13 ms·

Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some small but significant portion of the population is mentally ill, and it seems likely a few would hear a joke ("we keep

by bragr 3y ago

Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some small but significant portion of the population is mentally ill, and it seems likely a few would hear a joke ("we keep the alien space ships through that door, I'd show you but I'd have to kill you"), take it way too literally, and it becomes the focus of their mental illness. That seems not only possible but probable given the size the military industrial complex.

xref 3y ago
> likely few would hear a joke… take it way too literally… This is the premise of about half of I Think You Should Leave skits
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Have you seen the new season? Honestly they're hit or miss.
  - BinaryMachine 3y ago
    55 BURGERS 55 FRIES 55 TACOS
    - wussboy 3y ago
      This has quickly become legend in my house
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    All sketch comedy in a nutshell.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
zoogeny 3y ago
> Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities. For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence agent independently confided in him the same details as well as the same project name. He claims that ultimately he was furnished documentation evidence of this project which he refuses to provide to media (due to national security issues) but which he has provided to congress. I'm relating what he said in the interview. He could be making that all up. However, if he is relating actual events then there is a coordinated group of intelligence agents working towards the same goal.
- gonzo41 3y ago
  That Intel official is in trouble then. I can't imagine this guy's IPsec was that good. They'll dump his whole digital life and find 'the leaker' in minutes. More likely the UFO is just a 6 or 7 the generation stealth aircraft 'they' are keeping secret because otherwise you would be asking why they government is spending money on this and not health care
- coffeefirst 3y ago
  Or his colleagues are messing with him. But believing the US has a classified alien spaceship that was recovered in-tact is way more fun so let's go with that.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    It being so fun is reason enough not to believe it. When is the last time something this exciting ended up being true?
    - King-Aaron 3y ago
      Well we all suspected the government spied on us and then Snowden brought it to light. That was pretty fun.
tialaramex 3y ago
Also people who don't understand what is or is not possible easily get confused about what is impossible / difficult versus possible / easy. My guess is that a substantial fraction of otherwise competent American adults don't realise VTOL jet aircraft are a thing we can and have built for example, and that if one of them saw a prototype like the Flying Bedstead (Rolls Royce experimental platform, which doesn't look at all like an aeroplane since it doesn't need to) and was told (in jest) that's an alien spacecraft, they absolutely might believe that.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence, wouldn't you want to find out before it's too late?
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence It is not incompetence - it is orthogonal. I worked with an excellent software engineer who was rather smart - way above average. However, he believed in "Overunity energy" and paid actual money to attend conferences and buy the books. Some folks are predeposed to believing conspiracies and seeing order where there's chaos.
    - glenstein 3y ago
      Not to mention: (1) the Google engineer who "knows" what sentience looks like when chatting with a low-grade AI chatbot (2) the articles by Kevin Roose and other professional reporters about AI chatbots, believing they witnessed authentic confessions from ChatGPT that it wanted to become skynet, evincing a stunning lack of understanding of the function of large language models. (3) NASA Astronaut Edgar Mitchell who came to believe in UFOs and became cited by conspiracy theorists for decades. People at the centers of professional, institutional respectability who didn't have the wherewithal to step back and put thier impulses under the light of rational examination. It's not without precedent, and we don't have anything other than second order interpertation of information that hasn't been revealed, but we do have a blizzard of breathless reporting enteratining presumptions that are way ahead of any actual established facts.
Loquebantur 3y ago
[flagged]
- King-Aaron 3y ago
  Perhaps people simply aren't prepared to accept the implications of the government lying about this - as well as successfully covering it up - for so long. It's a big impact to a persons world view.
  - stouset 3y ago
    Perhaps people are tired of the same story playing out every few years. Someone got told by somebody else there’s a massive coverup and they definitely have the documents but they’re withholding them for reasons and no we can’t see them but we should absolutely take this story at face value because they have or had a career in the military so are a Very Reliable Person we should take very seriously. We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around.
    - pmarreck 3y ago
      > We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around. Until it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
      - King-Aaron 3y ago
        People keep saying "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something". And then someone says something, and they respond with: "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something"
