They may be a quarter million years more advanced than we are technologically. Their technology will look like magic to us. I don't think that we should be running around thinking these are gods in flying saucers that we should worship. We need to take this in a very rational way.
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Greer describing extraterrestrials.Steven M. Greer
» Steven M. Greer - all quotes »
It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is. Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers — because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said “I don’t think there are flying saucers”. So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You are very unscientific. If you can’t prove it impossible then how can you say that it’s unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, "Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence." It is just more likely. That is all.
Richard Feynman
Seriously. UFO organisations have been contracting of late, because no-one's seeing flying saucers any more. They turn up at weird cultural stress points, like an approaching millennium (which the X-Files lucked into, rather than caused). Almost, it seems, when the culture is worried about something amorphous rather than concrete (like terrorism). The 90s UFO "glut" coincided with the threat of nuclear war fading, relative political stability in the US and UK, and yet the feeling that the turn of the century Meant Something that we couldn't put into words. I almost miss flying saucers: because they might mean that we don't have anything serious to worry about.
Warren Ellis
To understand the magic way of thinking you have to know non-magic thinking. If you see that clearly, you will see how many magic thoughts are necessary elements even of natural science today. There seems to be just as much magic thinking in modern thought as in older; only it takes place in other areas.
Asger Jorn
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Larry Niven
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Arthur C. Clarke
Greer, Steven M.
Gregg, Josiah
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