The ETH Revalidated: Such Seems So!

" The ETH only needs to be 'validated' by those who
have not had the experience themselves 'of something so
incontrovertible it robs them of the luxury of doubt.' "  -- John Velez

The ETH Revalidated: 

Such Seems So!

by Alfred Lehmberg

Such seems, and decidedly, so! Nothing happens only once.
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Walk with me and perhaps see that the wholly extraterrestrial and so alien "other" (ET) is furtively regarded, if at all—and with all trepidation—early in the 21st Century. Avoided assiduously. 

Perhaps, for the same reasons we avoid the supposition that science seems to avoid acknowledgment of a perceivable "conservation of complexity" through time, or that an observed "novelty (new complexity) is created out of an evolving universe," more complexity and not a devolution of it... heat life not heat death, and that new complexity is ironically generated out of that conservation... ...or that chromosomal life could have a role as a "mechanism" perhaps essentially negating "Thermodyn's" 2nd Law*... [BAM!])...? We avoid copping to that, too. 
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Humans know hubris and seemingly little else. How is this not fact?
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This aforementioned "avoidance" encourages, though, a presumption posture ill-manners no, ...an arrogance employed in the facilitation for an allowance one might use to keep a certain "distance" from even the concept of the extraterrestrial, as the mere concept seems to be the quintessential slippery slope to a—forget justified—philosophical chaos... hoo-boy ...unsettling even as it is inevitable. Still, one does not catch a train by letting it run them down!
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This avoidance is even as one is compelled by history or circumstance to make the admission that "such" must indeed be "so" without regard to "slopes," slippery or otherwise. Courage is hard.  
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I know "contact" is a game-changer and huge sacrifices, likely, must be made... ...even where cosmic gains are as possible. That doesn't give it a pass or remotely excuse complacency, that smallest feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievement, in its regard. Our finest works are as pestilent rags for some as might regard us. Moreover, the perspicacious person doesn't search for answers, they face the ones already there.

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Drake's numbers show *they* are, and Fermi moved *they* will; 

that a plethora of evidence shows *they* have's a real thrill.

This writer's position is not lightly taken. Seven massive categories of compelling evidence is a provocative encouragement that "such is so." The corroborating involvement of vetted associates with abundant intelligence and research experience says, "such is so." Personal experience in an honest individual's felt presence of the moment says, "such is so." Such would seem... and decidedly, so. Consistency is as consistency does, good reader. 
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Additionally, and overpoweringly, isn't all this just another of the more lovely fractal expressions of our existential being? ...Self-aware bits of intelligence repeating past and future like cognitive flowers. I digress.

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There are reasons alluded to as regards our trepidation, such as they are, for the "facilitation of denial" also alluded above. These include (1) a reflexive fear of the unknown, (2) reactionary knee-jerk rejections for even constructive change, (3) overly conservative concerns regarding the invalidation of previously held but now justifiably challenged faiths or mores, or (4), just not wanting to re-do work thought done.  

On the whole: not the bravest of "reasons," eh?

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Yeah... ET would change everything, but given the current state of affairs that might not be a bad thing. Wouldn't it unite us at the least? 

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Be that as it may, over the years this rejection of the ET infects even the legitimate study of an "admitted" ET, itself, as well. Resolved! There is a dense plethora of explanatory alternatives to ET providing for that "distance," one can readily see.

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Where seven categories of provocative evidence for ET exists, suppositions still providing for the desired distance and deniability must also exist. Such soothes that rancorous cognitive dissonance.
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Consider the Extra-dimensional Hypothesis (Occupied adjacent dimensions, but us, comfortingly). Behold the Extra-chronological Hypothesis (Time Travelers, but us, comfortingly). Review the Intra-terrestrial Hypothesis (Hollow Earth, but us, comfortingly). Regard the Crypto-terrestrial Hypothesis (Of the Earth though perceived with extreme difficulty, but us, essentially). There is even an Entheogenic Hypothesis: the "Alien" tuned into receptive consciousness made receptive by psychedelic substances like LSD, DMT, or Ayahuasca. 
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That last one may not be as crazy as it sounds, still, it's something of a long-shot. There are more of these "alternatives"; that's what "plethora" means.

