. . . if you want to contact extraterrestrials, is it better to use physics or mindscience?
Conundrum Four: Part V: A Physicist Voyages to Distant Worlds
Make no mistake: the quest for intex is a game of the imagination. Extraterrestrials are like Jackson Pollock drip-paintings or cosmic gamma ray bursts: if we don’t have a clue what we’re looking at, our minds are free to imagine anything at all. In the hunt for intex, we start with zero constraints other than perhaps a weak Copernican Principle suggesting that aliens must abide the same regime of matter and Mind as us.
When faced with zero constraints, the human mind naturally projects itself onto the limitless mystery. Me. Pure self-congruence. What does an angel look like? It looks like me!
But who are intex? Where are they? When are they? What are they doing? We must imagine how an unknown and possibly nonexistent being might look and behave1. And the imagination of physicists is of a particular character.
Quite often, physicists’ private conceptions of intex manifest in public, allowing a window into the intimate contours of their personal reveries, such as Thomas Wright’s “Eyes of Providence” and Carl Sagan’s golden plaque. On occasion, these divulged fantasies of contact reveal quite a bit about the imagination of the fantasizer.
A few decades back, a Baltimore psychiatrist began treating a new client named Kirk. A physicist. Blond, in his mid-thirties, and preferring seersucker suits, Kirk performed classified work at a government laboratory in New Mexico. Kirk’s boss mandated therapy for the young physicist, declaring Kirk’s professional duties were suffering from his strange obsession with intex.
Bizarre symbols and eccentric pictograms decorated his official reports. Over time, Kirk began turning in the essential and top secret reports later and later, eventually missing deadlines. Confronted on his erratic and disengaged behavior, Kirk proffered a ready explanation:
“I’m tired and distracted from spending too much time on another planet.”
Fearing Kirk was a security risk, his boss mandated that Kirk get to the psychiatrist’s couch. When the therapist evaluated the young physicist, he seemed charming, bright, and articulate. Kirk quickly confessed the truth to his psychoanalyst:
The physicist could travel through time at will. He could also teleport through space at will. Kirk regularly used his personal mastery of spacetime to transport himself to a distant planet named Srom Olma.
Like any good physicist, Kirk was eager to share his analysis of the scientific details of planet Olma. He produced for his therapist “maps, charts, diagrams, architectural layouts, genealogical schemes and timetables” that described the distant world’s natural and social dynamics. (Kirk informed his shrink that he had already presented the same research to the Intergalactic Institute.)
Kirk was no deskbound scientist in this alternative timeline. No, Kirk might pretend to be an ordinary human on Earth, but in reality he was “Lord of a planet in an interplanetary empire in a distant universe, garbed in the robes of his exalted office.” Though Kirk failed to achieve much of a sex life on Earth—a disappointment, he confided—on Olma the physicist was a “notorious and successful lover” who seduced many princesses, all while battling a menacing horde of alien adversaries.
To substantiate his extravagant narrative, Kirk supplied his psychiatrist with a variety of supporting materials:
A glossary of names and terms, more than 100 pages.
82 full-color maps, carefully drawn to scale.
23 diagrams of planetary bodies, rendered in four projections.
31 annotated land masses, 14 of them labeled “Kirk’s Expedition to _____.”
161 architectural sketches, some colored, some inked, all scaled and annotated.
12 genealogical tables.
18-page monograph detailed the galactic system holding Kirk’s home planet.
4 astronomical charts, one for each season on Olma.
9 star maps of the skies from observatories on other planets in Olma’s solar system.
200-page history of the empire Kirk ruled, with a 3-page table of dates, battles, and historical events.
44 informational folders containing academic papers on physics and mindscience, including:
“The Fauna of Srom Olma I”
“The Transportation System of Seraneb”
“Science of Srom”
“The Geology of Srom Olma I”
“The Metabiology of the Valley Dwellers”
“The History of the Intergalactic Scientific Institute”
“Economic Foundations of the Valley Society”
“Sociology on Srom Olma I”
“The Application of Unified Field Theory and the Mechanics of the Stardrive to Space Travel”
“The Unique Brain Development of the Crystopeds of Srom Norbra X”
“Anthropological Studies on Srom Olma I”
“The Religious Beliefs of the Valley Dwellers”
“Manufacturing Processes and Dye Chemistry”
“Food Distribution in Seraneb”
“Plant Biology and Genetic Science of Srom Olma I”
“Parapsychology of Srom Norbra X”
“Fire Worship and Sacrifice on Srom Sodrat II”
“Sex Habits and Practices of the Crystopeds”
The psychiatrist spent months trying to pry Kirk loose from his fantasies. He was not successful. Kirk’s immersion in his private world seemed hermetic and impenetrable. So he tried the unorthodox. The therapist attempted to “enter” the patient’s delusion in order to dismantle it from the inside.
The psychiatrist began to pretend Kirk’s stories were true. He suspended disbelief and went along with the wild tales. To his genuine shock, he quickly discovered how absorbing and addictive it was to pretend Srom Olma existed2. The psychiatrist studied Kirk’s folders and familiarized himself with the climate, ecology, and politics of the galactic civilization. He found the process far more compelling than he anticipated. Soon the shrink offered his own suggestions for potential research to conduct on Olma.
Once Kirk felt assured his therapist took him seriously—very seriously indeed, as he now freely discussed the linguistic proclivities of the Crystopeds in the Seraneb metropolis—the shrink commenced his therapeutic mission: to question details of Kirk’s fantasy from the inside. Not as a Freudian psychoanalyst. As a fellow citizen of Kirk’s interplanetary civilization.
In the role of co-conspirator, the therapist pointed out that one of Kirk’s star charts contained a calculation of the distance between suns in Kirk’s galaxy that made no physical sense. The therapist did not present this observation as a failure on Kirk’s part. The opposite, in fact. Like the Marvel No-Prize, the therapist suggested a solution to the perceived mistake: the star measurements must have been made before the “Age of Interstellar Flight” and never got updated.
Nevertheless, this seemingly tiny fissure in Kirk’s galaxy-trotting façade steadily widened into a chasm in the young physicist’s mind. Just a few weeks later, Kirk showed up to the therapist’s office looking disheveled and depressed. When prodded on his atypical appearance, Kirk admitted the truth: he was not traveling to a distant planet in the future where he ruled as a robed sex god. He was a career physicist writing reports at a government lab in New Mexico.
Kirk’s intex adventures, I hope we might agree, exhibit the hallmarks of self-congruence. Expecting aliens to be like you. In Kirk’s case he viewed himself as alien emperor, without need to change his brain or physique. Kirk the galactic overlord, William Herschel’s lunar fauna, Frank Drake’s sugar-and-satellite-dish zeros and ones, and Carl Sagan’s nude selfie all provide vivid insight into the limits of physicists’ imagination concerning extraterrestrials.
Unless they physically manifest to you, as they did to me.
The psychiatrist reported, “Then there is another charm that Kirk’s extramundane delusion held for me. To an ego that has more than a modest share of a need to assert itself in creative ways, the opportunities afforded by this unique situation were tempting. While the position of ‘Lord of a Planet’ had already been preempted, my peculiar function once I had forced my way into Kirk’s romantic creation gave free play to every inventive whim, every inspiration, every demiurgic notion I ever hope to have. For as the power-behind-the-throne, the prime mover of a universe unhampered by realistic restrictions, the possibilities to exercise creativity on a grand scale were inviting beyond description.”