Surging Belief in Alien Visitors Is Becoming A Serious Problem For Our Society

[ramonmercado]

Is it really a societal issue which poses a danger to legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life>

Surging Belief in Alien Visitors Is Becoming a Serious Problem For Our Society​

Space 03 September 2024 ByTony Milligan, The Conversation

Note: not a photo of an alien spaceship. (KTSDesign/SciencePhotoLibrary/Getty Images)

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7 percent believe that they have seen a UFO. The figures are even higher in the US – and rising. The number of people who believe UFO sightings offer likely proof of alien life increased from 20 percent in 1996 to 34 percent in 2022. Some 24 percent of Americans say they've seen a UFO.

This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What's more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we'd only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.

In a paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, I argue that the belief in alien visitors is no longer a quirk, but a widespread societal problem.

The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the US, feel they have to respond. The disclosure of information about claimed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs rather than UFOs) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country. Much of it plays upon familiar anti-elite tropes that both parties have been ready to use, such as the idea that the military and a secretive cabal of private commercial interests are keeping the deep truth about alien visitation hidden. That truth is believed to involve sightings, abductions and reverse-engineered alien technology.

Belief in a cover-up is even higher than belief in alien visitation. In 2019, a Gallop poll found that a staggering 68 percent of Americans believed that "the US government knows more about UFOs than it is telling".

This political trend has been decades in the making. Jimmy Carter promised document disclosure during his presidential campaign in 1976, several years after his own reported UFO sighting. Like so many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus. (That happens a lot.)

Hillary Clinton also suggested she wanted to "open [Pentagon] files as much as I can" during her presidential campaign against Donald Trump. As seen in the video below, Trump suggested he'd need to "think about" whether it was possible to declassify the so-called Roswell documentation (relating to the notorious claimed crash of a UFO and the recovery of alien bodies).

Former president Bill Clinton claimed to have sent his chief of staff, John Podesta, down to Area 51, a highly classified US Air Force facility, just in case any of the rumours about alien technology at the site were true. It is worth nothing that Podesta is a long-time enthusiast for all things to do with UFOs.

The most prominent current advocate of document disclosure is the Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer. His stripped back 2023 UAP disclosure bill for revealing some UAP records was co-sponsored by three Republican senators.

Pentagon disclosure finally began during the early stages of Joe Biden's term of office, but so far there has been nothing to see. Nothing looks like an encounter. Nothing looks close.

Still, the background noise does not go away. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/surgin...is-becoming-a-serious-problem-for-our-society

 

[Sabresonic]

I would like more news coming leaders from other countries not just the whole American it's Me and all.

 

[Tanglebones]

I'm not really sure why this should be a problem.

People believe all sorts of crap on all sorts of subjects. Religion, economics, history......lots of stuff is recognised as being true when it really isn't....and the whole societal edifice doesn't fall down.

I can imagine that this belief is a problem is only so from the point of view of mainstream scientists. Like bishops of old, they are only too willing to be seen as infallible, and see any dissent as the first crack in the dam.

 

[catseye]

And there ARE UFOS, UAPs, whatever you call them. There are, most definitely, things in the sky that one person can't identify. That doesn't mean that nobody can identify them, or that they aren't real, nuts-and-bolts 'things' or meteorological phenomina. UFOs absolutely exist. They just aren't alien craft from outer space, that's all.

So when someone says 'I saw a UFO', well, if it was in the sky and you didn't know what it was, then, yes you did. Which is where it gets tricky because, on hearing that, some people are going to believe that they've had an encounter with alien life, but you can't tell them that they didn't see a UFO...

 

[Tanglebones]

And there ARE UFOS, UAPs, whatever you call them. There are, most definitely, things in the sky that one person can't identify. That doesn't mean that nobody can identify them, or that they aren't real, nuts-and-bolts 'things' or meteorological phenomina. UFOs absolutely exist. They just aren't alien craft from outer space, that's all.

