Am I An Alien?

Some 20 years ago, unknowingly, I started this thought experiment, possibly after watching some Hollywood movie about aliens: what if I am an alien?

You can say, “what kind of question is that? you look human”. But we have seen in many movies, star trek episodes, it is quite possible that if there exists a civilisation that can travel across the stars, they can also create beings that resemble human beings. This appearance of normal human (tho sometimes I doubt that when I look at myself in pictures) is not a conclusive scientific proof that I am not an alien.

The next line of questions is, if I am indeed an alien, what are my “super powers”?, can my face split open and there is a tiny being sitting their controlling the whole of me? Or can my tongue grow really long, and capture the cat when you are not looking? Are my ears real, or they just cut off in to become more human like?

I would argue, If we are assuming alien beings have made me resemble a normal human, they would not have done a crappy job at it. It is not logical to assume that they can make me look 90% or 99% human like, but there is 10% or 1% error. May be there is 0.1% error. May be there is 0.001% error. The fact is, if they are sufficiently advanced, they can make me sufficiently indistinguishable from a human being.

Then comes the real question, if I am an alien, how come I am asking this question, how come I do not know that I am alien? I would have known if I had some “flaws”. Or some super powers. But it appears I have neither, but does that mean it is a proof beyond doubt that I am not an alien? Does that fact that I do not know I am an alien a proof that I am not one?

To answer that question we will have to speculate into the motives of the aliens. We have no information about them, but lets say they did create a human being indistinguishable from human beings, then it is obvious that their motive was concealment. And if you want your “spy” to never reveal to someone that they are a spy, the easiest way would be to not let them know they are a spy in the first place.

There is nothing to say that I can not be “activated” at some later date, in which my powers would come into being, and I would do what they sent me here for.

So I think it is conceivable that even if I look exactly human, even if I do not have any idea about it, I could still be an alien.

The next question is that of motive. What do they want me to do? One possibility is that they sent me here, to stay dormant for all this years, and in future they would activate me to do some crucial thing. May be I will develop some super power, and when their fleet arrives I would fight from Earth and give them victory. But that is kind of nonsensical (this entire thing is nonsensical, but bear with me please). That does not require me to have the human form and live like human for all this year. If they wanted to deploy a missile they can launch against Earth at opportune time, they need not make that missile look like a human being. That would be an incredibly wastage of engineering. Another thing is I do not think we are even remotely prepared to have a space battle, leave alone having prospects of winning them. If someone can come from across gulf of stars, I am pretty sure they can win against Earth even without me. I am not a military weapon. That theory does not make much sense.

So this opens another question, what if I am already activated and I am already doing what I am supposed to be doing? I obviously do not seem to have any super power, so I can not be used for fighting, they do not need that anyways.

If someone sends a spy to foreign territory, they often do not do it for sabotage, but for information gathering. And this makes sense. If I was engineered to be a spy, assuming they are sufficiently advanced to have modified me to either be broadcasting the information I am collecting in real time, or if they can "collect me” and get the information post-martem.

This makes sense, as the most important need you have when you encounter an alien civilisation is information. They would want to understand who we are, what matters to us, how we react, etc etc. If you want to invade a country, or may be even do trade with them, its conceivable you want to get as much information about that country as possible.

And this is something I consider myself good at. I am curious. I aspire to be as learned as possible. I have been observing the world, trying to understand it. May be I am an spy already active on a mission against Earth.

Now this poses a question for me. An existential one. If I have no way to prove that I am not indeed an alien spy, I have to consider it as a possibility. Now there are two possibilities. One is that I do not matter. In which case all is well and I can go on with my life, as it basically doesn’t matter, may be there are hundreds of spies, may be they already have the information they needed, may be that civilisation is long dead and I am just the random probe which activated as per the programming, and nobody is listening. If I did not matter, all is well. But I have no way to prove that. So I have to consider the other possibility that I do matter.

Lets first consider what can information do? How powerful is understanding the enemy. This particular thought came to me when I was reading Ender’s Game. In that book Ender is the best Commander Earth can hope for, in a war against aliens. And while the book said this is because children who are accustomed to space battles from very childhood are going to be better in space battles, where there is no up and down, if we read the book the advantage of Ender is not about knowing up from down. One of the theories Ender develops during his training was that in order to win against an enemy, you need to understand the enemy, and this bit is obvious, you need to know strength and weaknesses of your enemy before you can formulate a battle plan, but he goes one step further, he says you have to understand the enemy so well that you know how they think about everything. Now if you understand how your enemy thinks about everything, you will also understand how the enemy thinks about themselves, and since everyone loves themselves (even when they hate themselves), you have to understand why the enemy loves themselves, and if you truly do understand that, you will not be able to help but love them. And this is when you are most prepared to defeat them. In later books he realized he does not have to defeat them, and if you really understand people you would know they are not really your enemy.

