29
votes
Can we get a ~UFOs or ~UAP ?
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- 'We're done with the cover-up': UFO claims to get their day in Congress
- Authors
- Adam Gabbatt
- Published
- Jul 21 2023
- Word count
- 1074 words
Just my own opinion here, sorry if it upsets anyone, but I don't think we need or should have aliens/UFOs be a prominently featured topic on Tildes. If there were truly any credible evidence, it would just belong under Science. Maybe under news if there is a credible whistleblower with no evidence, but even that feels like a stretch.
I think Carl Sagan's book Demon Haunted World, is a great read if you want to have your belief in UFOs/Aliens completely shattered. He spends several chapters debunking it all and it really changed my way of thinking about the alien and supernatural forever, even though I was already a skeptic.
I believe we will know, with absolutely no uncertainty at all, if aliens ever come.
Fully agreed.
The current hype is trivially debunked if you read one paragraph into the original story: The person making the claims will be releasing a book soon. It's just a marketing campaign.
And I think it's sad that so many taxpayer dollars and time is now being wasted on all this. We got actual shit to handle in the world, quite urgently right now. I get that people want a distraction from how depressing RL can be and frequently is nowadays, but this isn't it. This is not a useful use of our time and resources. We know this is all b/s, we don't need to hold extended public talks about how it is b/s.
This is the second time I've seen this claim on Tildes so I have to ask: Source?
As far as I can tell this is the original story, and I don't see anything about a book in there. A Google search for "David Grusch book" doesn't turn up any useful results either. Do you mind linking where you found that info?
Likely you did, but UAPs can be all sorts of phenomenon and not necessarily anything extraterrestrial, or supernatural. About 10-15 years or so ago, I saw an article in Sky & Telescope magazine which surveyed the general public, amateur astronomers, and professional astronomers on the subject of UFOs. The latter two groups, and pointedly the people who spend the most time looking at the night sky, reported the lowest percentage of belief in UFOs. I think that's pretty telling personally.
I mean, just look how crazy sprites above a thunderstorm can look. It's no wonder people think they've seen something of alien origin with some of the wonders of the world around us.
OP never mentioned aliens or the supernatural! Aren't a lot of UFO/UAP enthusiasts in it just for the sake of finding out more?
They did tag the post
aliensthough.Which only means the subjects are related, not that UFOs equals aliens ;)
Sure they are. Check out the article they linked:
As an aside: Oro Valley, AZ? Lol, guess we're (or were) neighbors.
The fact that most unidentified phenomena have mundane explanations doesn’t make the subject any less fascinating, partly because it is so multidisciplinary, and partly for the verified but unexplained phenomena. Most of those will no doubt also have scientifically describable explanations eventually, but the process of getting there will be just as fascinating as if their explanations were supernatural.
The reason why ~ufos shouldn't be a thing right now is that there's not enough content for it. The other reasons you point out are not very relevant. UFOs do not mean aliens, so all this talk about Carl Sagan's skepticism is missing the point. And when people ascribe an alien origin, an ~ufos group would be the place to argue against this.
As another commenter pointed out, this post was tagged with "aliens."
Additionally, the current news with UFOs and Congress is all centered around this notion of a huge government coverup around aliens specifically.
If the UAP phenomenon isn't all about aliens then technology, science, or news would be appropriate places to post about it.
But I think in this context we need to be honest with each other and with ourselves. People who get online and gather in UAP groups are 100% there for the aliens, even if they hide it, purposefully or accidentally, behind the veil of "just asking questions" or "being open to all explanations."
Sorry, no disrespect meant at all. But I've been on enough of those forums to know that it would change Tildes in an irreversible way. It's not a far leap from aliens to bigfoot to 9/11 conspiracies to Q Anon. And even if it doesn't happen to an individual person, Tildes' Invite system means that each conspiracy theorist only needs to invite someone very slightly more conspiracy-minded than themselves before the site is overrun with Antisemitism and Flat Earthers. I've seen it happen in far too many online communities already.
The malice tag specifically would lead to the conclusive ejection of antisemites and Deimos has said that he would be investigating and possibly also expelling anyone who knowingly invited such people.
This is a fair point. I mentioned below to someone else who made a similar comment that you're probably right. Tildes has a fairly good correction mechanism I believe. I just worry about the slow, subtle, insidious kind of infiltration I've seen in other online communities. The kind you don't notice day to day, and can only see in retrospect - about two years after all your best contributors have already left. But thanks for some good insight and I agree. Could you do me a favor and label this as noise? It's a repeat of my other comment but I wanted to give you some credit with a response.
