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Once again I propose what by now should be a classical experiment in psychology, in which a group of randomly chosen people are put in a room to hear a lecture by someone wearing the uniform of a high-ranking military officer, or a lab coat.

They are told and shown pictures that are “proof” that space aliens exist, and will soon be coming to Earth.

Then they are evaluated, to determine what their response to this information will be. And they will generally all give a typical response, that if extrapolated to the population as a whole, would result in a major national disaster if the public were to see such evidence.

Certainly some would have an extreme reaction, which would be bad enough, but a large block would take a “wait and see” attitude that could be far worse. Instead of going about their daily routines, they would stop working and just sit down in front of their television waiting for more information.

Such a reaction could bring our entire economy to an abrupt halt, resulting in disaster. And it wouldn’t matter one whit what, if anything, the space aliens did.

Now as I said, this should be a “classical” experiment in psychology that the government should have been aware of at the latest in the 1960s, and repeated often, since. So if they still get results that could be catastrophic to our economy and our nation, their actions should be straight forward.

That real or false evidence of space aliens should be very carefully controlled, and that a long term program should be carried out to try and change the public response to such a potentially traumatic event.

In other words, creating movies and TV shows to help the public learn to deal with either a panic response to the idea of space aliens; or more importantly, to be so unmoved by such evidence that they continue with their normal lives. Not respond as they did when “War of the Worlds” was first broadcast over the radio.

Eventually, such a program would need to “find”, or generate, very far flung “proof” that aliens exist, but in such a way that they can pose no threat to Earth. But even the discovery of some alien “artifact”, from ages ago, would have to be very carefully managed.

And every effort would need to be checked and re-checked with the use of psychological experiments, with the hope that eventually disaster wouldn’t strike if such a thing as alien contact took place.

There are a couple of ways to look at potential alien encounters.

First they will be technologically advanced as to seem almost supernatural to us. In this case there’s the possibility that they wouldn’t have much more than a passing interest. Ants could hold my attention for hours when I was a child but now it’s rare that an ant will hold my attention for more than a few seconds.

Second they could want something from us. This would likely be a bad thing due to their technological advantage making them unstoppable.

Third is that they would want to do something for us. Unfortunately that’s no more likely than the first two scenarios. I suppose it could be possible if we were the only alien life they’ve ever discovered.

And finally, maybe they just want to cut our grass and prepare our food.