The Hill: The Pentagon is lying about UFOs | Hacker News Reader

The Hill: The Pentagon is lying about UFOs

thehill.com

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Title: "The Hill:..."

Article: "THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL"

:thinking_emoji:

Argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

It is particularly fallacious when the topic is 'scrutinizing actions of authorities'.

I find it highly worrisome, people apparently prefer to be told what to think by "authorities" than to learn how to rationally check and judge arguments for their validity. It's tribalism vs enlightenment.

A far less extreme take could be that a random agitator writing an opinion piece has a lot less of a reputation to lose than a publisher or professional journalist.

"Reputation" is a crude social heuristic. It's also authority in disguise.

No it's not. The police have authority. Your doctor has credibility. Your doctor doesn't order you around. The doctor's reputation is an aggregation of the public's mood.

You don't understand.

The point is that the title implies a claim (that "The Hill" endorses it) that the article denies (it doesn't).

The title is click-bait.

The point here is people succumbing to confirmation bias and circular reasoning. That article is no simple 'clickbait'-nonsense.

Objectively, importance is judged via cumulative consequences over time. The event of contact with non-human higher intelligence can hardly be over-stated in that regard.

Being made fools of by your government to such a degree, you would risk missing a potentially world-changing event, is also quite something.

This discussion applies to every Opinion section piece.

* No, it doesn't necessarily represent the view of the editorial board. That why 'Opinion' has its own special section.

* Yes, they did find it at least noteworthy enough to publish.

> Argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

Only when the authority isn't authoritative.

Authority is not inherently bad, and in some cases what an authority recommends is going to be significantly better than whatever conclusion an individual comes to via their 'enlightenment'.

Maybe you're smart and great at critical thinking and have a high level of self-confidence that you could investigate an issue and reach the right, or at least a good enough conclusion, but I don't think that's true for most people.

It's certainly not true for the "authorities" in question here. Meaning, they indeed aren't "authoritative", as you would have it.

You essentially refuse to seriously check for that. I guess, because you have so little confidence in what your peers would do if they found out?

Authoritativeness isn't reliably conveyed ex officio. Putting your head in the sand isn't a solution for that.

> It's certainly not true for the "authorities" in question here. Meaning, they indeed aren't "authoritative", as you would have it.

Weird use of scarequotes. And yeah, no one is claiming the person who wrote the opinion is an authority. You made a generalization though, and that's what I was responding to.

> I guess, because you have so little confidence in what your peers would do if they found out?

Found out what? I don't even have confidence that most of my "peers" would think it's important to check in the first place.

I actually appreciate The Hill's opinion section and contributor editorials, as they regularly pierce my bubble and expose me to some, frankly, batshit opinions and bad ideas. But I think in moderation that's a good thing.

But I give more weight to The Hill's actual authors and editors. The name means something to me. Same as The Times, The Post, or (formerly) GiantBomb.

Does seem pretty impressive that the aliens manage to make themselves visible only to military operations subject to routine secrecy requirements and not to the civilian aviation equipment that spends 1-2 orders of magnitude more time in the air.

Long ago I heard the same argument in a Brazilian television show presenting a debate between "UFO specialists" and astronomers.

One astronomer posed that same question: "Dude, our job consists of staring at the sky for nights and nights with very powerful equipment and we never saw those things that you keep finding with naked eyes. How do you do that?".

The "ufologist" just did a "deer in the headlights" look.

Civilian pilots see UFOs, it’s just that no one cares. But when a military officer reports seeing something and it’s repeated on radar, it’s a bit harder to ignore.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2021/06/26...

> Davenport says he regularly receives reports of UAP sightings from FAA headquarters in Virginia, estimating that he received six to eight reports between November 2020 and May 2021.

45,000 flights a day and fewer than two reports of unknown sightings a month.

Commercial airline pilots truly are some of the most reliable among humans.

Well it’s not like the skies are saturated with UFOs.

And it’s also not like there’s much to gain for pilots to file reports like this and single themselves out.

But there’s enough smoke to make me wonder where the fire is

If it had beyond human capabilities it means pilot judged the size incorrectly. Pilots are routinely flying in a plane-sized objects among other plane-sized objects and tends to subconsciously assign plane size to everything they see. It was a drone or a bird or small balloon.

Ironically, the DoD has internally concluded those UAPs to be AI controlled craft and investors are already lining up, demanding access to siloed intellectual property concerning recovered technology.

While people here are busy mocking the seeming absurdity of the premises, that very absurdity has been determined to be a kind of intelligence test and deliberately administered social stimulus.

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