I grew up enjoying science fiction and science fiction, having fun with cartoons but being aware that if I threw myself off a cliff I wouldn’t flatten and move on, like the coyote in Beep Beep.
In my childhood, I remember a news story in which a Japanese kid threw himself out of a window dressed like Superman thinking he was flying, a symptom of confusion between fiction and reality. This confusion, exotic in less developed countries like Portugal during the Estado Novo, has now become the norm. The other day, alone at someone else’s house, I surfed through two hundred or so TV channels, not even RTP 2 was taking advantage of it, I ended up sticking to the History channel. I know that your objective is to sell entertainment, mixing history with medieval fantasies and myths so popular with today’s public; I also know that the scientific community’s reactions to programming range from disdain to irritation, with aliens being one of the most controversial topics.
I have already witnessed two sightings of UFOs (unidentified flying objects), a close person and his family observed another. I would have liked to spend my time in front of the screen acquiring knowledge, but I didn’t see it in the content of this channel, which does not seek to know, but instead spreads convictions. The object of extraterrestrials was explored in order to remove the curiosity of those who actually have it, the daydreams and conclusions they reached discourage those who observed extraordinary phenomena, polluting the study of the subject. I admit it is difficult to gather available material and witnesses to fill seasons and seasons of programs, available facts accompanied by images will not be abundant; So, how are years of episodes occupied with such scarce raw material? It creates. I am also creative, thank you, what I need is the scientific perspective. I have nothing against speculation, however that on this subject becomes pernicious, worse than fiction, in fact worse than a discussion in a tavern, it connects and disconnects from the scientific method as it suits. The perspective of the subjects treated there leans towards the most convenient bias where science is a cash cow used to the customer’s taste; if sometimes it serves to endorse the credibility of the allegations (“Dr So-and-so said X, exactly what we defend”), when she is unable to answer, they call her into question, suspecting that the scientific community knows more than it says, an attitude usual in apedeutism. For, the greater the ignorance, the less the ability to deal with uncertainty, the doubts of science and the gnosis accumulated until today are unsettling, there has to be something else that transmits security, reinforces convictions, gives meaning to life; this is what moves these “researchers”.
I ended up watching two episodes of the series “Alienígenas”, I tried to keep an open mind but critical thinking was proving to be an obstacle with each “bomb” dropped, in general the program boils down to an auto-da-fé. The first episode spoke of the famous map drawn up by an Ottoman cartographer in 1513 named Piri Reis; in the inscriptions at the margin of the document, the author reveals that he used more than two dozen maps, incorporating information from various sources originating in European and Middle Eastern traditions. About this, the “researchers” got lost in considerations that the map would have been transmitted by extraterrestrials, only they would have the technology to see the Earth from space and even accurately showed the contours of Antarctica with fauna and flora in a phase prior to the era glaciation and the fixation of the continent at the ice-covered South Pole. I burst out laughing: exact contours? So why is Antarctica represented as the extent of South America almost enclosing an inland sea? Anyone who knows maps from the time knows that traditional geography mixed with the legendary, it was common to embellish unknown lands with hypothetical flora and fauna. Did they present evidence or contradictory? Crickets can be heard in the middle of the grass, the only fauna and flora I detected… Do you want to know the indications that the southern land (Antarctica) has on the map? “In this country it seems that there are white-haired monsters in this form, and also six-horned oxen. The Portuguese infidels wrote on their maps”. Oh man, what a disappointment, the author not only assumes that the information came to him from the Portuguese, but also honestly uses the term “seems”, in ways that, in order to discard responsibility for such statements, he simply copied what the infidels wrote. Have the cartographers of the Iberian kingdom been visited by extraterrestrials? Well, if it’s worth rambling, I’d say that the Portuguese wrote that on their maps so that no one would set foot there before we had the interest, availability or means to do so; hey, how about it?
