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It's not harmless. If enough people believe there are aliens the government can use that to do basically whatever they want because now were in danger from the
by dokem 4y ago
It's not harmless. If enough people believe there are aliens the government can use that to do basically whatever they want because now were in danger from the ultimate boogieman. Re covid hysteria.
- IncRnd 4y agoA general disbelief in aliens will not stop the government from doing as it wants.
- bell-cot 4y agoHistory suggests that governments wanting to get away with crap do not need anything remotely resembling "the ultimate boogieman" to do it. And - my impression is that folks who believe in aliens tend to believe that the aliens are less dangerous (to ordinary people) than the government. BTW, what if people started believing in near-earth asteroids? Imagine what governments could justify then...
- daveslash 4y agoI agree with you. It's not harmless. When I was a kid, I'd tuck a small FM radio under my pillow and secretly listen to Coast-to-Coast with Art Bell when I was supposed to be sleeping. The stories about aliens, immortals, bigfoot, the Philadelphia Experiment, and holes to hell were mysterious, intriguing, exciting. I grew out of that and looked back on it as "harmless fun", like telling ghost stories around a campfire. I've changed my tune in recent years, seeing how destructive these conspiracies can be to society as a whole. Any single one conspiracy or ghost story isn't so bad, but they compound and result in a dysfunctional society less capable of digesting fact and thinking critically about nuanced topics. (In retrospect, I now recognize Art Bell himself never took it seriously and considered it Entertainment, almost satire, like the World Weekly News. But many people didn't pick up on that and did take it seriously...)