An example of Bostrom’s Singularity: The 1979 Robert Taylor UFO Episode

The Robert Taylor 1979 UFO event in Scotland has been a favorite of mine, as many of you know.

I’ve always accepted this etiological explanation for the episode as outlined in the Wikipedia “article” on the event [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_incident]:

"Patricia Hannaford, founder of the Edinburgh University UFO Research Society and a qualified physician advised Campbell on medical aspects of the case. She suggested that Taylor's collapse was an isolated attack of temporal lobe epilepsy."

However, the object's strange configuration and Mr. Taylor’s torn pants and grooves found in the ground have been troublesome for me:

"When Bob Taylor began to approach, the UFO dropped - from its bottom half - two spheres with protruding metal spikes which looked like old naval mines. These two small objects, of which each was approximately three feet wide, were made of the same dark metallic material as the larger object.

... grooves caused by some object weighing several tones were detected. The photographs of them were taken and analyzed carefully. Taylor's clothes were sent for forensic examination which revealed tears in the trousers."

The above from The UFO Evidence:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseSubarticle.asp?ID=684

In re-visiting the story, with an overlay of Nick Bostrom’s thesis about Artificial Intelligence, I think the incident is an particularly excellent example of what would happen if an alien probe that is a product of artificial intelligence confronted two biological species: Mr. Taylor and his dog:

"Lying on the ground he was met of his dog. The animal was barking wildly at him." [op cit.]

An artificial intelligent probe, that has evolved from a now possible extinct civilization that created artificial intelligent machines, if it came across a human being and a dog would try to determine what it had found.

The “beings” discovered by the probe would not be technology, obviously, and a probe would be flummoxed by two seemingly inter-related life-forms: a man and a dog.

A dog by itself or a human by it itself would be easily identified if an intelligent probe has a accumulated a data base of Earth species, but both a dog and human, seemingly interconnected would be something unique perhaps.

Or the probe was a new visitor to Earth and confused by two differing biological entities, thus precipitating an attempt to capture or gather the “specimens.”

Bostrom’s artificial intelligences, while advanced in the context of their galactic environment would be confronting a whole new set of data in this environment: the Earth.

This goes to my supposition that Earth is unique in that it has a myriad of species, all odd, and acting strangely (insane as I see it).

An artificial intelligence, coming across the zoo that is Earth would, surely be confused, no matter how advanced it was, by the surfeit of queer creatures found here.

And Mr. Taylor, walking with his dog, presented a strange scenario for a new probe, and I see the probe as new, in that the “machine” described by Mr. Taylor is, itself unique, in the pantheon of UFO reports (except perhaps for the Ezekiel “object”).

The Taylor object, and its actions, strike me as indicative of what Nick Bostrom’s thesis portends, should artificial intelligence reach the advanced superiority that causes alarm for Bostrom, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steven Hawking.

 RR