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in the early years the early decades of

the 20th century Charles Ford was an

eccentric American writer collected

these reports and reports of other kinds

of extraordinary anomalies natural or

para natural and in a book published in

1919 called the book of the Damned

actually presented the first draft of

what would be called the

extra-terrestrial hypothesis theorizing

that these events in these sites in

these reports suggested the presence of

otherworldly visitors when UFOs appeared

and became an international sensation in

the summer of 1947 and after that within

days within days of Kenneth Arnold

sighting On June 24th 1947

speculation about Mars and visitors

began to appear in the press almost all

of it came from people who had read

Charles Forte's book Charles Ford

himself had died in 1932 but that was

the people first thought these things

could be from outer space otherwise

people thought they were Russian

experiments or secret aircraft

experiments the Navy or there were all

kinds of natural explanations some

people thought they were an artifact of

atomic testing and so on not very many

people except the followers of Charles

Ford we're thinking about spaceships

from other planets but eventually by the

mid 1950s the association of UFOs and

extraterrestrial visitors was quite

widespread that it wasn't automatic and

natural it took a while in fact some of

the first people who thought that UFOs

could be extraterrestrial spacecraft

were in the Air Force because people in

the Air Force understood just how

extraordinary the apparent technology of

these things was they knew that there

was no earthly power that could

duplicate that technology they

understood that in a way the general

public probably didn't well no one truly

knows exactly what was going on however

we know that since t2 intelligence was

doing aeronautical analysis from the

German technology that they brought back

world war two from the Russians that

these objects obviously were not coming

from Russia nor were they coming from

the stash of older craft and and the

Horton Brothers and things in Germany at

the time so they could only come to one

conclusion they're not ours they're not

theirs they're from somewhere else and

this kind of put a big Kobashi

on the military careers many of the

people at - - intelligence at Wright

Field according to the story all the

copies of the estimate the situation

were destroyed but that couldn't have

been true because as a matter of fact we

have several people who said they saw

one including captain ruppelt himself

and the Pentagon's major person at the

so called UFO desk in 1952 major dewey

for an a they said that it was

interplanetary and it is intelligently

controlled in the interplanetary

fournaye who saw the whole document said

listen these guys were trying to shake

the tree up in washington this was a

preliminary thing and he said he didn't

see that they he read the report he

didn't see that they had the evidence to

make this conclusion but they were it's

an estimate of situation ten minutes

after you write I worked in intelligence

ten ten minutes after you write an

estimate a situation it's it's it's

stale

the first major UFO / planet was a

retired Marine Corps major named Donald

Kehoe keel worked in the Pentagon he had

once been an aide to Colonel Charles

Lindbergh he had all kinds of contacts

he was a popular writer he wrote stories

adventure stories and pulp magazines

usually with an aviation theme

he also wrote a fiction stories about

World War one flying and I read those

things every time they came out ten

cents of the copier pop magazines

beautiful things

so when true magazine which was a very

popular men's magazine back years and

years ago decided that it wanted to look

into the question of what flying saucers

were thought well Don key is a good guy

he's got all these Pentagon contacts he

knows about aviation knows a lot of

pilots and many pilots reporting UFOs so

he spent about eight months

investigating the story for true

magazine and the article that he

published in January 1950 issue of true

was titled the flying saucers are real

and Donald Keough became probably the

most important person in the history of

UFOs that article which came at the very

end of the year was sort of a

psychological bomb for many people

because it seemed to expose a hypocrisy

in Air Force intelligence and not only

that seemed to rather clearly point to

the extra-terrestrial hypothesis when he

was making the discussion with me

knowing it and he was essentially

telling me though that I was not doing

the right things as a job and I told him

that well in a way it's your fault

because if you hadn't written those

stores and got me so interested in the

Air Force I wouldn't be here did they

make you want to be a pilot or something

yes it did

Keele concluded from interviewing his

airforce contacts interviewing pilots

other credible witnesses that flying

saucers were coming to earth probably

from Mars that sounds rather ridiculous

today but in those days even many

reputable scientists thought it was at

least possible that Mars Harvard in an

intelligent civilization this was before

the space probes and other advances told

us that this was not possible but at the

time it was considered a reasonable

speculation that Mars was inhabited Kiel

thought they were peaceful they were

coming here with good intentions but

