This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I haven't seen anything yet to adjust my priors that it's some combination of 1. Room-temperature IQ people who were UFO nerds back in the 90s or so who have now become military officers, congresspeople, etc nerding out, seeing what they want to see, misinterpreting ambiguous evidence, etc, and 2. Manipulation and leaks by some shadowy Government/elite group trying to misdirect attention from whatever is really going on. As others have said, nobody is acting like there's an actual secret being leaked here.
I don't put a lot of faith in, well we still don't have a shred of actual evidence, but this guy who supposedly saw some actual evidence is totally more believable than the last guy who made some outlandish claims with no evidence.
Yeah, regarding 1, one point that doesn't get that much discussion is that, while people are going "Well, they're trained pilots and intelligence officers! These are precisely the people to trust!", I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it's precisely these professions that would be filled to brim with people whose career track started when they were around 10 and engaging in what I've called "Library paranormal shelf childhood"; an early fascination with all things weird and hidden leading them to precisely the career track where you would most likely be able to "meet the aliens", or at least be able to learn the truth about them.
This is exactly the sort of an environment where UFO lore would be sloshing around freely, people would hear random bits of UFOlogy from their peers and combine them to new grand narratives, and eventually these would also reach people like Grusch assigned from outside to find the truth. Grusch hearing the same stories from multiple people just serves to confirm that there's multiple people believing the same narrative; it doesn't mean that narrative is actually true.
More options
Context Copy link
Given that almost no one in congress has any training in either physics (beyond required freshman in college stuff) or aircraft observation, the fact that congress is impressed does not impress me. They’re lawyers, they have no expertise worth considering. It’s like, yeah, my lawyer believes in stuff that breaks physics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link