The best insurance
I feel a sense of irony typing this, since I am currently on hold with my health insurance company … long enough to write this blog on the side. Not surprisingly, the virus has done a number on my insurance from premium changes, to benefit changes, to what it looks like “getting kicked out soon” changes.
Health insurance is definitely one of these insurances who I would like to never need. I’m not sure what’s worse, suddenly needing a bunch of health benefits or being abducted by aliens. But that probably depends very much on the types of aliens I imagine. Somehow, I have the feeling that if they took the time, money, and effort to travel all this way, they might be after more than just a warm welcome and a handshake when they get here to make it worth their while. I hope I’m wrong on this but if you look at our own Mars missions (which are awesome, btw) it does look like they might be motivated by more than just saying hello to our neighbors.
As far as the new insurance for Roost Air goes, I’m not so sure Hans is on the right track here. Chuck does seem like kind of a Martian from another planet at times. And who knows where he will “accidentally” land next not paying attention getting himself in more trouble. Our friend, fellow helicopter pilot, and former writer for the X-Files Vince Gilligan came up with a great line for the X-Files: “Keep watching the Skies!”. This line actually also applies to Julio since he needs to watch for Chuck to not accidentally fall out of “the skies, LOL.
But I bet “they” are out there. Elon Musk doesn’t believe in “them” but Robert Bigelow does. What do you guys think?
Mike
Hi Mike, reading between the lines, hope you & family are ok, staying (getting?) well. Plenty of bushfires (last year) and flooding (now), to review insurance plans over here on East coast Aussi. Enough to make me go sailing on my 2Sail Sim ? 🙂
I think aliens exist but have never visited us.
They do visit us, but for them in their world(s) it is illegal! Only hotshot aliens from time to time come to Earth, but they do it at their own peril and risk.
@Kingsely: Are you isolating on your boat?! I’d imagine that’s the best place to stay away from the virus and during floods, especially when they happen at the same time….
Things are pretty good here. Our season is just about to begin. I will find myself back on the road in about 2 weeks…
I think you answered your own question:
https://www.chickenwingscomics.com/comic/in-a-galaxy-far-far-away/
I also think it interesting that assuming that a space-faring, possibly FTL-capable alien race appeared out of the blu…ahem, black, that:
a) they’d be in a form that would be very easy for us to recognize outside of Hollywood-based shows and stories;
b) they’d be stupid enough to make themselves visible to us in the first place, having traveled all that way, assuming any non-benign intentions;
c) and even assuming benign intentions, for a space-faring civilization to interest themselves in us specifically when we are rock-bound demonstrates a total lack of humility on our part – or to quote Marvin, “I think man is the most interesting insect on Earth, don’t you?”
A different argument, and bear with me:
Consider this from the perspective of us actual aliens. No, really. From our perspective, we’re a bunch of aviators; we see the world from a literal bird’s-eye view, can travel to almost anywhere almost at will, and under certain circumstances, we travel without detection from the surface (either by noise or by sight, or both). But when we are detected from the ground, our aircraft are noisy, flying, glistening beasts. When our aircraft are detected by people who do not understand what we do or why, cargo cults have formed, up to and including ritual sacrifice. These practices are generally designed to bring us back as tokens of good fortune. This was within the last hundred years; if this were to happen a couple of centuries ago, only a few generations back, one would probably argue silver birds or dragons, likely conjured by witchcraft. The idea that these machines were man-made would never have entered the popular mind, even if they had appeared over London or Boston, Tokyo or Cairo.
From our perspective, even today, why would we ever want to make ourselves known to just about everybody on the ground? What would we gain or learn, that people don’t like to get ‘buzzed’ by aircraft? What would we stand to lose by doing so? And do we really have nothing better to do than to do all of that, such as get to where we were going in the first place?
—–
In total contradiction to that last point, also wish you good luck on your very noisy, brightly-colored, highly publicized, well-understood and well-intentioned ground-bombing flights in a few weeks.
Well, the way I see it, statistically it is impossible that we are the only ones in the Universe. Also, I would argue, impossible that there are no other sentient beings or even much more advanced than us. Will we ever be able to make contact with them is a whole different story. I like to think that we will and that it is more likely that this contact will be initiated by “them” (them coming over here). I am absolutely sure I will not live long enough to see earthlings actually going far enough to contact another civilisation. Have “they” already been here or are “they” here now? Simply no way of telling for an uninformed human.
As for the intentions of these visitors. Again, I find comfort in theory that argues that beings on such evolved level would need to be peaceful, or otherwise would not be able to evolve that far and would destroy themselves before actually reaching that level (kind of what we are doing to ourselves now). On the other hand I can also imagine a civilisation advanced enough and desperate enough to launch an “ark” in a last attempt to survive the destruction of their own ecosystem. These guys would not care too much about indigenous species of the planet they see as their only future home. But, let’s hope there are not many of these.
And, yes – if I was sufficiently advanced life form, able to visit other inhabited planets, I would not announce my presence and cause all sort of problems and influence the object of my interest. Instead, I would watch and learn. Is there someone up there right now, looking and rolling its eyes on us? Can an ant tell if I am watching it? Most likely not and even if yes, I doubt it is able to understand who I am.
So – let’s get this planet into shape and maybe somebody will be impressed enough to say “hello”. As it is, there is probably some sign that says – keep away, a bunch of lunatics!
Who knows? I also think that “we”, as a species, would be totally uninteresting to a (hypothetical) advanced alien civilization. Like a bunch of immature kids, we aren’t even able to take care of the ecosystem we depend on.
That having been said, and as far as literary mental experiments on the “contact” problem are concerned, I feel much closer to Stanisław Lem’s pessimism (“His Master’s Voice”, 1968) than to Carl Sagan’s optimism (“Contact”, 1985).
But hey, at least microorganisms might be out there… somewhere.
Of course the humans would be of great scientific interest for aliens! Each and every creature (even microbes) are interesting for (alien) science.
The other question is: what the aliens would DO TO US when detected Earth? Would we be subdued to unhuman body or mental scientific experiments? Would the aliens connect wires to human brains and consume our mental energy as psychic fuel? And what does actually God think about it?