We are like a fly in a bottle — we cannot see that we are in a bottle unless we fly out and look from outside. That is what our alien overlords offer us: an outside perspective. They see the big picture, the forest for the trees at ten thousand feet, the broad generalizations that we have trouble seeing up close.

But despite their cerebral superiority, the aliens don’t get everything right. Just like we humans may observe that our dogs like to sniff the fire hydrant to check out what the neighbor dogs are up to, we don’t really understand what exactly they’re noticing and why they find it so interesting. So the aliens may observe things like how we humans like music, but they cannot tell the difference between The Beatles and The Wheels on the Bus.

This human owner’s manual is like a road map. To clearly see how all the roads connect, a map omits the buildings, trees, sidewalks, street lights, potholes, and roadkill. For every generalization of human behavior, there are dozens of “yes but” exceptions and counter-examples, which are all important and fascinating, but they obscure our perception of the whole. While our alien masters sometimes comment on cultural trends, with a pinch of social commentary, they mostly gawk at the human quirks that persist across the centuries and national borders.

“Earthlings are born as squishy balls of pure emotion, so they must be trained to use logic and reason.”

We do naturally learn reason and make rational observations — even a baby dropping a toy to see how it falls (and how often you will pick it up). But we start at zero, and we never get to 100, not even close. No matter how much education we cram in our heads, we are still by nature emotional creatures, making decisions subconsciously based on our infinitely changing and conflicting feelings.