Of all the subjects that has people shaking their heads in absolute surety before heading back to the safety and reality of FOX news its the reptilian topic within the alien genre. There's an irony there in so much as the amygdala or reptile brain is very much part of human biology and neurology.
The amygdala is the fight or flight part of the brain that chooses not to weigh up all the evidence when quick decisions are needed, and so its unavoidably amusing that people running away from the subject are deploying the part of the brain that prevents most learning about reptilian brains.
Epistemologically it's like refusing to engage the cerebral cortex in order to study how the cerebral cortex came into being so rapidly. If one questions the veracity of evolutionary theory's punctuated equilibrium, it's an overnight appearance in terms of evolutionary time and like waking up one morning without a bicameral mind. But you wont even get that far if you've shut down the cerebrum faculties because the amygdala simply isn't up to the task. Good at erections and a rush of adrenaline if that's more your thing.
I was watching Arthur C Clarke earlier of 2001 Space Odyssey fame and wondering how an artist writer could also be so talented as to propose the invention of the earth shrinking satellite when I heard him repeat a line that if any description of the future isn't so fantastic it's unbelievable it's as likely to be not up to scratch, and I thought that an appropriate way to end this post.