        stouset 3y ago
        You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence besides one guy saying someone else overheard a conversation where another person described our secret ET program. One crank making headlines every few years with nothing that actually backs up their claims doesn’t cut it. By that metric you might as well believe the hundreds of “leakers” claiming the government is made of lizard people.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Why does it need to be a mental illness? Could just be gullible.
- wussboy 3y ago
  Or confused. Or mistaken.
dboreham 3y ago
Believing BS turns out to be an evolutionary adaptation. The truth is generally too overwhelming to process.
- zeedude 3y ago
  The “truth”
klik99 3y ago
The idea that this Grusch guy just doesn't get jokes and brought some offhand comment all the way to whistleblower status is pretty funny. Honestly this guy seems pretty competent and I'd sooner believe a psyop or Meta paying someone off to throw off press coverage during the Apple event than that. A couple of offhand remarks wouldn't drive someone this far.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  Yeah, the number of people that seem ignorant of the circumstances here is astounding. He's given classified briefings to Congress on a subject matter he was tasked with investigating (UAPs). The fact that people seem so quick to dismiss that as "some people joked and he didn't get it" is kind of wild. That would require a "Weekend at Bernie's" level of ignorance at more official levels than I'd be willing to entertain of the bat.
GolfPopper 3y ago
Don't neglect the people who are not mentally ill, but still can't tell the difference between "Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (stuff we couldn't accurately ID for a variety of reasons) that's classified (because some of it legitimately need to be secret, and we over-classify a lot)" with ""Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (little green men in flying saucers) that's classified (because we're part of a conspiracy hiding the existence of intelligent alien life)".
- notahacker 3y ago
  And the people who are not mentally ill who think that being an authority on the US's UFO programmes is a nice retirement gig that comes with none of the downsides of actual whistleblowing...
13of40 3y ago
Just to stay grounded in reality, yes there is intelligent non-human life in space. No, based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them. Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception - either that or the guy with the big shirt who says we have alien spacecraft in warehouses is a nut.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception That's not how I read it. It seems to me that there are rather a lot of sane, intelligent people in the USG and especially the US military who believe in aliens with flying saucers, and alien abductions. From my perspective, it looks more like a "mass psychosis" than a conspiracy. I suspect the abduction stories are related to evangelical beliefs in The Rapture. QAnon tales of satanic pizza-parlour basements in a building with no basement seem to have many believers who are bright, and have no history of mental illness.
- stef25 3y ago
  > based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them It's probably too an obvious question to ask but seeing how knowledge is continually expanded can that claim really be made with known unknowns and unknown unknows and all that? Or are we really at the edge of all knowledge of astro/physics?
jonathanstrange 3y ago
This. It's annoying that people forget or ignore that. Within any population large enough, it's a matter of basic probability that you're going to see a number of inexplicable deaths, suicides, rare diseases, mental illness, bullshitters and notorious liars, disgruntled employees out for a revenge, conspiracy theorists, Qanon followers, and so on and so forth.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
soerxpso 3y ago
From what the commenter you're replying to said, it sounds like the guy was shown deeper evidence than just a joke. The tendency to assume that conspiracies don't ever happen is just as fallacious as the tendency to assume that they always do. In the particular case, the coverup would not be challenging (only a handful of people would be aware that it's "fake"), there would be motive (convincing China, Russia, etc. that new aircraft we experiment with might actually be extraterrestrial + convincing them to chase ghosts + generally messing with them), and there would be means (the theory that previous-commenter just expressed, where agents selected from psych test results and shown fake classified information). Not to mention US Intelligence's recorded history of doing some very outlandish and "conspiratorial" things. Of course, no theory in particular (conspiracy or "grounded") is going to be anything more than speculation given limited the level of evidence that's actually on the table.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  Also, he was in a position such that people would have confided such evidence to him. We're not talking about an Apache mechanic overhearing random conversations. He was on the team investigating UAPs for the gov, and people came to him with evidence regarding UAPs.
  - SauciestGNU 3y ago
    I also read he was a GS-15 (civilian equivalent to a colonel). Not just anyone ends up at that level. Colonels in the military command large units, think "senior director" level in industry. I believe this guy is probably acting out of a duty to root out what he believes is unlawful behavior (hiding activities from Congress). I don't believe the ET claims personally.

