Steve Bassett and two part shows

[Mothra]

You know when someone like Steve is on you should make it a two part show. two hours isn't enough. That was the most interesting two hours I've heard on the Paracast in a while. Excellent show

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Really enjoyed the last two episodes.

As far as world overpopulation issues go, the world's developed nations are ALL slowly dying out, and the only place populations are increasing are the lesser developed mainly Muslim countries. No first world nation has a growing population.

Christians are dying out and being replaced by Muslims, so David's fears of Christians overpopulating the world are unfounded. The top 100 nations with total fertilty rates above maintenance (2.1) are ALL heavily Muslim, with Christian population percentages in the single digits at most.

China is at a 1.75, so in the long run they are shrinking as well.

As nations become more advanced, the population becomes less religous and traditional, and more focused on personal enjoyment and consumerism. If advanced tech brings an increase in quality of life (along with all our first world toys) to primitive people, they will have LESS children, rather than more.

Another point that I wished had been brought up is the liklihood of adanced creatures feeling benevolent towards us and giving us their technology. We don't go around giving cars and ipods to chimps, and I think rather than bestow us with wonderous technology, they will simply do what they have always done - either passivly observe and monitor us, or continue to pull strings and influence people in subtle and obtuse ways.

It's conceivable that ETs are simply so advanced and alien to our understanding that they will NEVER treat us as peers to be "welcomed into the brotherhood of the galaxy blah blah blah" We may be 10,000 years away from open contact according to their planned timeline. I just don't buy the idea that we are in open contact with non-human intelligences, or that we have agreements and treaties or whatever. That would imply that we are on remotely equal terms, and we arent. I don't make treaties with my cat when I want him to behave. I just pick him up and put him in the bathroom for a time-out.

Same thing with us having access to their technology. Although from time to time I'm sure chimps in the wild do come across an old tire or tent left behind by people. So I guess anything's possible.

So again, great show. I'd love to hear more from Bassett in the future. I've heard interview from him made several years back, and by now, according to him, full disclosure would have already occured. hmm...I understand he wants to be hopeful and positive, but he comes across a bit like a charlatan trying to see you something when he talks in predicitions, IMO.

I'd love to hear a followup to the Slovakian thing from Ted Phillips as well... I found that whole thing to be creepy as hell.

 

[digigeek]

...It's conceivable that ETs are simply so advanced and alien to our understanding that they will NEVER treat us as peers to be "welcomed into the brotherhood of the galaxy blah blah blah" ...

Poppycock! (heh - fun word) There are many among us who will certainly be held in high esteem by any "advanced" alien visitors:

• Hasselhoff (What?! He's the Hoff.)
• Connery (and Trebeck's Mother?)
• Gilbert Gottfried (next to him anything looks good - and he's funny)
• Jennifer McCarthy (funny AND that hot? Pangalactic)
• Courteney Cox (Have you seen her lately?)
• Kylie Minogue (The genes behind that tush MUST seed the Universe)

...Same thing with us having access to their technology. Although from time to time I'm sure chimps in the wild do come across an old tire or tent left behind by people. ...

Wrong. They'd definitely make KITT real for the Hoff.

 

[Quantum Being]

I think Bassett is completely wrong about those of religious faith not freaking out regarding disclosure. At various times in history, people of strong religious faith have tried to exterminate those who hold different views. If someone were to take away their God and provide evidence that their belief system was a myth, I think we would see the behavior of religious extremists go completely non-linear.

 

[truthseeker]

I find Steve to be a bit overly optimistic about goverment disclosure. I applaud his effort and what he's doing, but I highly doubt that our goverment, democrats or republicans, would touch this subject with a 10-foot pole. I hope that I'm wrong, but I've seen this sort of optimism before, which pretty much ammounted to nothing.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I find Steve to be a bit overly optimistic about goverment disclosure. I applaud his effort and what he's doing, but I highly doubt that our goverment, democrats or republicans, would touch this subject with a 10-foot pole. I hope that I'm wrong, but I've seen this sort of optimism before, which pretty much ammounted to nothing.

I was more impressed with the second interview than the first, where I thought he was so dogmatic as not to allow for any questioning.

This time he seemed somewhat more reasonable, but his optimism isn't something I share. We have over 50 years of attempts to bring about disclosure, starting with the late Major Donald E. Keyhoe in the 1950s. It all came to naught.

On the other hand, I did deliver a theory in this week's issue of The Paracast Newsletter, where I felt disclosure might already been happening, but the process is so gradual you won't really notice it until the end game is invoked, whatever that is.

