William, I do not need to be convinced with most of what you’ve written since I do accept the reality of the sightings. I don’t think they are due to collective hysteria and mass illusions. There are STUFF up there (and some say even under the ocean) that exist. The question is about their origin.
Even “intelligent entity” does not begin to answer it since the firmware that runs my fridge is also intelligent but is neither human nor extraterrestrial. Up to this point I could not convince myself that they are E.T. in origin even if they are intelligent due to unbelievably high odds against travelling safely, repeatedly, and regularly across millions of light years of distances by passing through radiation belts, extreme cold temperatures, and other physical factors inimical to all carbon-based life forms.
If there are life forms based on another architecture we don’t know what they are yet, so we are back to square 1 of pure speculation fed by a lot of sci-fi ideas. That's not a solution.
Even when we answer such questions adequately there is then the damning question of WHY – why would they visit us if UFOs have E.T. origin? (For example -- Why would they leave their lights on so that we can see them but then disappear in a hurry once we see them?) I could not read a single WHY that ever made any sense.
On top of all that, we also have this inconsistent, ironic, and schizoid attitude towards “government’s reliability.”
On the one hand we think the government(s) is hiding crucial stuff from us and lying about the facts. But on the other hand, we show the latest Pentagon report as reliable evidence that the UFOs are not made by US, China, France or any other worldly power. Can the government be trusted when it supports our hunches but not in other times? Are we allowed to have our cake and eat it too these days? Switching positions whenever the situation demands it is not an intellectually honest way to think about these issues I believe.
Your explanation of why you believe in moon landing is the exact contextual proof argument I’ve used to explain why I believe in Barcelona even though I never visited the city. See this article if interested. https://medium.com/illumination-curated/an-old-fallacy-argument-from-authority-33435198d552
Continuing to learn from you and other reader/writer friends here on Medium. Very grateful for the kind, responsible, and free exchange we have here.
