The risks according to the article are that these modern stories of alien visition could:
- encourage conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions
- get in the way of legitimate science communication
- threaten to overwrite indigenous storytelling
From an anthropological view, myths of supernatural or superhuman beings are the norm, rather than any unique phenomenon arising from modern society. Many religions have stories of gods, angels, or ancestors who live among the stars and visit the earth on occasion.
Are religions a "serious problem" in our society? Some would argue yes, especially as such stories can compete for mindshare with the worldview and narrative of science.
What about traditional myths and legends? Or astrology and other non-scientific metaphysical beliefs? Fantasy and science fiction? I guess this last one is not a problem since people know it's for entertainment and don't actually believe in them.
> What about traditional myths and legends? Or astrology and other non-scientific metaphysical beliefs?
Yeah, too much belief in junk like this is a hindrance to progress, IMO. Things like "freedom of religion" meaning you have to tolerate some bullshit because "their god said so, and we have to accept this bullshit because, freedom of religion" make me facepalm... Which I know make me sound like a right-wing fascist, but hey Western right-wingers also have views like the fucking Taliban.
Some people ask "What's the point in believing and preaching about flat-earth?", that must also be a trick somebody came up with to sow disbelief in accepted science, and to deny all evidence except the ones their cult leader say are correct. Also it's a good way to spot fools whose money you can easily split from. Donate to the cause! Buy this frequency crystal to enhance your erection!
People still pretend flat-earthers are just well meaning skeptics and iconoclasts trying to demonstrate the faults of blind faith in scientism, but if you look into it, there's a lot of Biblical literalism and right-wing conspiracy theory behind it.
Not to get too thumbtacks-and-string with it but if you keep following the connections of influence for most of these fringe memeplexes eventually you find the racists and antisemites "just asking questions." There should be a unit of measurement - maybe call it the "Icke" - of how far down the rabbithole you need to go until you find references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Because it's usually not very deep.
The flat earth documentary Behind The Curve made it clear that the reason for participation in the flat earth community is more about a sense of belonging for the people involved than anything else. Give people something that is better for society that can meet that emotional need, and maybe things will change.
They say the same thing about QAnon - most people wind up there simply because they want to belong. And the Proud Boys are just a bunch of harmless nerds who like Hawaiian shirts. And the people who busted into the Capitol on Jan. 6th were just confused. And all of the racists on 4chan are just harmless kids being ironic. Everyone always has only the purest of intentions, and it's always society's fault if one of them shoots up a synagogue. If you can only find a "sense of belonging" by opting out of consensus reality to that degree then there's something else going on besides social awkwardness.
Also the links between the modern flat earth movement and antisemitic/white supremacist ideology are literally just a Google search away. This isn't even difficult to find.
A lot of people seem to treat their political identity like their favorite football team, it's pure tribalism in the form "My 'team', right or wrong!". Kind of sad that they'd rather have that "in-group" feeling rather than be a defender of what's moral and fair. And/or that they manage to twist their position to be the moral and fair one.
The big difference today is that 40+ years ago, organizing a group based on fringe beliefs had a cost. People had to put real effort into finding and organizing these groups by sending out flyers and spending time in the real world. Today, it costs almost nothing to promote any organization based whatever you want -- hate, conspiracy beliefs, virtually anything that society as a whole agrees is harmful is but a few clicks away with mere pennies being paid for getting views.
I strongly believe that hyper-targeting of these kinds of online ads and social media based content promotion is not good for humanity because it removes the social checks and balances that traditional less specific advertising or promotion of content have. Having people outside of the target audience see ads that promote hatred makes it more likely for them to be flagged or even cause a police report to be filed.
It's a pity that big tech has completely removed human over-site of these issues in the name of "scale". Maybe "scale" isn't what humanity needs.
> All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.
I really don't mind which conspiracy myths is currently trending. People who believe these myths will believe the next best thing and are ignorant towards science and facts. Therefore I don't see any particular risk from any of these myths. They're equally "risky", when choosing to use that terminology.
And same goes with the calls to storm Area 51. That has the same trend as any other TikTok trend. And I wouldn't compare the storm of the Capitol with something dumb as Area 51. The Capitol thing was provoked by right-wing extremists and used by Trump to stay in power. That is VASTLY different and an ACTUAL threat to society!