The way you talk about this makes it sound like there's some kind of conspiracy behind this "infiltration".
Anyway, I truly believe Tildes is way more resilient than you give it credit. With time, most people eventually realize that the apprehensions they had about other websites simply don't apply to Tildes.
Depends. With garden variety conspiracy groups, I don't ever see infiltration with intent. It just happens.
When you get into political movements, I have definitely witnessed groups like Stormfront intentionally infiltrating groups using very clever rhetorical strategies.
A link I refuse to post, but one that you can check out if you're so inclined (with a VPN, I suggest) is the Stormfront official website. Even now, they maintain a stickied post called "Promoting Hate on Facebook, Social Networking Websites." This is one of the many, many threads where they come up with strategies for how to infiltrate online communities.
They have tech guys in there with suggestions on how to artificially pump follower counts, how to network with one another, brigading tactics, etc. They post tons and tons of "redpill memes" for people to distribute to social networks. Many are explicit, a lot are pretty subtle and clever. They suggest using "report abuse" features anytime someone calls them what they are - Nazis.
The most brilliant and insidious thing I've seen though, was a post about how to "just ask questions." It gave very explicit advice that White Supremacists should have multiple accounts in which they pretend to be average Joes and start asking loaded questions or making naive-sounding innocent suggestions that will lead unscrupulous readers to Stormfront's desired conclusions. You can find these questions and suggestions all over Reddit. Several gaming forums, mostly meme-related, were completely overrun by Neo-Nazis throughout Reddit's history.
The rise of right-wing extremism was not organic in the Western world. The leaders are quite clever despite the fact that they play coy when they're called on it.
I don't think that will happen here. And I take your point about the Tildes system being fairly robust. But I fear edging closer. I am fairly new to Tildes so I will take your word for it. I'm in no position to correct you or debate you, and I really appreciate the insights you've shared. My concern comes entirely from my experience with many other online communities over the years. That's all.
I witnessed the transformation of Whoaverse into Voat, from a college student's naive attempt to make their own version of Reddit to an alt-right haven... and Whoaverse had something that Tildes lacks: a commitment to free speech at all costs. That college student believed in free speech as an inherently good thing, and was commited to allowing it on their new Reddit-clone. The alt-right people who moved in and took it over, within months of its creation, took advantage of that student's naivete.
Meanwhile, Tildes has no such commitment to free speech, and that protects us from infiltration by hate groups.
I've written about this before: "While this site is not deliberately intended to be a safe space for left-wing politics, I believe it will end up with a strong left-wing bias, due to its rules and its philosophy."
Fantastic writeup! Never heard of the term "indirect discrimination" but I absolutely have seen good and bad examples of it. I actually think that indirect discrimination kind of pushes my argument forward that Tildes shouldn't have UFOs be prominently featured as a tag/topic of discussion, since that topic inherently invites a lot of anti-science discussion.
Thanks for sharing!
I don't see the connection. How does indirect discrimination connect to whether or not Tildes should allow discussion about UFOs?
Indirect discrimination is the concept where an across-the-board policy that seems fair has an unintended consequence which affects one group of people unfairly.
Tildes choosing to discourage or suppress discussion about one specific topic is direct discrimination, rather than indirect discrimination.
I see what you're saying. Here was my train of thought:
I wouldn't suggest Deimos "suppress" discussion of these topics. But rather, that best practice for a forum which values high quality discussions would be to not officially include or encourage inherently unscientific topics such as Aliens or UFOs.
Having an "Aliens" tag or featuring the topic in the sidebar would be an open invitation for frequent discussion of these topics. Whereas not having them be official doesn't mean you can't talk about them, but indirectly there is an implication that other websites might be a better fit if that's what you're looking for.
Does that line of thinking make more sense? I completely see your point about how suppression would be direct discrimination.
I see what you're saying.
However, that's not "indirect discrimination". There's no blanket across-the-board policy that's being applied, which indirectly discriminates against discussion about UFOs. It's just a subtle approach to discouraging those discussions.
Indirect discrimination against UFO discussions would be something like... "All topics being discussed on Tildes must be based in verified fact or supported by reliable evidence." It's a simple open reasonable policy. However, while that blanket policy wouldn't directly discriminate against UFO discussions, it would indirectly make it a lot more difficult to discuss UFOs here.
