In his writings on contemporary culture, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek likes to invoke a concept borrowed from psychoanalysis, “the subject presumed to know.” Basically, we often project onto specific other people and institutions a sense that they hold the answers about us. It is derived from a patient’s inner conviction that his therapist really holds […]
For many years I was skeptical of the UFO phenomenon. I was persuaded by SETI pioneers like Carl Sagan: It’s pretty certain that the universe is full of intelligent civilizations, but the vast interstellar distances and the vast timescales involved in traversing them made the notion of an alien presence in our skies seem (to […]