I didn’t realize how popular Bill Maher is on YouTube: this clip, a fragment of his “Real Time” show on HBO, has garnered over 520,000 views since it was posted on Friday night. At any rate, this week he takes on the recent conspiracy theories that alien spacecraft are appearing regularly, and that some of their spaceships and even their bodies are in possession of companies or the government.
Maher notes that the UFO believers are no longer nutjobs but reputable people: politicians and “people with buzzcuts.” Steven Spielberg even has a movie coming out this summer about UFOs; it’s called “Disclosure Day.”
He then addresses the aliens directly, asking them not to kill us even though they could, and apologizes for America’s once firing a missile at a UFO. He even offers minerals to the aliens and then pleads for them to destroy our nuclear weapons, and to “get us off oil–and our phones.” In the end, he tells the aliens “you should think of the human race as Britney Spears. It would be nice if we needed a conservatorship, but in reality we really do.”
It’s clear that Maher, like me, doesn’t believe that these aliens and their craft really exist. He’s just using the notion to criticize what’s wrong with America. If craft and aliens did exist, and we possess crashed ships and alien bodies, then somehow there has been a massive conspiracy to hide it by both Democratic and Republican governments—as well as by the press— to cover up the greatest news story in the history of humanity.
The panel guests for this show were Laura Coates, CNN chief legal analyst, and Stephen A. Smith, host of Straight Shooter.
Here’s a teaser for “DIsclosure Day”. There are aliens in animal bodies, and it even buys into the discredited idea that aliens make crop circles.
Somewhat off the subject but take look at the oped in today’s times by Yonatan Touval.
Yes, it is off the subject. Why did you stick it in this thread? And why didn’t you tell us why we should read it, or what it said?
For a more humorous take on the first contact genre, I recommend “Agent to the Stars” by John Scalzi. It was underappreciated by the usual reviewers when it first appeared, likely because it was humorous & entertaining. Basically, the aliens show up and realize that they have a problem–they’re ugly blobs who smell really bad. So, having analyzed people via their mass media, they hire a Hollywood agent to introduce themselves. It was written in the pre-social media era, so maybe is a bit dated now, but nonetheless I found it fun. I think Scalzi published it online first (it was his first novel), so you might be able to find the full text out there.
Thanks Jerry for posting this most entertaining, if overtly satirical, Bill Maher commentary on aliens visiting us. You and I are about the same age ( January,1949) and we both share many overlapping views on current politics and the constantly evolving human condition from a Darwinian perspective. It would be nice if in the now finite time we have left that, indeed, a resolution to this paradox is finally made definitive. I won’t hold my breath though as this issue ( since Roswell in the 1950’s) seems very much a part of human culture. I often wonder how my idol, Christopher Hitchens, would respond with his penetrating wit, on Bill’s sarcasm, but I’m sure it would be brilliant and satisfying.
Steven Spielberg made Close Encounters of the Third Kind back in the seventies. The phrase came from a book which reviewed reports of UFOs and classified them as to credibility. The third kind were the most credible. The author was I believe an astronomer, however, although I read it at the time, it was much too long ago to recall much about it.
No. First kind were sighting, second kind had some sort of physical evidence (burned grass, etc.), third kind were meetings with aliens.
I don’t remember if it was Asimov or Sagan who quipped that since the UFO question revolves around what people think they see, an astronomer is not really qualified for the task; a psychologist would be better. Also, any astronomer should know that anyone who has looked at the sky for a significant amount of time has seen something the nature of which wasn’t clear at the time.
“A psychologist would be better.”
You want the eminent Harvard psychologist John E. Mack, who painstakingly interviewed and ~objectively analyzed reports by people who had very close encounters of the third kind in which Mack’s subjects said they had been abducted by aliens. From his wikipedia page,
“In a 1994 interview, Jeffrey Mishlove stated that Mack seemed ‘inclined to take these [abduction] reports at face value’. Mack replied by saying, ‘Face value I wouldn’t say. I take them seriously. I don’t have a way to account for them.'”
Mack wrote two books based on those interviews and his thoughts about what it all meant: Abduction (1994) and Passport to the Cosmos (1999). I read Abduction (but not Passport) and thought it was even-handed and honest in its treatment of the experiences of Mack’s subjects. It certainly didn’t cross over into Ancient Aliens or Chariots of the Gods territory.
This got Mack investigated by the Harvard authorities, and Mack had to hire lawyers to defend him against the charge that “To communicate, in any way whatsoever, to a person who has reported a ‘close encounter’ with an extraterrestrial life form that this experience might well have been real … is professionally irresponsible.”
Bill Maher genuinely seems to believe in aliens—he’s not just entertaining the idea. He appears to be as convinced of their existence as he is that COVID originated from a lab leak. He has interviewed the creator of the documentary Disclosure twice—once on Real Time and once on Club Random—and was very supportive in both conversations. In a previous Overtime segment, he was also asked about Area 51 and suggested that the government is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life. In my personal opinion Maher has been smoking too much weed.
