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[ UFOs and Extraterrestrial life]

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Here's an idea that demonstrates the lack of education in our society.

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A society which claims to educate the population.

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Due to poor or deliberately bad management,

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the monetary system has placed more emphasis on movies,

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tragedy and drama,

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leading citizens through a hallucinating state.

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In the film "Alien"

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a human being plays host to a parasitic alien,

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until it's ready to be born.

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This has long bothered biologist Jack Cohen.

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Alien is not concerned with the biology.

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You can't have a creature living in your chest, which is bigger than your heart

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and you don't know it's there, and your immune system isn't turned on.

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Particularly, it has never seen a human being before.

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It doesn't work biologically

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but it does work as a film.

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Because you see the thing coming up from the chest and you scream "Ahhhh"!

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And it's exactly what they want - it is a horror film.

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Another classic hard image of extraterrestrials shows them as giant insects.

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The alien of choice for the film "Star ship Trooper".

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But according to the laws of physics

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this kind of anatomy is impossible.

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It's like bringing a mouse up to be the size of an elephant.

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Its little thin legs wouldn't take the weight or they would break.

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You have to redesign.

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It is a lot easier to have a terrifying film with giant ants.

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As unscientific as the oversized insects of the Star Ship Trooper's are.

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At least they don't look like people.

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By far, most films, even the ones with huge special effects budgets,

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depict aliens that actually look like they evolved on Earth.

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Because they have faces that resemble ours.

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Nearly all the vertebrates we see around us,

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humans included,

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have faces.

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With two eyes, two nostrils and a mouth below.

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This configuration came from a common ancestor

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who lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

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Now, when we look at these aliens

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and they've got faces with two eyes, the nose, the mouth,

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they can't be aliens.

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They must've been developed on Earth.

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They must share that same ancestor or they wouldn't have faces like this.

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We expect the living thing-the dog, the cat or even a fish,

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to have a face.

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Therefore, when we invent something for film

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we give it a face.

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And that realy enables the people who are watching

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to get moved by it.

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Real aliens can't be like that.

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Do I believe in UFOs?

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Or extraterrestrial visitors?

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I'm not authorized to answer that question.

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Where shall I begin...

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UFO.

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First, remember what the U stands for in UFO.

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Now, there's fascinating frailty of the human mind,

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that psychologists know all about.

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And it's called argument from ignorance.

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And this is how it goes.

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Ready?

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Somebody sees lights flashing in the sky.

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They've never seen it before.

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They don't understand what it is.

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They say: A UFO!

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The U stands for unidentified.

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So they say I don't know what it is.

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It must be aliens from out of space visiting from another planet.

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Well, if you don't know what it is

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that's where your conversation should stop!

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You know, they say it must be anything.

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ok?

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That's what argument from ignorance is.

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It's common, I'm not blaming anybody.

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Psychologists kow all about it

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and it may relate to our burning need

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to have to know stuff,

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because we are uncomfortable steeped in ignorance.

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You can't be a scientist if you are uncomfortable with ignorance,

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because we live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the Universe.

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Unlike what journalists write...

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Have you seen journalists... any journalists here?

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You know, journalists...

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You know, journalists...

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all articles about scientist ... begin:

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Scientists now have to go back to the drawing board.

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As though we're sitting up in our office, you know,

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masters of the Universe, as if ooops...

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somebody discovered something.

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No,we are always at the drawing board.

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If you are not at the drawing board you are not making discoveries.

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You are something else.

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So,

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the public, it appears, seems to have that burning need

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to have to have an answer to what is unknown.

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And so you go from an abject statement of ignorance

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to an abject statement of certainty.

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So, that is operating within us.

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Let's start there.

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Second,

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we know not only from research and psychology,

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but simple empirical evidence from the history of science,

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that the lowest form of evidence,

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that exists in this world, is eye witness testimony.

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Which is scary because that's some of the highest form of evidence in the court of law.

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But we know from the second grade

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where's my guy from second grade....

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Grab the microphone for a minute...

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Grab the microphone! Grab the microphone!

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In your classes have you done the famous experiment where you play telephone

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and you line up all the kids in class and one person starts with a story

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and you hear it and you repeat it to the next person and the next person ....

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Have you done this in class yet?

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Yes.

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What happens by the time you get to the last person

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and they retell the story what happens?

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It's like completely different.

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Completely different, completely different. ok?

