3 behaviors in the UFO conversation that are totally NOT helpful
Skeptics and believers could both stand to clean up their acts.
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Hopefully you don’t follow the online debate between UFO skeptics and UFO believers, but if you ever have, you know that it can be a nasty, nasty place. There are but a handful of good faith communicators on both sides, each of them offset by legions of petty name-calling bullies. Today I’ve compiled what I see as the three most common communication failures by each side — and if you follow me at all, you may recognize that I’ve made all three of the UFO skeptic failures myself; so by no means am I claiming to be above the bad behavior.
Here’s where I see the UFO believers failing most often:
Conspiracy Accusations: Believers might quickly resort to accusing skeptics of being part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth about UFOs. This was recently seen quite starkly when many UFOlogists accused Susan Gerbic of GSoW of being a paid government disinformation agent. Does anyone really think the government sets aside countless millions of dollars to pay hundreds and hundreds of science bloggers and podcasters to lie about random urban legends, and the Government Accounting Office thinks that’s a good idea?
Automatically Rejecting Prosaic Explanations: Believers may ignore or dismiss scientific explanations or rational counterarguments that challenge their beliefs, often treating their own views as unquestionable. They already know what’s true so what’s the point of listening to anything else?
Personal Attacks: Like skeptics, believers may engage in personal attacks, criticizing skeptics for being closed-minded, unenlightened, or intellectually inferior, rather than addressing their actual arguments. They regard their own credentialed experts (military pilots, assorted former scientists) as unassailable.
And here is where the UFO skeptics are being at least equally bad: