Draft:Founder Hypothesis

= Founder Hypothesis =

The Founder Hypothesis states that there is a highly developed extraterrestrial civilization in our galaxy, several million years old, which strategically colonizes Earth-like planets with the aim of creating intelligent life there. The members of this civilization, the so-called "Founders", no longer exist as biological life forms, but have uploaded their minds to computers, enabling them to live indefinitely. These computers are installed untraceably beneath the surface of the planets.

One of the colonized planets is Earth. The Founders have directed human evolution within the limits of their technological capabilities. Among their technological capabilities is the recording and altering of electromagnetic signals in the brains of animals and humans living anywhere on Earth's surface. The Founders are currently in the process of ensuring that humanity cannot pose a threat to other advanced civilizations in the future.

Scientific basis
The scientific basis of the Founder Hypothesis is discussed in the book "Rewiring the Human Brain: How Extra-terrestrials Shape Humanity". . The presumed strategic goals of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations have yielded numerous testable predictions, which have been confirmed and which allow no other explanation than the use of advanced extraterrestrial technology. These predictions include
 * the possibility of correlated brain activity of people who are spatially separated from each other ,
 * the statistical significance of psi effects in Ganzfeld experiments ,
 * the existence of mental disorders that could not have arisen naturally, and
 * the sighting of UFOs performing flight maneuvers incompatible with the current state of human technology

History
The Founder Hypothesis is a relatively new hypothesis developed in the above-mentioned book. On the surface, it has similarities to the reptilian conspiracy theory and also to the ancient astronauts theory. Therefore, it is worth spending time to see why the related theories are considered pseudoscience.

The ancient astronauts theory holds that extraterrestrials visited Earth and contacted humans in prehistoric times. They helped them with their advanced technology to buid monuments such as the Egyptian pyramids. The theory became popular at the end of the 1960s due to the success of Erich von Däniken's work. Among scientists, the consensus is that the ancient astronaut hypothesis is not impossible, but unjustified and unnecessary. The "mysteries" cited as evidence for the hypothesis can be explained without having to invoke ancient astronauts. In contrast, the above-mentioned evidence supporting the Founder Hypothesis cannot easily be explained in any other way.

The Reptilian conspiracy theory is based on Robert E. Howard's fictional book "The Shadow Kingdom", published in 1929. Howard's "serpent men" are described as a species with human bodies and snake heads that lives in underground passages. The sepent men use their shape-shifting and mind-control abilities to infiltrate humanity and gain world domination. However, the probability that an intelligent species with shape-shifting abilities lives undetected in underground passages is negligible. Therefore, this theory has probably never been taken seriously among scientists. Nevertheless, the Reptilian theory was listed among the 10 most popular conspiracy theories of all times.

Historically, the Founder Hypothesis is not based on these theories, but arose from the study of the strategic goals of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. It, therefore, does not make any of the unnacessary claims for which the ancient astronauts theory and the reptilian conspiracy theory are famous.

Criticism
Arguments against the Founder Hypothesis arise from the following considerations:
 * Evidence in favor of a theory should not only have been statistically significant in the past, but should be reproducible in future experiments. This might be not the case here because it can be assumed that the Founder civilization is constantly developing its methods for intervening in human thought processes. Consequently, many of their interventions on Earth were only detectable in certain periods of human history.
 * Any theory should be compatible with our knowledge of the fundamentals of physics. The postulated technological possibilities of the Founders go beyond what can be deduced from the Standard Model of particle physics and the general theory of relativity. However, it is known that there exists physics beyond the Standard Model. Neither the Standard Model of particle physics nor the general theory of relativity reveal all the possibilities that would be available to a civilization that has discovered the Theory of Everything.
 * An advanced civilization with the postulated capabilities would be godlike. However, a theory that assumes the existence of god-like beings is seen by some authors as unscientific.

Implications
If the Founder Hypothesis is correct, then there are numerous implications, such as:


 * The future of humanity is not determined by humans alone.
 * The Fermi Paradox does not exist. The Fermi Paradox denotes the incompatibility of a high probability of the existence of an interstellar extraterrestrial civilization that has colonized Earth with the fact that science has not yet found sufficient evidence for it. The prior probability of the existence of such a civilization can be calculated from the Drake equation. While early analyses of this equation came up with high probabilities, a recent analysis provided a prior probability of only about 50%.