or How the “Grey Paradox” Might Actually Make Sense

[Epistemic Status: I’m having fun. But also, I’m attempting to make sense of seemingly bizarre phenomena through the lens of physics, evolution, and game theory. Heavy, perhaps even daring, speculation based on limited but increasingly credible evidence – take with a giant grain of salt and don’t update too much about Qualia Computing based on this one post]

Taking UFOs Seriously: Physics, Game Theory, and Evolutionary Dynamics

I should start by acknowledging my initial heavy skepticism about the whole “UFO phenomenon”. Like many people influenced by rationalist epistemics and aesthetics, I have always found it easy to dismiss the entire field as a combination of misidentification, social contagion, and wishful thinking. Whenever a friend sent me a link to credible-sounding journalism on the topic, I would remember Stuart Armstrong’s 2012 talk at the Oxford Physics Department about optimal space colonization strategies. His calculations showed that if you want to spread as far as possible, the winning strategy involves launching tiny self-replicating nanotechnology systems containing your civilization’s information content in rice-sized projectiles to as many galaxies as possible. The mathematics are clear: small differences in miniaturization lead to enormous differences in how many galaxies you can reach.

Given this logic, the idea that we would naturally encounter biological organisms in large spacecraft seemed ruled out on priors. Why would any advanced civilization choose to build massive craft and travel for hundreds, thousands, millions of years, only to reach a tiny fraction of the universe, when they could achieve vastly superior spread through miniaturized probes?

Then Robin Hanson started taking the phenomenon seriously (talk about social contagion!), a couple people I know and who I consider reliable witnesses told me unbelievable personal stories involving UFOs (while fully sober – both during the experience and while recounting it!), and finally the “New Jersey Drone” situation started happening last November (and, apparently, continues to this day). After compiling and anlyzing dozens of official sources and trying to apply all kinds of conventional explanations, I concluded that… I don’t know what the fuck is going on.

After I declared epistemological bankruptcy about the topic on Twitter, someone emailed me a series of lectures about the science of UFOs that were delivered at SOL Foundation‘s launching event at Stanford in 2023. Of special note to me was Kevin Knuth‘s presentation on UAP flight characteristics, which made me seriously reconsider my previous assumptions. It is worth mentioning that Kevin isn’t a random hobbyist; he’s an Associate Professor of Physics and Informatics at the University at Albany and has been editor-in-chief of the prestigious academic journal Entropy since 2013. The core issue, as he explains, isn’t just that these objects really do seem to exist – it’s that their behavior implies something unexpected about the nature of spacetime manipulation and, potentially, its accessibility to technological civilizations. Knuth’s peer-reviewed analysis suggests UFOs can show accelerations of up to 5,000 Gs, far beyond what any plausible human-made craft could generate (or even withstand). More recently, empirically-driven analysis of high-quality multi-sensor broadband UFO recordings by the Tedesco Brothers suggests the presence of gravitational lensing around these mysterious crafts. Thus, the phenomenon as reported in multiple credible cases suggest these aren’t just extremely advanced aircraft – they’re devices that manipulate the fabric of spacetime itself. Ok. Let’s take this with a big grain of salt. But I would be lying if I didn’t find this analysis at least somewhat compelling (in research aesthetics and evidential strength, if only).

Did you know some UFOs seem to “double” and then “remerge” at times? Apparently this _might_ be explained via gravitational lensing effects. Yeah, right…

This leads me to posit a really interesting possibility: what if relativistic travel is not as hard as we first thought? What if it becomes accessible relatively early in a civilization’s development, before perfect miniaturization or molecular manufacturing? What if traveling close to the speed of light safely for large objects is a technology within reach for a civilization not much older than humans? This would dramatically reshape our understanding of likely alien civilizational development paths.

The implications are enormous. In the volume of space-time where this technology is first discovered, the earliest escapees might actually achieve the furthest reach. Rather than waiting for perfect miniaturization, the optimal strategy might involve what I’ll call “hiding in the future”: using relativistic travel to explore vast distances while experiencing only years of subjective time. This isn’t exactly unprecedented, as it has a parallel with biological preservation strategies we see on Earth. Just as bears hibernate to survive winter and tardigrades enter cryptobiosis to endure extreme conditions, relativistic travelers could effectively “hibernate” through dangerous periods of their civilization’s development by being unreachable to others while fighting entropy via time dilation.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this creates powerful selective pressures in two directions. First, the ability to reach distant systems ahead of other civilizations provides obvious reproductive advantages. But perhaps more intriguingly, the time dilation effect offers protection against local instabilities and existential risks. If your civilization shows signs of approaching a potentially catastrophic singularity or societal collapse, the ability to effectively freeze yourself in time while traveling to distant systems becomes an incredibly attractive survival strategy. Given these dynamics, we might expect the first wave of cosmic explorers to be relatively young civilizations, perhaps only centuries ahead of us in development, who recognize this temporal escape hatch and take it before their window of opportunity closes.