So when someone says 'I saw a UFO', well, if it was in the sky and you didn't know what it was, then, yes you did. Which is where it gets tricky because, on hearing that, some people are going to believe that they've had an encounter with alien life, but you can't tell them that they didn't see a UFO...

Absolutely.

The stock answer appears to be "Ah, but they wouldn't be able to travel all those light years would they?"

My reply is "Why do you assume that whatever it is comes from outer space?"

 

[Frideswide]

I don't think it's the belief in aliens that is the problem per se. I think that vacuous, illogical, ill-informed and epistemologically inadequate ways pf thinking are certainly a problem - but they happen in all areas of study and imagination. A 1:1 identification with UFOs etc just doesn't exist!

I reckon that believing that there is a 1:1 relationship is part of the belief system I see as the problem!

 

[charliebrown]

I guess if the humanoids are friendly or not.

In my younger days I saw some UFOs and even had a bizarre contact with some kind of humanoid.

This did absolutely nothing for me over the many years except give me at times a strange form of depression.

 

[Tunn11]

A lot of the fault rests with the endless TV programmes where any sighting of a UFO is followed by a respected scientist commenting that they believe in life elsewhere in the universe.

They are not saying that they believe that life is here in a UFO and may not even have been given the context of a UFO; but the two are lumped together in the programme leaving the impression that scientist X has endorsed alien visitation.

This re inforces the UFO = Aliens idea in the popular media.

 

[BS3]

Jimmy Carter promised document disclosure during his presidential campaign in 1976, several years after his own reported UFO sighting. Like so many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus. (That happens a lot.)

Interestingly what he saw was actually a high altitude barium release experiment.

 

[BS3]

I'm not really sure why this should be a problem.

People believe all sorts of crap on all sorts of subjects. Religion, economics, history......lots of stuff is recognised as being true when it really isn't....and the whole societal edifice doesn't fall down.

I can imagine that this belief is a problem is only so from the point of view of mainstream scientists. Like bishops of old, they are only too willing to be seen as infallible, and see any dissent as the first crack in the dam.

What "mainstream scientists", or more specifically the 'sceptics' who claim to be the bearers of their message, tend to ignore is the vast range of human experience.

They could start by interpreting the UFO 'problem' through the lens of psychology and sociology and only at that point consider how the physical world might interact with it

 

[Frideswide]

I can imagine that this belief is a problem is only so from the point of view of mainstream scientists. Like bishops of old, they are only too willing to be seen as infallible, and see any dissent as the first crack in the dam.

Jeez! who are you associating with @Tanglebones ? Get more and better friends!

Seriously, I haven't ever met a Real Scientist who acts or believes as you describe. Where do these people hide?

 

[Sharon Hill]

You can't do much about waves of belief that spread. But you can be outraged about uncritical elected officials acting inappropriately by accepting complete nonsense from storytellers and liars who are recycling the same old stuff from years ago.

Social action should have a legitimate basis. This UAP stuff does not have that. It's driven by fringe people with money to push their unsupported, quasi-religious stuff. The new "evidence" is just as terrible as the previous "evidence".

I'll stop now before I head into talking about how I REALLY feel.

 

[Tanglebones]

Where do these people hide?

Behind people such as Sheldrake and Mack?

Those that don't like tenure?

 

[Tanglebones]

But you can be outraged about uncritical elected officials acting inappropriately by accepting complete nonsense from storytellers and liars who are recycling the same old stuff from years ago.

I'm hooked. Reel me in.

 

[BS3]

Incidentally, I'd take a bit of an issue with this:

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular.

I understand why the author might want to present this as a growing 'threat', but polling in the US as far back as 1978 showed that 57% of people thought UFOs were real and even in the UK, Gallup recorded belief in "flying saucers" at 27% - more than the "fifth" of UK residents noted above. Similarly the Establishment in the 50s, 60s and even the 70s was riddled with believers. UFOs have from the start been a hugely pervasive and successful 'modern myth'.

The main difference with the current situation is that in the 1980s UFOs came to be linked with a deep post-Watergate (I guess) mistrust of government institutions, encouraged by crackpots like Bill Cooper.

