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Next week in episode #900, the Skeptoid Podcast is going to take a deep dive into the primary UFO story told by “whistleblower” David Grusch to the Congressional subcommittee on July 25. It was originally based on a hoax, and not even one that fooled very many people in the UFO community. And then a random person in another country, who had no possible connection to the case, mailed in a whole bunch of new details that he just made up — a lifelong habit of his with virtually any UFO story he came across. But this was good enough for David Grusch to testify to this hybridized fan fiction as fact in front of Congress.
As eyebrow-raising as this might be to people of science, who require evidence, peer review, and replication, it was probably less so to attorneys and Congresspeople who have much lower standards and can go by what seems to have the preponderance of evidence. When there’s no evidence, they go by things like testimony — which science has shown is the very least reliable of all the ways we can learn things.
This is going to be a reaction post. There’s a tweet that I found quite interesting from a random account (unknown to me) called @Disclosure202, which I felt very aptly captured the reaction by the UFO community to the reaction of the world at large to how disappointing the hearing was, for presenting nothing new at all, just recycled old stories:
I'm going to be honest #ufotwitter .
I started digging into the #UFO subject about 3 years ago. I came to the field with curiosity and an open mind.
Starting out, I knew that anomalous phenomena was a real thing.
He knew that it was a real thing; despite having come into it with an open mind. Hmmm. But let us continue:
So I took it seriously. But I was mostly interested in it at a distance. The same way I was interested in other things, like history. It wasn't really personal.
I enjoyed digging into the stories, listening in on people telling me what this was all about. I was in it to learn about it, like I would any other subject or interest I have.
Recently, though, I'm not that curious anymore. I'm mostly furious. And fired up! It is very clear that the US Government is hiding something.
It is?
Because, to me, it’s not at all “very clear” that the government is hiding something (about alien visitation, I mean; we all know that a zillion things are classified by every government, but I don’t believe this person is referring to ordinary government secrets).
Look at the assumptions this statement is based on:
Proof of alien visitation exists.
It’s in the US government’s possession, oddly, and nobody else’s.
Just enough of it has leaked, or something, that it’s now “very clear” that there’s more to be learned.
Quite a stretch, to me. But let’s continue:
And according to witness testimony from David Grusch (#Hero), that something is technology that could end climate change. That could stop polution. Technology that could lift billions of people out of poverty.
According to faith healers, prayer can cure any disease. Wow, if only saying so made something true.
Not only is the technology being hidden from us. We're being lied to about the very nature of our reality. Of our place in the universe. We're victims of Ontological Kidnapping!
Have you been hearing the word ontological a lot lately, especially in the context of “ontological shock” during UFO conversations? Me too. Ontology used to be a word I heard once a year; now it’s 10 times every time I open up Twitter.
The term “ontological shock” was coined by John Mack, the late psychologist and firm believer in alien abduction, whose specialty was counseling people who believed they’d been abducted by aliens by assuring them that that was indeed what had happened. After this most recent UFO hearing was held in Congress, some UFOlogists dredged up the term out of Mack’s book and started applying it everywhere. They believed the UFOlogists’ testimony would be so shocking to some that it would surely cause “ontological shock” in many, completely rocking their worldviews.
I am satisfied by the evidence put forward. I'm sick and tired of those idiots claiming we "haven't seen any evidence". Yes, we have! In addition to sworn testimony, we have 80 years of people coming forward and telling us about things they'e seen. About programs they knew existed.
The notion that the plural of anecdote is evidence is a super common perspective among the scientifically illiterate, and is a threat to the intellect. Of course there is no evidence of alien visitation, and of course anecdotal accounts do not constitute evidence. We point this out, and it triggers an eruption of anger in many UFOlogists. Why? Don’t they also want evidence? Why should they be satisfied with anecdotes? It seems to me that the people who hope to prove this true would be fired up and demanding the evidence themselves, instead of gathering the worst kind of anecdotes and mischaracterizing it as proof. Imagine if all you had to do to collect a lottery jackpot was stroll into the lottery office and verbally state that you matched all the numbers, no ticket needed. Apparently this is the type of evidence the UFOlogists are now satisfied with.
There is a cover-up. It is of epic proportions. And disinformation agents (knowingly and unknowingly so) are working their asses off to discredit the subject. To keep the secret going for another 90 years.
Ah yes, the “disinformation agents”. The only reason anyone might doubt that aliens are actively visiting is that paid Agents of Evil are spreading lies. I wish I had a nickel for every time I was charged with being on some clandestine payroll. People ask me who I work for — and I actually am paid to promote skepticism — and they still think I’m lying about that. It’s not the right people who are paying me. It’s not the government, or the Illuminati, or the Jooz, or whoever the Evil Cabal du jour might be.
There are even politicians in the U.S. Congress who still try to keep this hidden, beccause they'll lose money if the secret gets out.
They will????
I spoke to a reporter not too long ago who is in the midst of a long-term investigation into some of these Congresspeople, and some of the contractors to whom they’ve been funneling some of these UFO investigation budgets, without going through the required bidding processes. This reporter believes someone is going to end up going to jail. There is big money in government UFO contracts — and if aliens actually were proven to be visiting, those budgets would go up by orders of magnitude. No, the Congresspeople who love this stuff would NOT “lose money” if alien visitation was revealed.
Just as nobody loses money when we go to war.
And while all this is happening we're at risk of nuclear war! If people knew about the reality of UAP, we could maybe avoid most future wars, because we would have a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
Surveys show that 40% of people already believe that aliens actively visit the Earth. Has that belief removed the threat of war?
I am f-ing pissed! We must end this cover-up, and we must do it now!
#uaptwitter #uapX #ufoX
Just as evangelical Christians have always predicted a rapture that will come any day now to set apart the righteous from the wicked, UFOlogists have predicted a Judgment Day of their own that they call “disclosure”. (This hearing was expected to be such an event, as every such hearing is.) On that day, they believe the government will drop all pretense and reveal that they have ongoing relations with aliens, and they’ll give all the details. And, on that day, the faithful will be set apart as having been Proven Right, while all the Doubting Skeptics will be cast into the abyss and branded forever wrong and probably all arrested for treason or spreading disinformation or whatever the Alien Truthers’ fantasy is for us.
It is not a healthy mindset.
"It’s not the right people who are paying me. It’s not the government, or the Illuminati, or the Jooz, or whoever the Evil Cabal du jour might be."
"the Jooz"? Really? Is this necessary, Brian?