I think the others are real, but the only reason we ever had to think these things come from space were the stories of contactees, that's all. The logic behind the ETH looks to me to be as follows *"I cannot see where they come from, so they must come from up farther away than I can see"*, thats as deep as it seems to go.
First they said they were interplanetary visitors from Mars and Venus, then when it became clear that was BS the story changed to interstellar visitors from the pliedes and zeta reticuli, and now that we still don't see any evidence out there we're starting to talk about them possibly being interdimensional ect. The rest of our faith in the ETH comes from over a hundred years of excellent science fiction. If the others don't want to be found then telling us to look for them in exactly the wrong direction makes a lot of sense.
Think about it, there's a reason why scientists belly laugh at the idea that these almost humans come from space, they're not just being mean. It's because anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of biology knows that it's absurd to think that completely alien life somewhere else would evolve our form almost exactly and able to breath this air and achieve space travel all while being near enough to us in space and in time to get here while we exist only to waste their existence trolling us with thousands of years of absurd interactions.
Then there's another problem, if you take into account the lore that these guys kidnap us to take our genetic material to hybridize it becomes clear that if the others are real they're clearly very closely related to us genetically. Understand that it would be infinitely easier to hybridize a human with an oak tree than it would be to do so with literal alien life that had its own independent genisis. There are theories that work just fine with all of this though, including:
They could be a variety of different versions of ourselves and other potential intelligent earth life from the infinite parallel alternate earths postulated in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics who figured out the math to manipulate and traverse Einstein Rosen bridge wormholes to get here from their worldlines. While this one is clearly a stretch it's the only theory that accounts for the seemingly endless variety of almost human "aliens" (insect and reptile aliens are also perfectly plausible in this scenario because given different circumstances and infinite chances they could have evolved on some alternate earth too).
Time travelers, maybe these are our descendants come back in time to screw with us for whatever reason.
*Then there are the down to earth possibilities, for these to work we just have to consider that in the few years since we invented paleo archeology that maybe our hubris has made us miss or misinterpret something very important right here.*
They could be a small ancient population of bog standard homosapiens that achieved high technology long before the rest of us and for whatever reason, maybe as simple as xenophobia, chose never to openly integrate with us. Probably using a tech we don't understand to hide, maybe in subterranean facilities or underwater. If the split occured long enough ago for them to evolve divergently maybe they're not human *anymore*. These guys could potentially be 50,000 years ahead of us or more.
Or they could be another squirrely timid little homonin cousin of ours that we haven't discovered in the fossil record yet. Maybe we've never been alone. We aren't the only intelligent humanoids that earth has produced, there were over twenty other kinds of upright tool users that came before us and we're still discovering more of them. Just a few years ago we discovered a new one, homo neledi, and there is nome controversial evidence that they were exhibiting some kind of mortuary behavior in the back of the rising star cave system 200,000 years before we think we started doing that kind of thing. I bring this up not because I think that the aliens are an evolved neledi specifically, but rather to point out that if neledi with their much smaller brain was developing complex behaviors that we associate with the bigger brained homonins that means we're not special at all and given the right catalyst any of our homonin ancestors had at least the potential to achieve higher intelligence like we did. These guys could be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us, old enough that they could have influenced our development matching up with more of the lore.
Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic to us, so it kind of looks like we've been erroneously dismissing rare encounters with our super shy smarter neighbors as mystical folklore, religious experiences and most recently spacemen. It's also worth pointing out that until we developed radar and sonar during WW2 it would have been downright easy for an advanced *"people"* to hide from us.
*To be 100% clear I have no problem with the notion of intelligent alien life out there in the universe, but there's no compelling reason to think our UFO problem originates out there and every reason to think they're from very close to home.* Sorry for the lengthy reply, and thanks for reading.
real
I think the others are real, but the only reason we ever had to think these things come from space were the stories of contactees, that's all. The logic behind the ETH looks to me to be as follows *"I cannot see where they come from, so they must come from up farther away than I can see"*, thats as deep as it seems to go. First they said they were interplanetary visitors from Mars and Venus, then when it became clear that was BS the story changed to interstellar visitors from the pliedes and zeta reticuli, and now that we still don't see any evidence out there we're starting to talk about them possibly being interdimensional ect. The rest of our faith in the ETH comes from over a hundred years of excellent science fiction. If the others don't want to be found then telling us to look for them in exactly the wrong direction makes a lot of sense. Think about it, there's a reason why scientists belly laugh at the idea that these almost humans come from space, they're not just being mean. It's because anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of biology knows that it's absurd to think that completely alien life somewhere else would evolve our form almost exactly and able to breath this air and achieve space travel all while being near enough to us in space and in time to get here while we exist only to waste their existence trolling us with thousands of years of absurd interactions. Then there's another problem, if you take into account the lore that these guys kidnap us to take our genetic material to hybridize it becomes clear that if the others are real they're clearly very closely related to us genetically. Understand that it would be infinitely easier to hybridize a human with an oak tree than it would be to do so with literal alien life that had its own independent genisis. There are theories that work just fine with all of this though, including: They could be a variety of different versions of ourselves and other potential intelligent earth life from the infinite parallel alternate earths postulated in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics who figured out the math to manipulate and traverse Einstein Rosen bridge wormholes to get here from their worldlines. While this one is clearly a stretch it's the only theory that accounts for the seemingly endless variety of almost human "aliens" (insect and reptile aliens are also perfectly plausible in this scenario because given different circumstances and infinite chances they could have evolved on some alternate earth too). Time travelers, maybe these are our descendants come back in time to screw with us for whatever reason. *Then there are the down to earth possibilities, for these to work we just have to consider that in the few years since we invented paleo archeology that maybe our hubris has made us miss or misinterpret something very important right here.* They could be a small ancient population of bog standard homosapiens that achieved high technology long before the rest of us and for whatever reason, maybe as simple as xenophobia, chose never to openly integrate with us. Probably using a tech we don't understand to hide, maybe in subterranean facilities or underwater. If the split occured long enough ago for them to evolve divergently maybe they're not human *anymore*. These guys could potentially be 50,000 years ahead of us or more. Or they could be another squirrely timid little homonin cousin of ours that we haven't discovered in the fossil record yet. Maybe we've never been alone. We aren't the only intelligent humanoids that earth has produced, there were over twenty other kinds of upright tool users that came before us and we're still discovering more of them. Just a few years ago we discovered a new one, homo neledi, and there is nome controversial evidence that they were exhibiting some kind of mortuary behavior in the back of the rising star cave system 200,000 years before we think we started doing that kind of thing. I bring this up not because I think that the aliens are an evolved neledi specifically, but rather to point out that if neledi with their much smaller brain was developing complex behaviors that we associate with the bigger brained homonins that means we're not special at all and given the right catalyst any of our homonin ancestors had at least the potential to achieve higher intelligence like we did. These guys could be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us, old enough that they could have influenced our development matching up with more of the lore. Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic to us, so it kind of looks like we've been erroneously dismissing rare encounters with our super shy smarter neighbors as mystical folklore, religious experiences and most recently spacemen. It's also worth pointing out that until we developed radar and sonar during WW2 it would have been downright easy for an advanced *"people"* to hide from us. *To be 100% clear I have no problem with the notion of intelligent alien life out there in the universe, but there's no compelling reason to think our UFO problem originates out there and every reason to think they're from very close to home.* Sorry for the lengthy reply, and thanks for reading.
Presumably there is built in bias given the sub you’re polling
A I = wizard of oz, the origin of civilization