Dear KMAG: 20190905 Open Topic

I still need to read the Corso book to understand your perspective on exo.
In the meantime, Sadie’s two-part take on it is very appealing to me.
1.) UFOs (actual unidentified flying Objects, not rare atmospheric phenomena, astronomical phenomena, or optical illusions, each of comes in many forms, and all of which collectively have very few people who are trained in all of them, even military pilots, astronomers, meteorologists, sailors, etc.) that can’t be explained any other way are advanced experimental vehicles or weapons being tested by the military.
2.) “Alien abductions”, (again, real abductions, where something weird happened, and that can’t be explained any other way,) are Black Hat MK abductions. Clown, Russian, Chinese, whatever.
—–
I grew up thinking ETs were probably real also, out there somewhere, and might even be be discovered soon. I was familiar with Fermi’s Question, and had read books by Sagan and others who thought about these ideas professionally.
The book that red-pilled me on Fermi’s Question was Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. (Originally published in 2000.)
Ward is a geologist and paleontologist and Brownlee is an astronomer. Though they are both professors of science at the University of Washington at Seattle, they had never met each other, or heard of each other’s work, before they both attended a NASA presentation in Seattle and, by coincidence, had seats near each other.
The NASA guy was talking about their programs to locate extraterrestrial civilizations using radio astronomy and so forth, and painting a rosy picture of the chances of finding somebody soon.
Ward and Brownlee kept muttering things under their breath about why he was too optimistic, until they overheard each other, and then introduced themselves. Comparing their respective theories, they found that each had done professional work that cast doubt on many of the estimates that Fermi and his famous colleagues had back-of-enveloped as a hobby during mealtimes when working in the Manhattan Engineering District in New Mexico.
The result ot their meeting was Rare Earth.
They both suspect that life on Earth origated elsewhere, and that the first life here was bacteria that travelled naturally from another solar system. Indeed, they think bacteria is extremely common throughout outer space.
Their problems with the estimates that came out of Los Alamos, which led to Fermi’s Question (“Where are they?”) deal with the chances of bacteria evolving into eukaryotic life (life forms whose cells feature well-defined nuclei and organelles,) the chances of simple eukaryotes lasting long enough to evolve into multicellular eukaryotes, and of the multicellular eukaryotes lasting enough to develop intelligence.
The issues are that the Milky Way is in a very favorable position in the universe, the Sun is in very favorable position in the Milky Way, the Earth is in a very lucky to have the Moon. Also, the Earth is extremely dense, and has geological features such as subduction zones which Ward and Brownlee believe are crucial in maintaining a steady climate, and that have not been found on other planets.
There are many other aspects to their theory that intelligent life is very rare in the universe, and, overall, it is an extremely eye-opening and convincing book.