this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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No, not really. Aliens existing, even aliens having crashed on Earth, would not mean that all the conspiracy bullshit that people came up with is real. This is a really stupid take and makes you sound like those people in /r/conspiracy.
Because it, as it did before, still lacks any sort of evidence. This is literally the same message we've seen weeks ago and I did not care about it then either.
He didn't give a single tangible thing in the hearing. I know.... he can't due to the classified nature of it, but then what's the point if you can't prove anything?
To distract the masses while political fuckery is afoot is my go-to assumption.
Yeah it's like 'casual Friday' at the office.
You seem intent on interpreting the quoted bit in the worst possible way. At a minimum proof of a crash or interaction, even if it was one time, even if it was 10000 years ago, would be enough to stop having to hear someone think they were the first person to bring up the Fermi Paradox every time the topic is discussed.
You can't even theorize lightly about scenarios where there might have been extraterrestrial interaction with Earth in most contexts without being pretty much branded a kook.
It would fundamentally change quite a lot I think, even if the immediate impact would be negligible.
What a bunch of bollocks. As a general space nerd I've discussed this topic plenty of times with people without issues. The only times this is an issue is when someone brings up his wild conspiracy garbage. You simply aren't branded as "kook" for talking about aliens, plenty of literal scientists did so, including very respected ones.
Avi Loeb is a high-profile example of this not holding true.
One of the topics they discussed during the hearings is the stigma and potential repercussions of reporting sightings, merely accounts of seeing a thing they can't explain, not inventing or citing, "wild conspiracy garbage." The fact that these were congressional hearings by people who can legally know things we don't, and they still thought it was of intertest to the public despite the stigma, security issues, and potential blowback, should mean something.
As a general space nerd you might benefit from entertaining the idea these accounts have veracity without accepting them as true.
Yes, a good example of people jumping to conclusions without any evidence, which is very much anti-scientific.
I'll entertain ideas based on their likelihood to be actually true. His position is not enough to qualify for this. For this alone I can give you a good and very recent counter example: Michael Yeadon
He was a high ranking pharmacologist working for Pfizer, so one would think a well established and knowledgeable scientist, one we should be able to trust his words about topics like vaccines, right? Wrong. He spewed a plethora of false conspiracy bullshit about covid, medical advice and the vaccines. Guess who argued similarly about him as you do now? All the antivaxx "kooks" that cry about never being taken seriously.
That's simply not true. Loeb cited evidence for his outlandish claims, I don't find it to be very compelling evidence of his interpretation but he did cite evidence none the less.
Perhaps you have a point regarding Loeb, but if you operate on likelihood:
The reason the Fermi paradox, (@be_excellent_to_each_other thanks for bringing it up,) is a paradox is because our mathematical estimates regarding extraterrestrial life says it is likely, yet we have not conclusively observed any.
Grusch is documented as being in a position where he could have access to the sort of classified information he claims to, and his background suggests he could interpret said information reasonably as it pertains to this. He has been vetted by congress. Although it is certainly not conclusive, what we do know about him corroborates with what we've heard so far.
Yes, sometimes credible people turn out to be totally wrong. Does that mean we should not investigate and either vet or debunk their claims, should we not listen to credible people because they sometimes go nuts or are totally incorrect?
Yeadon sounds a lot like Dr. Wakefield, the other totally wrong discredited medical person with a minority opinion who they love to cite because he justifies their irrationality.
The Fermi Paradox is a thought experiment, it's not a physical law of the universe. There are big, essentially made-up assumptions that have to be plugged into the formula to end up with the answer of "there's probably lots of aliens out there". I think we probably both agree on those assumptions being reasonable, but they are not proven. For these reasons, I simply do not agree that it's relevant at all in this discussion.
Keep in mind that we're not talking about the existence of an alien civilization, or even specifically that aliens have visited Earth in modern times. Rather, the big question is about whether aliens are visiting Earth and some humans know about it, but are keeping it a secret. That is the core of what people like Grusch are claiming. To prove this we need both evidence of alien life existing (already a huge claim, one of the biggest questions science has yet to tackle) and evidence of a human conspiracy.
Theoretically this must be happening in other countries, too, right? If not, that means there's only been very limited incidents and not the hundreds to thousands of incidents over decades that UFO apologists claim. Except all of this is also tied into the UAP sightings which we now know are pretty widespread... looking at the full picture, things start to collapse under their own logic.
yeah anyone talking about aliens is full of shit as long as there is no evidence, also:
if aliens visited and crashed on earth they dont just visit the US lmao
this kind of conspiracy needs way too many people to STFU, which is just not realistic especially as this would be one of the most important discoveries ever
if there were aliens hidden in the US then fucking TRUMP would be talking about that non stop
I don't know why you think the fermi paradox is somehow a good argument when I don't even deny the possibility of alien life. Please stay on topic and don't accuse my of something I haven't said, thanks.