by bragr 3y ago

xref 3y ago

> likely few would hear a joke… take it way too literally… This is the premise of about half of I Think You Should Leave skits

satvikpendem 3y ago
Have you seen the new season? Honestly they're hit or miss.
- BinaryMachine 3y ago
  55 BURGERS 55 FRIES 55 TACOS
  - wussboy 3y ago
    This has quickly become legend in my house
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  All sketch comedy in a nutshell.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

zoogeny 3y ago

> Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities. For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence agent independently confided in him the same details as well as the same project name. He claims that ultimately he was furnished documentation evidence of this project which he refuses to provide to media (due to national security issues) but which he has provided to congress. I'm relating what he said in the interview. He could be making that all up. However, if he is relating actual events then there is a coordinated group of intelligence agents working towards the same goal.

gonzo41 3y ago
That Intel official is in trouble then. I can't imagine this guy's IPsec was that good. They'll dump his whole digital life and find 'the leaker' in minutes. More likely the UFO is just a 6 or 7 the generation stealth aircraft 'they' are keeping secret because otherwise you would be asking why they government is spending money on this and not health care
coffeefirst 3y ago
Or his colleagues are messing with him. But believing the US has a classified alien spaceship that was recovered in-tact is way more fun so let's go with that.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  It being so fun is reason enough not to believe it. When is the last time something this exciting ended up being true?
  - King-Aaron 3y ago
    Well we all suspected the government spied on us and then Snowden brought it to light. That was pretty fun.

tialaramex 3y ago

Also people who don't understand what is or is not possible easily get confused about what is impossible / difficult versus possible / easy. My guess is that a substantial fraction of otherwise competent American adults don't realise VTOL jet aircraft are a thing we can and have built for example, and that if one of them saw a prototype like the Flying Bedstead (Rolls Royce experimental platform, which doesn't look at all like an aeroplane since it doesn't need to) and was told (in jest) that's an alien spacecraft, they absolutely might believe that.

Loquebantur 3y ago
If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence, wouldn't you want to find out before it's too late?
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence It is not incompetence - it is orthogonal. I worked with an excellent software engineer who was rather smart - way above average. However, he believed in "Overunity energy" and paid actual money to attend conferences and buy the books. Some folks are predeposed to believing conspiracies and seeing order where there's chaos.
  - glenstein 3y ago
    Not to mention: (1) the Google engineer who "knows" what sentience looks like when chatting with a low-grade AI chatbot (2) the articles by Kevin Roose and other professional reporters about AI chatbots, believing they witnessed authentic confessions from ChatGPT that it wanted to become skynet, evincing a stunning lack of understanding of the function of large language models. (3) NASA Astronaut Edgar Mitchell who came to believe in UFOs and became cited by conspiracy theorists for decades. People at the centers of professional, institutional respectability who didn't have the wherewithal to step back and put thier impulses under the light of rational examination. It's not without precedent, and we don't have anything other than second order interpertation of information that hasn't been revealed, but we do have a blizzard of breathless reporting enteratining presumptions that are way ahead of any actual established facts.

Loquebantur 3y ago

[flagged]

King-Aaron 3y ago
Perhaps people simply aren't prepared to accept the implications of the government lying about this - as well as successfully covering it up - for so long. It's a big impact to a persons world view.
- stouset 3y ago
  Perhaps people are tired of the same story playing out every few years. Someone got told by somebody else there’s a massive coverup and they definitely have the documents but they’re withholding them for reasons and no we can’t see them but we should absolutely take this story at face value because they have or had a career in the military so are a Very Reliable Person we should take very seriously. We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    > We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around. Until it's not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
    - King-Aaron 3y ago
      People keep saying "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something". And then someone says something, and they respond with: "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something"
      - stouset 3y ago
        You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence besides one guy saying someone else overheard a conversation where another person described our secret ET program. One crank making headlines every few years with nothing that actually backs up their claims doesn’t cut it. By that metric you might as well believe the hundreds of “leakers” claiming the government is made of lizard people.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Why does it need to be a mental illness? Could just be gullible.

