Let’s say we ignore mundane explanations like meteorological phenomena, secret military tech developed by known governments, and weather balloons. Even in that case, why jump to extraterrestrial life?
Consider, say, the possibility that these UFOs are from the hyper-advanced hidden underwater civilization of Atlantis. Sure, this is outlandish. But I’d argue that it’s at least as likely as an extraterrestrial origin. We know that humans exist, we know that Atlantis would be within flying distance, there are reasonable explanations for why Atlantis would want to secretly surveil us. If this version of Atlantis existed, sure, we would expect to see other pieces of evidence for them, but maybe Atlantis is hiding from us.
Consider the contrivances required to explain why a group of extraterrestrials would be discovered through UFO sightings. They’d be competent enough to travel through space, likely using faster than light travel, they’d clearly not want to be discovered because otherwise they’d respond to our signalling attempts. And yet they would not have the competence to, on multiple occasions, blow their cover and show themselves to humanity. And yet, they never blow their cover in a way that actually distinguishes them as extraterrestrial.
If not for popular culture, do you really think that you’d jump to an extraterrestrial explanation? All other flying machines that we know of have been made by humans. There is insufficient evidence to suppose that these flying machines, if they are flying machines, are not.
Sure, in this scenario I think “Atlantis” would count as “aliens” somehow. Anything that is not from 2021 humans really, like even humans who started their own private lab in the forest in 1900 and discovered new tech are “not part of humanity’s knowledge”. It’s maybe worth distinguishing between “humans in 2021″, “homo sapiens originated civilization not from 2021”, “Earth but not homo sapiens” (eg Atlantis) and extraterrestrial life (aka “aliens”).
As for why we should jump to alien civilizations being on Earth, there are arguments on how a sufficiently advanced civilization could go for a fast space colonization. Other answers to the femi paradox even consider alien civilization to be around the corner but just inactive, and in that case one might consider that humans reaching some level of technological advancement might trigger some defense mechanism? I agree that this might fall into the conjunction fallacy and we may want to reject it using Occam’s razor. However, I found the “inactive” theory one of the most “first principle answer to Fermi’s paradox” out there, so the “defense mechanism” scenario might be worth considering (it’s at least more reasonable than aliens visiting from another galaxy).
I guess there’s also the unkown unknowns about how laws of physics work–we’ve only been considering the limits to speed being the speed of light for less than a century, so we might find ways of bypassing it (eg with worm woles) before the end of the universe.
When I brought up Atlantis, I was thinking of a version populated by humans, like in the Disney film. I now realize that I should have made this clear, because there are a lot of depictions of Atlantis in fiction and many of them are not inhabited by humans. To resolve this issue, I’ll use Shangri-La as an example of an ostensibly hidden group of humans with advanced technology instead.
To further establish distinct terms, let Known Humans be the category of humanity (homo sapiens) that publicly exists and is known to us. Let Unknown Humans be the category of humanity (homo sapiens) which exists in secret cities and/or civilizations. Let Unknown Terrestrials be non-human lifeforms which originated on earth and are capable of creating advanced technology. Let Extraterrestrials be lifeforms which did not originate on earth. Let Superhumans be humans from space, or another dimension, or the future.
The arguments you bring up concerning the Fermi paradox don’t seem to answer the question of “Why jump to extraterrestrial life?”. They are simply saying, “This is how aliens could potentially exist in close proximity without our knowledge.” Let me attempt to demonstrate the issue with an analogy.
Imagine a cookie has been stolen from the cookie jar. Mother and Father are trying to figure out who took the cookie.
Mother: “It seems most probable that one of the children did it. They have taken cookies from the cookie jar before.” Father: “Ah, but we should consider the possibility that a raven did it.” Mother: “Why would we think that there’s a non-negligible chance that a raven took the cookie?” Father: “Studies show that Ravens are capable of rudimentary tool use. It could have pried off the lid by using another object as a lever.”
Nothing about these UFOs specifically indicates that they are extraterrestrial. The fact that extraterrestrial life might exist and might have the technology necessary to secretly observe us is not enough evidence to support any significant probability for them as an explanation for the UFOs, especially when we know for near-certain that Known Humans have flying machines with similar abilities.
