The Question of Contact

Lucid Silverback

Lucid Silverback

Ponderous
Joined
Apr 2, 2025
Messages
155
Location
Portland Maine
Frankly, I'm shocked there isn't already a thread for this yet. With the above-average intelligence level of our demographic here at Articulated Thoughts and the unusually high nerd-quotient, I know y'all know some things and have some Articulated Thoughts on the matter. Heck, maybe some of you have even seen some shit.
Me personally? I am not technically a "believer" and have never seen anything I can't personally explain. That's not to say I don't logically conclude we simply can't be the only form of life in this vast universe; the numbers and probabilities suggest otherwise. Still, I retain a healthy level of skepticism regarding the localized phenomenon, but have always been absolutely fascinated with the subject and, to this day, can't get enough of the news reports, documentaries, and pod/vodcasts exploring the subject. That being said, I have had more than enough of whatever they're doing over on the History Channel with that Ancient Aliens drivel.
There is definitely something very perplexing going on, but what it is is extremely difficult to pin down as the UFO ecosystem is populated with all sorts of characters from accredited/respectable scientists to woo-woo nutjobs, honest investigators and researchers to outright charlatans and grifters, honest credible witnesses and whistle-blowers to supposedly clandestine operatives spreading disinformation. The waters are muddy to say the least, and there is definitely fuckery afoot.
But beneath it all, there remains a confounding phenomenon well-deserving of exploration and analysis.

Possibilities...

Extraterrestrial Visitation- The common straightforward explanation; occupants from other planets traverse space using advanced propulsion/technology, observe and sometimes interact with inhabitants from Earth. Uncurious individuals like NDgT dismissively say things like, even if they COULD, why WOULD they ever come here? It boggles my mind that anyone would think Earth WOULDN'T be absolutely fascinating to other intelligences from across the galaxy.

Interdimensional hypothesis- These visitors are not from our physical universe. They may not even be corporeal. It may be some sort of multiverse situation or, it may be some sort of overlapping membranes of reality between which these things are jumping.

Breakaway Civilization- Did humankind crack the code on free-energy/anti-gravity back in the 40s/50s with the work of T. Townsend Brown etc. or possibly from reverse-engineered offworld technology, and are now clandestinely exploring other worlds while the vast majority of the inhabitants of planet Earth remain in a contrived, relatively primitive fiction?

Extratemporal hypothesis- Are these phenomena actually our descendants from the future, looping back in time in order to affect, alter, or simply learn from the historical timeline? If so, I could conceivably understand the need to conceal and classify any record of such incursions.

Synthetic intelligence/life- Biological organisms are incredibly fragile and not evolved for space travel. Silicon-based machine intelligence would not be so limited. Could we be dealing with a completely foreign machine intelligence not entirely dissimilar to the Borg? Maybe this is a "Von Neumann Probe" type situation?

Simulation theory- Are we all simply complex algorithms generated by a unfathomably advanced digital simulation that has been created by -and being run by- unknown parties whether organic or synthetic?
What is real and is there an ultimate reality? (i.e., Matrix and the work of PKD)

Telepresence- Are these "craft" or "objects" actually here, or are they some sort of advanced technology that enables a non-local telepresence across vast distances of intergalactic space in order to surveil or communicate with distant lifeforms?

Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis- Have these visitors been here all along? Could they be a progenitor civilization? Are they the original indigenous inhabitants of earth, or possibly an invasive species that took up residence countless millenia ago?

Basic conundrums...

Whether human tech or NHI, if they are trying to stay hidden, why all the blinking lights and brazen near-miss aviation incidents? Just stay hidden. Duh.

If there's nothing to any of this, why all the documented obfuscation, disinformation, and classification? And how do you resolve the fact there have been countless credible witness accounts and even recorded techno-signatures of anomalous events in our atmosphere, on our planet, beneath our oceans, etc.?

If these devices are so incredibly advanced and otherworldly, how have so many of them supposedly crashed or been rendered ineffective by lightning storms or radar arrays etc.?

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Alright. I think that's more than enough to get started here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter and especially any sightings/experiences you may have had. Also, feel encouraged to post links to articles or videos or sightings or whatever. I actually have a YouTube playlist I curated for a few of my skeptic friends that I'm considering posting here. It contains some of the more solid, well-researched information and witness accounts that are out there. Literally, out there.
 
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This comes close to paralleling my opinion on religion. I fully support your choice to believe and as long as it's not an effort to convert I'll even talk to you about it, in earnest. I think it's all hooey, though. I would be at least as excited as yourself to be proven wrong.
 
November 11th, 1972. That's the one and only time I ever saw a UFO.

I was 14 years old and living in rural Indiana. I remember it was cold out that night. My Dad, whom I loved but was not very well organized, wanted me to help him clean his pickup truck for something he had to do the next day. At 8 or 9 o'clock at night. On a cold Sunday night in November. My Dad was ... well, he was unique.

So there I am, out there in the driveway, talking all the garbage out of the cab of his truck and putting it in a box for a trip to the trashcan. I was wearing my winter coat and my little blue Chicago Cubs baseball cap. I was so cute. Anyway, I turned around to make the trip down to the end of the driveway with the box of trash in my hand when I saw it. I looked up to see a shining, golden object hurtling through the night sky and leaving behind a sparkling golden trail. It was moving fast but not as fast as a jet. I yelled "Dad! Dad! Look!" "Just a second" he said. "No, look!" He quit rummaging around in the truck and looked up. Of course by that time whatever it was I saw was long gone. He told me that I read too many *&^% comic books and I needed to quit.