wussboy 3y ago
Or confused. Or mistaken.

dboreham 3y ago

Believing BS turns out to be an evolutionary adaptation. The truth is generally too overwhelming to process.

zeedude 3y ago
The “truth”

klik99 3y ago

The idea that this Grusch guy just doesn't get jokes and brought some offhand comment all the way to whistleblower status is pretty funny. Honestly this guy seems pretty competent and I'd sooner believe a psyop or Meta paying someone off to throw off press coverage during the Apple event than that. A couple of offhand remarks wouldn't drive someone this far.

BobbyJo 3y ago
Yeah, the number of people that seem ignorant of the circumstances here is astounding. He's given classified briefings to Congress on a subject matter he was tasked with investigating (UAPs). The fact that people seem so quick to dismiss that as "some people joked and he didn't get it" is kind of wild. That would require a "Weekend at Bernie's" level of ignorance at more official levels than I'd be willing to entertain of the bat.

GolfPopper 3y ago

Don't neglect the people who are not mentally ill, but still can't tell the difference between "Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (stuff we couldn't accurately ID for a variety of reasons) that's classified (because some of it legitimately need to be secret, and we over-classify a lot)" with ""Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (little green men in flying saucers) that's classified (because we're part of a conspiracy hiding the existence of intelligent alien life)".

notahacker 3y ago
And the people who are not mentally ill who think that being an authority on the US's UFO programmes is a nice retirement gig that comes with none of the downsides of actual whistleblowing...

13of40 3y ago

Just to stay grounded in reality, yes there is intelligent non-human life in space. No, based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them. Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception - either that or the guy with the big shirt who says we have alien spacecraft in warehouses is a nut.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception That's not how I read it. It seems to me that there are rather a lot of sane, intelligent people in the USG and especially the US military who believe in aliens with flying saucers, and alien abductions. From my perspective, it looks more like a "mass psychosis" than a conspiracy. I suspect the abduction stories are related to evangelical beliefs in The Rapture. QAnon tales of satanic pizza-parlour basements in a building with no basement seem to have many believers who are bright, and have no history of mental illness.
stef25 3y ago
> based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them It's probably too an obvious question to ask but seeing how knowledge is continually expanded can that claim really be made with known unknowns and unknown unknows and all that? Or are we really at the edge of all knowledge of astro/physics?

jonathanstrange 3y ago

This. It's annoying that people forget or ignore that. Within any population large enough, it's a matter of basic probability that you're going to see a number of inexplicable deaths, suicides, rare diseases, mental illness, bullshitters and notorious liars, disgruntled employees out for a revenge, conspiracy theorists, Qanon followers, and so on and so forth.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

soerxpso 3y ago

From what the commenter you're replying to said, it sounds like the guy was shown deeper evidence than just a joke. The tendency to assume that conspiracies don't ever happen is just as fallacious as the tendency to assume that they always do. In the particular case, the coverup would not be challenging (only a handful of people would be aware that it's "fake"), there would be motive (convincing China, Russia, etc. that new aircraft we experiment with might actually be extraterrestrial + convincing them to chase ghosts + generally messing with them), and there would be means (the theory that previous-commenter just expressed, where agents selected from psych test results and shown fake classified information). Not to mention US Intelligence's recorded history of doing some very outlandish and "conspiratorial" things. Of course, no theory in particular (conspiracy or "grounded") is going to be anything more than speculation given limited the level of evidence that's actually on the table.

BobbyJo 3y ago
Also, he was in a position such that people would have confided such evidence to him. We're not talking about an Apache mechanic overhearing random conversations. He was on the team investigating UAPs for the gov, and people came to him with evidence regarding UAPs.
- SauciestGNU 3y ago
  I also read he was a GS-15 (civilian equivalent to a colonel). Not just anyone ends up at that level. Colonels in the military command large units, think "senior director" level in industry. I believe this guy is probably acting out of a duty to root out what he believes is unlawful behavior (hiding activities from Congress). I don't believe the ET claims personally.