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This week on the program: will humankind be forced to take to the stars in the future, just to be able to survive? Also, what role does the potential for a future “intelligence explosion” play in all this? Finally, will we get that far before mutually-assured self destruction results from nuclear tensions around the world?
The Gralien Report Podcast for November 22, 2011
All this and more are addressed on this week’s edition of the Gralien Report Podcast, along with special commentary from a creepy AI version of Captain Kirk (a link to which will be included below in the accompanying show notes)…
by 
Your ideas about the UFO phenomenon being a possible representative of a Post-Singularity intelligence, hinting at what might the near future keep in store for our civilization are very interesting. The late Micah Hanks made a lot of speculations about it, as we have explored in past episodes of the Gralien report.
However, feeling an odd compulsion to play Devil’s advocate today, it may very well be that we are falling for the same perceptional ‘carrot’ that the phenomenon has been dangling in front of our eyes for countless millennia.
UFOs seem to have always played out to our immediate expectations, and adapted their superficial morphology. Back in the XIXth century they showed themselves as steam-punk airships piloted by eccentric inventors stemming out of Jules Verne’s fiction. By 1946 they were ‘ghost rockets’ more akin to secret weapons deployed by some military superpower; and then later came the Martian and the Venusians, with their retro-futuristic spacecraft full of gadgets that would have made George Jetson jealous.
So now we might start thinking of the UFO phenomenon in post-sigularitarian terms because that’s what WE are able to discern just above our cultural horizon. But we have to acknowledge that the ultimate reality of UFOs might still remain as elusive as the fairy rings encountered by medieval peasants a thousand years ago.
Not that I’m saying such speculation is worthless. On the contrary, I think it’s a valuable mental scaffold that allow us to transform our preconceptions, and ultimately ourselves. Which is probably the ultimate goal of the UFO phenomenon itself, keeping in tandem with Vallee’s ‘spiritual thermostat’ theory.
Hey RPJ, great comments… but why “the late Micah Hanks?” As far as I’m concerned, I’m still alive and well! LOL! Unless the Hadals have finally gotten to clone number one, which could only mean one thing… wait, I’m a replicate? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
But anyway… 😉
Good reference to Vallee’s work with the “spiritual thermostat” model. My colleague Dr. Kammerer recently alerted me to the fact that Vallee was a recent speaker at Tedx, where he spoke on “A Theory of Everything Else.” Here’s a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9pR0gfil_0&feature=player_embedded
It’s fascinating to see a recent speech like this from Vallee in itself… enjoy!
Que pendejo soy me cai >_<
I meant the late Mac Tonnies. An easily understandable mistake, in my own defense