they were afraid of us because we had

sent our interceptor aircraft after them

and so they were shy about establishing

contact but they were watching us and

they started watching us intensely

because they began monitoring our atomic

bombs this was a version of the

extra-terrestrial hypothesis for the UFO

age in 1957 he assumed directorship of

an organization called the National

Investigations Committee on aerial

phenomena which brought together all

kinds of people with solid professional

and middle-class credentials to argue

for interplanetary visitation to lobby

for congressional hearings NICAP began

as a hugely ambitious operation but the

funding that Kiewit counted on did not

materialize that's an interesting story

in itself but in the late 1950s up until

the later 1960s Kehoe and ICAP

represented respectable Pro UFO opinion

and this was at a time when although

there was a great deal of skepticism the

idea that UFOs could be real even

extraterrestrial was not quite the

bargeman alized idea that it would

become in later years

I think that scientists at the time

despite the interest that was there in

possible life in outer space and the

knowledge of astronomy what was possible

in terms of solar systems and chemistry

in the galaxy scientists basically had

literally no conception that aliens

could potentially visit here you trust

the big paradigm maker at the time and

the big paradigm maker the time is

Einstein and by gum you don't go against

Einstein he told you this he put the

10-pound finger on you you cannot go

faster than the speed of light special

relativity in the speed of light how

much I think in considering the

possibility of let's say ET visitation

or even ourselves going out and

exploring other stars in the future even

though general relativity had come along

and actually changed that picture most

scientists with an instant response

would think on special relativity terms

and say well the velocity of light is

the limitation you can't go fast the

speed of light and therefore to conceive

of us exploring stars or other people

coming here it just bits it's it's too

far they they just can't get from here

to there we might explore our own solar

system but that's probably as far as

we're going to get but the truth of the

matter is that in general relativity

that's not not the case there are

options there and in fact one of my

favorite examples was when our Carl

Sagan was putting together his book and

movie contact he wanted to have some

kind of more or less instant connection

to faraway locales and so he approached

Kip Thorne at Caltech who was a friend

of his and says I want this to be as

scientifically reasonable as possible

and so Kip decide to look into the

possibility out of general relativity

that you could beat the speed of light

well it turns out that in general

relativity we can begin to talk about

manipulating the space-time variables

which was not the case in special to

and in fact you could say make wormholes

which is ought to be like Subway's

through space or whatever so he came

back and told Carl I know you you could

you can incorporate that but he got

sufficiently interested as as a

theoretical physicist

it began Tipton that he began having his

graduate students look into these more

bizarre outcomes predictions of general

relativity and so in fact they came up

with ways that you could beat the speed

of light with the so called wormhole

shortcuts through space-time but of

course now that's become a very

legitimate area of general relativity

research and so there's a lot of work

going on looking at wormholes so-called

warp drive in the anime turned out that

wormholes there's a possibility of

engineering them and people are still

looking at that at least the principles

of it warp drive is as far as we can see

is going to be tough well here we are at

the beginning of the 21st century and so

we know they're going to be a

twenty-fourth and a twenty eight and a

30th century science and the scientists

of those years are going to look back

and see how primitive we were so really

a scientist if he's up to it can't rule

out anything

I have several editions of an astronomy

textbook out and I talked about this

limit of speed of light and I put a

footnote in there saying something like

you know at least according to our

current understanding of physics and I

got a moderately irate letter from some

scientists you know what this is an

outrageous that you would put this in

and I thought well how outrageous for

him you know does he is he really on

record that our physics of 1987 or

whenever this was is the last word I

mean it doesn't mean you should start

assuming things can go fast in light but

but you just shouldn't assume that we

know everything and as Arthur Clarke

said you know any superior intelligence

is going to look like magic to us

anything that anything that violates our

crude understanding of the universe that

we have is to assume that our

sure we do yeah yeah and you have to be

ready for the thing that's out there

that it's violence I was reminded back

in the late 1890s how the head of the

British Academy of Science said we know

it all we're just wrapping up the

details and there's a who was it was it

Haldane or one of the famous British

scientists spacecraft the space flight

is utter bilge is a famous line I mean I

love planks phrase which could be

paraphrased that is how does science go

forward he says funeral by funeral so I

