Oops - My original version of this wrongly credited Cowen with a Nobel Prize in Economics. I had misread his bio; that was won by his doctoral advisor when he was at Harvard. Apologies for the error!! -BD
Economist Tyler Cowen has written one of his regular Bloomberg Opinion columns which would have been more appropriately titled Everything I Know about UFOs I Got from 5 Minutes on TikTok.
You can read his piece here. Basically what it tells you is that he knows nothing more on the subject than someone who glances at the tabloid headlines once a week. However, I want to be clear: For someone not to know shit about the current UFO kerfuffle is a merit, in my opinion; and I applaud him for that. Intelligent people should have better things to do and to think about. But if you are one of them, don’t go spreading the popular UFO bullshit your heard on TikTok on your Bloomberg column!
(For brevity’s sake, in this piece I shall refer to the SMURFs (SMall group of UFO Religious Fanatics) that former AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick has confirmed has been driving all the UFO headlines and Congressional moves ever since they published their fantasy piece in The New York Times in 2017 — and which those of us who report on this stuff have been saying for years. Journalist Steven Greenstreet has the best YouTube report explaining all this, if you have 28 minutes. My own detailed article on the SMURFs is here.)
Cowen writes:
The Intelligence Authorization Act , which [the Senate Intelligence Committee] passed last week, among other things calls for review of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
It does call for such a review, at the behest of the SMURFs. The reason is simply that outgoing AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick found no evidence of alien visitation, which was essentially heresy to the SMURFs and the Congresspeople they have brainwashed into believing their alien visitation fantasies. If AARO won’t confirm your preferred conclusion, then “review” and replace AARO.
The bill would also limit research into what are now called UAPs (for unidentified anomalous phenomena) unless Congress is informed and add whistleblower protections for anyone who might wish to step forward and speak their minds.
The so-called “whistleblowers” like David Grusch have all either been SMURFs or associates of theirs. Grusch is longtime friends with SMURF Lue Elizondo, and was essentially recruited by them to play the role of a whistleblower and tell old UFO stories in front of a Congressional committee.
…the truth remains that there are systematic sightings and sensor data of fast-moving entities that the government cannot explain. You don’t have to think they are space aliens to realize that they are threats to national security.
This is simply false. You could easily get this impression if you “did your own research” and watched some UFO conspiracy YouTube videos or listened to some UFO conspiracy podcasts, which is evidently what Cowen did. If you listen to the actual authorities, basically the AARO report, and/or the many science writers commenting online about it, you would know that there is, in fact, no evidence of “fast-moving entities that the government cannot explain.” AARO did explain all of the familiar videos Cowen is thinking of, and their reports confirmed what independent experts (like Mick West and the team at Metabunk) had already been saying for a long time.
…the mere fact that some experienced military pilots entertain the more speculative alien-linked hypotheses suggests that the military is not processing information effectively.
No, it suggests only that UFO believers can be found in every demographic, as we’ve always known. There are approximately 30,000 pilots in the US military services; the fact that about four have now become regulars on the UFO conference circuit is an expected noise level.
The Pentagon’s report presents many of the weaker UAP allegations and notes that there is no serious evidence to back them up. And it simply dismisses some of the stronger UAP puzzles, such as the Nimitz or Gimbal incidents.
The Nimitz and Gimbal incidents have been thoroughly explained for years; explanations confirmed by AARO. How it’s possible for Cowen to have looked into this topic at all and concluded they are “some of the stronger UAP puzzles” is kind of shocking. Unless — as I hypothesized at the top of this article — his research consisted of 5 minutes on TikTok.
The chatter among insiders, some of which surely reaches senators, is that some of the data is very hard to explain. Some people, such as John Brennan, former head of the CIA, have even speculated that the available evidence might imply contact with a non-human civilization. Agree or disagree, the admission is a marker of our ignorance.
No; Brennan’s speculation is a marker of the fact that UFO believers can be found in every demographic.
There is no “data that is very hard to explain.” If there is, it has never been made public, nor has anyone specified what it is or where it comes from. Oh, the SMURFs have been verbally asserting that such data exists for years; but a verbal assertion of the existence of evidence is not the same as evidence. The fact is it doesn’t exist; the SMURFs say it does to stay in the headlines. Shit or get off the can.
People are often more concerned with dismissing the possibility of alien life than with admitting the possibility of genuine uncertainty. And since even partial evidence of aliens might scare the public too much, there is an overriding incentive to keep matters under wraps.
Hmmm… well, I don’t know where this top economist is getting the pulse of the public, but he should know that (depending which poll you look at) some 40% to 60% of Americans already believe that aliens visit the Earth. They seem to be taking it rather well. I don’t see rioting in the streets.
And who is he thinking of that’s so concerned with “dismissing the possibility of alien life”? Nearly everyone in the relevant sciences is persuaded that life is abundant in the universe. We don’t know yet, so it remains a matter of opinion; but if Cowen’s research had included speaking to anyone with knowledge on the subject, he’d have learned that there is almost nobody who who “dismisses the possibility”.
There has also never been anything like an official government resolution to keep the glorious truth about aliens from the public. That conspiracy theory is just another SMURF wet dream.
When I think about all this, I try to keep two questions separate. First, is there a major puzzle to account for? And second, what is the best explanation for that puzzle?
Awesome! This is real science. We find a replicable observation, and then we test hypotheses to explain it.
Except… we’ve never had a replicable observation. We’ve had people telling stories. We’ve had endless evidence that resolved to mundane explanations. We’ve had many, many, many more reports where there just wasn’t enough information to conclude anything. But never a testable, empirical observation in need of an explanation.
So, I repeat: If your knowledge level on something is this poor, please write your Bloomberg column on anything else. Serving as an apostle for the SMURFs just harms the public intellect.
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