NH-PHILOSOPHY, PART 0: UAPs, advanced non-human technology and disclosure

Over the past few weeks, the subject of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) and advanced non-human technology has been catapulted to the forefront of our cultural attention. The historical UAP hearing at the US congress has conferred on it a whole new level of legitimacy, and for good reason: this time, the whistleblower isn’t an ‘anonymous high-ranking official’ shot in silhouette with a distorted voice, but someone with a name, credentials, a history, willing to appear on camera and make statements under oath, and with corroborating witnesses. Pilots with impeccable credentials are reporting phenomena that seem to violate the known laws of physics, and their observations are corroborated by instrumentation. Throughout the cultural history of UFOs, we haven’t seen anything like this before, despite the persistent lack of a proverbial smoking gun. So, what do I make of all this?

More than ten years ago, I wrote a book—Meaning in Absurdity—discussing anomalous phenomena such as UAPs. Those who read that book know that I view UAPs and so-called ‘alien abduction’ phenomena as largely psychological. Now, as an idealist, when I say that something is psychological I don’t mean that it is unreal, for under idealism everything is ultimately psychological. But I did regard these phenomena, at least to a large extent, as the result of our own ‘subconscious’ projections onto elements of the world. Under this view, UAPs really are real, but ‘dressed in the clothes’ of our own projections. Their core is independent of our human psychology, but their physical presentation isn’t.

One could argue that an implication of this view is that the physical phase of the phenomena is necessarily unstable, fluid, not immutable or permanent, but mercurial and impossible to pin down, like the Hessdalen lights. And this is why the allegation that human beings have managed to recover, store, disassemble, and even attempt to reverse engineer craft not created by humans, if true, would force me to put my view in a new perspective. Although their mental phase is self-evident, I had not expected the phenomena to have such a stable physical phase.

Which, of course, raises the question: are the allegations true in the first place? I feel quite comfortable in saying that what the pilots are reporting is true. They experienced these phenomena themselves—unlike the intelligence official, who has not observed anything directly—and their observations match measurements from instrumentation. The number of witnesses is also overwhelming. So, it’s quite safe to say that there is something out there—something controlled by a deliberate agency—which behaves in ways that seem to contradict the laws of physics as we understand them. In and of itself, this is already spectacular, but not really new, if you’ve been paying attention.

What is new is the weight of the allegation that the US defense establishment has possession of several of these craft. And this is what forces me to reconsider the view that the phenomena always have an ephemeral, fluid physical phase. Can we trust such a grave allegation?

The sincere answer is: I don’t know. I am impressed by the circumstances of the case; I am struck by the willingness of those involved to double-down under oath; and by their carefulness in following a lawful process. This is all new and inspires some confidence. Yet, they didn’t present any smoking gun. So, all I can say is that I now take the allegation more seriously than before.

And in taking it seriously, I feel compelled to revisit everything I saw or read about the phenomena before, so to reconsider it all under this new light. For instance: might Robert Lazar have been telling the truth all along? Surely his allegations sound a tad less incredible today than they did in 1989. And if he has been telling the truth, what are the implications? What are we to make of it all?

I believe it’s clear—as I argued in Meaning in Absurdity—that the phenomena have been with us since as far back as the beginning of recorded history, and probably much earlier than that. It is therefore unreasonable, in my opinion, to think of UAPs as performing some kind of survey or mapping of our planet and species; any such mission would have been completed long ago, and wouldn’t require the recurring, frequent visiting of UAPs that we witness.

If UAPs are, to some extent, mental projections of our own, then their repeated visits simply reflect ourselves, and will thus continue to recur for as long as we are us. There is no deep mystery here. But if they are solid, concrete technology bringing life from other planets, dimensions or realities here, then we must ask: what makes them keep on coming? What are they trying to do?

Potential planetary surveys can’t explain the visits, for the reasons above. So what could? Well, only one thing comes to my mind: an experiment carried out on Earth at a geological time scale, which requires constant monitoring. I have no idea what that might be, so I can’t make the hypothesis more precise. But some kind of experiment is all I can think of—assuming, that is, that the allegation is true in the first place, which right now I just don’t know to be the case; I don’t even have an opinion on the matter.

Now allow me to say something that you won’t like to hear. Do I think that we have the right to know the truth about UAPs?