Also, Area 51 is almost certainly an "authorized use of deadly force" area. Storming that is spectacularly unwise. A dangerous possibility, yes, but not dangerous to society. Not even dangerous to the people in Area 51. But definitely dangerous to anyone who tries storming it...
I remember a video around that time talking about the automated turret systems they apparently had deployed. Who knows how seriously the plans were taken, but they supposedly had enough advanced warning to have CBRN defense units on site.
> All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.
I really don't mind which conspiracy myths is currently trending. People who believe these myths will believe the next best thing and are ignorant towards science and facts. Therefore I don't see any particular risk from any of these myths. They're equally "risky", when choosing to use that terminology.
And same goes with the calls to storm Area 51. That has the same trend as any other TikTok trend. And I wouldn't compare the storm of the Capitol with something dumb as Area 51. The Capitol thing was provoked by right-wing extremists and used by Trump to stay in power. That is VASTLY different and an ACTUAL threat to society!
... has the same trend as any other TikTok trend. And I wouldn't compare the storm of the Capitol with something dumb as Area 51.
I agree it is ridiculous (this latest UFO craze), but keep in mind that what happened on Jan 6th ALSO started out as something dumb. Wacky conspiracy theories can turn very dark.
Pizza-gate was laughable until somebody decided to "take action" and those same sentiments poured into the q-anon "movement" and influenced many of the participants of the capitol riot.
There has been, lately it seems, interest in UFO stuff on the right-wing fringes. Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck have both been dabbling with this stuff. Elizondo and Grusch are thrilled to appear on any show that will take them, and now Elizondo is doing a speaking tour with his book. It could easily pivot into some bizarre and harmful stuff. At the very least, we're already seeing more politicians willing appease their conspiracy-minded voter base with lip-service to trashy UAP conspiracies.
The underlying paper is really odd. It says nothing good about King's College London or the International Astronomical Union that they publish stuff like this.
The author Tony Milligan doesn't do any research, the paper is really just a blog post arguing that the solution to belief in aliens is ... <drumroll> ... for scientists to research the claims! The author even invents an acronym for his new idea: the Scientific Research Program (SRP). He then helpfully outlines that SRPs should be built on "robust argument structures", should use Ockham's Razor, should "avoid sensationalism" or anything "beyond the pale" and that whilst it's OK to feed "unhelpful background noise" at the start it should stop doing so later (??). That's the end of the paper.
Weirdly, he also argues that as long as scientists believe any alien ships encountered are derelict or look natural, this is rational and doesn't "step outside the normal bounds of science" (last paragraph page 4). But believing that alien crews could survive or that an alien ship would look artificial presumably does.
The obvious problem with this plan is that most claims of UFO visitations include a government coverup of the evidence, so there's not much available for scientists to research. When evidence does emerge it's usually better investigated by people with an engineering background like Mick West, who can work out explanations to do with camera mechanics and the like.
The guy's bio is perhaps explanatory:
"Current research, as part of the KCL (China) team and the University of Manchester (Russia) team within the Cosmological Visionaries project, takes in the ethical aspects of dialogue building between local scientists, indigenous peoples and national minorities in Russia and China in the face of climate change. The key theme uniting my broader areas of research is otherness and our shared future. This works its way into various publications on Space (other places), philosophy of love (other people), and animals (other creatures). Tony is also an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute."
This "everything ideologically fascinating is connected to everything else" claim crops up all over the place in academia in recent years and always seems to yield low quality scholarship.
"All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility."
More than 2 million people responded "going" and 1.5 million "interested" on the event's page
On the day of the event, only about 150 people were reported to have shown up at the two entrances to Area 51, with none succeeding in entering the site.
One person attempted to enter the facility and received a warning, while six others were arrested for crimes including public urination, alcohol-related offenses and indecent exposure.
Event creator Roberts pulled out of Alienstock 10 days before the festival, leaving other organizers and booked entertainers to run the event.[29] Roberts claimed his last-minute departure with $70,000–$100,000 in sponsorship money and donations was "due to poor planning"
ROFL. This event sounds hilarious.
