Let’s talk about something different. UAP’s, UFO’s, etc.

I remember following the hearing debacle at the time and if you paid attention to the subtle difference in meanings, neither sides were technically making any debatable claims regarding aliens one way or another. The confusion allowed for statements that help discredit the other party without necessarily disproving their accusations. The actual controversy I suspect had more to do with illicit funds, obfuscated by alien talks.

Edit: removed bold claim

Watching the 2022 congress hearings was like getting teeth pulled with how everyone seemed to be using a completely different dictionary and didn't feel bothered to define their usage of key terms.

This is the problem with just about everything in mainstream discourse and the lack of nuance so many people have nowadays.

So many people use the exact same words to mean completely different things, then waste their time arguing with each other instead of establishing what they're actually talking about.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain something along the lines of:

"When you say X, you're referring to one specific concept. But when I say X, I'm referring to an entirely different concept. I actually agree with what you're saying about your definition of X. The problem is that you're arguing against a position I'm not even taking, because you've assumed your definition is the only one."

We're not even disagreeing about the actual issue. We're arguing over a misunderstanding that could have been resolved in thirty seconds if people bothered to clarify what each other meant.

But apparently establishing a common understanding of what we're discussing before arguing about it is asking far too much of some people's brainpower so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mostly agree with you.

But I think interstellar travel is probably possible. It's just very slow without some energy source that we don't currently know about.
So there could be extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth. It could be:

• Unmanned/automated probes
• Life forms that can last for decades or centuries. Either artificial life, or they hibernate, or for some other reason they have very long lifespans.
• Could also be generation ships, where the inhabitants have offspring during the journey, but this seems much less likely

The things I'm extremely skeptical about are:

• Anything about alien abductions. These mostly don't make any sense. Most of the stories are like torture porn, as if the aliens are all like the guy from the Saw movies. That's scary and maybe fun in a horror movie way, but it doesn't make sense to make a very expensive trip for many lightyears and then capture-and-release intelligent animals while giving them selective amnesia
• Government coverups. Surely there would have been believable leaks in 80 years of this. There have been many big promises and then disappointing deliveries.
• The apparent stupidity of the aliens. They are super good at hiding most of the time, but then they sometimes hover slowly above people or get shot down by relatively primitive tech.