Reflections on the Alien Abduction Phenomenon

The following article was first published in Issue 1 of Katy Elizabeth's new Fortean World magazine. Please support the magazine.

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Recently during the Halloween season, I watched ‘Intruders’ based on the late Budd Hopkins’ book about cases of alleged alien abduction. It is terrifying because it is based on experiences that people really believe happened to them… and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve them… though it raises complex questions about what the word “real” means… can something exist without being physical, and therefore not have to obey the normal laws of physics that govern the physical universe? Is there a non-physical world that has its own separate laws? Are these alien abductions an example of these two linked but separate realities colliding? Is human consciousness a kind of bridge allowing this? These are some of the questions I will be considering as I take a look at some of the films and classic literature in this sub-genre of UFOlogy in this article.

Probably the first Alien Abduction film I ever saw was the 1989 film ‘Communion’ based on the book written by experiencer Whitley Strieber. Watching the film again it is clear to me that the close encounters are not always in the physical world. Instead, they appear to occur in a dreamworld. But these are no ordinary dreams, as these experiences have a real physical impact on the experiencer such as physical injuries. Also, as explained in the film many other witnesses reported having similar experiences, and this was in the 1980s before television series like ‘The X-Files’ cemented the alien abduction phenomenon in popular culture…That said, the phenomenon was not completely unknown in television and film. ‘The UFO Incident’, a 1975 television film based on the bestselling book ‘The Interrupted Journey’ written by John G. Fuller, documented the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case, the first widely publicised UFO close encounter of the fourth kind.

Alien abduction author David Jacobs has estimated that perhaps as many as 5% of the American population could be alien abductees. While the large numbers of alleged abductees can be seen as evidence that something real is happening, such large numbers combined with the lack of physical proof (although physical injuries and alleged implants could be considered physical evidence) raises the question: is alien abduction a physical phenomenon involving “nuts-and-bolts metallic spacecraft” piloted by “flesh and blood” alien beings from another planet, or, is something else happening? Although “real” in the sense that the experiences are not delusions or imaginary. Could it be that that alien abductions are a non-physical, paranormal phenomenon?

In other words that a real external intelligence is interacting with human consciousness, but alien abduction experiencers are not physically being taken onboard an alien spacecraft and that alien abductions have more to do with ghosts and demons than extraterrestrials in the sense that they represent a paranormal rather than physical phenomenon.

However, going back to the Hill abduction, there are two points that make me reconsider this conclusion.

The first reason is the dress Betty was wearing on the night of the alleged alien abduction. Betty claimed under hypnosis that a large needle was inserted into her stomach, according to the alien beings this was a pregnancy test. Stains on the dress Betty was wearing in the region where the needle was allegedly inserted is evidence that something physical happened to the Hills.

The second is the famous “Star Map” Betty Hill recalled being shown onboard the UFO, which Betty Hill drew and after years of research was shown to potentially match the positions of real stars, Zeta I and II Reticuli which were unknown to the Hills.

Because of this the writers of the 1979 film Alien decided to set the location of the planet where the crew of the Nostromo encounter the acid for blood Xenomorph for the first time in this start system. Weirdly, the life circle of the fictional alien in the film in some ways echoes the bizarre reproductive experiments reported by alleged alien abductees under hypnosis in the real-world. These experiments often involve the hybridisation of humans with aliens, using human women as incubators before the unborn hybrid is removed and finishes gestating in an artificial womb onboard a UFO. Such bizarre stories are easily the most fringe and controversial aspect in an already fringe enough topic… but the stories are consistent. Assuming these stories reflect something that is a physical reality and are not an attempt to communicate using symbolism via visions and dreams, what do these accounts potentially tell us about the greys and their motives for abducting people?

Could it be that like the fictional alien in the Ridley Scott film, the greys can only reproduce by fusing their own DNA with that of another species and using this other species as a host to gestate their offspring?

Zeta II Reticuli system is estimated to be twice as old as our own sun. Any potential life originating from there then, could potentially be twice as old as life on Earth, which could include intelligent life. Any intelligent life that left their home planet millions of years ago could possibly evolve to make hybridisation with other species possible. It would be the fastest way to adapt to the environment of a new planet and avoid the fate of the Martians in HG well’s novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, where the Martians all died from exposure to Earth’s microbes that they had no immunity to.

