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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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But the Epstein thing is legitimate, there's there there. In this model you're supposed to investigate meaningless clown stuff that is established as meaningless and cringe, to undermine the legitimacy of possible future meaningful investigations. Every redneck knows UFOs were some chicken coop fraudulent stuff, it's the current consensus. People joke that Americans believe in aliens but I think almost no American would bet money on them being real.

Are aliens real? People online don't seem to care either way

I admit, however, that this logic is a bit tortured. They could also have gone after yeti (though that'd be too on the nose; aliens is a really good option, it's not openly childish).

Yeti is dirty Chinese commie, no one cares about him. Bigfoot is native born American citizen whose Constitutional rights need to be protected. If American citizens are routinely kidnapped and murdered only for hairiness of their skin, it should be big deal.

Yes, it would be cool to see full Congressional investigation into Bigfoot.

(if you ask Bigfoot researchers why there is no physical evidence, they will tell you that government keeps existence of BF deep secret, that if you kill one or find a corpse or bones, feds in black helicopters instantly arrive and seize the remains at gun point.)

Maybe there is no single motive,

Even veteran UFO researchers are confused, bewildered, unsure what is really going on.

maybe it's really just an, ahem, a Cabal of aging UFO nerds and a cascade of independent silly mistakes.

The investigation itself seems to be well under control.

Maybe your proposed motive is lacking. In your model, the cabal controls US, it is theirs. Why should they deliberately undermine and demolish it?

I don’t care precisely because I don’t see anything to see. And I suspect this is why most people don’t care — this is hearsay on a topic that actual science is showing is not and probably cannot happen. If you get evidence for any life at all in deep space I’d update my priors to the point that I’d be interested in what these guys are telling Congress. As it stands, life that as far as we know doesn’t exist in space is almost certainly not coming to earth.

I’m more bothered by the implications that our elites are wasting time and money on a hearing like this, and that there are enough people scientifically illiterate that they are taking it seriously. That’s a big problem because we can’t move forward as a society so long as people are willing to believe just because they want to.

I’m more bothered by the implications that our elites are wasting time and money on a hearing like this, and that there are enough people scientifically illiterate that they are taking it seriously. That’s a big problem because we can’t move forward as a society so long as people are willing to believe just because they want to.

Yes. There are three options, none of them good.

1/ Aliens are real, and the government was deceiving the people at least for 70 years.

2/ Aliens are not real, and the government is deceiving the people now.

3/ Aliens are not real, and the government delusionary believes they are real.

Given that the government makes science policy and funds research, I’m most frightened by 3.