Well, if by ‘right’ one means legal right, I don’t know; I am not a lawyer. Only a US lawyer can answer the question in this sense, but there should be a definitive, non-polemical answer. On the other hand, if by ‘right’ we mean ethical right, my answer is: it depends. I’d love to believe that I, along with everybody else, have an extra right—who doesn’t like rights?—particularly because I am very curious about the phenomena. But I am too committed to truth to allow my preferences to dictate my opinions on the matter. I don’t think there is a trivial case to be made here; our potential ‘rights’ are not self-evident. Allow me to elaborate on this with an example.

In a decades-old video called ‘The Lazar Tape and Excerpts from the Government Bible,’ Bob Lazar goes into a fair bit of detail regarding the non-human tech he allegedly helped to reverse engineer. At a superficial level, the material sounds largely coherent (although, at a slightly deeper level, I believe it to be incoherent, as I discuss in the postscript below, which is the reason why I, personally, don't believe Lazar's technical story). I don’t know whether it’s true but, for the sake of argument, let us imagine that it is. Then, if you watch the video, you will see that Lazar is giving everyone—including the Russians and Chinese—a roadmap for figuring out gravity drives, invisibility cloaks, and high-energy beam weapons. The material, superficial as it is, tells everyone what they should look into—starting from element 115 and the relationship between gravity and the strong nuclear force, neither of which is trivial or self-evident—and what problems they should try to solve. This constitutes enormous help: people now know where to start. If that stuff is true, I am horrified that it’s out in the open.

I don’t read any maliciousness in Bob Lazar; at best naiveté. But this doesn’t change the fact that disclosing what he did—again, assuming for the sake of argument that it is true—is atrociously, seismically, catastrophically irresponsible. I feel furious at the defense establishment for the delinquent vetting and security that allowed a kid, with a psychological disposition to sharing information, to have access to that kind of knowledge. For the past 18 months we have been watching the overwhelming level of evil, carnage and destruction that a totalitarian regime in Europe is unleashing upon the continent. Now imagine a Russia with high-energy beam weapons, gravity drives and invisibility cloaks—that would be the end of democracy, personal freedoms and our very way of life. So no, I don’t think it is obvious at all that we have the right to know everything there is to know about the phenomena. In fact, I feel enthusiastically inclined to believe we don’t. Any information that is made public is also made available to those who want to destroy our way of life; regrettably, there is just no way around it.

That’s not to say that some level of carefully redacted disclosure wouldn’t be useful. The mere suspicion that we might not be alone in this universe has already brought the Democrats and Republicans together; imagine what disclosure would do for bringing humanity together. There is much to be gained from it; so much it is hardly imaginable. And thus I do think disclosure should be done. But it should be done responsibly; not because we are psychologically unstable kids that need to be protected from the truth, but because the world is crammed with criminal regimes that would use whatever technical means at their disposal to exploit, and curtail the freedoms of, everybody else. Let us not be naïve here, thinking that disclosure will cause we all, Putin and his cronies included, to hold hands and sing the Kumbaya. The only reason we still enjoy the freedoms and way of life we do is our ability to apply superior military force when threatened. And if the phenomena have demonstrated anything beyond any doubt about the intentions of non-human intelligences, it is that they won’t protect us from ourselves.

Disclosure, when properly done, can significantly advance our culture, science and civilization at large, in almost unimaginable ways. It can open entirely new horizons for human life and aspirations. But we should guard against irresponsible disclosure and the demonization of a defense establishment that, whatever else might be true about it, ultimately protects our freedoms and way of life.

NEXT POST: NH-Philosophy, Part 1

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Postscript: Lazar's argument that one needs an element with high atomic number to expose the strong nuclear force beyond the atomic nucleus seems coherent. The claimed relationship between that force and gravity is intriguing. What doesn't seem to add up is talk of amplifying the strong nuclear force with an anti-matter reaction. There he conflates strengthening the nuclear force with energy release, which are fairly different things. The analogy he makes with signal amplification also doesn't add up: amplification is about increasing the amplitude of a pattern, such as that from a radio station. But here he needs to strengthen the force itself, not a particular pattern. It is completely unclear how an anti-matter reaction can amplify the strong nuclear force, as opposed to just releasing energy. Due to this, my opinion about Lazar's technical revelations is that they are bogus (even if the rest of his story turns out to be true), this being the reason why I felt comfortable publishing his old video above.