For interstellar spacecraft you have to assume they are using an exotic propulsion scheme.
Or they have almost infinite life spans.
Well we definitely know that they’re using an exotic propulsion scheme, because the only type of propulsion principle that can in theory produce the kinds of instantaneous accelerations that are commonly reported is a gravitational field propulsion system.
And a gravitational field propulsion system just happens to also be the only form of propulsion that permits superluminal speeds with no time dilation. So in theory, a craft using such a system could drop by the Earth from light-years away, and be back home in time for lunch.
Interesting but I can't help but think of the arguments the cargo cults might have had sitting around the campfire at night.
Except that we’ve made some significant progress in science. We know that intelligent life could arise around other stars, so we don’t have to resort to superstitious/mythical thinking to explain their origins. And we actually have a rational and explicit mathematical model that shows us precisely the kinds of performance characteristics that we’re seeing with these devices.
So we’re not exactly in the position of a primitive tribe, though there are still many similarities.
As for ET, we all have an unavoidable anthropomorphic bent to our perceptions, experiences, theories mo matter how detailed or well reasoned. Don't see how we could fail to.
Granted; that’s unavoidable – I especially find this applicable when people demand explanations of their behavior.
But I think that most of us can see in our pets, for example, that living beings (if we are dealing with living beings) have a lot in common. My dog expresses joy, and fear, and anger, for example – as most animals do, but certainly social animals like us, and presumably other beings who also live within a social structure. So I think that any social animal will share a lot in common with us in that regard.
But they’re also a technological species like we are, which means that they’ve had to figure out physics and various other sciences, which requires the judicious application of reason.
So they probably share an understanding of emotion and social mores, and they’re definitely proficient with logic or they couldn’t have built such marvelous devices.
One or both of those qualities provides a common foundation for one day understanding one another, I presume.
This is a bit silly, but I remember a newspaper article about an octopus that let itself out of an aquarium at a zoo by doing a series of things the keepers never even thought of. Apparently they are quite intelligent and have some notable problem solving capacity. It had it's own ideas, agenda and capabilities that we never even suspected because we just couldn't fathom (in advance) what they might be. I wonder what it might have said if we could have tracked it down and talked to it. My anthropomorphism tells me it might've said "you buncha a******s"
I can't say what the source of this phenomenon is with any certainty, nor can anyone else. I can filter out the obvious fakery and most of the all too common lunacy - which is a lot of ufology in general really, but I really don't even know how to pick a starting point for any of this.
The octopus simply didn’t have the conditioned context that we have when we look at things – we have cognitive biases about the things in our world, which they wouldn’t share. When we see a pen for example, we tend to see a writing implement, rather than a weapon, but it can of course be both. So it’s not surprising that an intelligent being would solve problems without our contextual cultural conditioning.
And we don’t have to anthropomorphize the octopus to understand what it was thinking, because its actions speak loudly: “get me the f*** out of here!”
Anyway, I think a good starting point is science. Which has recently informed us that billions of habitable worlds reside within our own galaxy, and by extension, most other galaxies as well. We’ve also learned about evolution, and understand the powerful adaptive advantage of intelligence. And we know that intelligence comes with goals and curiosity, because we have those as well – in fact the search for extraterrestrial life is a major drive for us. I see no reason to assume that other intelligent species will be any different in such regards.
I’m sure that we still have a great deal to discover, and learn about. But we’ve made some progress. We should build on that.
Rather than chucking it all out the window and going back to the irrational musings of our ancestors who probably saw these exotic objects in their skies as well, and attributed them to the passage of gods through the divine realms above.