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What do they hold in common? All move evidential goal posts decidedly further and further away from the existential or probable; indeed, there becomes no "proof" enough! ET becomes a shadow—a mere suggestion of itself and gains "plausible deniability" for its aforementioned shadowiness. 
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Consider now, reader, that Humanity is no shadow and is entirely existential... this is demonstrated as a result of one's felt personal experience which is totally inured in the corporeal. Here. Now. Real! Follow?

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Stanton Friedman, who does not find my thesis entirely revolting, alludes to these alternative hypotheses as the "ABA" conjectures. "Anything But Aliens." The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) remains; however, so far up our ufological nose we do indeed feel alien boot heels scuffing collective chins!

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How does that happen? How can such a high degree of "certitude" be justified? Well, as a result of being able to use the unquestioned reality—the unquestioned existentiality—of ourselves as the extant proof of that contention, reader! Here's how that might work.

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First: Yes. The ETH is correct. This is true whether or not any of the more unlikely hypotheses exist and are correct. They can exist; nevertheless, the ETH is, at the last, the more likely to be the correct conjecture. One can arrive at this conclusion handily, themselves, if one remembers the old saw regarding (1) unending time, (2) abundant monkeys, and (3) plentiful typewriters. Shakespeare does indeed get tapped out—eventually—even if not in the best spelling, eh? That would be humanity, perhaps.

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See, anything that can, and remotely, "happen"... ...happens, given time. When it does that, when something makes that "occurrence," into our corporeal existentiality, Alfred North Whitehead, for one, allowed as how it would seem to exceed some kind of "'expression' formality" or " 'event' threshold." A subsequent occurrence, then, seems almost encouraged... almost like a proof of concept was all that was necessary for a reproduction to be possible...eh? Then? ...And not ending there... It happens, again. How often?

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In answer, consider, for example, fact: the nascent universe foments bigger suns than Sol to form. Fact: Fusion physics dictates that iron is the last element able to be made in that fusion process in any of them. Fusion just doesn't have the energizing juice to go any further in the production of materials beyond iron. From where, then, must come the remaining energy, birthing the remaining elements beyond a capitalized Iron on the periodic table and observable in our universe? 

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Observe: in the cosmic cosmos relatively fresh from its big bang, and in the furious bowels of the monstrous stars aforementioned, paired silicon atoms are "produced" at last in the furious fusion alchemy. Then they try, fail, and then try, try again as the elements leading to the silicon (preceding iron) did... to combine into humble, if entirely key*, IRON! 
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Eventually, with so many silicon atoms trying... and, with so much time available? Space distorting Heat? Diamond imploding Pressure? Unspeakable Energy? ...An iron atom (*ping*) occurs that first time... is fused from the two silicon atoms essentially. Comes the death of a star... and life! 
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Here is your creator, indeed that author of all things. That first iron atom: death, death enough to put out a star's fire, even a star a billion times the volume of our own Sol!

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The occurrence of that iron atom doesn't happen just once, mind. "Formality" achieved? Its recurrence traces an asymptotic and accelerating curve of manufacture so fast and extreme that the newly created and quickly amassed iron—an element newly able, magically even, to suck up huge amounts of excess heat as a feature of its new design as a near inviolate element—abruptly puts the star's fire, almost instantly, out!

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...Huge masses of boiling matter once held aloft and suspended in a heretofore hellish conflagration of fusion fire now crash in a cosmic crush to a tortured center mass! The resultant rebounding explosion, or hypernova, when the energized atoms meet head-on at the raging center,  has all the power to manufacture the elements passed IRON which fusion could not... and then explosively scatters them to the starry stellar reaches on its fiery cosmic winds. Our universe was a fractal expression at the start and only conserving more complexity with the passage of every picosecond onward!

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Those aforementioned additional elements beyond iron are on the way to the self-aware intelligence we are speaking of, recall, occurring in a manner analogous to the iron above. Nothing happens once is the point.  Nothing. Happens. Once.
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If it happened? 
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It is happening! It's happening now! It will happen!

