A thread for news and discussion about UFO/UAP related topics

Honestly, I agree. I like to consider myself open-minded, and I like to see multiple perspectives. As such, I find the automatic dismissal of anyone even discussing the hearing as causing harm, and calling anyone who thinks there might be a chance there's a grain of truth, to be rather disappointing.

I don't think admitting there's a possibility automatically makes someone a crackpot conspiracy theorist who wears tin foil hats, but that's the general attitude I'm seeing. It's also why I think the only discussion we tend to see are so full of those crazy conspiracy theorists: people who want to talk about in a serious, civil, sane conversation are wary of being automatically being labeled as a crackpot by the larger community.

Your other comment which was linked by the OP (and I highly recommend people read) also raises one more very good point about these hearings: the potential existence of a secret office that is outside of government oversight. I'll quote the relevant part from your comment:

His claims regarding some office, operating in complete secrecy from Congress, the DoD, and the IC-at-large, disturb me.
Our field works on clearances, and need-to-know. Often the need-to-know can be the most difficult thing to justify. It's easy to believe there are offices, or projects, with very few people working on them, and very few people outside of it having any degree of knowledge as to what they are doing. That's normal. The secrecy, and lack of verifiable leaks, are honestly the one part of the story I have the least problem just accepting.

But someone is supposed to know, at least on a general level. Leadership, Congress, somebody. An elected official, or someone authorized to brief an elected official, at least.

If nobody knows, outside of this office, the true nature of what is actually going on, that carries with it some very dangerous accusations about the current functioning and structure of the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense. This isn't new territory for the conspiratorially-minded members of the general public, but for someone on the inside—especially in the modern day—it's very serious. I've been struggling for about a week trying to put exactly how I feel into words, but I just can't.
This seems to be what the motivation behind Senior DoD, Senior IC, and Congresspersons apparent scrutiny over all of this. If Grusch's allegation is true, than this office is operating outside of the law, and outside out Congressional authority.

These facts, as you laid them out, ARE concerning. It DOES deserve discussion. And yet people are dismissing that because the supposed office in question deals with aliens.

As it stands, if this office does indeed exist, we don't know what it actually researches or does. Maybe they DO investigate UAPs and aliens. Or maybe they do something else entirely. Whatever its purpose, the general dismissive attitude towards discussion of any such office makes for a disturbingly good cover to deter investigation. People will automatically dismiss its existence as a conspiracy theory and deride any attempts by politicians and others to look into it, just as they are now.

That does seem to be the true purpose of the hearing: to look into what documents this office has so they can determine what it actually is.

On another note: when David Grusch had that interview, I spent that day looking up articles about him and the situation. And the conclusion I reached is that... He just doesn't seem like a crazy conspiracy theorist. His career history seems to be solid, and he had many people vouching for him and his integrity. He feels different from all the others who have come forward claiming aliens exist. He openly admits he hadn't seen anything directly, but claims to have been told about it by many individuals, and it was enough to convince him to quit his job and risk his reputation. The situation also felt like it was a coordinated effort by multiple people and had been in the works for some time.

At the time, I commented to some friends there were three possibilities: A) it's all a bunch of lies and he's crazy, B) he's the victim of an elaborate prank that got him to quit his job and publicly testify to Congress, or C) him coming forward is meant to be used as a "jumping point" to bring the topic to public awareness, so that others could come forward with their own evidence.

I'm personally leaning towards scenario C. My overall impression is that Grusch was chosen as the "spokesperson" due to his career history and previous reputation giving him more credibility. I feel that there's either some grain of truth to what he's talking about.

Thing is, I don't think that grain of truth has to be about aliens existing. He and everyone else involved may be very well using the sensational nature of the claim to get more attention, the same way this supposed office might be using it to deter attention.

Whatever is going on, I do want to see some discussion that doesn't just automatically boil down to people saying that we should ban any discussion of it whatsoever, just because it happens to involve someone claiming aliens are real and there's a secret government office dedicated to them. Which, I know how crazy that sentence is, but it's possible to discuss that possibility WITHOUT also insisting that QAnon is real and that there's some secret world council.

At the very least, this general automatic dismissal shows that it's a strangely good cover for some secret government office that focuses on other areas.

Noo. Don't censor yourself. That's what I assume this thread was for. To contain the discussion to a post so anyone who doesn't like it can ignore it.

I didn't watch the hearing, but I would have been interested in reading people discuss it.

