I believe that the Simulation Hypothesis – a hypothesis that we ‘live’ as virtual beings inside a simulated landscape inside a computer - is the most probable hypothesis when it comes to choosing between differing possibilities of reality. However, the key word revolves around what I "believe". I cannot prove that the Simulation Hypothesis is the be-all-and-end-all of our reality - not yet at least though I'm working on that. Thus, I must keep an open mind to the possibility that our reality isn't virtual but really real. In the meantime my pontificating on the aliens-are-here, the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis and related, is to be examined here in that virtual reality scenario.
# Virtual Aliens: If the Simulation Hypothesis is correct, what would it mean for aliens to be here? It would mean no more and no less than what would it mean for a simulated couch to be in your simulated living room or a simulated tree in your simulated front yard or a simulated crook to pickpocket your simulated wallet. You're asking a question about the motivation of whoever programmed into our simulated landscape the this and the that and the next thing too including the concept of simulated anomalous lights in the sky and simulated extraterrestrials having their wicked way with a select few of us. I have no idea what their motivation might be.
I suggest though that one needs to perhaps look at things through the eyes of our very own simulated beings part-and-parcel of our simulated landscapes in our video games. What would these virtual beings that we have programmed think of all the bits-and-pieces that we have included in their virtual world? Why is this guy shooting at me? Why is this monster lurking in the shadows? Why is this Little Green Man abducting and raping my daughter? Do we not include aliens, and all manner of alien interactions in our own video games? Have we not created video games that revolve around "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and their associated extraterrestrials? So, if we do it, what's the issue with what someone (or something) might include in the programming of our simulation and simulated landscape?
Okay, that's hardly a question that discounts the existence of aliens in the here and now in what you would call our really real reality.
# The Supreme Programmer: It could well be the fact that as far as our Supreme Programmer – the he / she / it / them responsible for creating our virtual reality - is concerned, we are just trivia. If this Supreme Programmer has designed hundreds or thousands of simulated universes and landscapes, then yes, we're trivial. But then so to is any simulation or video game that we create. You buy an off-the-shelf video game and isn't really all of the contents really trivial? But back to simulated aliens. Since we have programmed hundreds of video games that feature aliens, and produced hundreds of movies and TV episodes (cinema being just another form of simulation) that featured ET, some made even before the start of the modern UFO era, why should we (Royal We) and why should you (as in just you) raise eyebrows at the thought that our Supreme Programmer(s) featured aliens? Many forms of what passes for entertainment is trivial. Our science fiction novels and short stories feature aliens by the bucketful who don't "have to travel through space, time, space-time, or even a mental space to get "here"." Well actually they have to travel via a mental space - the author's mental space or the film producer's mental space or the programmer's mental space. So maybe we're just entertainment for the Supreme Programmer, the "we're" including aliens and UFOs all rounding out the Supreme Programmer's cosmic landscape.
If we could talk to our video game or simulation characters (or characters written into a novel or who appear on the silver screen) - and as you note, we can't, yet - they might ask questions very similar to what must exist in the minds of readers here about why we (the Royal We), their creators, programmed this or that or the next thing in creating their simulated landscape. We (the Royal We) might respond that that's the way we wanted it, even if it was trivial, or absurd.
I need point out when addressing the Simulation Hypothesis that no free will exists. The characters in our novels have no free will; the characters in our films have no free will; the characters in our video games have no free will. If we're the creation of a Supreme Programmer, we have no free will. We might have no free will when we boldly go, but as long as we think we have free will then we (Royal We) can be convinced of our boldly going prowess. That by the by could equally apply even if we exist in a really real reality.
But if anyone has digested anything I've ever posted about the Simulation Hypothesis, they’d be aware there is one vast difference between my postulated Supreme Programmer and a supernatural deity, or God if that word floats your boat. My postulated Supreme Programmer is a fallible SOB and ‘oops’ happen and absurdities happen. God, being omni this and omni that and omni the next thing wouldn't create any oops or absurdities.
It is important to contrast a creation by a perfect being, an omni-God, whose creation logically would be perfect - no anomalies, no absurdities - and an imperfect being like a mortal flesh-and-blood computer programmer whose programming would not always be perfect and would probably contain anomalies and absurdities. The proof of that pudding is it the constant updates and upgrades you get for your PC as well as the news stories that surface from time to time about security programming flaws in software that allow the less than ethical among us to do relatively nasty things to our privacy, our bank accounts, our databases, our private and public institutions, like hacking into the NSA or the CIA, or having the NSA and the CIA hack into our PC's.
But by the by, if anyone were to wish to call the Supreme Programmer, the software/computer programmer responsible for our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe "supernatural", that's fine by me as long as it's not an omni-supernatural he / she / it / they. But what this nitpicking actually contributes to the subject of E.T. and whether or not aliens are, or are not here, in our postulated virtual reality quite escapes me. I doubt if the readers here give a damn whether or not a computer programmer can be defined as someone "supernatural".