don't I really don't think it was only

Lightspeed again it was it was it was

more sociological psychological and

philosophical reasoning that led

scientists to reject UFO sightings aw

there's another one there too this is a

corollary to the we don't know it we

don't unaware but it can't be true we

will not we the scientists will not use

data that comes from the public that

comes from the great unwashed and of

course physicists and astronomers well

at least the physicists don't ever do

this or chemists astronomers do a little

bit with amateur astronomers but but

other scientists don't and they're just

not used to saying well we could be

getting some valuable evidence from

people who are out there one of the

themes that comes out in the early

history of UFO G was that the UFOs

weren't actually there for investigation

but the people who reported them were

and this is what led to a whole group of

psychological kinds of interpretations

and then they were essentially negative

ones the person stupid they're lying

they're drunk they don't know what

they're talking about they're crazy and

then you let off the hook right there's

no real challenge to science there's no

real challenge to what you currently

believe because it's this person's

problem you know something wrong with

them

so we don't have to rethink things like

interstellar travel you know

interdimensional tea you know whatever

you know Mike Minor might not be out

there there was a terrific example of

this that's that's in my chapter in

there and it was a Russian spacecraft

satellite called Zond

zond for I think it was and that was a

big rocket booster and that reentered

over the United States came in through

the atmosphere

as we know from you know modern films

and the disaster shuttle breakup and

things like that these things come in

start to glow they start to they get hot

from friction with the atmosphere they

start to break up just like a meteorite

or a fireball and you get a string of

fragments and I've actually seen one of

these I saw one of the shuttle tanks

re-enter over Hawaii once and it's it's

amazing it's remarkable it's like a big

mass of fireworks the one I saw they

were all kind of sparkling and there

they're moving across the sky together

because you know there's like the big

piece out in front and some smaller

pieces behind and they're slowly

spreading out but what you see moving

across the sky is that string of Lights

together and we could say that's the

perception in this case now I was given

on the Condon Commission a folder of

what I remember is something like 150 or

200 reports of this and one of the

strangest things I experienced there was

that in general the people who knew what

they were looking at the people who said

gee that must be a satellite re-entering

the atmosphere and breaking out

they gave the shortest and Christmas

reports you know I saw this bright

things and lights in the sky I think

maybe it was a satellite breaking up

it's kind of the end of the story the

people who most badly misconceived it

they conceived that they saw something

else gave the most elaborate and

detailed reports and some great examples

of that there were even a progression of

stages there were the people who as I

say the people who said oh this is

satellite and the story then there were

the people who were describing what they

saw and they said I saw a string of

lights you know it kind of in a line

moving across the sky well that's

basically absolutely accurate great

great example of the perception

correctly reported as a conception and

so on then were people who started

introducing a very subtle difference

there were people who said I saw a set

of lights flying in formation

the sky a little bit of a different idea

there you know it's the idea that

somehow they're under control I just was

relooking at that chapter that I wrote

and I noticed there was a person who

said they were flying in perfect

military formation now if you know what

he saw that's not a bad description but

on the other hand if you come in and

you're talking to this guy next day and

he says I saw these things flying in

military formation you think well you

know was were these really a bunch of

different craft flying along in military

formation that's that's not what he saw

but that's his conception and then

finally you know we get to the this end

as I say with the detailed descriptions

there were people who said I saw a black

cigar-shaped object with a row of lights

and of course they didn't see the black

cigar-shaped object they conceived it it

had to be there because there had to be

something for those lights to be

attached to then there were the people

who said I saw a black cigar-shaped

object with a row of lighted windows and

we absolutely had reports like that and

then the last two or three that were the

furthest off you know I saw the

cigar-shaped probably the windows it was

so close we could have seen people

inside the windows if there had been

anybody in there my dog was barking and

whimpering and and there were fires in

the fields outside of town the next day

and you know all of that and you know

you come in as a either inexperienced or

and maybe an inexperienced UFO report

you know investigator looking for

reports of alien craft you know those

sound like pretty good reports and so

you know they're all the same thing and

they were all a satellite breaking up in

the atmosphere so really tough to to

translate those into real understanding

