WHAT DO THEY KNOW ABOUT US?

[Todd Feinman]

This is exactly what I have been arguing over at a number of forums for years. I even used the phrase:
"They Know Us Better Than We Do Ourselves"
What Do They Know About Us? - The Debrief
Satisfying.
A persistent technology that has been here for so long or was delivered some time ago that is incredibly advanced would know more about us than we know about ourselves --in the same way we know more about ants than they know about themselves. And all of the connections and nexuses of information an alien AI could understand would put them in a different information universe from ourselves. They could anticipate our actions long before we act. Know about future meetings between people, know where and when to show up, etc.

 

[nivek]

I think there's likely some alien species that operate with a reasoning, rational, and/or motivation which cannot be easily understood in human terms and this could be a problem and the cause for any confusion or misunderstanding if/when we ever have first contact publicly...If they have the technology to visit this planet then its likely some of them have been watching our kind, maybe for hundreds of years...If so then its likely they know us better than we know ourselves, as a species and have a huge edge over us, their knowledge about us...

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[pigfarmer]

We'll find out they have zero interest in us and are just here to keep an eye on Proxima Centauri because that's where the real problem is ......

 

[Todd Feinman]

I think the objects have been here for a very long time, and most are not spaceships, but rather a surveillance / contact technology that was deployed long ago. The devices are following a program of long-term interaction and contact that involves displays and demonstrations (D&D). This involves the shocking yet transitory road encounters where the objects show themselves and then take off, and also encounters where the objects are equally inaccessible; over the ocean or lakes, or reservoirs, or valleys --places where they can show themselves and then shoot off, as they are wont to do. Leaving shocked witnesses and little evidence, purposefully.
The "Prime Directive" is not being adhered to, but the kind and level of contact (generally ephemeral and leaving very little evidence), maintains contact without causing the dreaded tipping point. So that is the strategy, and it has worked; about half the population (iirc) believes that the objects are alien, the militaries of the world are subject to them, but can do nothing about them. This is the only kind of contact we can handle at this time in history.
The devices are always ten steps ahead of us, the closest modern analogy would be living alien AI drones and perhaps a persistent self-organizing nanotechnology that might be responsible for much surveillance and certain types of UFO reports. These technologies could have been deployed long ago, and by now are so integrated that the intelligence behind the devices knows far more about us than we do. All electronic medical records, personal information, all infrastructure and military and industrial data, and perhaps even our own minds are all known by the intelligence, which, much like a godlike generalized AI, can know what we are going to do before we do it, and we can be played like a game.
It is all exactly what our scientists would want to do if they finally found an oasis of life and didn't want to destroy it, and had developed these kinds of technologies.

 

[nivek]

This is the only kind of contact we can handle at this time in history.

Yeah I think this is likely true, these visitors could have revealed themselves publicly when they've come to our planet but they haven't and that's telling...Its probably because they already know we wouldn't handle that realization very well en masse...So this is all we will get, what were getting now, unless an accident happens, like a UFO crash (which has occurred before) or something else...

I'm not onboard with the Great and Powerful AI dominance theory...I don't think AI are as common in the universe as we'd like to think...There's likely many species who probably never had a need to develop AI, never having the will or reason for it IMO...

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[Todd Feinman]

I'm not onboard with the Great and Powerful AI dominance theory...I don't think AI are as common in the universe as we'd like to think...There's likely many species who probably never had a need to develop AI, never having the will or reason for it IMO...

I agree. It might not be AI, but whatever it is, it is far more clever than we are. It's just the closest analogy I can think of without going "supernatural".
I actually think that a number of the objects are the same ones over and over again, across decades.

 

[pigfarmer]

Geek out. Remember some of the old Star Trek themes ? Computer control vs human, the M5 multitronic computer, Nomad etc. Zeitgeist at the time was concerned about 'computers' and all the implications that come along with them. We look at what they were worried about the time and laugh - primitive. Give me deja vu when we start talking about AI.