almost exclusively astronomers, physicists and engineers. They are simply unaware of the fact that the success of the SETI project is not a matter of physical laws and engineering capabilities but a matter of biologic and sociologic factors. These, quite obviously, have been entirely left out of the calculations of the possible success of the SETI project.… [Why are] biologists, who have the
greatest expertise on evolutionary probabilities, so almost unanimously skeptical of the probability of extraterrestrial intelligence? It seems to me that this is to a large extent due to the tendency of physical scientists to think deterministically, while organismic biologists know how opportunistic and unpredictable evolution is.
¹³

We must, in fairness, consider whether the damning truth, in the end, could be that unsettling reality that suggests we really
are
alone, and that the idea of there being alien life elsewhere—or life similar to ourselves, at very least—is less likely than even our renowned cosmologists are willing to accept. But even if these were the circumstances, and the physical presence of other advanced civilizations were rendered logically impossible, then one resounding question would still remain:
Where does this leave us in terms of understanding the UFO problem?

Again, we might be called to revise our notion of what “alien” really is, if not abandon most of our anticipations regarding physical alien beings altogether. Researcher Mark A. Sheridan, in his paper “SETI’s Scope: How the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Became Disconnected from New Ideas About Extraterrestrials,” discusses how the problem could have less to do with whether or not there are aliens, favoring instead questions regarding what alternate forms a nonhuman intelligence could be expected to take: “In one of the most important, if largely overlooked, events in SETI’s history, NASA formally acknowledged the nature-based critique of SETI at
its 1979 Life in the Universe conference.”
¹⁴
Essentially, three points were set forth during this conference with regard to alien life:

1. That humanoids were an unlikely form for any likely extraterrestrial intelligence.

2. That there is a reasonable potential for the existence of
non-humanoid
ETs.

3. That the SETI programs of the day had largely been designed only to deal with humanoid forms of intelligence like ourselves, an issue that continues to shackle our cosmological sciences to the proverbial stony cliff of bias to this day.

To address this bias, C. Owen Lovejoy, a biological anthropologist, was invited to speak about the characteristics that might distinguish humanoid and non-humanoid intelligences. Lovejoy, rather than taking the view that “intelligence” as we know it is a defining characteristic of scientific advancement, instead posited the idea that intelligence could be a form of
adaptation
, and furthermore that this “adaptation” might be labeled
cognition
in humans. “By simply distinguishing between humanoid and non-humanoid intelligence,” Sheridan writes, “Lovejoy significantly broadened the official discourse about SETI in a manner that soon exposed its anthropomorphic bias.”
¹⁵

Here, it is made painfully obvious that the variety of potentials surrounding extraterrestrial life is far more complex than even most “alien theorists” today are willing to consider. Furthermore, the burden presented by a lack
of proof supporting an alien presence in our midst should make this quite evident by now. But, again, what are we to make of the curious unidentified saucers, triangles, horseshoes, chevrons, and amorphous globes of energy that so many claim to have seen flying throughout our skies? Again, we are dealing with
some variety
of highly advanced technology and one that, despite the apparent and occasional “stupid” skylarking they undertake (to borrow my Russian colleague Mr. Turchin’s terminology), remains capable of thwarting our best efforts at determining precisely what they are.

What we are left with are the known factors: the varieties of different UFO craft appear to represent some sort of physical, or at very least,
quasi-physical
presence. They are physical enough, at least, to be able to produce measurable amounts of electromagnetic and non-ionizing radiation, as well as highly visible, often intense sources of light. These craft also appear to be intelligently controlled. Finally, the preponderance of UFO reports that involve nuclear facilities and weapons sites seem to indicate that they are very interested in the political and military happenings within the jurisdictions of our major superpowers. They seem to actively monitor and, at times, display capabilities that allow them to overreach or even
disable
various military weapons systems.

Quite obviously, “they” are
heavily
invested in earthly happenings and perhaps have far more at stake here on this planet than most would ever guess. And this is for
one simple reason, which constitutes an entirely different set of complex circumstances and potentials that lead toward our full understanding of the UFO presence. It is evidenced, almost entirely, by the importance they project at the rest of the world through their mighty actions. In short,
they act as though the very future of this planet relied on them.

For all we know, maybe it does.

If the UFO phenomenon is generated by Earth itself, perhaps it uses the human nervous system as a kind of operating system. Its enduring physicality argues that it can manipulate consciousness in such a way that individuals can function as unwitting projectors. If so, the study of UFOs might eventually lead to a new understanding of the role of awareness. One day, through careful back-engineering of our own minds, we might employ UFO-like abilities through thought alone—in which case the UFO phenomenon risks becoming obsolete.

—Mac Tonnies,
The Cryptoterrestrials

F
or the most part, the views that have been expressed with this book,
The UFO Singularity,
have largely been positive, or at least neutral in their approach to understanding what technology may be underlying the UFO phenomenon. There are a vast number of potentials that may await humanity in terms of our eventual introduction to nonhuman intelligence, and despite whether this ends up being some form of alien intelligence, or perhaps an artificial variety that we manage to create ourselves, the hopeful expectation that such changes in our eminent future will be for the better also seems to be shared by most of those in the Transhumanist realm with whom I’ve corresponded and interviewed. However, there do remain a number of potentials that bear the promise of a far darker outcome.

In February 2012, my weekly
Gralien Report Podcast
featured an interview with Ben Goertzel, PhD, an advisor to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and arguably one of the preeminent A.I. experts living today. I joked with Goertzel during our interview that, because he may be the most likely candidate for implementing artificial intelligence using computer science in the near future, he may also be one of the most dangerous men in the world. Though my commentary had obviously been tongue in cheek, Goertzel did go on to express a few concerns of
his own, with his apprehensions juxtaposed alongside the overt optimism of his colleague Ray Kurzweil:

[Kurzweil] really views the Singularity like life as it is now, but better, with no material aging, no scarcity and disease, no need to work, and a lot of amazing wish fulfillment, where humans and A.I.s work together and cyborgically fuse together, and everything’s wonderful. I think that’s a real possibility, and I hope it works out that way. I think there are also darker possibilities, in the sense that A.I.s could be created that see no need for human beings—and are much more powerful than human beings—with predictable consequences. But I wouldn’t want to obsess on those kind of dystopian science fiction possibilities, either. The main feeling I have more strongly than Ray, it seems, is that once we hit Singularity, we just have no way to tell what’s going to happen. This was Vernor Vinge’s original notion of technological Singularity when he proposed it. Vinge saw it as a point after which the human mind just couldn’t predict with any reliability.
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