as proof of the EXO tres hypothesis

remained elusive some ufologists began

to look in other directions and some of

the more 40 inclined ufologists the ones

who were attracted to the idea that UFOs

were part of a broad range of anomalies

and mysteries speculation grew that

there weren't extraterrestrial visitors

that these were actually paranormal

entities who is the realm of year drew

in 1960s about the mid 1960s the idea

begins to form that UFOs really aren't

what they appear to be they may not even

be craft they may not even represent a

technology in the ordinarily understood

sense of those words that these were

actually shape-shifting entities from

some unknown Otherworld a parallel

universe a demonic realm something like

that and there was an attempt to link

flying saucers not only with other weird

phenomena that people reported like

strange creatures and so on but also to

traditional folkloric entities like

fairies and angels and demons which were

also interpreted as not literal entities

but as representations of kind of

cultural expectations about supernatural

experience these things existed in some

sense the experiences of them were real

but but they weren't what they appeared

to be that they really were something

else representing some kind of unknown

other reality the most influential

writers in this new school were jacques

valet and John keel in 1969 Jacques

Vallee wrote a book called passport to

Magana where he links modern UFOs to

traditional beliefs about fairies demons

gods entities of various kinds

at the time passport ammonia was

published it was looked on more as an

ancient astronaut type text rather than

a real subversion of the whole

extra-terrestrial hypothesis most people

read it and said well okay the aliens

must have been around from time

immemorial you know this is just more

evidence for the same but in fact what

Malay was saying was was something quite

different

was that the UFOs are just a part of

some larger mystery John keel who is

much less intellectually sophisticated

but just as influential as valet wrote

several books in which he revived

traditional demonology and he argued

that UFOs and their entities and all

kinds of other strange creatures were

literally demanding entities he didn't

say they were from Hell but he called

the renamed hell the super spectrum the

super spectrum was also related to the

traditional occult idea of the etheric

realm a realm on another level of

vibrational frequency it did sort of

mesh with the spirit of the times

the idea of getting away from technology

you know scientists and government as

the good guys

which you know you see in all those

1950s monster outerspace movies the

heroes are always scientists and

soldiers complete revolution there they

become the villains and the

counterculture in the notion of a

new-age relief in this one more

spiritual sort of thing becomes very

popular so this idea of valet is that

there might be some kind of mysterious

force I had almost a star wars since

controlling yeah I'll out there and is

responsible for many manifestations of

the paranormal that quickly call it on

now to critics this was really an

abdication of Reason logic and science

that this was really a reversion to

magical thinking and a rejection of

science and reason as the right tools

with which to investigate phenomena but

the absence of conclusive proof for

these you know extraordinary phenomena

was very frustrating to a lot of people

and some people had come to this less of

scientists than is mystery mongers they

weren't really hard clear thinkers

ballet was trained as a scientist ballet

was trained as a physicist ballet was

intellectually sophisticated and not as

inclined to rank paranoia as keel and

his followers were but still underlying

his reading of what was going on was

really magical thinking that really had

as much to do with traditional occultism

as with science

out of the paranormal school of you

Falah djegal theory there evolved the so

called psychosocial hypothesis which

actually rejected paranormal processes

but did see UFO reports and experiences

as part of a broad range of folkloric

supernatural phenomena but instead of

ascribing them to demons or parallel

universes or some other unknowable place

held them to be psychological phenomena

sometimes extraordinary psychological

phenomena this school really grew among

European ufologists and to this day is

fairly popular in in Europe representing

a kind of skeptical ufology which is

making its own variety of extraordinary

claims they tend very much to look for

answers in what you might call tradition

the idea that you are that certain ideas

have been passed along they want to find

cultural antecedents you know it here

are the here's the same imagery as

abductions we can find it in science

fiction we could find it in stories of

fairy kidnap you can find it in all

sorts of cultural predecessors that

doesn't mean that there's some kind of

organizing force it just means that it

has something to do with the way we

think and believe and there's really no

mysterious unknown phenomenon involved

critics of paranormal and cycle social

approaches to UFO theory pointed out

that there is a body of physical

evidence for the presence of something

anomalous that seems irreducible that

doesn't seem amenable to prosaic

explanation or to being contained within

known knowledge at this stage and so

they would respond to psychosocial