As for whether Tildes should host discussion about UFOs and alien visitations and such things... I believe it should. I believe that most topics should be open for discussion here. And, when some people raise their pro-alien-visitation talking points, other people can raise their anti-alien-visitation talking points, and the subject can be discussed at length.
I'm not sure we should make a whole group for it in these early days of Tildes, when we've got less than 25,000 registered users. We still don't even have a group for religion here, or the whole field of social science. Making a group for UFO discussions is a very low priority in that context.
Hasn't this been the issue with all forums for the last 20 years? Isn't this precisely the weakness that is used by crackpots and Nazis to take over and lower discussion quality?
You have to keep in mind the Bullshit asymmetry principle. Crackpots can spit out conspiracy theories and abduction stories way faster, and with far more gusto, than skeptics can spit out responses debunking them.
I have been on forums that allow this type of unscientific discussion and over time I notice that nobody has the energy to keep having the exact same debate over and over again. Eventually the people with more energy and more toxic rhetorical strategies win. If you are using good-faith arguments against someone who doesn't care or understand healthy debate, or worse, a bad actor, you've already lost. This is why it's a waste of time to argue with Nazis, 9/11 truthers, flat-Earthers, etc.
I'm not in favor of strict censorship. But on a closed forum, I think it's fair to say that topics discussed should be based in reality, if not science.
Aliens belongs under science if there is evidence. It belongs under news if there is something noteworthy such as a Congressional hearing. And religion belongs under philosophy.
I mean no disrespect and you've made some great arguments here. But haven't you looked at the world lately? What topics can you think of that are more toxic and divisive than religion and conspiracy theories? Everyone has piled on to (rightfully) point out that Tildes has safeguards in place to prevent its downfall. But perhaps the fact that Tildes doesn't directly endorse discussion of religion and conspiracy is a major, accidental safeguard that people aren't appreciating as much as they should. Just a thought, I could be very wrong.
I'm going to start out by saying, as the person who requested the ~humanities group, that we should absolutely discuss theology and religion here. That was part of my intention in requesting that group: to eventually have a ~humanities.theology group here (and I've expanded my thinking on this somewhat since then). The soft sciences, social studies, and humanities should be represented here, and I strongly disagree that not having them here is some sort of "safeguard". For context, I'm a secular humanist, and I've been an atheist all my life. I'm not a religious apologist by any means, but religion is a significant part of human history and human experience, and it should not be excluded from Tildes, either as a field of study or as a lived experience.
As for the rest... I'm just going to flat-out disagree with your "I don't believe in strict censorship but all these things should be censored" stance, and leave it at that.
Tildes is not perfect, but, really, you shouldn't be that worried. This is a nice place to be, and the fact that you won't see anything like that here is a testament to that. I can't say that I know, but I am sure that Deimos has been quietly removing those kinds of people since day one. And we are not even that big, so it's unlikely for those groups to feel we're even worth a concerted effort.
In any case, really, just relax and enjoy the website. Most of the time, this is not a place were you have to keep your guard up.
And welcome to Tildes ;)
Thanks! I really like Tildes so far. It reminds me of the old internet forums I loved back in the day. Well, the good parts anyway. I love that this community is full of intelligent discussion - I have been missing that feeling for years on Reddit and other communities, with Hacker News being the only exception.
You are definitely in the right place, buddy ;)
You are not at all wrong to be wary. But Deimos is a savvy webmaster/developer who designed this space to be defensible. His previous role at reddit as well as other experience I am less familiar with gave him valuable insight and skills for his work here. I hope you enjoy your time here as much as I do.
If you are curious, here are some things to investigate.
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
https://tildes.net/~tildes/189l/the_code_of_conduct_doesnt_say_enough#comments
https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/commenting-on-tildes
The documents generally are worth reading. https://docs.tildes.net/
The documents were what brought me to Tildes, but i hear you. Appreciate all good discussion from everyone either way :)
Sorry for assuming you didn't do due diligence. I do think that the conversation thread I pointed to demonstrates that there are many of us here motivated to protect the civility and inclusive nature of this space. you are not alone in your concerns and priorities.
I can't imagine how a group like this would have such a tremendous impact on the website. Tildes is tightly ran by someone who cares. There's little chance for a group to become a honeypot for bad content. Your concern is exaggerated.
In any case, as I say, there's not nearly enough content to justify ~ufo at the moment, and I don't see that changing any time soon. So you shouldn't be worried.
