Until there is some actual data to back any of this up, there's not really anything to talk about.
Not a fan of Rubio but this quote sums up the dissonance, and I think it's worth talking about. If these are people looking to be famous, they're going about it in a really painful way. If they're delusional, how did they advance so far in our government? If they're even half right, then what's the science behind it?
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4083904-true-or-crazy...
That's for starters.
And on the other side of evidence vs. gut feeling, this guy sounds all of my bells, intuition screaming "off, off, multiple things in his behavior are off."
Eg: Why is Sean M. Kirkpatrick (director of the Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office) seemingly directly contradicting the testimony of David Grusch, despite Grusch claiming they worked together for years and that Grusch gave all the evidence he accumulated from people who came to him (people who allegedly worked on craft retrieval / reverse engineering) to Kirkpatrick?
Eg: Why are the congressionally mandated groups such as All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office not receiving or not requesting the Title 50 authority they need to access information on Special Access Programs (SAPs)? If Kirkpatrick is actually invested in succeeding in investigating what the government and military know, and gathering as much evidence and information as possible, why didn't he ask for the legal and intelligence authorities his group would need to do so? And instead just say they found nothing?
Eg: Why is the Navy being much more forthright with providing information, providing records of UAP sightings by seamen and pilots on carriers, while the Air Force stonewalls both the public as well as Congress itself?
Eg: Why are weirdos like the television personality Travis Taylor (scientist on the pretty much reality-TV show / UFO version of Ghost Hunters - Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch) appointed Chief Scientist of the UFO panel by the director of the UAP task force Jay Stratton?
Eg: Why are there respected scientists like Stanford's Chair of Pathology Garry Nolan - who claims he was hired by the DoD to investigate the brain damage of US servicepeople who got too close to UAP and were gravely injured or killed - involved in this? Are they victims of a psy-op or should we be taking their claims more seriously?
If we don't put public pressure on our UN-elected officials - those in the DoD and defense contracting, Department of Energy, etc. to reveal what they were told to reveal to Congress, these issues will continue to be swept under the rug just like they have been for decades despite the efforts of congresspeople and presidents.
In other words, is this UFO thing trying to distract the public from something very important?
us_agency: ufo's are not real, there's no proof
ny_times: us_agency spends at least 22 million in ufo program w/ no results and no oversight.
us_agency: ufo's are real.
NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog... (most likely common knowledge by now, but just in case)
Like 1952 when multiple newspapers have front page news about UFO sightings over Washington DC.
And then in 1952 Gene Pope, a graduate of MIT in only three years, leaves his position in CIA psyops to buy up a failing periodical that two years later he rebrands as the National Enquirer which frequently covers UFO stories alongside claims Elvis isn't really dead, etc. (And then later has Weekly World News with batboy.)
Suddenly no more newspapers will touch UFO stories with a 10' pole and everyone that thinks Elvis is still alive also thinks there's aliens.
Probably one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history, so effective that even today multiple career military witnesses being interviewed in front of Congress taking their claims seriously and looking to get private follow-up details - much of which alleges defense contractors funneling tax dollars to unaccountable projects - is largely brushed off by both the news media and commentators as "nothing to see."
So yes, sure, look at the timeline - but maybe cast a wider net.
I spent an afternoon reading these stories in university (G.U.) microfilm archives of the Washington Post. Fascinating stuff. Many, many occurrences over the course of a month or two.
Pedantic nitpick:
I believe 100% that aliens exist. The universe is way too vast for us to be the only intelligent life.
But I also 100% believe that they have not visited our planet. Unless faster-than-light travel is actually possible, the universe is simply too vast for intergalactic travel.
Having said that, I disagree with the conclusion. There are few areas where one can confidently dismiss something as absurd (perpetual motion comes to mind). Perhaps an enemy of the King has indeed released a tiger in the market, and then what? How many reports are needed before the King actually looks into the matter?
I agree with the deeper explanation that a person as powerful as Pang Cong would easily have three enemies willing to discredit him in front of the King, but I feel that dismissing something as "that cannot happen" is how (say) my local bureaucracy gets angry at me for registering late because my explanation (that the system is overloaded) is absurd and therefore a lie.
The first of these is that whatever is happening on earth must either be a whole lot of nothing truly abnormal, or a case of aliens from other star systems having visited our planet, under the partial disqualifier that this seems unlikely as hell unless they have FTL travel capabilities.
What if it's neither of those things? What if something else, not normal as we know normal things of nature to be, but also not classically extraterrestrial or for that matter an outright case of hoaxes and mistaken identity is happening?
That last question leads into the second very common rigid point that should be scrutinized: the assumption that aliens have to be extrasolar visitors to be present on Earth. Since we known nothing about alien life, or any super-intelligent life anywhere at all, we can only guess at anything about its nature.
Because of this I think it's a bad idea to not consider the possibility of something entirely different from classical interpretations of extraterrestrials interacting with us already, and possibly in ways so strange (because of its own truly alien strangeness in a general sense) that they seem absurd and instead get written off as myths or hoaxes across decades and centuries of human history and reported events.
Tons of conversation yesterday over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880471