If everyone on this website agreed on everything, we would end up in an echo chamber. That's not great to have. And if you look in the comment section of some of the other articles, people clearly do want to discuss it.

I would also be very interested to hear your take. There's probably more sympathetic ears than is readily apparent IMO.

I don't dispute the idea that this is a much more realistic possibility in general than aliens, but I've noticed on the topic of various famous UFO videos, some people believe "even skeptics agree various videos show something crazy, it's just a question of whether it's aliens or secret military tech with instant super acceleration". I just want to emphasize that many of the famous government UFO videos are obviously bs by taking details like visible HUD data into account, so I don't agree the evidence is even strong enough to speculate advanced secret military technology.

Not sure if they're specifically involved with this hearing, but there's a specific set of three very famous videos from the last couple years ("gimbal", "tic tac", "go fast") I still regularly see brought up in discussions and news articles around this, and the fact I still see them brought up often makes me insanely skeptical because they're easily debunked and UFO-enthusiasts surely wouldn't keep bringing them up if there were any better evidence around. (Good HN thread with links to the videos, analysis, and discussion.)

The famous "gimbal" video that seems to show a craft suddenly rotating unlike what seems physically possible (suspiciously aligned with the camera) has the rotation happen exactly as the camera crosses 0 degrees (shown in the HUD) and is fully consistent with glare on the camera rotating with it as the camera rotates on its gimbal on crossing that angle. The "tic tac" video has the object appear to instantly accelerate ... right as the camera is switched modes and stops rotating (angle shown stopping in the HUD) to keep the object centered in view. The object never changed speeds, the camera just lost lock and stopped rotating. The "go fast" video doesn't actually show an object zooming crazy fast over a stationary background, it's a zoomed-in video of a slow 40mph object high in the air viewed from a 400+mph plane flying over it as you can tell from the hud data.

Don't discount the possibility that these UFO/UAPs are advanced military craft.

Honestly, that's my default go-to assumption for any strange aerial sightings that don't subsequently turn out to be prosaic things like weather balloons and the like: the Chinese or the Russians or Americans have some new stealth technology they're testing out, but it doesn't quite work, so someone spots something they can't explain. And, of course, none of those governments will own up to the fact that they have advanced stealth spy devices flying over each other's countries, so these sightings remained unidentified aerial phenomena.

I wouldn't go that far. I think that, especially with the mini social media exodus, some people from less credible forums ended up joining non-mainstream sites like Tildes and the Fediverse, and are attempting to introduce their talking points into these places.

Though it might be a bit controversial, I am of the mind that engaging these talking points - for a while - is a positive thing. Dismantling conspiracy theories may not convince the theorist, but it might convince the would-be theorist. Showing the flaws in their arguments rather than dismissing them as crazies or something of the sort - not that I am accusing you or anyone on Tildes of doing so.

Of course, this has it's limits. We shouldn't go too far, as they will eventually win the war of attrition since they don't have any reason to operate by good faith arguments. I think that we have a responsibility to examine and criticize wild claims in order to keep a check on our own opinions and make sure we aren't falling down our own rabbit holes.

I'm of the opinion that the story isn't verified and that we shouldn't jump to conclusions.

But I do think it's fine to share and discuss this story as this is an actual event. Not that the whole alien bit is a verified event, but the fact that there is a whole actual hearing about it from the government.

The guy might not be legitimate and what he says might be false, but the hearing is actually happening and the hearing is real.

There are politicians that people either care about or don't, sitting there, taking interest and asking questions.

The fact that they are doing this shouldn't be dismissed. People are taking an interest because some parts of the government body is taking an interest. It isn't a random article on a fringe website.

So while this might include people jumping to conclusions, I don't see this as a definite decline in quality of the website as they're not discussing a random article on a fringe website. They are discussing a legitimate event (the hearing) that is actually happening.

If people really don't want this to be discussed, they should take issue with the fact that more legitimate channels are giving him a platform. And not that we are discussing this in response to him having that platform.

And well, some people believe in aliens. I think that's not particularly the most damaging belief to have.

If your first response to discussion about a subject is to question its integrity for not having the "right" opinions already decided at the outset, I would suggest some self-examination as well.

I’ll apologise for the lab leak article. What I found interesting in it was lost because my comment got buried and no one read it (which I thought wouldn’t happen as the idea is to read all the comments. Live and learn). I deleted it when I realised!