As discussed in my previous post in this blog, I admit to having been caught off guard by the latest developments regarding UAPs and non-human intelligence. Nonetheless, I cannot help but take these developments seriously, and thus felt compelled to explore the subject further in two directions: first, to understand clearly how (im)plausible it is that the allegations are fabrications, given the legal context of the case; and second, to apply reason and information already disclosed to speculate educatedly on what we can expect a non-human intelligence to be like.

As luck would have it, the first part was already done ‘for me’ by Marik von Vennenkampff, writing for The Hill. I recommend his level-headed and well informed essay, which explains better than I could why I now take this whole thing quite seriously. In addition, yesterday I decided to watch James Fox’s wonderful new documentary, Moment of Contact (about the Varginha UAP case in Brazil).

I have always had respect for Jamie’s work and this latest film doesn’t disappoint at all: he captured very well what is perhaps the most important UAP/close encounter case of all times, because of the sheer amount, detail and consistency of witness accounts. As most of you know, I spent my childhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

And although I haven’t been there in almost three decades now, childhood is a formative time, so I like to believe—perhaps too optimistically—that I can still judge the Brazilian demeanour, body language and tone of voice, in a culture-bound manner. Based on this, I do think the witnesses interviewed in the film were all telling the truth.

What this means is that, in addition to being a definitely psychological phenomenon in many ways—as I discussed in my own book Meaning in Absurdity several years ago—UAPs also have a stable physical facet: it would seem that there really are biological E.T.s from another star system visiting us by means of technologically advanced craft. Again, I hadn’t expected this, but I am too committed to truth to ignore the new data.

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However, whatever the case may be, the idea of very physical—meant here in the colloquial sense, not as a nod to physicalism—aliens coming to visit us in very physical craft raises a number of new questions: what can we expect these beings to be like? What about their technology? And how can we make sense of their weird behaviour, such as the typical ‘brownian motion‘ of their craft?

Since we are far from being able to visit other star systems, if these beings are visiting us they are obviously more technologically advanced than we are. Therefore, one educated way to speculate about them is to extrapolate the technology development curve we have been following. This is admittedly fraught with potential errors, as there is no a priori reason to think that their development arch would resemble ours in any way; yet, it’s the best we can do when armed only with our own cultural and conceptual references.