theorists and paranormalists as saying

and this isn't all just Airy fairy

this isn't all subjective there actually

is some objective evidence that

something strange is going on

and the paranormalists and the

psychosocial skeptics could never really

adequately rebut this argument and

eventually some ufologists who had gone

over to the paranormal or psychosocial

side said yes the physical evidence is

really the core evidence it really is at

the core of the controversy

it's amazing how quickly galaxies are

formed the

old Space Telescope did a couple of very

deep surveys very long exposures to look

for the most distant clusters and

individual galaxies and found that

galaxies formed sometime around the

first billion year age of the universe

and so that means the stars of course

which constitute galaxies have been

around that long so a civilization could

be rather old you have to assume of

course that evolution took place and

that takes some time but certainly

civilizations at least a billion years

older than ours are theoretically

possible maybe even much older than that

the first job one generation of stars

has to go by you know I think four to

five million years well it depends I

mean the very heaviest star is about

pretty quickly the involvement time

skills of even less than a billion years

so it's possible that there could be

civilizations that are very very old how

what would be what would the limit well

just say ten billion years that'd be

about twice as old as as the

civilization could be ten billion years

or well I suppose so I mean the

symbolization of all during the first

say four billion years of existence of

university that's not out of the

question more conservatives say it's

easy to imagine a civilization at least

a billion years older than we are leave

at that ten billion well it's kind of

stretching it but it's not out of the

question in my view the universe is

really old compared to our age not super

old because you know you can imagine

what a trillion years old and we're not

nearly close to that but it's pretty old

and what that means is I'm ticularly

with recent astronomical discoveries is

that in fact the average civilization in

the galaxy how can I even speak of it

because just pick the average age of a

planet like Earth in other words in a

solar system you know what would be the

average age of a solar system or like

the Sun like solar system the answer is

a billion years older than ours so when

you start imagining what a billion year

old civilization would be like the

answer is I can't imagine it so I

imagine almost anything including yes

the earth is just a place to come and

enjoy the local natives and or what have

you but but it really means that that

almost anything is possible to be able

to be honest so

I find it difficult that my mind does

begin to reel actually when I think

about billion years civilizations well

so a lot of people will say something

like what would a technology be liked

it's a billion years in advance of us I

say I don't need a billion years give me

a thousand years and if you don't think

that would be kind of amazing just think

back a thousand years in hand some guy

living in the 11th century a light bulb

let alone a generator a nuclear power

plant

you

I have an answer

I think one of the things that may have

been left out of the famous Drake

Equation about trying to estimate how

many what fraction of solar systems have

planets what fraction of those planets

have life by the law is that technical

civilizations may only last a thousand

years or ten thousand years you know

that we've begun we're I don't know I

I'm not sure we could be that optimistic

about our own culture what we're seeing

and whether we get off the earth and get

out there before we use up all the

resources I mean we may only have one

shot at doing that so it may be that the

fraction of cultures that are around

long enough to be interested not at is

small plus then there's the evolutionary

window that you know you're only a

species for four ten billion years I'm

ten million years that's kind of the

turnover time for evolution so so the

idea that cultures once they achieve

space travel remain interested in

everybody else you know seems small to

me I don't think that's probably likely

I guess the point is simply that Fermi's

paradox is a bigger paradox now that was

5060 years ago and Fermi first made his

famous quip so we've got to face up to

it and I think that the the problem is

that the scientific community is

unwilling to consider the possibility

that in this is giant more asked which

is the the field of UFO reports that

there might be lurking some really valid

signal it's just a mindset that that

can't be and I think that's I think

that's actually to the detriment of

science i and bernie hey Bruce Maccabee

Jim Dierdorf

put together a paper for the journal the

British interplanetary society which it

which is a very well-respected journal

and first covered the what we began with

Fermi's paradox you know famous makes

the claimed expression by Fermi which

which which did take place when he said

well all astrophysicists looking out at

all those stars and all those galaxies

know that I'm

we want to really be pumped up with

hubris there's got to be other et

civilizations out there furthermore if

you look at the statistics of travel

even if you're very conservative and say

you can't beat the speed of light and

each time you go to a new star you stay

