Here's an interesting question. If there was evidence of something extraterrestrial or something stranger that would scare a lot of people and destabilize things, perhaps globally —but answered the big questions about whether or not we are alone as "advanced" life in the universe, or provided some profound insight into the nature of reality, would the public have a right to know?
Yes, I think the public, at least in established democracies, would have a right to know.
People- at least competent adults- don't have a right to be protected from truths they might find troubling or inconvenient,
and governments shouldn't take it upon themselves to hide such truths.
An electorate should be informed, otherwise it cannot make informed decisions, and the franchise becomes diminished.
If the executive determines what the public should know then the public might not be equipped to determine who should be the executive.*
On arguably comparable major issues, I don't think there is a precedent (post-WW2) of a democratic government "shielding" the public from the truth.
The best example of this is the nuclear threat during the Cold War.
No private citizens in North America, Western Europe etc. ever
saw a Soviet or Chinese nuclear test, and none would have had the means to verify if any had taken place**. Both states were known to make false claims, the USSR used doctored/ faked images; claims of tests could have been dismissed as propaganda. This didn't happen.
The governments of democracies did not hide the fact that any location, in any country, could be utterly destroyed. People in Western Europe were aware that they could receive as little as four minutes warning (UK) or much less (FRG) before inescapable death for around 30 years.
From the mid-60s on, Americans were aware that any target in their country could be hit and destroyed at will by the USSR.***
Some anti-nuclear campaigners argued that the consequences of nuclear warfare were not adequately publicized by their governments, but it would be disingenuous to say this information was suppressed. Academic papers, TV documentaries and dramatizations (
The War Game,
The Day After,
Threads) and a whole sub-genre of literary fiction (
On The Beach, many others) all described the devastating effects of nuclear war, up to and including human extinction.
Yet faced with these depressing facts about a very real, life-threatening possibility, there wasn't mass panic or societal breakdown.
The nuclear threat might have played a role in some instances of stress and mental illness, and a very small number of people deciding to move to remote areas, but the hundreds of millions of people at risk by and large continued with their lives as per usual.
Facts regarding global warming have not been supressed (though the stance of the current US administration concerns me).
Any realistic efforts to minimize global warming
will be expensive, and unpopular amongst many groups of people, some of whom are likely to suffer significantly (e.g. coal mining communities). This has almost certainly impacted the political will to address the issue- but the facts have not been systematically hidden from us.
I don't agree with the premise that reliable evidence of ETI would "destabilize things" globally, or even cause marked civil unrest.
Why should it?
It's a trope of UFO enthusiasts (who never explain why it's
other people who will be affected) used to "explain" why the (often, US) government hasn't shared what it knows. It conforms with the beliefs of conspiracy theorists and those who axiomatically distrust "the authorities" while allowing broadly patriotic and apolitical UFO enthusiasts to believe the government, armed forces or whatever aren't bad guys exactly; they're just mistakenly doing what they think is in our best interests. In my view, such paternalism
would make them bad guys.
(I have no belief whatsoever that any governments have any reliable evidence of ETI.)
But why would knowledge of ETI be scarier than knowing that your life- or at least your relatively comfortable way of life- could end within a few minutes of an attack warning? And living with that knowledge for years?
Would the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan feel less safe than they do? And take to the streets because some US Congress people have said "This is definitely a photo of an alien spacecraft" or something similar?
The "example" of Orson Welles' 1938 radio play
War of the Worlds might be raised, but it is irrelevant: (1) It portrayed an attack, in America, with people "dying" in "real time" on air; (2) There's actually very little evidence that there
was any mass panic (
post #22, thread "The role of contemporary culture in the changing UFO narrative").
Many hundreds of millions- perhaps billions- of people living in less wealthy countries might be forgiven for thinking that evidence of ETI was a first world problem. If they got to hear about it. A truly benevolent ETI might advise on how to tackle wealth inequalities, food insecurity and vaccine scepticism long before it gave us FTL drives or whatever else our contemporary cargo cults think we should get.
*There are some defence, security and law enforcement matters that are understandably kept secret; more mundanely tax changes, budget planning and other financial matters are sometimes kept secret until they come into effect to minimize insider trading, profiteering, tax evasion etc.
**Excluding some civilians working in defence/ intelligence, a very few others (e.g. some radio astronomers, re the "Arecibo ripple" 22/09/79).
***No potential US target could have withstood a nuclear strike or near-miss from a weapon assigned to destroy it, including the NORAD command center at (in) Cheyenne Mountain:
External Quote:
At the end of the tour, he [President Reagan] asked Commanding General James Hill what would happen if a Soviet SS-18 hit within a few hundred yards of the steel front doors. Without a moment's hesitation, the general answered, "It would blow us away." Reagan was incredulous.
George Shultz
Turmoil & Triumph, passage viewable at The Margaret Thatcher Foundation website
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110632
Other professions are also fatiguing. Other ways of thinking are also useful. Sit down and draw a comic book; I'll wait for you to post it.