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Be aware that a self-aware and consequence understanding intelligence "happened," in this universe. It was ourselves. It was you.

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...But not just once, I remind a patient reader, no. ...Many, many times, and right here on this planet! Many different species of bipedal tool-using hominid had religion and considered an afterlife. Don't kid yourself that your species was the miracle jewel in creation's crown, eh?

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Meet the folks, indeed...

Homo Naledi—newly discovered species

of human and clearly self-aware

2.5 to 3 million years ago...

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...And not just hominids. Cetacean expressions in whales and dolphins... Then through Avian expressions in parrots and crows, even to Mollusca: squid and octopus... vast expressions of self-aware intelligence right on this planet! Intelligence abounds right here! The suggestion that it has occurred elsewhere is emboldened of logic!

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Truly, when a cornucopia of thousands of galaxies of unknown stars can be masked with a grain of sand held at arm's length at any point in the sky one would care to hold same... ...what does that say regarding the time and opportunity for adjacent self-aware bits of intelligence, beyond ourselves, to have sprung into existence everywhere else?  Hither and yon, verily, to raise their own masking motes of sand!  
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I'm reminded that "as above, so below," also means "as below, so above."  If A equals B, B must equal A. 

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See, we know they're "there" precisely because we're "here." This is without regard to foolish and pretty cowardly notions that it doesn't matter, anyway, allowing they can't get here because we can't get there... eh? What pompous and unjustified hubris is that?!

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No, a wide smear of craft, competence, and capability in that expressed universal self-awareness dictates that they can get here... and remembering the aforementioned 7 categories of evidence pertaining to just that? Have! 
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...You didn't think we'd be anywhere near the top in a list of these occurrences, did you? Don't. I offer you're better served sans any hubris or pride, at all.

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...Very politically incorrect. Then, real Science and Philosophy often are.

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It's a rabbit hole... sure. ...But then everything is, eh? 
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We don't even understand ourselves, it is clear, awash in Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness..." everything you "know" is wrong... Still... if we see a rabbit we can look around and expect to find another kind of rabbit... bird ...even a person if you consider something like Australopithecus' nascent personage above... I would go on to logically presume another self-aware intelligence capable of abstract thought somewhere else in a vast, vast universe. Seems abundantly reasonable to me...

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Consequently, I find I have to wonder at the reluctance of most people to even consider the potentiality or sneer at same. Perhaps it's like the difference between UAP (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) and UFO. The former is wholly unexplained, nebulous phenomena, and does not even have to BE there, eh? Folks can keep it at a distance...

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The latter, on the other hand, is identified as "there" at the start and presumes an association with intelligence—"them"... The "other." ...Up your nose as I pointed out earlier... I happily eschew the UAP for the UFO!

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...Just recently, reader, a heretofore unfound tribe of forest people, AND UNBELIEVABLY, too, were discovered deep in the remaining uncharted tracts of the Amazon Rain Forest... and this in the 21st Century? Making no judgment on the quality of either, I point out that to them... We're the other! The ET, simply, is as we are. We're better served and serve each other better embracing that... none dare call it, "fact."

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*No Saint by any means, never presented as one, one could still do much worse than to consider the recorded thinking of Terence McKenna. It very definitely takes you out of yourself... because see, it's not about him, and it's not about me... it's about you. We find out who you are and wave is collapsed to particle, we can't tell how fast you were going or where you were. You know... ...you! Still, no idea who that is...

**...but for fusion created iron providing the magically produced and immediate heatsink sufficient to putting out the hell-fire of monstrous super-giant stars—and so causing the terrible implosion of the star's terrific amount of degenerate matter once held aloft in the glow of that now absent fire—there would be no furious concussing in spherical head-on collisions providing for engines of terrible manufacture, engines composed of immovable objects instantly meeting irresistible forces and then rebounding apocalyptically with more energy than can be appreciably measured. An existential cornucopia is a fiery result and, like the contents of exploded pinatas, ejecting all the elements necessary and required for the intelligence reading of this footnote, at all, and beyond...

For learned discussion on the ETH, See Alien Worlds, a documentary streaming on Netflix... 
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https://www.netflix.com/

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