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Comment by rocgf | Hacker News Reader

Whatever the truth may be, we now have people testifying in Congress - under oath - that the UFO phenomenon is real. David Grusch has gone through the official whistleblower process in order to make this happen, and there have been private briefings with the ICIG and members of Congress, who have given credence to his claims [1].

So while it's difficult to know what the truth is at this point in time, it's either that aliens are real or there are a lot of nutjobs in the US government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower...

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Nutjobs have already been proven to exist and are in ample supply. Odds are it's not aliens.

> it's either that aliens are real or there are a lot of nutjobs in the US government.

I know that at least one of these things is true. I can prove it. I wish it wasn't the boring one.

It’s actually a false dilemma. They’re real, but they’re non-human Earthlings living here in an environment we haven’t yet discovered or stumbled upon is the option few talk about, fits the full body of evidence better than any other explanation, and would prove most everyone wrong in different ways. So I bet that is what is going on.

Edit: it’s always funny that I get downvoted for just writing a theory out that is a pretty good one, as though you’re supposed to downvote people for this kind of post. People get really upset by this subject.

I don’t think anybody is upset by what you wrote, it just sounds like a nutty theory with no evidence, which doesn’t contribute to an informative discussion.

Lots of people in this thread are speculating about the plausibility of an ET hypothesis, which is far more nutty than what I wrote here. What I wrote here is unorthodox, but an ET hypothesis comparatively is absurd, particularly if you are going to entertain that based on the existing evidence. The existing evidence would not imply ET as much as another Earth species interacting with us. It also can imply that people are crazy or lying, of course, but I'm talking within the realm where we are going to speculate about ET.

You are being downvoted because it’s obvious that a cabal of hyper intelligent dogs fits the full body of evidence better than any other explanation.

I don't think it's a pretty good one. It sounds crazy. What do they eat? Where is any evidence of their existence and history? Where do they make their technology? Why is there no heat signature? Why not a single one ever tried to run away and expose them, or just got lost into our world?

Yeah I mean ultimately I can put forward falsifiable tests for most of these. My hypothesis is they are in a large void under one of the oceans, in physical pods. They don't eat solid food, but absorb a liquid diet. They probably do produce a heat signature, if we looked. I don't have a good explanation for the relative lack of evidence of their surface phase, but we do have some evidence that timelines around technological civilization are very off base. For your last point, I think most of them are not physically able to travel to the surface at all, and any instance of crashed manned UAPs (which imo, are no longer manned at all) may have explanations of the kind you state. But that's all been eliminated now - I would be surprised to find out we have any surface visitations by anything other than things which absolutely must be manned. (Of which I can speculate, but the null set is a possibility.)

Considering how many recent supposed ufo events have been debunked I'd say it's the latter

Nutjobs are literally everywhere

Consider the general prevalence of conspiracy theories on the American right - Alex Jones, qanon, stop the steal, etc.

Consider that many on the left avoid jobs in the military, where most of the UFO stuff is coming from.

I'm on team 'lots of nut jobs.'

Conspiracy theories are a political tool that Democrats and Republicans use on an uniformed audience. It's not just a right-wing phenomenon.

In the sense of existence, sure. But it's pretty clear that one side has gone far, far further down the conspiracy hole. Can you think of anything in the dem side as widespread as, say, the ivermectin+antivax crap was?

This stuff isn't new, either, but the scale of it is. A major wing of the Republican party is effectively the John Birch Society, who were nuts mostly kept at arms length in a previous generation. And that's seemingly the way that many Republican voters want their party to behave.

'Can you think of anything in the dem side as widespread as, say, the ivermectin+antivax crap was?' Russian conspiracies. To be clear, I think the left and the right are bad.

> either that aliens are real or there are a lot of nutjobs in the US government

Well, they caught David Grusch in multiple factual lies he made during that congressional hearing and called him out on it immediately after[0]:

> Contrary to assertions made in the hearing, the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO.

> Further, some information reportedly provided to Congress has not been provided to the office, Kirkpatrick said, “raising additional questions about the true commitment to transparency by some Congressional elements.”

With his credibility already being questionable, those easy to disprove things don't make his credibility look any better at all. So I am heavily leaning towards the nutjob take on the situation. If we have presidents willing to perjure themselves during a trial, I can easily believe we have a bunch of random government employees willing to make up lies in congressional hearings.

P.S. It doesn't have to be all nutjobs either. All it takes is one nutjob and a good number of opportunistic grifters.

0. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/pentagon-ufo-boss-c...

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