Your other point is nothing but a bunch of could've would've. Just like the hearing and the previous statements, which were basically the same.
Again, you continue to derail and bring up straw man arguments that I haven't even said. Also, the burden of proof is still on him, especially when "we" cannot prove or let alone disprove any of his claims. That's why I consider this to be a nothingburger until there's actually some proper evidence of anything claimed.
There have been plenty of people like Yeadon, in and outside of the medical field. It's just one example that I was able to think of right now because of how recent it was and how much of it made the rounds at the time too. There's people sitting in governments who did and continue to do the same thing, for whatever their reason may be.
The reason people think the Fermi paradox is a paradox is because they assume insanely optimistic values for L in the Drake equation.
But doesn't all his knowledge come from second-hand accounts? If so, why should his opinion matter any more than anyone else who's read someone's account of being abducted and probed by aliens? Working for the government and having access to classified material doesn't make his claim any more legitimate if all he's doing is reading stories written by others. It's the appeal to authority fallacy in a nutshell.
Why should I spend any of my time or energy on an unproven claim? Should I also entertain the idea that an invisible pink teapot is orbiting earth until it's proven false? What if there is someone with "credibility" claiming they have (classified) photos of the teapot, is it worth considering then?
Probably for the same reason we dedicate energy and time to world matters of import. It's interesting, it's potentially very important, and even if we personally may not have a hand in the verification or outcome, this matter ultimately affects us all. It could literally change the way all humans think about intelligent life and the possibilities for humanity in the future.
Your Russel's teapot is pink? Neat.
Yes! I mean the analogy is rather breaking down here because the implications of a pink teapot in orbit around the earth today would probably point to someone launching it into orbit, and not something as consequential as the verification of non-human intelligent life, but yeah, we should investigate credible claims of things that matter in general.
Meh. If you think conclusive proof of even one single intentional extraterrestrial visit or verified crash at some point in our planet's history would not represent a sea change in the state of discourse on the topic of UFOs and alien interactions with earth, I don't really know what to tell you.
I think it is quite the logical leap to see something you can't explain and assume it's aliens. That is what gets you labeled as a kook.
Well, yeah. You can speculate about those scenarios all you want, that's why sci-fi is so much fun. But 'theorize' implies a serious consideration of the event having occurred and there is zero tangible evidence for that and physics itself suggests that in the span of a civilization the chances of even detecting another may be infinitesimally small. So any 'theory' of those scenarios would be based on nothing so- yeah- kookery.
...and thus, it's not an exaggeration to say:
Sheesh, I'm quite sure it was just a lighthearted comment by @DarkGamer, and folks are going all "Well ackshully" about it.
I guess we have to agree to disagree here.
Good point, and if Jesus showed up at the superbowl with Prince's guitar we'd owe a lot of apologies to a lot of Kid Rock fans who were written off as Kid Rock fans ;)
...and thus, (cringe) That's not an exaggeration either, it's just completely asinine, like babbling about 'ancient astronaut theory'. So don't get so upset when strangers point out that it's asinine.
It would be an appropriate comment if we'd just had a congressional hearing about Jesus showing up at the superbowl with Prince's guitar, but since we haven't I don't see how your analogy really works.
I'm done with this - you folks are clearly more invested in tearing down a cute comment from another poster than I am in defending it. Please enjoy your breakfast of bitterness and bile.
I love when people throw a little tantrum that they're 'done'. People that are really 'done' don't have to fuss to anonymous strangers about how done they are ;)
The comment is a perfectly valid comparison- we have congressional hearings about religious nonsense all the time. The Prince\Kid Rock part was a goof but are you seriously unaware of how often Jesus and 'Gods will' are cited in congressional session?
So if you heard religious kookery in a hearing and then said 'Well, if God really did bring that hurricane to punish gays it would change humanity's relationship with religion and science' - that would be a deeply, stupidly, asinine statement. So it's just like you adding your half-cent to the UFO kookery. Not sure you can follow that but thought I'd lay it out for you just in case.
Dude, we are well and thoroughly done here.
Do you really not get how silly it is to say "I'm done" and then show up again to say "I'm done"?
It's okay if this subject is over your head and you want to leave, you can just go.