So lets assume understanding == dangerous weapon.

May be there would come a day when it would be between Earth and some aliens, and I would matter. Without my knowledge I am being tool on the wrong side. All my friends are from Earth, my family, my everything is here. How would I feel if I am to be the tool for destruction of all this? Now granted this is a very small possibility, and if we as a thought experiment assume, that this is possible, then I am the bad guy.

What are my options? One simple option is I kill myself. Don’t get me wrong, I have no such notions, I value my life far too much, and to be very frank if I did find out I am going to be the cause of destruction of Earth, knowing myself I do not think I would be that willing to kill myself to save the Earth. I am quite a regular, small, selfish kind of person. I am talking about a thought experiment.

So is this a logical choice? Would it necessarily, without any doubts, help Earth?

To answer this, lets look at the other possibility. If I am indeed a sort of “weapon” that could possibly destroy Earth, then it is reasonable to assume that I could also be the “weapon” that could save the Earth.

Consider that I am not a alien spy, but instead NASA stumbled upon such spy, and found the technology, and NASA knows there could be more such spies as redundancy ("aliens are fools" is wrong assumption), and since NASA can not yet stop the other spies, they can may be plant their own spies, to find out the information that aliens are getting, so they can get that same/similar information themselves, try to extrapolate what strengths and weaknesses aliens may be seeing from that information, and may be I am the spy of the Earth. Imagine they do not have technology, but a controlling probe crash landed, and they just rigged it to send the information to NASA data banks.

Now since this possibility exists, may be I am the only probe of that form, the only hope of Earth. In that scenario, killing myself would be a huge disservice to Earth.

So that is not a logical choice.

But I still have to decide. Am I the weapon of aliens against Earth or the counter weapon of Earth against the alien? What action can I take that I can go to sleep with peace? Assuming understanding == dangerous weapon. And since I do have love for Earth. How do I act?

I did manage to solve this dilemma some 6-7 years back, and the solution is: if understanding is indeed a powerful weapon, and since I can not eliminate myself as I do not know for sure I am not an Earth agent, I have only one logical choice: write a book.

I do not know if NASA/whatever has cracked the alien plan. I do not know if I am their agent. So I can not assume the information/understanding I am collecting is reaching Earth. How else to communicate the accumulated understanding than by publishing a book?

Lets analyse this choice.

If I did not matter, then it would be an okay choice, as nothing mattered, may be the book would be amusing to some, no harm done. If I am NASA agent, I am still alien technology, and there could be other alien spies, who are giving this very information that I am collecting to aliens.

There is one major flaw with this choice: now the aliens will know we are onto them, it removes the element of surprise. I am going to reason that drawback of this plan is small compared to gaurnteed advantage it has.

Lets consider an anology: if your enemy country has nuclear weapons, and you do not know if your country has nuclear weapons, and you come across nuclear weapons, you have two choices: publicly give your country nuclear weapon, or not give your country the nuclear weapon. What would you chose if you were not sure your country has nuclear weapon? In the case you country did not have weapon and you chose to refrain from giving nuclear weapon, you have guaranteed a defeat of your country. If you gave your country a nuclear weapon, and you remove the element of surprise, you reduce the chance of winning very slightly.

I think it should be clear that advantage (going from defeat position to equal position) is far supreior to disadvantage (losing one element of surprise).

If there was a way to privately communicate my knowledge to lets say NASA, I would have loved to, but we are under the assumption that the alien technology has complete access to what is going on in my head.

One remaining flaw with my plan: what if I was the only alien spy? In the analogy that would be then equivalent to me giving the nuclear weapon to both sides. Since I do not know which side I am, if I do not write the book, the weapon I got is definetly going to at least one side, and the only way I guarantee Earth get it is to give it to both. I think its a better choice than not giving to any (which may lead to weapon going to only aliens). If NASA knows better, they can take appropriate action and eliminate me before I publish the book or protect the book any other way. I am not the only one fighting. And I can sleep with peace.

PS: This was just a thought experiment, please don't come to kill me.