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Because the conveyance of information

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was relying on eye witness testimony

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which in that case is ear witness testimony.

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And so, let's take it, so he knows that.

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So he knows it and he is a second grade!

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right, so

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Actually he should be in twelvth grade...

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So...

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So now, so now

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it wouldn't matter if you saw a flying saucer.

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In science even if you have something less controversial than a flying saucer,

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if you're coming to my lab and you say : You gotta believe me I saw it!,

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and you are one of my fellow scientists, I'd say: Go home!

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Go back and retrieve some other kind of evidence that it's not just you saw it.

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Ok? Because human perception system is rife

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with all ways of getting it wrong, ok.

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But we don't like thinking of ourselves that way.

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We have higher opinions of our human biology

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when in fact we should not.

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I'll give you an example of how it reveals itself.

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We've all bought and enjoyed books called optical illusions, right?

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We all love optical illusions, but that's not what they should call the book.

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They should call them "Brain failures".

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Ok, 'cause that's what it is.

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It's a complete failure of human perception, all right.

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All it takes is a few sketches that are cleverly done and you brain can't figure it out.

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All right?

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So, we are poor data taking devices,

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that's why we have such a thing as science.

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Because we have machines

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that don't care what side of the bed they woke up in the morning.

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Don't care what they said to the spouse that day,

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don't care whether they had their morning caffeine to get the data right, ok.

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So maybe you did see visitors from another part of the Galaxy.

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I need more than your eyewitness testimony.

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And in modern times I need more than your photograph,

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which photoshop probably has an UFO button

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today sticked in

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So, your computer!,

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so here is what you do: I'm not saying we haven't been visited.

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I'm saying the evidence thus far brought forth

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does not satisfy the standards of evidence that any scientist

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would require for any other claim that you're gonna walk into the lab with.

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Then you're done, you come back and say: Look what I got!

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Like I stole the ashtray off the shelf of the flying saucer

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and then you bring that to the lab.

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It's not about eyewitness testimony at that point

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cause you have something of alien manufacture.

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And anything you pull out of the flying saucer that cross the Galaxy

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is gonna be interesting, ok.

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Because even objects within our own culture .....

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I got this device here,ok,

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the iphone.

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Ten years ago they would've resurrected the witch burning laws

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had you pull this thing out.

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Ok?

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And that's in our own culture.

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Our own culture produced this over 10 years back.

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So if this is some technology that crossed the Galaxy,

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that's gonna be some serious stuff to look at in the lab.

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Then we can have the conversation.

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Until then - I can't, I'm sorry.

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Go ahead, keep trying to find it, I'm not gonna stop you.

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But get ready for that time you are abducted,

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because I'll be looking for your evidence when that happens.

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and...

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And last point on that is

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there are people who look up all the time,

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like for example the Community of amateur astronomers in the world.

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I was an amateur astronomer. We come out of a building and we look up.

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We are looking up.

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UFO sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public.

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In fact, they are lower. You'd say why is that so.

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Well, because we know what the hell we're looking at.

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Because we study this stuff!

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Do you know there was an UFO sighting reported by a police officer

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because you think that when you have a badge or you are a pilot or whatever,

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that your testimonies are somehow better than the average person.

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It's all bad because we are human. ok?

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So there was a police officer who was tracking an UFO

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that was swaying back and forth in the sky.

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ok, reported on the ... what it called the cop?

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On the squad car chasing an UFO and the UFO was moving back and forth like this.

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Ok? Later it turned out

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the cop car was chasing Venus

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and he was driving on a curved road.

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but was so distracted by Venus he though Venus was the one moving

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and he wasn't even thinking why he was doing this

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I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers -

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because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers!

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I said “I don’t think there are flying saucers”.

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So my antagonist said,

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“Is it impossible that there are flying saucers?

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Can you prove that it’s impossible?”

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“No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”.

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At that he said, “You are very unscientific.

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If you can’t prove it impossible

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then how can you say that it’s unlikely?”

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But that is the way that is scientific.

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It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely,

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and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.

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To define what I mean, I finally said to him,

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"Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me,

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I think that it's much more likely

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that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence

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rather than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence."

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If you look at our closest genetic relative

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to human beings- the chimpanzees-

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we share like 98+% identical DNA,

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we are smarter than a chimpanzee.

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Let’s invent a measure of intelligence that make humans unique.

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Let’s say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry,

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symphonies, do art, math and science, let’s say.