Let’s say we ignore mundane explanations like meteorological phenomena, secret military tech developed by known governments, and weather balloons. Even in that case, why jump to extraterrestrial life?
Consider, say, the possibility that these UFOs are from the hyper-advanced hidden underwater civilization of Atlantis. Sure, this is outlandish. But I’d argue that it’s at least as likely as an extraterrestrial origin. We know that humans exist, we know that Atlantis would be within flying distance, there are reasonable explanations for why Atlantis would want to secretly surveil us. If this version of Atlantis existed, sure, we would expect to see other pieces of evidence for them, but maybe Atlantis is hiding from us.
Consider the contrivances required to explain why a group of extraterrestrials would be discovered through UFO sightings. They’d be competent enough to travel through space, likely using faster than light travel, they’d clearly not want to be discovered because otherwise they’d respond to our signalling attempts. And yet they would not have the competence to, on multiple occasions, blow their cover and show themselves to humanity. And yet, they never blow their cover in a way that actually distinguishes them as extraterrestrial.
If not for popular culture, do you really think that you’d jump to an extraterrestrial explanation? All other flying machines that we know of have been made by humans. There is insufficient evidence to suppose that these flying machines, if they are flying machines, are not.
Sure, in this scenario I think “Atlantis” would count as “aliens” somehow. Anything that is not from 2021 humans really, like even humans who started their own private lab in the forest in 1900 and discovered new tech are “not part of humanity’s knowledge”. It’s maybe worth distinguishing between “humans in 2021″, “homo sapiens originated civilization not from 2021”, “Earth but not homo sapiens” (eg Atlantis) and extraterrestrial life (aka “aliens”).
As for why we should jump to alien civilizations being on Earth, there are arguments on how a sufficiently advanced civilization could go for a fast space colonization. Other answers to the femi paradox even consider alien civilization to be around the corner but just inactive, and in that case one might consider that humans reaching some level of technological advancement might trigger some defense mechanism? I agree that this might fall into the conjunction fallacy and we may want to reject it using Occam’s razor. However, I found the “inactive” theory one of the most “first principle answer to Fermi’s paradox” out there, so the “defense mechanism” scenario might be worth considering (it’s at least more reasonable than aliens visiting from another galaxy).
I guess there’s also the unkown unknowns about how laws of physics work–we’ve only been considering the limits to speed being the speed of light for less than a century, so we might find ways of bypassing it (eg with worm woles) before the end of the universe.
When I brought up Atlantis, I was thinking of a version populated by humans, like in the Disney film. I now realize that I should have made this clear, because there are a lot of depictions of Atlantis in fiction and many of them are not inhabited by humans. To resolve this issue, I’ll use Shangri-La as an example of an ostensibly hidden group of humans with advanced technology instead.
To further establish distinct terms, let Known Humans be the category of humanity (homo sapiens) that publicly exists and is known to us. Let Unknown Humans be the category of humanity (homo sapiens) which exists in secret cities and/or civilizations. Let Unknown Terrestrials be non-human lifeforms which originated on earth and are capable of creating advanced technology. Let Extraterrestrials be lifeforms which did not originate on earth. Let Superhumans be humans from space, or another dimension, or the future.
The arguments you bring up concerning the Fermi paradox don’t seem to answer the question of “Why jump to extraterrestrial life?”. They are simply saying, “This is how aliens could potentially exist in close proximity without our knowledge.” Let me attempt to demonstrate the issue with an analogy.
Imagine a cookie has been stolen from the cookie jar. Mother and Father are trying to figure out who took the cookie.
Mother: “It seems most probable that one of the children did it. They have taken cookies from the cookie jar before.”
Father: “Ah, but we should consider the possibility that a raven did it.”
Mother: “Why would we think that there’s a non-negligible chance that a raven took the cookie?”
Father: “Studies show that Ravens are capable of rudimentary tool use. It could have pried off the lid by using another object as a lever.”
Nothing about these UFOs specifically indicates that they are extraterrestrial. The fact that extraterrestrial life might exist and might have the technology necessary to secretly observe us is not enough evidence to support any significant probability for them as an explanation for the UFOs, especially when we know for near-certain that Known Humans have flying machines with similar abilities.