One last note about the Hill abduction. Even if you are sceptical about alien abductions, ‘The UFO Incident’ is an excellent film, telling a very real love story. It would just as easily be a good choice for a Valentine’s film as a Halloween film and stars James Earl Jones (Voice of Darth Vader) who just recently passed away.

Probably the scariest of the alien abduction films, ‘Fire In the Sky’, is based on the alleged experiences of Travis Walton as described in his book ‘The Walton Experience’. If not for this case I would probably separate cases of alleged alien abductions into two distinct and separate types of phenomena, one involving “nuts and bolts” physically real but unknown craft. And the other more paranormal kind that involves something (possibly intelligent) external affecting (possibly communicating) with the human mind. In the latter case, whatever it is using popular culture, folklore and religious beliefs to construct a lucid dream so real that it can cause physical injury to the experiencer.

…However, unfortunately it isn’t that easy to separate alien abductions into different types like apples and oranges, and Travis Walton’s experience perhaps best documents why this is. Walton was seen being struck by an energy beam from a UFO by multiple witnesses before being taken onboard the craft where he woke up being examined by classic grey alien beings. It was clearly a physical experience, not a dream or hallucination.

Perhaps then the UFO occupants can choose between many different communication channels to make contact with humans, much in the same way we decide between having a face-to-face meeting or making a phone call or arranging a Microsoft Teams or Skype meeting. The only difference being that the UFO occupants can use consciousness itself as a communication channel when face to face encounters are not necessary or possible.

The Fourth Kind is another disturbing film to watch. I need to take a slight detour here into theoretical physics, but we will return back to the film soon.

If aliens are travelling from other solar systems to Earth, it is impossible for them to be coming in nuts-and-bolts spacecraft travelling slower than the speed of light. UFOs are seen too often and seem to be reacting to current events on Earth too quickly. For example, the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945 and within two years in the same region flying saucers turn up, seemingly investigating our nuclear weapon tests. If these objects came from another solar system, they would need to be at least approx. 4 light years away. Meaning it would take a radio signal at least that time to reach our nearest neighbouring solar system. Then travelling at light speed take another four years to get to Earth. That’s eight years total. As UFOs were being seen in 1947 (and earlier) in the American Southwest and were seemingly interested in nuclear weapons, it would seem to indicate they could send signals and travel faster than light to get here two years after the first atomic bomb test.

While travelling faster than light is impossible in our physical universe, other universes could potentially have different laws of physics that allow objects to travel faster than light.

So, if such a parallel universe existed it could be used as a kind of cosmic motorway. The only problem is how could an object travel between parallel universes?

Arthur C. Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Could aliens be using what we would call magick (yes with a “k” to differentiate real magick from fake magic conjuring tricks) to open portals into other dimensions? This might sound absurd, but a lightbulb would appear to be magical to someone who had no knowledge of electricity. I’m only suggesting that there might be something to magick which could potentially be developed into another science one day. Perhaps a science of the Mind or Consciousness.

It is interesting that one of the aspects of real-world alien abduction mythology which is highlighted in ‘The Fourth Kind’ is the phenomenon of alleged screen memories. These are distorted memories of real events subtly altered either by the sub consciousness mind to make the memories accessible without driving someone insane, or, perhaps artificially altered by the aliens encountered during abductions to hide their activities. Put simply instead of remembering an alien, abductees remember other mundane things instead in their place. In the film the aliens are replaced in the memories of the protagonist by an owl, something which is widespread in real abduction accounts. Which is interesting because the owl has long been an important symbol in ancient religions. The owl was associated with the Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom Athena. And even today owls are still allegedly ‘worshiped’ in outlandish rituals by the quasi-secret group the Bohemian Club.

It could simply be that the large black eyes of owls lend the creatures to being good standings for the black-eyed grey aliens mostly associated with abductions. But an alternative explanation could be that owl and other esoteric symbolism is somehow being used to generate some kind of energy or power (for lack of a better similarly as this psychic power may not be energy in the scientific sense of the word that can be measured) which is used to phase in and out of our physical universe in ways we don’t yet understand.

Eyewitness accounts of odd symbols resembling Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on wreckage/debris from alleged UFO crashes like the one at Roswell in 1947 are well known inside the UFO field. What if instead of writing these were occult symbols? What if instead of using physics to travel through space the aliens have developed an alternative science based originally on what we would call magick?