I usually use a method that has helped me in life, that of “Ockham’s razor” known as the “principle of economy”: in multiple possible adequate explanations for the same set of facts, one should opt for the simplest one. The theses of Ptolemy, scientist of classical antiquity, were in vogue in the Renaissance and in his conception of the planet, the oceans were surrounded by land; he also assumed a large continent to the south because he felt the need to “balance” the Earth. The conjecture proved wrong, after all the continental mass is “unbalanced”, in the northern hemisphere 41% is land and in the south only 17% is above the level of the oceans. Yes, no one had been to Antarctica but everyone in the 16th century believed in a continent to the south, even the Portuguese; where did this idea come from, the super-knowledge of extraterrestrials or the Ptolemaic model? It should also be noted that the map of Piri Reis is just a fragment lacking the eastern half, it is fallacious to infer a perspective from space, it seems more sensible to follow the suggestion given by the drawing itself that the extreme south of the continent American is enclosed in an inland sea, a representation that, I emphasize again, is not complete. We are looking at a portulan type map (approximate distances between ports) indicating the wind directions, the normal at that time. In one of the inscriptions the author tells that he used a map elaborated by Columbus to compose the contours of America; the islands of the Caribbean contain errors, which is not surprising since the discoverer of the new continent died convinced or intending to convince that he had reached the Far East: Hispaniola (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) appears oriented North-South as if was Japan, and Cuba is linked to the mainland as if it were part of China. These inaccuracies point to the fact that Piri Reis may actually have had access to a map of Columbus which has since disappeared; according to his account, he obtained it from a Spanish sailor who accompanied Columbus to America and was captured in a naval battle off Valencia where Reis participated with his uncle, a corsair named Kemal Reis. Let’s see the logic of the claims presented by the “researchers”: did extraterrestrials transmit the exact contours of Antarctica but were they mistaken in transmitting the exact contours of America? Piri Reis used the alleged alien information to show Antarctica connected to South America but unfortunately disregarded the accuracy of other possible data received, or did he only receive those relating to Antarctica from extraterrestrials? As none of the continents appear covered in ice, they claimed that the map shows the continents before the ice age; very well, if it predates the ice age where did the ice go? To the ocean, right? In this way, how do you explain the contradiction of stating that the errors in the Caribbean stem from an era of shallow oceans if, in that era, the scenario would necessarily be the opposite? Are we not today suffering the consequences of the melting of the polar ice caps? Isn’t the result of the melting a rise in the level of the oceans? Of course, they didn’t even go there because if they tried to explain a shallow ocean that contradicts the lack of ice on the planet, they would take paths as far-fetched as those taken by those who follow the flat Earth theory, a labyrinth of mistakes without experimental support. Ockham’s razor, folks… Nothing has a point to stick with, but the most serious thing for me is disrespecting the author of the map, trampling the indications that he himself provides, attributing his own, a typical characteristic of shameless manipulators. For them, the map cow only counts for the milk that interests them, the “mysterious” continent, what they believe to be right, the rest, including the wrong, they neglect. The dimension of the discovery of America would only be revealed after the death of Columbus, completely different from what he had ever dreamed of; if by chance he became aware that he had not landed in the east, the man died embittered by the failure of his purpose in life, after all what he discovered were some islands to the west. He created the confusion between Indian and Indian that persists in European languages, fortunately not in Portuguese because speakers of this language knew what they were doing in the seas, and not even the continent he discovered perpetuated its name, adopting that of the person who mapped it. , Americo Vespucci. This is a tragic comedy, in fact the protagonist turned out to be an obsessed fool who bumped into a fantastic discovery but had no way of understanding it, and until the end of his life he chose to sell his obsession by composing a world to his measure, the ego clouded his reason. This program does exactly the same thing: a few idiots with an ego inflated by convictions spreading turmoil, building a universe to their measure, and insisting on hoaxes can ironically pass by an interesting discovery. Of course, the most important thing is to sell an ideology.
The second episode revolves around a face someone saw in an aerial view somewhere in Europe. Time and money spent on “research”, 3D models to give volume to the profile, the “researcher” pointing the contours on the computer screen and slowly, fed by the faith of the presenters, the spectators glimpse the oblong shape of the head of Pharaoh Akhenaton or , of course, from an extraterrestrial. Ahhhh, just like that… And what does that mean? However, no one remembered to mention pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon that makes us tend to discover eyes, mouths, faces in the midst of chaos, an atavistic instrument of survival for our species. Tired of nonsense, I gave up, I was about to hang up in the middle of the episode and they were already throwing themselves at the “face” of Mars, naturally I couldn’t miss this one, a photo from the 70’s of the Pioneer missions that recent photographs proved to be the result of the play of light and shadows. Hell, it would be so “cool” if it were true… but it’s not. Even a devout Catholic person laughed when I described what she had seen, she who confessed as a child to discover shapes and figures in the clouds, dreaming about them, pure and simple fantasy. Deep down, everyone sees what they want, armed with the predisposition to do so, I can also see everything from ETs to the Virgin Mary in the foam of the gallon.
Myths and legends have always accompanied us, the difference with the past is that today they are widely disseminated. I have no interest in the demons that inhabit each one’s head, I would like to understand the universe better, but it is difficult to hear reason amidst the noise caused by so much emotion from laypeople and believers. Despite that, fiction is one thing, pseudoscience is another, and by popularizing fanciful perspectives of “researchers” without a scientific method, these programs divert the focus from what is really interesting, misinform, brainwash uncritical minds, reinforcing convictions, contributing to the ignorance and confusion of the world, in a word, are harmful, even dangerous. Then there are those who find it strange that I prefer to watch football matches on TV; at least it’s an empty pastime, it doesn’t intoxicate me, providing good and sterile discussions in taverns.
*Plataforma Ambassador