The interview was with Dan Farah. I’m not sure Maher is just being satirical either. I got the feeling when Anna Paulina Luna was on a week and a half ago that Maher seemed to be open to some of the conspiracies. I just watched a small clip with Farah and got the same feeling. Bro may be hanging out with Joe Rogan a little too much.
His constant anti-vax positions p** me off. I like the guy, his instincts on politics are great, but his thoughts of medicine (including the drugs he himself takes), vaccines and now “Aaaaliens” are cretinous.
D.A.
NYC
Yes, indeed there are aliens. This was proven beyond all doubt way back in 1958, with the release of the fabulous documentary by Ed Wood: “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Not only do aliens exist, but they want to save us from ourselves!
Do not laugh at visionaries like Bill Maher. Oh, wait a sec–he WANTS us to laugh at him!
I think another documentary has precedence: Kronos, from a year earlier. The eponymous “alien” was actually a mechanical construction — a robot! — sent to California by (and controlled by) an alien race on a planet that was running out of energy. Kronos was to harvest the earth’s energy and take it back to the planet. As one noted physicist helping the US government suss out what made the machine go put it, “They have unlocked the other half of the nuclear secret. Kronos can convert energy into matter” (anticipating by thirty years exactly the use of replicators for making tea (“Earl Grey, hot”) aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek TNG. This made Kronos invulnerable to attack by munitions: even an atomic bomb just made it bigger, and more ornery.
I’m keeping the resolution of the affair a secret. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you, and then “they” will kill me.
(There was another classic documentary, The Day the Earth Stool Still from 1951 but I’m told it was actually a pretty good movie and I haven’t seen it so I don’t want to make fun of it here.
So, what am I to make of “Age of Disclosure,” which features gobs of interviews with government, military, and scientific come-forwarders? From the comments above I feel foolish to put any credence in what the documentary offers, yet I have to wonder just who is telling the truth about UAPs and who is simply manipultating sound bytes for entertainment value? For now it seems the best thing to do is heed Dr. Sagan’s dictum about extraordinary claims.
There was a recent episode of NOVA about the strange UFO sightings from IR cameras in military jets, and the supposed credibility of the highly trained pilots, etc. I was prepared to have a huge eye-roll over how the NOVA documentary might give an even handedness to these claims. Much to my surprise, it patiently let the claimants have their moment, in full, then it used real experts to show that they were explainable as IFOs (Identified Flying Objects).
I agree, NOVA handled this with real journalistic integrity and scIQ. Someone should alert Bill but i dont think he watches PBS.
This discussion reminds me of a convincing d(m)ockmentary aired in June of 1977 by Anglia TV in the UK. It was called Alternative 3. For its time, it was brilliantly done. I remember while watching, I was 95% taken in that it was true.
Only watching the credits, I noticed that the production date was labelled 1st April 1977. For those too young, it may be worthwhile tracking down.
Apparently, ‘industrial action’ had delayed the airing.
The big question is, to me, if aliens were to id themselves, how would deeply, extreme, religious people react, I feel it could take a bit of adjustment BUt, every one in-between for that matter.
Would we survive by NOT eating ourselves, would Elon? Trump? Kim’s butt, get first rights to new technologies… or tourism. Who knows…
I recently read that J D Vance has said that UFO’s are real but not aliens. They are actually demons as mentioned in the Bible. If it is true that he believes this I will pray for the President’s health.
Demons, huh? Why not angels?
I never got the whole demon thing. Given the unspeakable evil that some examples of Homo sapiens have shown themselves capable of, why would one need to postulate anything worse?
(Of course, Asmodeus, Astaroth, and Belphegor are firing up the grill in Hell for a light snack of roast Starwolf……)
Yes there are an unfathomable number of stars out there, and it now seems that the number of planets is astronomically (pun!) large as well. So the math would seem to indicate not only the existence of intelligent life in the Universe, but a copious amount of life. Given the number of planets and the age of the Universe, our galaxy should be teeming with life.
So, where are they (the so-called Fermi Paradox)? Even drones or probes traveling at subluminal speeds could have colonized our galaxy many times over. The Earth is at least 4 billion years old. At any point after the formation of the Earth an alien probe could have deposited unmistakable artifacts on say, the moon, which would now be identifiable to us.
Given the complete lack of evidence of alien artifacts anywhere we have looked, I now tend to believe that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent alien life is exceedingly rare in the Universe. So if we take the Drake Equation, one more of the factors in it must be so improbable as to be almost impossible..perhaps the chances of multi-cellular life occurring is stratospherically improbable. It could also be that any civilization that has ever existed has destroyed itself before becoming a true space-faring civilization… a sobering thought for us. It could also be that traveling faster than the speed of light is truly impossible, forever limiting the amount of interaction between distant civilizations (but this does not answer the earlier point about sub-C craft).
Slightly more optimistic, it could be that for whatever reasons, the conditions in the Universe have only been amenable to life relatively recently (i.e. the last few billion years), so we may be the first among many future civilizations.
All of this is to say that we haven’t been visited by aliens…yet.
Even if there is only one planet harboring sentient life per galaxy, we’re still talking billions (trillions?) of planet’s with sentient life in the universe.