Chemistry is an example of a science that began as a pseudo-science. The treating of illnesses with magical potions. This was the beginning of treating illnesses with specific drugs to remedy a particular disease or other health problem.

There is a certain amount of theatrics involved with cases of alien abductions. Why would the aliens want to scare the people they are abducting? The aliens should be capable of tranquillising the subjects of their experiments, so that they would have no distress or memory at all of anything happening. The way we do with animals, for instance, if a large and dangerous zoo animal needed to be seen by a vet.

It is widely believed in paranormal research circles that poltergeists feed off human fear and anger, and that the best thing to do if you are experiencing such a haunting is to simply ignore it until the poltergeist runs out of energy effectively. Could the aliens seen in abductions be using similar paranormal energies generated by negative human emotion to travel between different dimensions? Perhaps a non-physical realm where the laws of physics do not apply, making interstellar travel possible?

One last thought … it is suggestive that the alleged covert group set up by the US Government to study the alleged UFO wreckage found at Roswell in 1947 was called Majestic 12 … as in Magic or Magick 12.

The Mummy Returns: Illuminati Cloning? - Richard's Room 101

Do the global elite, sometimes called the Illuminati, plan on using cloning and other emerging technologies to give themselves immortality?

   

It is commonly believed inside conspiracy circles that the Illuminati secret society network that is allegedly working towards establishing a world government (New World Order) is thousands of years old, with its origins in Ancient Egypt and Babylon. The big problem with this belief often pointed out by sceptics is that it doesn’t make much sense that anyone would spend their entire life working towards something they would never see completed to benefit from.

   

But what if they knew that they could be brought back to life someday?

 

In the second Star Trek spin-off series Deep Space Nine, a species called the Vorta are given eternal life, of a sort, by their masters the Changelings in return for administrating a vast interspecies galactic empire called The Dominion. Whenever a Vorta dies, he or she is instantly resurrected via cloning. In the dark sci-fi series, we watch one Vorta called Weyoun die several times, only to be brought back, sometimes in the same episode.

  

Paralleling Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe, since 1997, when a team of British scientists announced that they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep, there have been many rumours that humans have also been cloned. Perhaps the most bizarre of these claims is that President Obama could be a clone and not just any clone, but the resurrected ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who the President does bear a striking resemblance to.

   

The father of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Akhenaten had a far greater impact on world history than his more famous son. The “Heretic Pharaoh” abandoned the traditional Egyptian gods in favour of worshipping a single deity, Aten, who was associated with the sun. Because of this, some historians credit Akhenaten as being the creator of the world’s first monotheistic religion. This might explain why the Illuminati would choose Akhenaten above other more famous Egyptian royalty to be brought back to life. It has even been speculated that the sun god religion started by the Pharaoh could be the secret religion of the Illuminati practiced today. For more information about this read Freeman Fly’s “Obama clone of an Egyptian Pharaoh” page on Freemantv.com. 

  

Whether or not “Atenism” was really the first religion to worship one god, there is something we can be sure of. Like all Ancient Egyptians, Akhenaten would have had no doubt about living again after his death: something which is made theoretically possible by the mummification process which preserved this ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’s DNA for cloning. 

  

While there is a resemblance between Obama and the Ancient Egyptian King, Obama does not have the elongated features that Akhenaten is depicted as having. This could be because these features are environmental rather than genetic in nature, but there is no consensus on why the Pharaoh is shown with such unusual-looking features. 

  

With controversy still surrounding the US President’s birth certificate, perhaps it isn’t surprising that conspiracy theories about Obama’s ‘real’ origins should pop up, but this isn’t the only clone conspiracy theory linked to the 44th occupant of the White House. 

  

In 2009 Fox News reported that an Indonesian magazine photographer, Ilham Anas, was collecting pay cheques appearing in advertising because of his strong resemblance to the President. 

   

The idea of a world leader being cloned strongly echoes the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil, in which Adolf Hitler is brought back to life as a teenager living in the 1970s. In this story, it is Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi Doctor notorious for his experiments on twins during WWII, who clones the Nazi Fuhrer in the sick hope of reviving the Third Reich.

  

The obvious problem with using cloning as a means of bringing the dead back to life is also explored in the film. A copy no matter how perfect is still just a copy. The boys Mengele creates may have the same DNA as Hitler, but without the life experiences of the Nazi Fuhrer, they are still completely different individuals. 