Consider the game theory implications. If spacetime manipulation technology is achievable before advanced consciousness tech or molecular-scale manufacturing, it creates what I’ll call a “relativistic first-mover advantage.” Any civilization that achieves this capability gains an enormous evolutionary edge by being able to physically explore and colonize space while bringing biological beings along for the ride.

The Grey Question: Antigravitic Tech Transfer in Tandem with Genetic Experimentation as an Optimal Cosmic Reproductive Strategy

Let’s follow this logic to its natural conclusion. If we accept that:

1. These objects demonstrate actual manipulation of spacetime
2. This technology might be accessible relatively early in a civilization’s development
3. Relativistic travel creates powerful first-mover advantages

Then we should seriously consider whether certain consistently reported patterns of UFO behavior, particularly around technology transfer and biological sampling, might represent an optimized evolutionary strategy. Yes, I’m talking about the “Greys” and their alleged hybridization programs. Bear with me – this gets interesting.

Most analyses of “Grey behavior” assume either benevolent uplift (teaching us technology for our own good) or simple resource extraction (treating us like lab rats). But what if we’re looking at something far more sophisticated? I propose they discovered and are applying a highly optimized reproductive strategy that operates on multiple levels simultaneously. Instead of seeing this as either altruistic teaching or exploitative research, consider it as a sophisticated bootstrapping operation by a parasitic relativistic intelligence that has evolved to optimize for cosmic-scale reproduction.

The core insight is this: if spacetime manipulation technology is achievable relatively early in a civilization’s development, but also represents a crucial branching point in technological evolution, then steering other civilizations toward this technology (and away of other tech trees) while simultaneously collecting genetic material for hybridization represents an incredibly efficient expansion strategy. We will build the technology for them while they use our genetic material to learn to adapt to more environments. It’s a win-win for them. A lose-lose for us.

Think about it this way: rather than building all their own infrastructure across the cosmos, “the greys” (or whoever we want to call the alleged creatures that allegedly gave the US alleged antigravitic tech, allegedly as way back as in the 50s) could be creating self-replicating launch points by guiding civilizations like ours toward the specific technological path that their reproduction strategy is optimized for. Their “gift” would not be about keeping us dependent or about harvesting resources. It’s about shaping our entire civilization into a format that’s maximally useful for their own replicator strategy.

This would explain the peculiar focus on both antigravitic technology transfer and biological sampling. They’re not trading technology for genetic samples in some sort of cosmic barter system overseen by a benevolent Galactic Federation. Rather, the technology transfer ensures we develop in ways compatible with their civilization’s needs, while the biological sampling allows them to maintain and expand their own genetic diversity. In tandem, these are both crucial for a spacefaring species facing the harsh realities of cosmic radiation, diverse planetary environments, and competing reproductive strategies (likely extremely competitive in their own way, of which we know nothing).

The alleged genetic experiments, in this light, aren’t about creating a worker caste or infiltrating human society. No. They are about maintaining evolutionary adaptability, minimizing the number of bodies they needed to come to earth with, and achieve squatter rights (ahem, first mover advantage) on other planets predicted to harbor intelligent life in the forward lightcone. Each new civilization they encounter becomes both a technological bootstrap point and a source of genetic variation, creating a network of compatible technology bases and adaptable biological resources.

This model resolves many of the apparent contradictions in reported Grey behavior. Their seemingly excessive interest in human biology despite advanced technology makes sense if biological adaptation remains crucial to their expansion strategy. Their careful parceling out of technological information aligns with the need to guide our development along specific paths without triggering catastrophic disruption.

In the end, we might be looking at something far more sophisticated than either simple resource extraction or benevolent technological uplift. We might be observing an incredibly well-optimized expansion strategy that operates simultaneously on technological, biological, and civilizational levels. A strategy that evolved precisely because spacetime manipulation technology became available before advanced consciousness tech or molecular manufacturing. The former (in my view) being a benevolence factor, and the latter a civilizationaly destabilizing factor. Something which the Greys seem to both avoid despite their apparent “highly advanced” status.

If this model is correct, we’re not dealing with unfathomably advanced post-biological entities or simple resource extractors. We’re dealing with a civilization that has optimized for a specific developmental path. A civilization that we might be about to encounter ourselves. The question then becomes: do we recognize this branching point for what it is, and if so, what do we do with that knowledge?