 

[digigeek]

This time he seemed somewhat more reasonable, but his optimism isn't something I share. We have over 50 years of attempts to bring about disclosure, starting with the late Major Donald E. Keyhoe in the 1950s. It all came to naught.

On the other hand, I did deliver a theory in this week's issue of The Paracast Newsletter, where I felt disclosure might already been happening, but the process is so gradual you won't really notice it until the end game is invoked, whatever that is.

Don't you ever wonder why no alien crew have ever, say, just messed up and "landed" somewhere totally public either accidentally or because of some sort if mishap. Not a crash in some horribly remote area, but something more like the good old reported landing in the former Soviet Union in broad daylight.

Then again, you could argue that we are so complacent and dazed that we put up with just about anything. I mean, it seems as though thousands of sane people saw the massive Phoenix triangle craft with their own eyes and pretty close-up as these things go. You might think that would cause major upheaval, but it really didn't, did it? In the end, it was just sort of either brushed off or went a bit stale.

I don't think disclosure would cause any panic at all. Like everything else, it would get stale and be overtaken in the media by Brangelina's latest baby-finding trip to a third-world country or Britney going postal and shooting up a Jack in the Box...

Consider how completely and starkly serious Global Warming is, if it is really happening. If we really are that far in the hole environmentally, then we should be focusing every effort on trying desperately to fix it or stave off the worst, but we are not. We just feign some interest, by and large, and flip the page or click the next link and read about something current, hip, and shocking...then we move on again.

I think disclosure will affect people very differently depending on what part of the world they live in. A tribesman in rural Mongolia will consider it much more deeply, I think, than a corporate lawyer in NYC or even a diner owner in Iowa.

I think Steve should think about that...we here in the Western world are no problem - I think we'll just go on with our self-absorbed lives, but in more rural, less "advanced" parts, I think you will see people deeply moved.

The religious folks won't even be an issue, they will either be in full denial or will just jump on whatever other bandwagon comes to be as a result of disclosure - it'll be fun to see all the new religions sprout up, full of those who fear the unknown and require a crutch.

 

[digigeek]

PS - Me? I just want free energy and Internet so I can be off the grid and not have to work for "the man". That will afford me the opportunity to just farm, enjoy my wife and kids and animals, and live a sane, peaceful life and have some damned time to THINK now and again and not be so stressed out all the time over someone else's petty issues. If disclosure and alien tech could give me that then I'd be a happy camper.

 

[schticknz]

This time he seemed somewhat more reasonable, but his optimism isn't something I share. We have over 50 years of attempts to bring about disclosure, starting with the late Major Donald E. Keyhoe in the 1950s. It all came to naught.

I agree with your pessimism on this question, Gene. I don't see how any government such as the US government at the moment would even consider disclosing what they know about UFOs and what they are.

Whats in it for them??? I can't see any reason why they should or would want to disclose anything at all. I think Steve Bassett is being extremely naive and fantastically over optimistic in his assessment of the entire disclosure issue.

In this weeks episode, I really wanted Steven Bassett to be taken to task over such naivete and his total belief in the ET hypothesis. It didn't happen this time, maybe next time?? 8)

[Glad to see that Richard Dolan will be at the next X-Conference ... pity about Snoory being there too, though ... sighh]

 

[CapnG]

I really wanted Steven Bassett to be taken to task over such naivete and his total belief in the ET hypothesis. It didn't happen this time, maybe next time?? 8)

To be fair to Bassett, I think they covered that quite well in the beginning. Sure, he subscribes to the ETH but when taken to task he bottom-lined it quite well by saying that whoever they are, they aren't from around here (crypto excluded, of course).

I must add my voice to the choir decrying Bassett as overly optimistic about the whole issue of government disclosure. There is simply no incentive and the can of worms it opens is bigger than we can imagine. Fear alone is reason enough to refuse disclosure.

Also he doesn't seem to get that when we speak of how the religious community will react, we don't mean the Pope, the archbishops, the Imams and the various other leaders who might be more open to this sort of concept, we're talking about the ignorant, unwashed masses for whom this particular opiate is so satisfying. They will not take kindly to this AT ALL. Listen to any episode of C2C on the subject of aliens and at least two callers will chime in declaring that they are simply demons, that UFOs are the work of the devil and that only Jesus can save us. Good luck convincing those folks to do anything other than go berserk!