 

[kamalktk]

The word for it is post-truth, and more generally the "firehose of falsehood", which is a political/propaganda technique.

 

[catseye]

I wonder if an increasing belief in alien life visiting us might be linked to an almost childlike hope that 'a big person' is going to swoop in and save us from ourselves? The aliens that people imagine always seem to be peaceful and bringing hope and a message about life, the universe and everything, rather than threatening to invade and take over. So maybe humans are programmed to believe in help coming from outside.

 

[Xanatic*]

Is this particular belief really a problem? It seems to me that the beliefs in satanic abuse or "alternative medicine" are the main problems.

 

[Sharon Hill]

Is this particular belief really a problem? It seems to me that the beliefs in satanic abuse or "alternative medicine" are the main problems.

As the article notes, it's a problem when our social leaders want to focus on it, spend money and effort on it, and think it's a critical issue. They are fixated on the wrong thing and thus pay less attention to the dire problems in society that we actually can do something about. (We have many serious social issues in the US that are killing people everyday. UFOs aren't one of them.)

I'll just note that some of the evangelical-minded people in the UFO circle believe that aliens are demons.

 

[AgProv]

This is a symptom rather than the illness itself? Over the past few decades there's been a growing alienation between the people who are governed, and the Establishment/political class that does the governing. (This is not meant as political comment - more sociological). Trust in Government by the governed has eroded everywhere and is practically non-existent in some places: the belief is strong that all politicians lie by default, seek to mislead and deceive, and use a compliant media to assist in cover-ups and deceptions of all kinds. Concealing the truth about UFO's is in this analysis a smaller part of a larger whole, a suspicion They lie to Us about everything.

 

[Analogue Boy]

I find it predictable that NASA seems to promote the Life on Mars routine in the run up to an election as if to say, ‘Don’t forget about us when you’re thinking about funding’. Similarly, it’s in the US military’s interest to also ensure funding to investigate ‘tic tacs‘ or whatever.

 

[Sabresonic]

I guess if the humanoids are friendly or not.

In my younger days I saw some UFOs and even had a bizarre contact with some kind of humanoid.

This did absolutely nothing for me over the many years except give me at times a strange form of depression.

I got depression just a minute or 2 before my and my mate saw the Orange UFO back in 1988 in which I posted on hear in the past....is it the term the Oz Factor in UFO and Time Slip cases.

 

[BS3]

The aliens that people imagine always seem to be peaceful and bringing hope and a message about life, the universe and everything, rather than threatening to invade and take over

The latest popular trope seems to be that "aliens" are actually sinister transdimensional entities who are "farming" us in some way, possibly with government collusion.

While the underlying framework is certainly something we've seen before in ufology (certainly in the 1970s), I can't help but think this this latest version of it is mainly an echo of people's anxieties over late-stage global capitalism.

 

[BS3]

This is a symptom rather than the illness itself? Over the past few decades there's been a growing alienation between the people who are governed, and the Establishment/political class that does the governing. (This is not meant as political comment - more sociological). Trust in Government by the governed has eroded everywhere and is practically non-existent in some places: the belief is strong that all politicians lie by default, seek to mislead and deceive, and use a compliant media to assist in cover-ups and deceptions of all kinds. Concealing the truth about UFO's is in this analysis a smaller part of a larger whole, a suspicion They lie to Us about everything.

The renewed focus on Roswell was an early symptom of this. Roswell was a nothingburger until the post-Watergate years; indeed early publicity actually described it as a "cosmic Watergate".

 

[Tanglebones]

I find it predictable that NASA seems to promote the Life on Mars routine in the run up to an election as if to say, ‘Don’t forget about us when you’re thinking about funding’. Similarly, it’s in the US military’s interest to also ensure funding to investigate ‘tic tacs‘ or whatever.

Been going on forever mate. Apparently.

A cursory glance through the comments in the British tabloids will tell you that global warming (for example) is just a wheeze to keep the funding coming in.

And to be honest, there's yer problem.

They'll only believe who they agree with.