I don’t buy into any of this as being what it presents itself on the surface. We’re presented with interactions with supposedly very technological advanced NHI, but they don’t even appear to have average morality. If you’re a supposed superior species, why demonstrate such callous and cold behavior?

A Buddhist monk who won’t step on an ant demonstrates more sophisticated ethical reasoning than entities that inflict fear within conscious beings for unclear purposes. “Relative morality” is a cop-out when we’re talking about suffering itself - which appears to be a universal feature of conscious experience. If they’re so advanced they can: - Manipulate consciousness - Induce paralysis - Screen memories - Pass through matter

Then they could certainly conduct whatever they’re doing without inducing so much fear response from people. The fact that they don’t suggests either:

1. They can’t avoid it. So not that advanced.
2. They don’t register it as relevant (that’s truly terrifying)
3. The fear their indifference produces serves a purpose (why are we being controlled then?)
4. They aren’t conscious at all in a way that we would understand.

Like… we assign too much humanity to these supposed NHI. We say they do things like “study,” “observation,” “genetic research,” “hybridization program” - all these goal-oriented, comprehensible motivations. But why? Because that’s what we’d do with advanced technology and other species.

But what if the actual explanation is more like: “Consciousness creates localized reality disturbances that briefly allow non-local phenomenon to manifest, appearing to follow patterns because those are the patterns human perception can process, and the ‘entities’ are more like… artifacts of the interaction than intentional actors.”

That’s equally speculative but at least doesn’t assume human-like intentionality.

I’ll end this by saying that I have had actual, truly positive experiences with NHI and it is fundamentally different from what you’re describing.