Regarding contact and our place in the universe, I have never understood this automatic assumption that aliens must be thousands of years ahead of us in terms of evolution or technology. It just doesn't wash. Look at where we are now in our history and compare it to 200 years ago, then 100, then 50, 20, 10 and now. See the trend? I assume we're all familiar with the concept of technological singularity by now. Try and picture humanity in 50 years. I actually CAN'T DO IT. I have no freaking clue what life on this earth will be like by then. At this point, I wouldn't rule out anything up to and including star travel. But will we be that much different as a species, that much better? Not likely. Why then should aliens be so much better than us?

Maybe that's an idea that's just too uncomfortable for our fragile, human egos... a species that's not god-like, not all-powerful and therefore above comparison, just slightly ahead by a couple laps...

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Regarding contact and our place in the universe, I have never understood this automatic assumption that aliens must be thousands of years ahead of us in terms of evolution or technology. It just doesn't wash. Look at where we are now in our history and compare it to 200 years ago, then 100, then 50, 20, 10 and now. See the trend? I assume we're all familiar with the concept of technological singularity by now. Try and picture humanity in 50 years. I actually CAN'T DO IT. I have no freaking clue what life on this earth will be like by then. At this point, I wouldn't rule out anything up to and including star travel. But will we be that much different as a species, that much better? Not likely. Why then should aliens be so much better than us?

A) If plain vanilla ET's have been here since the earliest days of mankind then they are, by definition, much much farther along than us. If they have engineered us, then the difference is obviosuly enormous. As in they were advanced enough to come here 100K years ago or whatever and fiddle with proto-humans.

B) The random chances that two different planetary intelligent species would be within a 100 years or so of each other tech-wise is incredibly low unless there are other mitigating factors we are unaware of. Statistically I think it's more likely they would be millions or years apart from each other. Anything's possible, but if I had to take a wild guess (which we all do at the end of the day), I just dont see us as anywhere near one another along the scale.

C) I think the "technoligical singularity" idea is the equivalent of 50's visions of the year 2000. Supposedly we'd all have flying cars and androids and be living in giant floating cities by now. Certain technological advances are likely many magnitudes of difficulty beyond artifical intelligence and nano-bots. I think its erroneously to project forward the notion that technology increases will continue forever along at the same geometric rate in some sort of "Moore's Law" of development. At some point we will experince diminishing returns. We are in a science bubble, but that bubble will eventually burst.

Overcoming interstellar travel may forever remain out of reach unless that knowledge is given to us (assuming it's even possible) As we all know, faster than light travel or time travel is not just making a faster spaceship or building a Delorean with a Flux Capacitor. It's a fundamental restructuring of everything we know about physics combined with the ability to harness and manipulate energy and matter in ways totally foreign to us. Even purely theoretical ways to achieve it require godlike mastery over normal science and technology (like harnassing and manipulating mutiple neutron stars and employing latticeworks of negative energy etc. Mastering the human genome and building android bodies is childsplay compared to FTL travel. I'm not saying I dont think it will NEVER happen, but our descedants who do manage it will resemble us about as much as we do chimps.

D) I don't see them as being "better" than us, just more advanced technologically. God help us if they are as agressive, petty, and territorial as humans, but the fact that we aren't dead seems to indicate they aren't openly aggressive. Since all life as we know it on Earth competes with other life for resources to continue on its own genes (us included) then it's likely that life on other planets is also structured to continue itself. It's pointless to speculate on their nature, but something like benevolence and compassion for lower life forms is all we can hope for.

As for religeous people going beserk, again I think that problem is wildly overrated. Sure some people will be freaked out, but what exactly can they do? March on Washington? Stop going to work? To do what? More pressing is a general fear amongst the general population that they are unsafe and that the government cannot protect them. Expect a huge wave of people convinced aliens are abducting them, or that aliens have replaced their loved ones with duplicates, or people pulling out all their money from the stock market and building fallout shelters. Stuff like that. Has nothing to do with religion, but rather basic human fear and insecurity. At first a lot of people would be seriously scared - athiests, muslim, and christians alike, and there might be looting and crime by people looking to take advantage of the situation, But within a few weeks of not going to work and the US miltary in the streets, people would realize that the world isnt crumbling and that their rent is due and they need food for their kids. Life would return mostly to normal at some point.

 

[zaneivy]

Really enjoyed this latest podcast. It was nice to observe the old brain cells firing up on this one. Whether one agrees with Bassett on his various points or not, I think he deserves major "cred" for this display of "realpolitic" think and contingency planning. Personally, the problem I have with a lot of the "this globe is too small for all of us" argument is basically the acceptance of relatively well=worn ways of thinking...if one can make the jump intellectually into a very different picture of reality than the given, why can't those boundaries bleed over into other aspects of the world view as well? Usually...WHO is slated for "cleansing" - non-White, non-European folks who have been colonized for the last how many hundreds of years now (?) and who have been targeted by organizations and corporations around the world (using vectors of colonialization from among "their own" as well of course)...to ensure they are kept down and unorganized and frankly, USEABLE... The way things are didn't get that way just "by accident" there has been a lot of money thrown around to make things the way they are...