   

One answer to this problem would be to download a person’s consciousness into a computer until a new body is ready. This concept is used in the science fiction series Lexx, where one of the chief antagonists is a mad scientist called Mantrid who has transferred his “life essence” into a computer in order to survive the death of his body. 

  

Other science fiction series have also used this idea as a plot device. In the reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica, a race of biological robots identical to humans called Cylons use “resurrection ships” to download into a new body aboard one of these space vessels upon death.

   

Like human cloning “consciousness downloading” is another concept that began in science fiction, but could soon be a reality. In July 2012 the mainstream media reported that a Russian entrepreneur had contacted a list of billionaires offering them eternal life in return for funding a hi-tech research project called “Avatar”. The goal of which was “transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality” by the year 2045.

  

With the announcement on 9 March (2013) that the first genetically engineered humans have already been born, it is clear science fact is rapidly catching up to science fiction. The idea that an American President could be a clone of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh may sound like a clever spin on The Mummy films, with technology replacing black magic. But it would appear that the Ancient Egyptians may have been right about mummification guaranteeing them eternal life after all.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Doctor Who and Transhumanism - Richard's Room 101

Transhumanism is a movement that advocates advancing human evolution via artificial means, such as genetic engineering, cloning, and other emerging technologies. Proponents see certain aspects of the human condition such as old age and sickness as unnecessary and therefore undesirable. By merging with technology Transhumanists believe humans will be able to evolve into a new race of Transhumans free from these weaknesses. 

 

  

While it might sound like pure fantasy, since 1997 when a team of British scientists announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep, science fact has quickly been catching up to science fiction. On 9 March (2013), it was reported that the first genetically engineered humans have been born, sparking debate about the morality of science being used to guide human evolution: a subject first explored in Doctor Who in 1966 with the creation of the Cybermen. 

  

After Terry Nation withdrew his Daleks from Doctor Who, it was decided to introduce new star monsters to the series. But who or what could come close to replacing the Daleks? That was the difficult conundrum then script editor Gerry Davis posed to the unofficial scientific advisor to the series Kit Pedler as Doctor Who approached its fourth season. 

  

Reflecting on his own fears as a Medical Doctor of “dehumanising medicine” Pedler delivered in spades. Pedler imagined a race of human beings who had been forced by circumstances beyond their control to slowly replace most – if not all – of their vital organs and limbs with steel and plastic replacements. Ultimately even replacing large parts of their brains with computers and neurochemically programming out their emotions altogether. In effect, surgically erasing all traces of their humanity and transplanting it with cold technology and uncompromising logic. Pedler and Davis called these new nightmarish life forms Cybermen. 

 

In the 1974 Target Book adaptation of the first Cyber-story, The Tenth Planet, Gerry Davis described the fictional origins of the Cybermen: 

 

“Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far distant planet Telos sought immortality. They perfected the art of cybernetics, the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb, with plastic and steel. Finally, even the human circulation and nervous system were recreated, and brains replaced by computers. The first Cybermen were born.” 

 

Somewhat ironically, though, despite this apparent evolutionary leap forward Pedler reasoned that such beings would be driven solely by the most primitive of biological instincts … the will to survive whatever the cost. A frightening contradiction that made itself felt much more prevalently later on when Pedler and Davis decided to revisit the initial concept behind the Cybermen for the BBC series Doomwatch in the Seventies, oddly enough in an episode starring second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. Far from battling the Cybermen, though, on this occasion, Troughton does everything he can to become one of them! In the words of Troughton’s character: “I keep trying to tell them machines can’t catch diseases!” 

  

In the season two episode In The Dark a terminally ill man Alan McArthur (Patrick Troughton) desperately tries to prolong his life artificially by replacing his dying body piece by piece with experimental life support systems. Although the experiment is successful it has a terrible price. McArthur begins to think of himself as well as other human beings as nothing more than biological machines. Ultimately McArthur plans on cheating death forever by becoming a living brain attached to a dead machine. 

  

It is difficult to appreciate today but the spare-part surgery envisioned by Pedler was a rapidly emerging technology at the time. In 1960, Belding Scribner invented the Scribner shunt, a breakthrough kidney dialysis machine, and in December 1967 the first successful human heart transplant took place at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. While, in hindsight, Pedler’s concerns about these developments might seem premature back in the Sixties and Seventies, are they still so in 2013? 

