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Materialist or skeptical views are also comfort food for the mind, though. It's just comfort for a mind that's differently tuned.

These beliefs project a very basic, easily understood view of reality - discount vast amounts of difficult or inconvenient experiential data which has been with mankind since the beginning (ETs, visions, dreams, ghosts, the paranormal, faith healing, synchronicities, etc.) - and papers over a variety of huge and fundamental questions (origins, purpose, life after death, etc) with a very solid, tangible, and pat answer.

People who are deep into materialism will also see materialism everywhere, so the effect also happens that you mentioned with your grandmother.

People's abilities to disregard evidence selectively is more powerful in my opinion than your comment seems to give credit for.

Look into crop circles, if this topic interests you. I think how deeply you look into it will be a reflection of your beliefs - and more than that, of what you want to believe! (Same for each of us, generally speaking!)

Look into Richard Dolan's youtube presentations.

Now I just clued you into two rabbit holes- how deep will you go? See, your beliefs will determine that. Your desires to believe or not believe will determine how much you look.

I was interested, and wanted to believe, so I read 3000+ pages of Dolan's writings and watched 10+ hours of YouTube documentaries. Now I know practically "everything" (as far as I care to) about these topics. But it's because I wanted to know, I wanted to believe.

And how is the written or verbal testimony of hundreds of thousands of witnesses over time not counted as "evidence"?

Changing the minds of skeptics is impossible. People believe what they want to believe, in my opinion.

>Even a half eaten discarded alien candy bar would change the minds of almost any skeptic.

I don't think you've thought this one through fully. So you have this candy bar - what does it look like? Where will you have it analyzed? When you get the analysis back, who are you going to show? People will still be easily able to discount anything short of a direct landing of alien craft or a cyber-weapon that demonstrably altered reality. I'm not even skeptic and I can discount your candy bar in my mind in half a second - it just looks like a normal candy bar. Or just looks like a shiny candy bar. Or maybe its a prank made up by an elaborate joker. etc. etc. etc.

Just look into crop circles on YouTube. It's plainly obvious to me anyway what is going on here.

But if a person doesn't want to see or believe, it's almost like a magical shield goes over their eyes - they simply won't see it, or won't be able to acknowledge it.

>I know the History channel is complete trash, but this series was apparently done in collaboration with MUFON.

The history channel is not complete trash. They have good experts on there and their productions are beautiful - what are you comparing them against?

>These things are almost certainly worthy of study, but the entire field of interest needs to be completely cleansed of the woo and pseudoscience that plagues it.

Yeah, the guy who invented Newtonian physics believed in an all-powerful Creator-God who created the world in a week or so. It would be fun to see you sit down with him and explain to him that the basis of his worldview was, in your opinion, 'woo'.

>The other thing is that actual science isn't very sexy.

Actual science also doesn't explain very much. It punts on the question of consciousness and on the question of ultimate things - the two most significant questions that a person seeking 'scienza' could probably ask.

Amen!

Creditors get their power by virtue of the monopoly they have on the creation of money. This is a right restricted to an extremely small subset of people, which are basically the government and large banking institutions. This right is backed by violence. I think the comparison between Mafia and banking cartels has merit.

thanks, looking into it!

thanks, that kind of info is useful to me.

project for a friend that could become his business/SaaS platform.

yeah fastmail rocks. I can confirm this.

Its my opinion that they are out there, their communications with us have already been very, very extensive. This guy is a good place to start researching the phenomenon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbdJMl0H64

Thanks Stegosaurus, for articulating so well what I have also been strongly feeling about work.

I liked this part especially: "For me it's not so much the absolute requirements (i.e. 8 hours a day, these specific hours, can't do anything else within that time) but rather the subordinate aspect of having no control over that."

I would restate that in my own way as follows:

I consider myself thirsty for life, thirsty and desirous of enjoying my life experiences. Once someone has put me under contractual obligation to 'just do x' for a significant slice of my life, its really set into motion the pendulum's swing in the other direction: How can I not, almost immediately, begin to subconsciously yearn for the day when I can live differently? Whatever it is, whether its an office commute or even a lax remote job (hard to admit in the latter case), whether I'm building widgets or contributing to a huge multi-application 'Widgetron', confine me and you all but guarantee that one day I will seek release from you. It may take years, but thats life for me.

I don't think our society has achieved ethics yet, hasn't yet demonstrably earned ethical values for itself. And freedom is a value that is even higher or more rarified than ethics or the golden rule. In place of that we have a rampant survival ethos, with bits of social status signaling / prestige-mongering thrown in. Asking for self-determination in this environment can appear at times like walking into a soup kitchen and requesting their finest tiramisu. How dare you be so bold, slave?

And yet, nothing can stop me from trying.