It shows how disconnected from reality some of these academics are that they're willing to give the stamp of peer reviewed research to someone who thinks there's a "dangerous possibility" of people storming Area 51, a giant fenced-off military base in the middle of the desert which you can be arrested or shot for entering. Being British is no excuse. I'm British and know perfectly well there's not a chance in hell of a bunch of X-Files fans storming Area 51.
The last 20 years has basically been the elites clutching their pearls at the crazy stuff the riff-raff believe, now that riff-raff are able to publish their thoughts on the internet without any sort of gatekeeping. The "crazy uncle" stereotype is one everyone can relate too, well there's a lot of uncles out there and there always has been.
The last 20 years makes me question glib use of the word "elites" to refer to any arbitrary collection of individuals not necessarily based upon their wealth or whatever imagined social status the person invoking the word wishes to convey, with regards to said arbitrary collection of individuals.
You basically vomited a series of pop cultural phrases and managed to paint a clear picture with them, but i question your very mental boxes.
But i would wager that astronomical societies were rather unfond of alien conspiracy buffs, so the feeling is likely mutual, as evidenced by this piece here.
Hand wringing aside, one boring trope i am unfond of is this notion of a virtuous anti intellectual lower class of common folk gosh darnit...
That is an elite pretension that smells like Rousseaus "noble savage"
So Lue Elizondo (who is very much not a fringe person, with a lengthy career of service in the military and federal agencies) publishes a book that makes many assertions about the reality of non-human intelligence and now we've got this condescending thinkpiece by some academic scold about how the peons are crazy?
And after reading the paper, it's filled with the predictable moaning about protecting "indigenous stories".
> If all of this stayed in its own box, as entertaining fiction, then matters would be fine. But it doesn't, and they aren't. Visitation narratives tend to overwrite indigenous storytelling about sky and ground.
How does this get any play? Overwrite? In the digital age when the ability to publish and maintain and distribute information has never been easier? It's amazing the sorts of people who are able to get a foothold in academia cause this is seriously laughable.
“Lue Elizondo (who is very much not a fringe person”
Lue Elizondo is a highly fringe person, and has been for decades. He ‘learned’ remote viewing from Hal Puthoff, and claims he used it to somehow remotely interact with insurgents in Afghanistan. He also claims that he routinely sees colorful orbs floating around his house. He has also been caught faking UFO footage.
Lue Elizondo has not been fringe for decades, he has a very long and established career in counter-intel. Also Mick West left out key details and context of the Nimitz encounter which is laughable if he's trying to purport his video as substantial analysis.
If you feel remote viewing isn’t fringe we can agree to disagree. But between that and having colorful orbs fly around his house Elizondo is clearly prone to making fantastical claims without evidence, which undermines any claims of UAP (despite his authority in counter-intel).
Prominent astrophysicists I trust say there is no evidence for Elizondo’s claims.
Have we examined all motives here? Possible motives include:
A government program for uniting religious belief to some end.
A government program to gauge how people would react to disclosure if non-human intelligence was ever discovered (arguably we are already there with LLMs).
A cover for advanced military craft.
And finally, by far the most likely in my opinion, the profit motive. To the Stars Academy, LLC, now known as To the Stars (TTS), is essentially an entertainment company. The supposed other operating arms of aerospace and science divisions have not and probably will never generate any revenue.[0,1]
Yeah, I've more or less aligned with Steven Greenstreet on this - it's a grift by a cult of UFO activists within the Pentagon, diverting funds and attention from legitimate programs and being given legitimacy by gullible people like Chuck Schumer and I assume David Grusch.
And somewhere in the midst of all the bullshit there's probably some interesting stuff happening with drones and exotic propulsion that maybe caught the US military off guard, but I would bet a cubic meter of money that it isn't aliens.
It is a coordinated group of the same people starting in the 90s with NIDS (Hal Puthoff, Robert Bigelow, Eric Davis, Kit Green, Lue Elizondo, George Knapp, et al.) through the 2000s with AAWSAP and AATIP. All the stuff happening currently can be traced to them and the ‘lore’ they’ve managed to build up over the years.
31 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 70.3 ms ] threadReally?
