Shrike
1yr ago
This is a very interesting suggestion that I'd love to see get fleshed out more. It seems to me that it might suggest the root cause of what you call 'idpol preoccupation" isn't necessarily liberal/conservative ideology as much as real-world experience or a lack thereof, but perhaps you would take that in a different direction.
I wonder if Jonathan Haidt's work positing that liberals rely less on moral values involving respect for authority, ingroup/outgroup distinctions, and disgust might tie in here.
Shrike
1yr ago
It seems like "picking a successor" is very low-hanging fruit that isn't very often picked in US politics. Or am I missing some good examples? Is there an argument that Reagan did that successfully with H.W., and then H.W. did that successfully with George W., as part of an intentional plan, or is that typically taken to be happenstance and situational maneuvering?
It seems like planning your successor, if you are a popular president, is a really easy and obvious thing to do. But I guess the issue is getting everyone else on board with that. There's a lot more demand for the Office of the Presidency than there is supply...
Shrike
1yr ago
Maybe even drop them some obviously fake documents about aliens captured by NSA or something.
Worth pointing out for the record that something that seems to be exactly this has in fact happened. At least twice.
Shrike
1yr ago
To be clear, my position isn't "do_something should agree that aliens exist." It is "if research into UFOs by other countries is a good reason to take UFOs seriously, then do_something should take UFOs seriously." Apologies if that was unclear; I was responding to a limited portion of your post, not endorsing OP's position. I think you can make an argument for taking UFOs seriously without leaping to the assumption that they are aliens.
And some of the may be say advanced aircraft operated by other country, interesting and useful natural phenomenon etc. (And there are cranks also in positions of power who will be confused by blurry dots)
Perhaps. The specific definition of UAP in US law, enacted by Congress, makes reference to "transmedium devices" which are defined as not immediately identifiable objects that are "observed to transition between space and the atmosphere, or between the atmosphere and bodies of water." It seems like if people in positions of power are seeing blurry dots, they are seeing them do some pretty unusual things. Or, as you allude to, there is a widespread conspiracy to make it seem that way (as has been suggested in The Motte in the past).
But this is ridiculously unlikely, only a bit above "angels as described in the Bible".
It's funny you should say that – the current claims by whistleblowers like Grusch et. al. (and what seems to be the current consensus of the "UFO community," if that loose conglomeration of individuals can be said to have such a consensus) looks much closer to "angels as described in the Bible" than it does to (say) "aliens as described in War of the Worlds or Footfall."
Shrike
1yr ago
Yes, absolutely, although I would expect such work to be integrated into the typical air defense network or bumped into a classified program (which might dovetail into all the rumors about SECRET UFO PROGRAMS – yes probably we don't want our enemies to know what we do and don't know about their classified programs). Setting up a public-facing program like BlueBook or Geipan makes more sense as a PR effort than a secret project to spy on enemy spy craft, and I think is a more parsimonious explanation, especially considering that, despite contemporary concerns, there almost certainly weren't Soviet spy aircraft buzzing our nuclear installations in the late 1940s but there were enough UFO reports that defense officials worried they would overwhelm defense channels.
If you follow the link-trail I threw out, though, you can see DNI Ratcliffe alleging that there are objects that
- Don't fit the profile of "advanced aerospace tech made by our enemies that we want to know more about," and
- are picked up on multiple sensors, including satellites, at the same time, which is interesting in the context of long-running rumors US satellites have detected objects entering the atmosphere from outer space.
We know, from declassified NRO documents, that the NRO's satellites have detected at least one small object that "did not match the visual signature of typical aircraft detections" and seemed to resemble the "tic-tac" UAP (although alternative possibilities are discussed and the sighting is considered "low confidence") and that the NRO's "Sentient" image processing software may have a "UAP detection" mode.
I don't think anyone should consider that a slam dunk for extraterrestrial life but I do think it's noteworthy that the intelligence community appears to have internal conversations around things like "can we use our image analysis program to look for UAPs."
Shrike
1yr ago
Sure, this is fairly easy – the USA has run a number of investigations, most (in)famously Project BlueBook, back in the day. See also Project Grudge, Project Sign. There is a lot of controversy/smoke over what exactly the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was doing, but it certainly seems to have involved research into UFOs.
When it comes to an official announcement by a USA President about aliens, I don't have anything directly in this vein, but here's a former director of the CIA suggesting that UFOs might be "a different form of life" and the current and former Director of National Intelligence have suggested there is some form of advanced technology that does not have a prosaic origin being detected by US sensors. As far as Presidents go, Obama hasn't gone quite that far, but he does seem to take the issue seriously.
France has a very small official UFO group called GEIPAN.
The USSR had a UFO investigation unit during the Cold War. I think it's worth taking this with a grain of salt since from what I can tell the popular reporting on this is basely largely on hearsay, whereas in the United States there are a lot of now-declassified documents indicating at least some legitimate government interest (such as by e.g. Edgar Hoover). I believe there are also Soviet documents "smuggled out of Russia" after the Cold War ended, but I'm not sure how confident one should be in their legitimacy.
China seems to have a UFO investigation unit currently, although there is little known about it from what I have seen, and it seems plausible that it is doing it to keep up with the United States/get a handle on prosaic atmospheric clutter.
I don't think any of this makes the jump to "aliens" but it does suggest powerful and presumably rational actors take the issue of UFOs/UAP seriously, or have reasons to pretend to.
(I realize this is a very weird comment to drag one out of perpetually lurking, but, uh, in my defense it's not all that often that it's comparatively easy to make someone take anything seriously?)
Minor nitpick – at least going by GDP, Texas has a considerably larger economy than the Netherlands (2.4 trillion USD vs. 1 trillion, and headed towards 2 trillion ). Texas population is also considerably larger (30 million vs. 17 million) so it stands to reason.
On the substance of the proposals, I will be very interested in seeing how a lot of these go. I suspect that the currency one will be more useful for speculating in gold than for use as an actual currency, based on looking into the details of the proposal a while back (unless details change).
School choice might end up being the most impactful in the long run, particularly if it sets off a cascade and pushes other states to do the same. Could have considerable impacts on education.
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