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I don’t agree with censorship, but the dude isn’t exactly wrong in what he’s saying either. The hearings are based on nothing solid, nothing but one person, and that person essentially overhearing rumors of weird programs in the hall. There isn’t anything here to see, in my view, and quite a lot that hinges on things we have no evidence of. In fact, the people who should be interested, the physics professors, the astrophysicists, the xenobiologists and just plain ordinary biologists are not interested at all.
It is a conspiracy theory, and one based in fantasies that almost everyone here desperately wants to be true. We want the warp drive, we want Spock or Worf Or Chewy. But there isn’t real evidence. We haven’t found anything that points to life. It could well be out there, there could be an alien out there looking in our direction, but without proof, without evidence of a ship, a space station, or some planet out there with its own version of starlink, it’s just fantasy. These UAPs are angels for people who are not religious.
I’ll strongly agree that we should allow rigorous debate. I don’t want censorship here or anywhere else, it bad for truth detection. But I’m finding myself rather surprised at the rate with which nerds are willing to toss rationality over the side of the boat the minute they want something to be true badly enough. People (not all of them here) willing to hand wave known physics, or the complete lack of evidence in deep space, or the complete disinterest of subject matter expert’s because they just want it to be true.
But that's precisely why they should be discussed and debunked, if possible. If you shut everything down, then what is left is "The Congressional hearing is a serious investigation and they are taking this seriously so that means it is really true aliens exist and we have evidence they visited Earth" going around credulous people. Isn't that way more harmful?
I said we should allow debate. I would very much prefer that there’s a factual debate. My thinking is that when talking about something like that, it should require that the people debating should have to cite sources. It’s not that complicated, things where a conspiracy is claimed need to cite reputable sources to back up the claim. That’s the entire thing— I do take the idea of aliens fairly seriously, which is why I’m being very careful to not make claims that are not backed up by either known physics or physical evidence. That, to me, is part of taking it seriously. I feel the same way about the claims of election fraud in 2020 — it’s a very important debate which is why you have to look at the evidence and not just go with what you want.
The reason I think for contentious and serious topics a rule like “cite your sources” would be a good idea (and again I’m not for banning any topic, or any argument) is that it keeps the debate to facts and not opinions or supposition or cherry-picking of sources. If not, the debate itself becomes a mess of claims many of which will turn out to be dubious or fraudulent or opinion pieces.
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Then you've conceded the entire point, and nothing else you wrote is relevant to the conversation. No one cares what the dude thinks and says about the hearings, in fact conspiracists duking it out with anti-conspiracists is part of the fun. It's the censorship that's the problem.
It’s relevant in the sense that without the toolkit of critical thinking and a devotion to following the truth wherever it actually leads is dangerous. And I do in that sense agree with at least acknowledging the issues with conspiracies especially for people without the skills or the base knowledge to actually investigate these sorts of ideas. Qanon took off precisely because it was discussed by people with few reasoning skills in an atmosphere where those beliefs went unchallenged. This place has an above average record on both points. And I think were I in charge of a debate on these issues, I’d insist on effort-posting and citations of claims of facts. This would at least keep the debate fairly honest.
Lots of things are dangerous, and people are free to point out the danger all they want. Personally I find your self-appointment as a critical thinker devoted to following the truth wherever it leads to be dangerous. The only issue OP had here was the censorship, so I still don't see how pointing at the danger of the censored idea is supposed to be relevant.
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