- encourage conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions
- get in the way of legitimate science communication
- threaten to overwrite indigenous storytelling
From an anthropological view, myths of supernatural or superhuman beings are the norm, rather than any unique phenomenon arising from modern society. Many religions have stories of gods, angels, or ancestors who live among the stars and visit the earth on occasion.
Are religions a "serious problem" in our society? Some would argue yes, especially as such stories can compete for mindshare with the worldview and narrative of science.
What about traditional myths and legends? Or astrology and other non-scientific metaphysical beliefs? Fantasy and science fiction? I guess this last one is not a problem since people know it's for entertainment and don't actually believe in them.
Yeah, too much belief in junk like this is a hindrance to progress, IMO. Things like "freedom of religion" meaning you have to tolerate some bullshit because "their god said so, and we have to accept this bullshit because, freedom of religion" make me facepalm... Which I know make me sound like a right-wing fascist, but hey Western right-wingers also have views like the fucking Taliban.
Some people ask "What's the point in believing and preaching about flat-earth?", that must also be a trick somebody came up with to sow disbelief in accepted science, and to deny all evidence except the ones their cult leader say are correct. Also it's a good way to spot fools whose money you can easily split from. Donate to the cause! Buy this frequency crystal to enhance your erection!
For a good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
Not to get too thumbtacks-and-string with it but if you keep following the connections of influence for most of these fringe memeplexes eventually you find the racists and antisemites "just asking questions." There should be a unit of measurement - maybe call it the "Icke" - of how far down the rabbithole you need to go until you find references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Because it's usually not very deep.
Also the links between the modern flat earth movement and antisemitic/white supremacist ideology are literally just a Google search away. This isn't even difficult to find.
A lot of people seem to treat their political identity like their favorite football team, it's pure tribalism in the form "My 'team', right or wrong!". Kind of sad that they'd rather have that "in-group" feeling rather than be a defender of what's moral and fair. And/or that they manage to twist their position to be the moral and fair one.
I strongly believe that hyper-targeting of these kinds of online ads and social media based content promotion is not good for humanity because it removes the social checks and balances that traditional less specific advertising or promotion of content have. Having people outside of the target audience see ads that promote hatred makes it more likely for them to be flagged or even cause a police report to be filed.
It's a pity that big tech has completely removed human over-site of these issues in the name of "scale". Maybe "scale" isn't what humanity needs.
I really don't mind which conspiracy myths is currently trending. People who believe these myths will believe the next best thing and are ignorant towards science and facts. Therefore I don't see any particular risk from any of these myths. They're equally "risky", when choosing to use that terminology.
And same goes with the calls to storm Area 51. That has the same trend as any other TikTok trend. And I wouldn't compare the storm of the Capitol with something dumb as Area 51. The Capitol thing was provoked by right-wing extremists and used by Trump to stay in power. That is VASTLY different and an ACTUAL threat to society!
Maybe it would lead people to question a thing or two about what they listen to, too.
I really don't mind which conspiracy myths is currently trending. People who believe these myths will believe the next best thing and are ignorant towards science and facts. Therefore I don't see any particular risk from any of these myths. They're equally "risky", when choosing to use that terminology.
And same goes with the calls to storm Area 51. That has the same trend as any other TikTok trend. And I wouldn't compare the storm of the Capitol with something dumb as Area 51. The Capitol thing was provoked by right-wing extremists and used by Trump to stay in power. That is VASTLY different and an ACTUAL threat to society!
Pizza-gate was laughable until somebody decided to "take action" and those same sentiments poured into the q-anon "movement" and influenced many of the participants of the capitol riot.
There has been, lately it seems, interest in UFO stuff on the right-wing fringes. Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck have both been dabbling with this stuff. Elizondo and Grusch are thrilled to appear on any show that will take them, and now Elizondo is doing a speaking tour with his book. It could easily pivot into some bizarre and harmful stuff. At the very least, we're already seeing more politicians willing appease their conspiracy-minded voter base with lip-service to trashy UAP conspiracies.
Equivocal encounters: alien visitation claims as a societal problem
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/293600954/IA...