# The Twilight Zone: Whoever, whatever, programmed our cosmos and our local landscape had a sense of the absurd. Perhaps that's our Supreme Programmer's sense of humour coming to the fore. What absurdities? Quantum physics is absurd. The fact that we just can't come up with a Theory of Everything is absurd. An accelerating expansion rate for the cosmos is absurd. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are absurd concepts. Crop circles are absurd (but they're here). The Loch Ness Monster is absurd (but people report seeing it or them). Long Delayed Echoes are absurd (but verified). Transient Lunar Phenomena are absurd (but verified). Those Martian rock 'anomalies' like lizards, rats and skulls are absurd (but they have been photographed). Biblical 'miracles' are absurd but millions believe they happened. The SETI "WOW" signal is an absurdity but it happened. There are all manner of archaeological absurdities, but I’ll mention just one – The Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek in modern day Lebanon. There are many things that are absurd when it comes to the human species: here’s one – humans are the only species where the saying “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes makes actual sense. If photons cannot escape from a Black Hole then neither can gravitons. Gravitons convey the gravitational force which means that Black Holes exert no gravity. A Black Hole without gravity is therefore an absurdity. Then you have quasars that appear linked but have vastly differing red shifts which is also an absurdity. The missing satellite of Venus, Neith, is another absurdity as in how can satellites vanish? You have physical constants that apparently aren’t – constant that is. Time travel to the past is both theoretically possible (General Relativity) and theoretically impossible (paradoxes) – it’s an absurdity to have both something that can be and not be at the same time. Ghosts are absurd yet there are probably more sightings of ghosts going back to ancient times than there have been sightings of UFOs. Perhaps UFOs, the "Greys" and related are also absurdities, but they exist in good company with the rest of what passes for our simulated cosmic 'Twilight Zone'.
Here are a few more absurdities to ponder over. There are three generations of elementary particles, yet only one plays any significant role in the cosmos. The other two contribute nothing of substance and structure, so why is there a second and a third generation of the elementary particles? In archaeology, the Mesoamerican Olmec massive multi-ton stone heads scream out ‘made in Africa’ or ‘we’re African’, yet there should not have been any cross-cultural contact between Africa and Central America way back in Olmec days. Such a scenario is deemed an absurdity. Lastly, turning again to human anomalies, we alone in all the animal kingdom have a bipedal gait without benefit of a balancing tail. A bipedal gait without any balancing mechanism makes us very unstable on our feet. We’re very easy to knock over. We can lose our balance, fall down and do ourselves a mischief very easily relative to the rest of the animal kingdom. That Mother Nature would select for such an absurdity, is, well, an absurdity.
Exceptions to the rule, like the human bipedal gait, require extra special scrutiny since at first glance lone exceptions appear highly out-of-place and anomalous. Another example is with respect to velocity. Velocities can be added and subtracted with one exception – the speed of light. Why is this so? Nobody knows.
Now from the inside of the computer looking out, as virtual beings, we could never know for absolute certain that anomalies or absurdities weren't designed deliberately or built into the system. But that doesn't mean we (Royal We) can't damn well have suspicions, especially when the anomalies or the absurdities just keep on mounting up. So there is no such thing, as some might suggest, of a proven ‘oops’, but there certainly can be suspicions that something is screwy somewhere. There couldn't logically be such suspicions if an omni-God (or equivalent) were the only option regarding our creation, something that was the case in ancient times before computer programming and software simulations was conceived of in anyone's philosophy. An omni-God is no longer the only creation scenario game in town.
I repeat, our Universe might be deliberately designed to be a 'Twilight Zone' cosmos, but the odds seem to flavor some unintentional "oops" caused by lapses in the programming that was done by my postulated Supreme (but fallible) Programmer. Given the absolute complexity of designing a simulated cosmos from scratch, it is logical to suspect that anyone who isn't an omni-God would goof a few things up. No one can prove that, but one certainly can suspect that not all is right with the cosmos; one can have one’s doubts! The bottom line is that anomalies and absurdities most certainly argue against an omni-God but support the idea of a fallible creator, like a computer programmer.
Addendum: I have, by the way, NEVER told anyone that they ARE just a simulation. I have stated, again and again that I believe the simulation HYPOTHESIS has a strong claim to being correct. If the simulation hypothesis is correct then clearly UFOs are also a simulated part of that overall simulated landscape, and of course they cannot be a threat to our "real" existence since we don't have a "real" existence. But they might be a threat to our simulated existence, just like a virtual reality being in our video games can be terminated. So while a major threat to our simulated existence is the entities that control the simulation, simulated events within the simulation can also be a threat to life and limb. A simulated tornado can terminate a simulated being just as much as a real tornado can terminate a real person.