Fair point. I guess in the past, I have always seen it happen as a very gradual, almost imperceptible shift toward this type of thing. I guess I just worry that one day Deimos wakes up and doesn't recognize the site anymore after years of slow decay. This kind of happened with Reddit and political/meme/low quality content. Once it gets that bad, your best contributors have left and there's no way to clean up the mess anymore.
But I take your point. It would have to be very slow and subtle for it to happen here and even then it feels like I'm not giving the mods here enough credit. Tildes is a tight ship.
A bunch of new groups were recently added:
https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/17q7/group_updates_for_july_2023
So I doubt any more will get added any time soon.
But if you're interested in the subject, there are a few related tags you might be interested in:
https://tildes.net/?tag=aliens
https://tildes.net/?tag=ufo
https://tildes.net/?tag=extraterrestrials
When the congressional hearings happen, posting in say ~news (maybe ~space but you might not get a warm reception there) with these tags is probably appropriate.
This does raise the question of how to address circumstances where terms are deprecated. For example, UFOs are now referred to as UAP, largely to avoid association with conspiracy theorist cranks.
Consequently it can’t just be a situation where we simply apply both tags and then go retroactively applying the UAP tag to UFO tagged items or treating the tags as synonyms. If UFO is for the cranks and UAP is for the serious people there will need to be a process of going back to old posts and retagging them as we deem it crank or not.
I'm out of the loop. Can you link me to where we deprecated UFOs?
For a technical/scientific reason why, UFO presupposes that there is an object when for many of the supposed instances that is likely not the case. For example, a lot of the Navy ones - in all likelihood, what was being seen was the weird image artifacts related to the internal construction of FLIR camera pods. It seems more than coincidence that they kept seeing three sided objects accelerating at improbable physical speeds in their IR cameras... when common IR target pods use a three sided aperture and the movement was well within the normal angular acceleration rate of the camera gimbal.
I found find this information for you, using a quick internet search for "ufo uap", to find sources that mention both terms (i.e. probably talking about the change in terminology).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object#Terminology
https://thedebrief.org/the-pentagon-just-revealed-the-new-name-of-its-uap-investigative-office/
This transition seems to have been happening quietly for a while.
Yeah I know the new term has been all the rage. I was hoping OP's strong assertions of the why and how meant there was some official statement on the matter. I don't think so though.
Well, there's no United Nations Department of Unidentified Flying Objects to issue an official statement about whether the correct terminology is "UFO" or "UAP". Anyway, both terms have been used for decades, as Wikipedia says.
The closest I can find to an official statement by anybody is this announcement by the United States Air Force in 2020 that they're setting up an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force - rather than an Unidentified Flying Objects Task Force. That sort of makes it official that the U.S. government (at least) considers these to be UAP rather than UFO - and has done for many years.
Thanks for the links.
I think this is just me being unnecessarily pedantic. I really only hear the term deprecated in relation to software, which is my professional field. There it has a mostly reliable meaning and the use of the word almost always means there is an announcement somewhere.
I'm going to stop being hung up on its usage here, and let people talk how they want for a while.
In the nicest possible way: yes. I've been hoping you'd realise that. :)
I don't really think it's needed. As others have already pointed out if there was anything actually worth discussing it would just be news. Additionally, r/UFOs and the like have traditionally attracted a lot of anti-science discussion. While I'm sure there are a lot of very smart people in those subs, a disturbing amount of the regulars also frequent antivax, QAnon and other conservative conspiracy spaces.
I may be new here but I'd like to keep that stuff out of Tildes a while longer.
is it better than r/aliens? I hate all the unfalsifiable "believe me bro" "whistleblowers" and stuff that get so highly upvoted over there.
There already is ~space which is kind of unique when there is only one ~science for all the other sciences. This is still a small community, but if you post something in ~space or ~misc I would imagine that people might comment.
I don't think it's appropriate to post about UAPs in ~space, since it isn't proven that they come from space and almost all of the sightings are in the Earth's atmosphere.
got it. thank you for voicing your perspective.
All glory to our alien and lizard overlords.
Don't get me wrong, I still check r/UFOs now and again for when I want to get my Mulder on (I believe in the UAP phenomenon, I just don't believe they're extraterrestrial) but I don't think we need a group for UAP. As cfabbro has said the tag system would work well for that in other groups.
Speaking of though the upcoming hearings in the House and Senate along with Chuck Schumers recent amendment added to the NDAA is interesting and I'd love to see some of the stuff surrounding UAPs declassified.