Additional Insights: Temporal Competition, Technology Trees, and Pure Replicators at the Evolutionary Limit

I’ve had a few additional insights while thinking about this topic in recent weeks that came from this (admittedly speculative) way of thinking that deserve mentioning. First, there’s what we might call the “Pioneer Paradox”: the observation that the first entities to achieve relativistic travel capability might paradoxically come from civilizations that are less technologically advanced overall. This sounds counterintuitive until you consider institutional constraints and safety protocols. Cheap antigravitic tech is the sort of thing you would gift a civilization to destroy itself. It’s extremely powerful for terrorism, for example. More advanced civilizations might develop comprehensive safety frameworks and review boards that effectively prevent early adoption of potentially risky technologies. The first relativistic travelers might emerge from civilizations just advanced enough to build the technology, but not so advanced that they’ve developed institutional frameworks that would prevent its use.

Then there’s the matter of nuclear technology. If the reports about UFOs showing particular interest in nuclear facilities are to be taken seriously (and there’s surprisingly consistent documentation here), it might indicate something about technological development paths. Nuclear technology represents one possible path to space travel, but it comes with specific risks and limitations. The apparent interest in nuclear facilities might not be about preventing war. At least not about preventing war in general (but it might be about preventing the kind of war that is counterproductive to their own reproductive strategy). The real reason they are so interested in our nuclear capabilities might be about steering technological development away from what they consider a developmental dead end from their (reproductive) point of view. The aliens don’t want us to be peaceful. They’re showing us they can disable nuclear weapons so that we invest heavily in antigravitic tech and build craft that they can use for themselves down the line (perhaps after, or while, we blow ourselves up with it).

This brings us to what we might call “temporal competition zones.” In a universe with cheap relativistic travel but no FTL, you get interestingly non-trivial patterns of information spread. The first travelers from Civilization A might arrive at a distant system, only to find that while they were en route, Civilization B developed better technology and beat them there. This creates regions of space-time where multiple civilizations might be racing to establish first contact or control, each operating with different technological capabilities and different amounts of time dilation.

The most unsettling implication? Once relativistic travel becomes possible, there’s a strong game-theoretic pressure for civilizations to expand as quickly as possible, even if they’re not fully ready. This is not only because the host civilization will likely face existential risk due to the technology; the risk of letting another civilization establish first presence somewhere might generally outweigh the benefits of waiting for better technology. Robin Hanson’s concept of “grabby aliens” becomes particularly prescient: the early relativistic travelers might be harbingers of a more organized expansion wave following behind them (assuming the society didn’t collapse due the instability introduced by the technology).

Finally, there’s the question of why these visitors (if that’s what they are) seem so interested in military installations. The conventional explanation focuses on monitoring nuclear weapons because “it’s the only thing that might hurt them”, but there might be a simpler game-theoretic explanation (even leaving aside the reproductive strategy of the Greys): military installations represent the highest concentration of sensors and trained observers capable of detecting their presence. If you’re trying to guide a civilization’s technological development while maintaining plausible deniability, you’d want to be detected primarily by credible observers operating sophisticated equipment. This creates an ideal calibration mechanism, where military encounters provide feedback about detection capabilities without requiring overt contact with the general public.

We might be witnessing not just a reproductive strategy, but a complete civilizational bootstrapping approach that operates across multiple timescales simultaneously. The technology transfer shapes our development path, the biological sampling provides evolutionary adaptability, and the pattern of encounters creates a calibrated revelation process that prevents both complete dismissal and civilization-disrupting panic.

The universe, it seems, might be stranger than we imagined… but perhaps in more logically coherent ways than UFO skeptics like myself originally assumed. Not in a comforting “we’re all one consciousness” kind of way, but in a “the world’s bacteria biomass is 45X larger than the animal biomass” kind of way.

Consider this: bacteria represent the most successful form of life on Earth, with a total biomass 45 times larger than all animals combined. Despite billions of years of evolution producing seemingly more “advanced” organisms, bacteria remain the dominant form of life because they optimized for robust reproduction rather than complexity. What if cosmic civilization follows a similar pattern?

We imagine advanced aliens as post-biological entities who have transcended their evolutionary origins, basking in enlightened states of consciousness while casually engineering matter at the molecular scale. But what if the most evolutionarily stable strategy in the cosmos looks far more parasitic – relativistic biological entities hiding with the benefit of time dilation across space-time, spreading their genes through hybridization programs, and “helping” developing civilizations build ships with suspiciously compatible technology… only to exploit those very ships as replication vectors once their hosts reach critical technological maturity? The cosmic equivalent of a parasitoid wasp laying its eggs in an unwitting host, but with spaceships instead of larvae.

The path toward consciousness technology and molecular manufacturing might seem more elegant and “advanced,” but perhaps the messy, biological path of relativistic space travel represents a more robust evolutionary strategy. Just as bacteria continue to thrive alongside more “advanced” organisms, perhaps the cosmos favors strategies that prioritize reliable reproduction over transcendence. The limit of Pure Replicator Dynamics might look less like Grey Goo and more like Grey Aliens.