  

In July last year (2012), the mainstream media reported that a Russian entrepreneur had contacted a list of billionaires offering them eternal life in return for funding a hi-tech research project called “Avatar”. The goal of which was “transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality” by the year 2045. 

  

Perhaps it is more likely, however, that instead of reinventing ourselves limb by limb as Pedler envisioned, the real danger is doing it gene by gene. Like heart transplants and dialysis machines such technology will no doubt save the lives of countless people but we must be cautious that in saving lives we do not begin to think of humans as mere biological machines. As Professor Quist points out in In The Dark human beings are separated from animals by two factors: knowledge of our own mortality and human emotion.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Mac Tonnies - A Room 101 Interview with a Transhumanist

This fortnight in Room 101, we're breaking new ground with a special non-UFO interview with Mac Tonnies. Tonnies is the author of After The Martian Apocalypse, an excellent book on Mars anomalies. He is perhaps better known in UFO circles, though, for his controversial cryptoterrestrial hypothesis. Both these topics, of course, were covered in-depth during his appearance on BoA: Audio, so in this interview, we're going to focus more on his views and beliefs as a Transhumanist instead. In particular, we'll be getting his take on many of the problems people have with the whole idea of Transhmanism. (You can read about my views on the topic in Doctor Who and the Robots of Death). 

   

So is Mac Tonnies a real-life Davros-like mad scientist or the next Arthur C. Clarke? Maybe a bit of both, you decide ... 

  

Richard Thomas: First things first, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. I've really enjoyed your appearances on BoA: Audio and other podcasts and am really looking forward to finally getting the chance to ask you some questions, myself. 

  

In this interview, I want to mainly get your take on the Transhumanist movement and some concerns many (myself included) have about the whole idea of upgrading humanity. But first, there is something else I've been wanting to ask you about that kind of relates to transhumanism a little bit. 

  

I'm a huge fan of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass serials and films, particularly Quatermass and the Pit. What do you think of the central premise of the story: "That we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects"? 

  

Mac Tonnies: Cultures all over the world seem to have a special affinity with insect intelligence, a theme we seem to see reiterated in Western pop culture's eponymous image of the "Gray" alien. "Trippers" who ingest DMT sometimes describe similar insect-like entities. The question that naturally arises is whether we're indeed making contact with an intelligence external to our own minds or else tapping into some neural legacy. 

   

Colony collapse disorder is at least as disturbing, albeit for different reasons. The global die-off of bees reminds us how intricately connected we are with the planet. Ultimately, there are no dispassionate, clinical observers; we're embedded in the experiment with no clear sight of its purpose -- assuming, of course, that it has one.

  

Richard Thomas: For people who don't know, what is "transhumanism" and why do you support the idea? 

   

Mac Tonnies: Transhumanism is a simple blanket term for people who view technology as a means by which to augment and expand human prowess -- physically, cognitively and perhaps even spiritually. We're already knee-deep in an era of smart drugs, genetic therapies and molecular manufacturing, so it's not exactly rash to attempt to anticipate future breakthroughs. For instance, there's reason to suspect that ageing itself will eventually come to be viewed as a degenerative disease, much how we currently view diseases like polio or cancer. Given the ability to avert disease, relatively few among us will refuse to take advantage of new cures. So I suspect most of us are "closet transhumanists," whether we're explicitly familiar with the philosophical arguments or not.

  

Richard Thomas: Sci-Fi is littered with examples of what might be called transhumans or post-humans: from the Daleks and Cybermen of Doctor Who to the Borg and Augments of Star Trek. But how do you imagine these future creations? For example, do you think some might have a group consciousness like the Borg or maybe removed their emotions like the Cybermen?

  

Mac Tonnies: The Borg is a wonderful cautionary metaphor: the transhumanist equivalent to the Party in Orwell's "1984." Could transhumanist technologies be used unwisely? Certainly. But the same could be said for any technology, old or new. As with any endeavour with the potential to fundamentally alter our relationship with ourselves, we need to apply caution and forethought, which is what much of contemporary science fiction represents.

  

Richard Thomas: I'm all for giving sight to the blind, replacing missing limbs and that kind of thing. Restoring or making up for lost ability seems fine since we're already doing it with things like false teeth and eyeglasses, but I have to draw the line at trying to make "improvements" or "upgrading" people. Trying to create better or even "perfect" beings suggests there is something wrong, or worse, inferior about people now. Historically, this is a very, VERY dangerous idea. What are your thoughts on this? 