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Ok?

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Let’s make that as the arbitrary definition of intelligence for the moment.

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Chimps can't do any of that

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yet we share 98% - 99% identical DNA

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Ok?

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The most brilliant chimp there ever was

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maybe can do a little bit of sign language

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well our toddlers can do that

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Toddlers.

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So

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here's what concerns me deeply, deeply

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Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps

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emerges from that 1% difference in the DNA

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It has to because that’s the difference.

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The Hubble telescope, the grand… that’s in that 1%.

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Maybe...

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everything that we are that is not the chimp

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is not as smart compared to the chimp as we tell ourselves it is

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maybe the difference between constructing and launching a Hubble telescope

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and a chimp combining two finger motions as a sign language

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maybe that difference is not all that great

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we tell ourselves it is

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just the same when we label our books

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optical illusions

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We tell ourselves it's a lot. Maybe it's almost nothing.

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How would we decide that? Imagine another life form!

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That is 1% different from us!

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In the direction that we are different from the chimp.

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Think about that.

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We have 1% difference and we are building the Hubble telescope.

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Go another 1%.

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What are we to they?

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We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence.

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That’s what we would be.

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They would take Stephen Hawking and roll him in front of their

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primate researchers and say well

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this one is like the most brilliant among them

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cause he can do sort of astrophysics in his head

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Oh isn't that cute! Little Johny can do that too

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Oh!!

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Let me get it it's on the refrigerator door here it is

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he did it in his elementary school class

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Think about how smart they would be!

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Quantum mechanics would be intuitive to their toddlers.

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Whole symphonies would be written by their children, and like I said just put on the refrigerator door

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the way our pasta collages are on our refrigerator doors.

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So the notion, that we're gonna find some intelligent life

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and have a conversation with it!?

0:17:28.260,0:17:32.785
When was the last time you stopped to have a conversation with a worm?

0:17:35.429,0:17:37.353
Or a bird?

0:17:38.242,0:17:41.500
Well, you might have had a conversation but I don’t think you expected an answer, alright.

0:17:41.600,0:17:43.977
All right? So...

0:17:44.238,0:17:46.978
We don't have conversations with any other species on earth

0:17:47.078,0:17:49.900
with whom we have DNA in common.

0:17:50.051,0:17:53.337
To believe that some intelligent other species

0:17:53.437,0:17:57.705
is gonna be interested in us? Enough to have a conversation?

0:17:57.868,0:18:03.149
they’ll look at our Hubble telescope and say, “isn’t that quaint… look at what they’re doing.”

0:18:03.428,0:18:09.248
So I lay awake at nights wondering whether simply we as a species

0:18:09.348,0:18:13.489
are simply too stupid to figure out the universe that we are investigating

0:18:13.646,0:18:18.238
and maybe we need some other species 1% smarter than we are

0:18:18.504,0:18:20.997
for which string theory would be intuitive,

0:18:21.178,0:18:26.078
for which all the greatest mysteries of the universe, from dark matter, dark energy, the origins of life

0:18:26.178,0:18:28.716
and all the frontiers of our thoughts

0:18:28.964,0:18:32.419
would be something that they would just self intuit.

0:18:33.260,0:18:35.909
I'm jealous of that possibility

0:18:36.036,0:18:39.854
because I want to be around for those discoveries.

0:18:49.497,0:18:54.077
[ Alternative solutions ]

0:19:01.712,0:19:05.306
UFO associated with extraterrestrial life

0:19:05.406,0:19:10.170
presents, very well, the aberrant approach of the monetary system.

0:19:10.993,0:19:14.368
Thus, the solution is proper education of human beings

0:19:14.468,0:19:16.341
and a reorganising of our system

0:19:16.441,0:19:20.461
so that our priorities are aligned with natural necessities.

0:19:21.096,0:19:23.921
The monetary system is unable to achieve this

0:19:24.021,0:19:28.694
because it's main concerns are profit and consumption.

0:19:55.691,0:19:59.402
It's disheartening that human beings consume their curiousity

0:19:59.485,0:20:03.675
Through films or discussions rather than inquire through science

0:20:04.469,0:20:08.329
What is even worse is that this organization called the monetary system

0:20:08.541,0:20:11.381
allows and perpetuates this situation

0:20:13.047,0:20:16.137
It does not give enough attention to science

0:20:16.312,0:20:20.312
Instead it focuses on consumption and profit