Fermi doesn’t really account for life forms in other galaxies…”where are they?” Most likely in a galaxy far, far away. If so, we ain’t gonna have a meet and greet anytime soon.
supposed to be a reply to Darth above…I mean Jeff 😉
Even within our own galaxy, we are pretty far out in the periphery. Maybe aliens consider us as flyover country, or just a truck stop on the galactic interstate.
Jeff’s point about the lack of alien artifacts is not strong evidence against their visiting here. First of all, if the visits happened millions of years ago, it is not likely that the artifacts could have survived. Second, we have no idea of what to look for.
(I am not arguing for or against the existence of alien life, or whether or not we have been visited by aliens. I do believe that the former is far more likely than the latter.)
“Jeff’s point about the lack of alien artifacts is not strong evidence against their visiting here.”
This is why I mentioned the moon. With very little tectonic activity, artifacts placed there would be much longer lasting.
I recently read that J D Vance has said that UFO’s are real but not aliens. They are actually demons as mentioned in the Bible. If it is true that he believes this I will pray for the President’s health.
Ok, here’s what needs to happen in order to put this alien question to rest. A determined scholar has to do a deep dive into the Betty Hill records at UNH. Inquiring minds want to know. Certainly, the answer is in there!
If they are here and they don’t want to contact us, how would we know? We’d be like a coyote looking at a trailcam and deducing she’s being watched on YouTube.
Sorry for multiple posts (this is my last one), but I have a question for the those with a physics background.
That is, what is the likelihood that faster than light travel (for something as massive as a starship) is ever possible? My rudimentary understanding of the subject indicates that Star Trek or Star Wars style superluminal speed is impossible.
So if Kirk asks Scotty for Warp Factor 9, the correct answer would be “I cannae do it Captain. Like, none of the warps. This is a highly unrealistic show!”
So if the cosmic speed limit (c) is non-negotiable, and the distances between civilizations are vast, then that may explain much of the reason why we haven’t been visited. Also, it probably means that the scope of human civilization will be limited to our own solar system at best.
Parts of the US government are very capable of keeping very big secrets for a very long time. If that includes captured UFOs built by an alien civilization used for reverse engineering, I don’t know for sure. However, the F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft was only officially revealed in 1988 after being operational since 1983. The prototype first flew in 1976. An airline pilot friend of mine was assigned to an operational F-117 unit. After flying into several secret airbases around the world, myself, I don’t find it hard to believe at all that our governmment (and other governments also) have kept all information about UFO/UAPs and our interaction with them a complete secret.
I understand your argument, and clearly you have some expertise in this area.
However, if it came to the release of documents relating to the biggest story in human history, I would bet on a Daniel Ellsberg, or an Edward Snowden, or even a Reality Winner to come forward, papers in hand. This bet leads me to suspect that there is nothing to see here. Who would risk a career to reveal “nothing”?
I’m not down on the government James, but thinking they (or parts thereof) can keep any kind of secret – particularly one of this magnitude – strikes me as nonsensical.
best regards James.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
I appreciate your and Mr. Dentinger’s opinons, and I take no offense because your opinion differs from mine. I do think, however, that you both discount the possibility too much of how deep and dark some government programs really are. I really can’t say more than this. Thanks, David and John for taking the time to comment.
David, the government can keep major secrets for decades. The National Security Agency was established by Truman in 1952. Its existence (let alone its mission) was not publicly acknowledged until the 1975 Church Committee hearings in the aftermath of Watergate. Even inside much of the broader national security community, most people had no idea that “No Such Agency” existed for those 23 years. This is far from the only example to which one can point.
I often hear people claim that secrecy is impossible when so many people work for the government and have security clearances. However, even at the Top Secret level, please realize that there are also “need-to-know” requirements, Special Access Programs, and other processes that can further bury a program deep in the organization and limit the number of people with full, or even partial, awareness.
That said, I am not weighing in one way or the other on UFOs! Not my wheelhouse.
https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/15/2002763653/-1/-1/0/TRUMAN-MEMO.PDF
“David, the government can keep major secrets for decades.”
Can all governments do this? Have aliens only crash-landed on American soil?
If aliens have visited all over the world, now you have multiple governments that are needing to keep things secret. The chances of these secrets being consistently kept across different governments, many of whom are much less stable than the US’s, seems to be to be vanishingly small.
Like I said, UFOs are not my wheelhouse! I haven’t paid the slightest attention to the matter.
But more broadly, yes, there are secrets that can be kept across close allied governments or those whose interests otherwise align.
There was nothing in his delivery in the segment last weekend to indicate Maher is anything but completely serious about UFO/UAPs being aliens.
In the previous week’s episode, he mentioned it to one of the panelists as if he were quite serious that he does believe in them. He received some comments on YouTube.
This week, he received my “unsubscribe.” He has expressed enough anti-science thinking about modern medicine that I already had my doubts about him. This “New Rules” segment convinced me that his professed atheism is more anti-religiousness than based in critical thinking.
I know he originated from New Jersey, but he has really taken on the worst thinking of his adopted city. Ooh! What do you call a person from Los Angeles with super weird ideas? An L.A.lien!