The author Tony Milligan doesn't do any research, the paper is really just a blog post arguing that the solution to belief in aliens is ... <drumroll> ... for scientists to research the claims! The author even invents an acronym for his new idea: the Scientific Research Program (SRP). He then helpfully outlines that SRPs should be built on "robust argument structures", should use Ockham's Razor, should "avoid sensationalism" or anything "beyond the pale" and that whilst it's OK to feed "unhelpful background noise" at the start it should stop doing so later (??). That's the end of the paper.
Weirdly, he also argues that as long as scientists believe any alien ships encountered are derelict or look natural, this is rational and doesn't "step outside the normal bounds of science" (last paragraph page 4). But believing that alien crews could survive or that an alien ship would look artificial presumably does.
The obvious problem with this plan is that most claims of UFO visitations include a government coverup of the evidence, so there's not much available for scientists to research. When evidence does emerge it's usually better investigated by people with an engineering background like Mick West, who can work out explanations to do with camera mechanics and the like.
The guy's bio is perhaps explanatory:
"Current research, as part of the KCL (China) team and the University of Manchester (Russia) team within the Cosmological Visionaries project, takes in the ethical aspects of dialogue building between local scientists, indigenous peoples and national minorities in Russia and China in the face of climate change. The key theme uniting my broader areas of research is otherness and our shared future. This works its way into various publications on Space (other places), philosophy of love (other people), and animals (other creatures). Tony is also an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute."
This "everything ideologically fascinating is connected to everything else" claim crops up all over the place in academia in recent years and always seems to yield low quality scholarship.
"All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility."
Ah yes, "storming the Capitol"
More than 2 million people responded "going" and 1.5 million "interested" on the event's page
On the day of the event, only about 150 people were reported to have shown up at the two entrances to Area 51, with none succeeding in entering the site.
One person attempted to enter the facility and received a warning, while six others were arrested for crimes including public urination, alcohol-related offenses and indecent exposure.
Event creator Roberts pulled out of Alienstock 10 days before the festival, leaving other organizers and booked entertainers to run the event.[29] Roberts claimed his last-minute departure with $70,000–$100,000 in sponsorship money and donations was "due to poor planning"
ROFL. This event sounds hilarious.
It shows how disconnected from reality some of these academics are that they're willing to give the stamp of peer reviewed research to someone who thinks there's a "dangerous possibility" of people storming Area 51, a giant fenced-off military base in the middle of the desert which you can be arrested or shot for entering. Being British is no excuse. I'm British and know perfectly well there's not a chance in hell of a bunch of X-Files fans storming Area 51.
You basically vomited a series of pop cultural phrases and managed to paint a clear picture with them, but i question your very mental boxes.
And after reading the paper, it's filled with the predictable moaning about protecting "indigenous stories".
> If all of this stayed in its own box, as entertaining fiction, then matters would be fine. But it doesn't, and they aren't. Visitation narratives tend to overwrite indigenous storytelling about sky and ground.
How does this get any play? Overwrite? In the digital age when the ability to publish and maintain and distribute information has never been easier? It's amazing the sorts of people who are able to get a foothold in academia cause this is seriously laughable.
Lue Elizondo is a highly fringe person, and has been for decades. He ‘learned’ remote viewing from Hal Puthoff, and claims he used it to somehow remotely interact with insurgents in Afghanistan. He also claims that he routinely sees colorful orbs floating around his house. He has also been caught faking UFO footage.
In describing (now public) military FLIR footage in his book, he gets several basic facts wrong: https://youtu.be/V6Pc48yXWyI?si=4RIEbhOsM_cJFelg
Have we examined all motives here? Possible motives include:
A government program for uniting religious belief to some end.
A government program to gauge how people would react to disclosure if non-human intelligence was ever discovered (arguably we are already there with LLMs).
A cover for advanced military craft.
And finally, by far the most likely in my opinion, the profit motive. To the Stars Academy, LLC, now known as To the Stars (TTS), is essentially an entertainment company. The supposed other operating arms of aerospace and science divisions have not and probably will never generate any revenue.[0,1]
[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1710274/000114420417...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Stars_Inc.
And somewhere in the midst of all the bullshit there's probably some interesting stuff happening with drones and exotic propulsion that maybe caught the US military off guard, but I would bet a cubic meter of money that it isn't aliens.