Anyway, really enjoyed this show. There were so many points of departure for further discussion...I hope you guys follow up on these...

Peace, Zane

 

[CapnG]

A) If plain vanilla ET's have been here since the earliest days of mankind then they are, by definition, much much farther along than us. If they have engineered us, then difference becomes enormous. As in they were advanced enough to come here 100K years ago or whatever and fiddle with proto-humans.

IF that's the case well then yes BUT it relies upon the notion that either a) there's only one group of aliens and/or b) they aren't trying to snow us with some BS line about genetic intervention so we'll think twice about killing them (ie we "owe them"). There could be one group visiting us that's 10,000 years ahead and another that just figured out space travel last tuesday and we're their first stop.

B) Statistically I think it's more likely they would be millions or years apart from each other. Anything's possible, but if I had to take a wild guess (which we all do at the end of the day), I just dont see us as anywhere near one another along the scale.

Well that's the problem isn't it; we can't see the scale to know where we are on it. To turn my point around though, say we'd cracked the FTL problem and suddenly we could be anywhere, so if we were to go into space and discover a society at a point we recognize as being roughly 50 years behind us how far ahead would they assume we are?

Supposedly we'd all have flying cars

And still waiting, dammit...

androids

Roomba

be living in giant floating cities by now.

Dubai

Certain technological advances are likely many magnitudes of difficulty beyond artifical intelligence and nano-bots.

Funny, I was looking on a more techie job search site the other day and one of the catagories was actually "nanotechnology". This stuff is right around the coner...

Mastering the human genome and building android bodies is childsplay compared to FTL travel.

I've often felt that sci-fi is pretty backward. We have almost everything that has been considered "futuristic" by hollywood over the years RIGHT NOW. FTL will probably be the last "great" innovation for quite some time. On the other hand someone could figure it out tomorrow...

It's pointless to speculate on their nature, but something like benevolence and compassion for lower life forms is all we can hope for.

I don't know that compassion or benevolence is even really an issue. As long as overt (or even covert) hostility is slim to none, I'll perfectly happy with them being indifferent.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Well that's the problem isn't it; we can't see the scale to know where we are on it. To turn my point around though, say we'd cracked the FTL problem and suddenly we could be anywhere, so if we were to go into space and discover a society at a point we recognize as being roughly 50 years behind us how far ahead would they assume we are?

But we do know the scale is measured in billions of years. That point in the past at which the earliest planets cooled and formed enough to harbor some form of life is like 4.5 billion years or more. The amount of time that advanced human intelligence has been around is a miniscule slice of that. So if you take a 4.5 billion year timespan, generously remove several billion for intelligent life to form, you still have like 500 million years or more of possible timespan to play with. That's a one in 5,000,000 chance that we fall within a 100 years of them. And that's assuming that we would develop at a rate similar to them in the first place (unlikely). Plantary catastrophes, geologic changes,and a billion other things all influence the development of life.

If it was discovered that humans and ET's are within a few hundred years of each other techwise I would shocked beyond belief. Way more than the fact that ET's are here in the first place.

I've often felt that sci-fi is pretty backward. We have almost everything that has been considered "futuristic" by hollywood over the years RIGHT NOW. FTL will probably be the last "great" innovation for quite some time. On the other hand someone could figure it out tomorrow... [

Well even if someone discovers how to do it on paper, thats a far cry from realizing the technology to do it. If the requiremnts for FTL dictate a black hole for example, it might as well require faieries or unicorns, because it will a long as time until we can emply such energies to make it happen. Explaining to an Aborigine tribe how to build a nuclear sub is a long way from them having an infrastructure capable of building it. I just dont see somem guy coming out with a paper saying "See FTL travel is easy, the answer was sitting there right in front of us all this time, we just forgot to divide by X. All we really need is a hundred gallons of Uranium and a few electric motors - well have it built in a week! "

 

[d.braun]

Which, among our social, religious, economic, or even political or military institutions, could even reasonably hope to offer credible reassurance of their continued viability in the face of a Disclosure so unquantifiable that our very sovereignty as a species was challenged on all fronts simultaneously?

Consider that anything we THINK we know about ET (even if there’s been an ongoing covert relationship) is only what they’ve REVEALED about themselves.