I figured I couldn't have been the only one who saw that. The next day I talked to my classmates and my neighbors. No one saw anything. I listened to the radio and watched the news on TV. No one reported anything.

But I don't care. I know what I saw. People tell me I saw a shooting star but that wasn't it. It was moving too slow. And too slow to be a jet but too fast to be anything else. To this day I have no idea what it was.

Here's a picture an artist with the History Channel drew for me at Comic Con. This was right before their Project Blue Book series came out. 2018, I believe.

XdujQb0.jpg


Anyway, that's my story.
 
I think intelligent life is likely given the size of the universe. I do not think they've visited Earth yet.

Why they haven't visited or made themselves known is another question. A question well above my pay grade, frankly. While the Fermi paradox and dark forest hypothesis are both interesting to me, I'm not smart enough to speculate or add anything to the discussion.

I don't spend much time thinking about extra-terrestrials. They'll show up during my lifetime or they won't. I don't have much say in the matter.

As an atheist turned agnostic, I spend a lot more time thinking about the existence of god.
 
Yeah, I find it's an issue I just don't care enough about to speculate on, I suppose. Do I believe in the possibility that other life exists somewhere in the universe? I imagine it MUST. Do I believe that life has visited earth? I don't. Like.. at all. I'm not even remotely moved by any evidence that's ever been presented on that topic.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say I'm not even convinced that whatever life exists outside our solar system is even necessarily something we would understand as sentient life. And I do, on some level, prescribe to the belief that the Dark Forest Theory pretty well explains both IF life we would understand as life exists out there and IF it is capable of visiting us in some way, why it hasn't shown up and we can't find it. In fact, I tend to be of the mind that we really should be a lot more careful in how we go about looking for it.

I think this tends to delve back into my political and philosophical beliefs, but humans are fucking garbage and it's an absolutely terrifying consideration that there may be a sentient species out there like us enough to interact with us that is advanced enough to show up from space. If that actually were to happen, we'd very likely be totally fucked in about 100 directions.


In short; I don't think aliens have ever visited earth, and I think we should be very glad that's the case.
 
Oh yeah, I've always been super into the paranormal, but oddly enough, just because of how my brain works, I always attempt to disprove things before I believe them. But I promise, it's because I so badly want to (and do) believe in the paranormal that I feel a weird.... protectiveness? I guess is the word I'm looking for. I so badly want to believe in the spooky stuff that any time I watch one of those paranormal clip shows, I always try to disprove what's in it (which isn't hard to do, since the vast majority of them are pretty clearly fake, but it's fun to pretend!). As if I have any qualifications whatsoever to be able to discern what's real or fake, but hey, I'm an armchair expert on the paranormal! It's a tricky topic for me; I do mostly believe in cryptids- it's totally reasonable for me to assume that there are undiscovered species out there, or one-off animals born with deformities that we run into every now and then. But either they die off or what have you, and we never see them again, but they pass into legend. Also, having my fair share of trauma and learning about how our brain processes it (and other outlying factors like tiredness, etc.), it's also not hard for me to believe that a lot of what people see/think they see is just a figment of their brain processing things in their waking or sleeping life.

That said, I totally believe in intelligent life. Like others have said, I think you'd be more silly not to at this point. The question is where they are and what they look like. I think it's kinda silly to just assume they look like us, though who knows- they might. I always love reading people's theories, no matter how "out there" they are, like that they made us in their image and are observing us from afar, that they're us from the future coming back to warn us or study so as to avoid the same mistakes, etc.

Don't know if I've ever really given much thought to whether or not they've visited us. It's possible- whether it's to observe, or just because they have to pass us on the way to the intergalactic 7-11. No matter what, do I think they'd be horrified if they ever did visit us? Absolutely. If there's "intelligent" life in the universe, it surely isn't here on earth. But even if they did visit us and attempt to make contact, would we even see the signs? Would we know that that's what it is, or would we just ignore it, or chalk it up to something else? That's why the movie Arrival is so fascinating to me- the idea that alien life would communicate in something completely different than what we're used to.

I also think it's kinda the worst kept secret at this point that the government does have knowledge of unidentified aircraft. Doesn't necessarily mean they're alien in origin, but it's certainly more fun to think than just other countries being more advanced than us.

Then there's the theory that octopi are aliens, which I always thought was a cool one. Do I necessarily believe it? Dunno, but they're definitely cool, quirky little things that seem far smarter and more capable than most other things on earth do. And it would fit with the theory that, should intelligent life ever come to us and attempt to blend in, we'd just automatically kill them and eat them. Do aliens taste good deep fried and served with marinara? The truth is out there.....
 
Hahahaha!
Virtually anything tastes good when it's deep-fried; and humans are notorious for deep-frying just about everything.
Hell, that may be the motivating factor for aliens visiting earth in the first place. "Gotta' get some of these things I think they call 'fried pickles'?
Or, maybe that explains the anal probing. They're like, "All this fried food these primitive apes eat must be wreaking havok on their digestive tract."
 
Michael Ian Black is a charming writer/comedian who, along with Amber Ruffin, is most notably a regular on the "Have I Got News For You" show hosted by Roy Wood Jr. (it's a fun show if you haven't seen it). He also happens to be a UFO enthusiast who just penned an insightful article on substack regarding the peculiar convergence between the phenomenon and MAGA members in the Trump administration -a somewhat alarming convergence I have also noticed and with which I share similar concern.

michaelianblack.substack.com

Some Idle Ruminations on the Convergence of UFOs and MAGA.

Why do so many higher-ups in MAGA world believe in UFOs? And if those assholes do, why do I?
michaelianblack.substack.com michaelianblack.substack.com
 
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