  

Mac Tonnies: I would argue that we're all "inferior" in the sense that we're ill-adapted to essentially any lifestyle other than the one in which we happened to evolve. (Ask an astronaut.) I don't think any transhumanist thinkers want to create a "perfect" being; the operative goal is to empower the human species on an individual level. In a foreseeable future scenario, instead of being saddled with the genome one blindly inherits, one can choose to become an active participant -- and I find that possibility incredibly liberating and exciting. Transhumanism is not eugenics. 

   

Richard Thomas: The whole idea of the post-human seems dangerously close to Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch or Superman. How do we prevent transhumanism from being hijacked and turned into something evil the way Nietzsche's ideas were by Hitler and the Nazis? 

   

Mac Tonnies: That's a legitimate risk. As with the "digital divide," it's likely that, at first, only the relatively wealthy will have access to modification technology -- whether a brain-computer interface, anti-senescence treatment or access to intelligence-expanding pharmaceuticals. But one of the appealing outgrowths of digital manufacturing is the ability to build on the atomic level: the sort of technology that could mature into a nanotech "assembler" that can produce desired goods from scratch. Machines like this could do an immeasurable amount of good for the developing world; one hopes they're inevitable, like the now-ubiquitous cellphone. 

   

Richard Thomas: Human beings seem to find it hard enough to get on with other humans, never mind post-humans. What sort of relationship do you think will exist between us and post-humans? Will they be our slaves or will we be their pets?

  

Mac Tonnies: Neither. A posthuman civilization will probably have enough to think about without harassing its neighbours -- especially if they pose no threat. When I see the Amish, I'm tempted to speculate along similar lines. Almost invariably, some of us will eschew transhumanism for various philosophical or metaphysical reasons, but that doesn't necessarily entail antagonism or hostility. 

   

Richard Thomas: Closely paralleling transhumanism, of course, is the whole idea of "Technological Singularity." A point in our future history when computers advance beyond the limits of human intelligence and become the new leading source of great invention and breakthroughs in the world. How likely do you think Ray Kurzweil's predictions are that it will occur in the next few decades? 

   

Mac Tonnies: I think Kurzweil's overly optimistic -- and naive in a sort of endearingly infectious way. Specifically, I don't think the post-biological future will arrive as abruptly as Kurzweil suspects. While I think many of his forecasts will indeed happen more or less as advertised, I foresee a more gradual -- and markedly less utopian -- transition. On the other hand, we might direly need the technologies Kurzweil describes in order to survive the excesses and hazards of the next century, and necessity is often the mother of invention.

   

Richard Thomas: Do you think the Singularity is something we should be preparing for in case it really does take place? For instance, do you think we need any new laws or other safeguards to prevent any possible dangers? (e.g. Robot rebellion.)

  

Mac Tonnies: Absolutely. We can continue to engage in a healthy dialogue about when and how the Singularity might arrive -- if ever -- but there's enough momentum to suggest some very real challenges in coming decades. Possible dangers include "designer" viruses and weaponized nanotech: inventions that could conceivably render us extinct. I don't think that's a risk we can afford to underestimate, regardless of one's intellectual biases. 

  

Richard Thomas: Some speculate that superintelligent machines might develop their own goals that could be inconsistent with continued human survival and prosperity. What do you think of AI (Artificial Intelligence) researcher Hugo de Garis's warning that such entities may simply choose to exterminate the human race? 

  

Mac Tonnies: Roboticist Hans Moravec thinks the opposite is more likely: our mechanical offspring will think of us as parents and allow us to join them or perish of our own accord. Perhaps it seems cold, but that's evolution. If homo sapiens in ultimately usurped by something wiser and more capable, that's quite OK with me. 

  

Richard Thomas: What are your plans for the future? I understand you've been working on a book on your cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, when do you think we might expect that? 

  

Mac Tonnies: I'm fascinated by accounts of apparent UFO occupants and have been rethinking who or what we might be dealing with. I'm of the opinion that the extraterrestrial interpretation is incomplete. Could we be interacting with indigenous humanoids? That's the question I'm posing in the book I'm writing. Time will tell if it helps resolve the UFO enigma; I'll be satisfied if it makes readers a little less complacent.

  

Richard Thomas: Thanks again, I look forward to your future projects.

  

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