there for a million years before you go

off to look at another star nonetheless

you end up saying the galaxy should be

colonized by now because after all we're

a relatively young star were less than

four billion years old

we've got stars in our galaxy ten

billion years old that's plenty of time

for for us to be colonized so where are

they and the answer at the time this is

back in

I don't know 40s 50s well as well

probably speed of light limitation so

looking at that we said okay well that

limitation now has begun to evaporate

due to the new understandings and

predictions coming up general relativity

so that's not the issue well what about

what Condon said in his report well

that's not really an issue either

because we now have better data better

sightings more evidence so finally came

down to least in that paper we sweet and

we talked about a couple of cases at

Bruce Maccabee had been directly

involved investigating that's seen

pretty good and then you finally get to

the issue of well that's the case and

why don't we see the evidence um well

you can claim that UFO sightings are

possibly evidence but of course that

hasn't met the scientific standard of

really being proven and then the

question is well if they're kind of here

but they're not showing themselves why

is that

one possibility is that if you're a

super advanced race super advanced

technology what some value to you you

don't need slaves you don't need

minerals out of the ground you don't

need this you don't need that you can

basically make whatever you want so the

only thing of value would be the

intellectual property and creativity of

an uncontaminated species uncontaminated

uncontaminated being because I show up

here and say whoa internal combustion

machine we would have thought of that or

look at those musical scales now that's

that's really something and but the

minute they land and we shake their

hands 100 years with them and we've lost

our value and also as we know from

interacting with primitive societies the

shock and disrupt the society presumably

they would know that too so what

Dierdorf likes to point out is that okay

they're not going to make themselves

immediately known or obvious reasons

because it would destroy our value to

them on the other hand and would be a

shock on the other hand they know it's

only a matter of time even if it's only

when we get our own space ships go out

there and run into them so we do have to

kind of be brought along and our

maturity to accept this as a possibility

and so kind of a covert peekaboo process

would be the favored one and you know

that could be the case obviously we

don't know for sure there's almost

nothing I can think of good that would

come from landing and making contact

with another civilization that is not

either comparable to yours in

development or is so sophisticated that

they can handle it and when you think

about the scenarios we could all dream

of science fiction about contacting in

other words were the aliens and we we

have this ability to travel we develop

this technology we start flying around

the galaxy we encounter another

civilization that's less advanced than

us would we land and the answer is I

certainly would would not

yeah and I won't go through the long

long list of bad things that can happen

but there's it is a long list and so it

by the way raises the question of when

could contact even occur when you think

about it that way and you realize that

despite all the science fiction stuff in

fact I think that societies would would

pull back from contact and not do it

when does it happen

actually and that to me is the more

profound question and I don't have an

answer that that there is an awful lot

of us assuming that they would be like

us and I tend to fall into that trap

frequently and it spits very hard very

hard not to do it it may be of course

that if the extraterrestrial

intelligence were sufficiently different

from us we would not recognize it we

would not know it was there we couldn't

make sense of it and possibly vice-versa

but you know that certainly we don't

know how technology is going to progress

right now it seems to be accelerating

going very very fast will it you know

level off will it taper will there be

various plateaus but the different nough

sub X tricked rational intelligence is

something that has to be taken into

account when we think about the

possibilities of contact and if contact

is going to occur and you know it

we might not notice it I mean sad but

true well there could be good reasons

why they don't say hello it could be if

they're trying to keep our civilization

from suddenly imploding because we're

encountering something that's beyond our

ability to assimilate it could be that

this is part of the plan to bring a new

civilization into the fold to gradually

expose the phenomenon I think that there

are a lot of reasons why it wouldn't

just come and land here if they if they

so chose our own experience with South

Pacific civilizations

in European technology you know in the

19th century should it should answer the

question I mean those civilizations

would practically destroy it well in

fact it's true when we encountered

ourselves more primitive civilizations

we tend to destroy them but it may be

even more severe than that I mean we

don't tend to to try to initiate contact

with them with a group of ants do we

when we don't know how far advanced a

civilization might be how many surprised

