synchronomy, on 11 September 2012 - 04:49 AM, said:
You are probably correct. Government thrives on control, so they are never going to admit all their secrets have been made public. They maintain the cloak of secrecy and in doing so make us believe they know more. It's all about control. That's why they will never admit they have crashed vehicles, they have bodies, and they have reverse engineered many things...cause that would give up control over us.
Since we make such wild claims and they remain silent, it makes us look like loonies.
I do not think it is the Governmental silence that offers the loony angle, that comes with the claims themselves, and the fact that most of them dismiss themselves. If we look at the perceived obstacles you have chosen above,
1 - Control. Private Enterprise tends to control the Government a great deal more than you realise. Mining Magnates can shape the value of a countries dollar. They will have input as to what taxes they are prepared to pay, or they will simply move to another country. To maintain resources and economic stability, Governments have no choice but to bow to big business.
2- Governments themselves. With the current tensions in the middle east, the cold war in the past, and all the civil conflicts in between I fail to see how the US could keep interstellar visitors a secret. Not only do most major countries have the resources to monitor interstellar traffic, many have no love for the US and have absolutely no reason to keep quiet about such happenings. The amateur community is more than capable of this level of monitoring itself. The last 2 Jupiter strikes were reported to NASA by amateurs. The entire UN cannot even keep the Sea Shepard out of the water, and could not stop France blowing up an innocent atoll, nor curb North Vietnams nuclear experiments, so I fail to see how this magnificent secret is being kept globally. That logically simply cannot happen.
3 - Crashed vehicles? Do you really believe that an advanced species would ba capable of fending of all the dangers of space to crash in a quiet and predictable atmosphere? This would be one of the safest environments in the Universe to fly in. Storms on Jupiter make our worst typhoons look like a mild summer breeze. Yet somehow, this is the place to crash.
4 - Reverse engineering. There is absolutely no proof of anything being reverse engineered, but plenty of the opposite. Every invention has a long history of R&D associated with it. Nothing pops up overnight.
LINK - The Industrial Revolution.
Personally, I feel if we are to see contact from another civilisation, that such contact will be in the form of communications. It just makes sense to me that it would be the best way to initiate first contact.
But considering the above, there are many reasons why the CT's don't hold water, I think that we should all have a closer look before making a statement. We all make mistakes, that is that nature of being human, but if we learn from them, they are a good thing. I do not think we need to keep asking the questions above, I think they answer themselves with a little thought.