The tip of an iceberg that may itself be totally orchestrated.

The world’s financial markets are VERY averse to developments of unknown consequence, and such a revelation would be on an order of magnitude like never before seen. A major collapse in the money centers, and those powers now in control would lose it very quickly, as commerce (aka: food and energy supplies) shut down. Think “Katrina” everywhere.

On the other hand, “denial’s” consequences (government embarrassment, Stephen?) are a relatively tame affair.

Those same powers that aren’t telling us what we (almost all) already know, are also giving us permission to continue believing in our myopic, though suicidal, world view.

And they get to stay in charge to fleece the flock.

Don’t expect Disclosure anytime soon; too much to lose, and even ET doesn’t seem all that hot for the idea.


By the way: Great show! I think Stephen Bassett (as well as Richard Dolan) is one of the most interesting guests you’ve ever had on.

 

[The Hawk]

I'm more in line with Dolan's thinking on most everything government conspiracy related.
Though I tend to agree with Basset on how he thinks Disclosure will effect the major religions.
Never underestimate the sheer willingness of the average fundamentalist to bend any and every thing to come their way into their perception.
It doesn't even matter what the aliens themselves say about God it won't matter. To the Christian it's "God made us. Christ is the only savior, the end.".
The biggest issue when it comes to religion accepting ET is:
Will the visitors do anything that looks vaguely like something prophesied in the bible?
The answer is THEY ALREADY DO.
In Revelations the fallen angels come back as they did in the time of Noah to breed with humans and genetically radify the human bloodline.
The average Christian doesn't know this about the book of Revelations nor are they keenly aware of the large scale hybridization which is at the center of the abduction phenomenon, but they sure as hell will if there is ever Disclosure.
It will take very little to set off the average Christian fundamentalist into believing these are demons we should terrorize.
Muslims will not have as big of a problem because the Quaran talks about many worlds and grays/jinn are not often overtly hated.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

It will take very little to set off the average Christian fundamentalist into believing these are demons we should terrorize.

"Set off?" What exactly are all these crazy fundamentalist christians going to do? I keep seeing Christians portrayed as some sort of enormous threat. That's laughable. How are they going to terrorize anything at all? This is not 15th century Spain where 99 percent of the population is dumb as dirt. Modern Christianity is so watered down and neutered it's a joke.

Please point me to any fundamentalists roaming the local neighborhood with an AK47 and and RPG blowing shit up like you see Muslims doing in the Middle East. The nuts who ARE heavily armed here in America (like the cultists on those compounds) will have little interest in screwing with you - they will be busy stockpiling more food and guns.

So in the highly unlikely event of disclosure, Christians are not going to do shit en masse. And any crazy fundamentalist who happens to have a gun is not going to do shit either. The stock market collapsing, as d. braun and I mentioned, is much more of a problem that crazy religous nuts barracading themsleves in their houses for fear of "demons." Looting will occur if society collapses, but it's not the Christians who will be doing it first. At the end of the day martial law, the national guard, and the US military will clamp down on any widescale bullshit.

I guess "progressives" need their version of a boogeyman, just like everyone else.

 

[macavity]

I find Steve to be a bit overly optimistic about goverment disclosure.

I second that with bells on, even assuming there's anything to disclose.

Personally I don't find Bassett particularly credible - he's waaaaaaaaaay too sure of himself for my liking - but it seems I'm in the minority around here...

 

[truthseeker]

I doubt that disclosure will negatively impact any religious dogma. If anything, it will probably make a stronger case for the existence of the Creator and God's greatness. Think about this: If God created life on this planet, who's to say that He wouldn't be able to create life on another planet, other universe etc... I think that to say otherwise would be considered sacrilegious.

I agree with Steve on this point. If aliens were involved in some kind of a genetic manipulation on this planet, who's to say that they were not a mechanism through which God brought life to this planet or caused certain events to occur that laid the course of our history.

Just a thought

 

[valiens]

I'm listening to it now. Good job, gents. Did Bassett really say that small tech items like bullets are used for war but larger, more complicated tech, like nuclear energy, are used for good and bad at a 50/50 split? Did I hear that wrong? Does he take into account bunker busters which are, effectively, nukes?

Of course some good would come from harnessing zero point energy. There's always some good runoff. Just look at Silly Putty. But that would not be our major objective and it wouldn't come to market until we had developed weapons with it first so that we'd have a nice head start on any of its applications.

Also, I like Stephen and all, but when did he start talking like a weatherman? "There's a 20% chance of open contact having happened with a slight chance of rain."