we're tens of thousand but certainly

decades or even centuries I would see as

a possible timescale for making contact

known if you look at the UFO reports

they're oftentimes extremely convincing

to the people who see them and witness

them but the event never lasts long

enough never has enough exposure to sort

of rise to the surface of national

attention and it could be that that that

is part of a deliberate strategy I mean

it could be one way to gradually make us

collectively as a civilization realize

that there's more to reality than what

we experience every day around us but

without up suddenly upsetting the whole

apple cart without suddenly sort of

challenging all of our structures and

our politics or economics it could which

could be very devastating here's another

thought maybe it's already taking place

maybe that you know flying around or

whatever in a kind of liminal way right

at the margins of our reality is in fact

the first step to towards a Content you

know that that contact would not be

something which would be abrupt but

maybe is designed to take place over

thousands of years so that the impact on

us is yep this this is actually how if I

were in charge how I would manage

contact and this is sort of getting back

to this idea of the dawning realization

that you know if if everyone reaches the

same conclusion at once it would be very

exciting if slowly more and more people

are drawn into one position or the other

and then finally there's just a small

very small group of holdouts that

maintain a contrary view of what will

buy in the case of something like

contact if we're talking about

civilizations billions of years older

than us what would be the rush in modern

North America we're always in a rush

no we wouldn't think of building a

cathedral say over a period of 800 years

as was done in an evil times give it a

few years but those if something were

truly momentous then indeed it could

could take place very very slowly over

many people's lifetimes and and what

this would mean if it were to take place

over many people's lifetimes is that

there would always be there would be a

growing group of people who quote thinks

something's going on with a lot of other

people who still don't agree with them

but why would there be a rush

requirement and something is delicate

and portentous you might say is

contacting another civilization well

this becomes more just tried which is

that you ready for it I mean you're

really ready for it

meaning that you are at such a level

that it will not affect your social

mores it will not affect your

technological underpinnings because in

fact the best way for aliens to

completely screw us up is to land here

and say here's the box for free energy

go use it you know and all of a sudden

everything here just falls apart you

know why there have to be gasoline

stations oh gee all those people just

lost their jobs and why I mean do you

just go on and on and on and just the

whole places becomes a nightmare of you

know so so you have to have a society

that can handle this contact whatever

that means you know and I can just

conceive of it my 21st century you know

small human mind here which I don't

think is big enough necessarily get get

our arms around it but I do think we're

a long way away from it but what would

be the appropriate moment for contact

and so that's another reason why I think

I'm pessimistic I used about scientists

and I think I'm realistic about whether

or not we can expect contact and my

realism says no actually it's an

interesting interesting set of

challenges I I personally am NOT this is

worried about these sort of fierce

destructive aliens as a lot of people

are because I think what we're finding

out through political science is that

there

a lot of forces that tend to put really

aggressive societies out of business and

it's not a it's not a popular message

when I talk to people who read the

morning paper it's less popular now with

what's going on in the Mideast but

there's a lot of growing evidence within

within political science on the kinds of

conditions that lead to peaceful

coexistence and why they're likely to

prevail and what I have to do as a

psychologist is if I'm trying to imagine

what et might be like is while being

being aware of the problem of

anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism

and so forth this is to try to say okay

now what's out there that seems to be

pretty robust what is there out there

that we've learned that applies in

different historical epics that cuts

across cultures and may cut across

species and those are the things that I

see is the fairly useful hypotheses you

know to try to try to follow up such as

such as interstellar tit-for-tat or

negotiation that if in fact you find a

communicative civilization and if in

fact there is a way to communicate in a

timeframe that's meaningful what you do

is you indicate an interest in

collaboration and getting along sharing

information and so forth but you don't

just sort of give it all away at once

you wait for some sort of reciprocal

concession it's known as the golden rule

it's known as tit-for-tat there's a

number of other names for it it appears

in science it appears in biology it

appears in social science it appears in

religion and given the universality of

the of the reciprocal relationships

that's one way to start thinking about

bargaining or interacting with et

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