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Comment by dontbenebby | Hacker News Reader

My favorite conspiracy theory (emphasis on theory, this is pure speculation) is they're Chinese drones.

The logic basically goes that 3M accidentally created a force field[1] in a factory[2], factories are mostly in China now, so if "running a factory" leads to antigravity tech, China would be the ones to develop it.

As much as "I want to believe", if it's true they're not American, it's quite possible they're not alien, just foreign.

I've noticed a weird kind of racism in some folks who talk about China: they simultaneously think they'll conquer the world and that they can't invent technology on their own.

It's certainly interesting logic to conclude "If it's not American, it must be alien".

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-plastic-sheets-an...

[2] http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html

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“I've noticed a weird kind of racism in some folks who talk about China: they simultaneously think they'll conquer the world and that they can't invent technology on their own.”

That’s just normal racism. Mexicans are too lazy to work, but come here and steal our jobs. Muslims come here to force Sharia Law on everyone, but fail to integrate and keep to themselves. Illegals are using public services for free, but pay taxes using fake information and are criminals. Obama was incompetent, but also managed to build complex shadow government. You can just keep going.

By using a dichotomous framework of stereotypes you can easily make a case against an entire population because if one negative stereotype doesn’t fit a given individual you simple apply the other one.

Any blanket criticism of millions or billions of people is bound to be highly inaccurate and also have some non zero degree of accuracy just due to the sheer numbers of people and how common these traits are in any population.

Racism is taking the non-zero existence of a complaint and extrapolating it to the broader population without caring to get to know the individual people.

Unfortunately, it was probably an evolutionary survival technique that worked thousands of years ago but has pretty disastrous consequences today.

Why do you think it is a biological trait rather than a politically useful tool? What do we know about racism outside the context of complex mass societies with highly stratified classes of members? Maybe it's an effective con and not a natural instict.

Don't we know that chimps engage in large scale tribal warfare. And that our ancestors killed off the Neanderthals

What's that got to do with racism of the type this thread has been about?

edit, to be clear, what sort of contradictory, no-win steriotypes to chimps have about other chimp groups or did early modern humans have about neanderthals?

It's racism to doubt that China has antigravity ships and that this is the obvious commonsense answer to these sightings?

Prior to the US having a nuclear program there were papers being published on the possibility of fusion reactions that split the atom. These papers then disappeared during the Manhattan project, signaling that research was happening which was being suppressed.

Is there evidence that China had papers on antigravity research and that such papers have recently stopped being published.

Assumption: the military is in control of this narrative and the narrative is meant for the consumption of our adversaries. Conclusion: the intended narrative is that we are testing advanced systems against our own battle groups. Beware. I don’t know what the tech is or if it’s as sensational as being reported by the “witnesses” but the intent is to give the impression that we have highly sophisticated tech waiting in the wings

>the intent is to give the impression that we have highly sophisticated tech waiting in the wings

Interesting theory. Considering all the hubbub I've heard about "anti carrier cruise missiles[1]" lately, it could make sense there's an incentive to project strength.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_ballistic_missile#Ch...

The problem with that is, there are credible sightings from quite a while ago, before drones really took off, not to mention the speed, acceleration and size of the "drones" are far superior to any drone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai...

Airport employees, pilots and bystanders have all reported seeing it, but it was dismissed. I remember seeing an interview with a retired Air Force officer who said that nothing's being done about the supposed UFOs is because once you start working on something people will demand results, and if you say we can't do a damn thing about these, your career will be in jeopardy.

Pretty big gap between static elec fields and what's being described in the article.

> I've noticed a weird kind of racism in some folks who talk about China: they simultaneously think they'll conquer the world and that they can't invent technology on their own.

China is the new USSR :)

The US - both the general public and the state itself - vastly overestimated the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces.

I don’t think that’s true for China, at least not today.

The Soviets had vast presence in Europe and were credible ideological opponents.

China is contained in South East Asia and poses no ideological threat to the West.

Are you unaware of China's Belt and Road initiative? Confucious Institutes at U.S. universities?

Plus, countries like Korea are nervous with all this talk of closing bases. China is a likely new ally if they feel they can't rely on the US.

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