Interview with Mick West on UFOs and Conspiracy Psychology
Added 2023-06-09 06:57:57 +0000 UTCDoes exactly what it says on the tin but this time with video.
We cover all things UFOs, including the recent high profile claims of US government secrets, and learn about the secret organisation contacting Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein.
Unedited!,,:
Comments
If anyone is interested in the UFO mythology, there is a 90s TV series called “Dark Skies” that starts with the Roswell crash and ties major 20th-c events to alien activity. Also, Carl Sagan discovers a tenth planet broadcasting alien signals. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Skies
Mark K
2023-06-22 01:22:34 +0000 UTCGreat discussion that I found very educational and helpful in refining my own thinking. Thanks.
Conal dunn
2023-06-11 11:50:57 +0000 UTCMatt mentioned the book 'The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee' by Mike Clelland. I'm not familiar with Clelland or the book. Coincidences being inevitable and more likely than people think, and people noticing/remembering coincidences when primed to do so are an interesting psychology+statistics subject. Not sure if the author takes a mathematical/skeptical perspective or if he's claiming there's some underlying causality phenomenon happening. It was published by and has a foreword written by Richard Dolan, who is a prominent figure in the UFO community. He frequently participates in alien conferences and speaking events. He just led one earlier this week alongside other well-known UFO figures Danny Sheehan and Linda Moulton Howe. I find people like Sheehan and Garry Nolan interesting. They are both professionals with respectable careers in field unrelated to military, aerospace, or UFOs/paranormal (until they joined and became outspoken in the UFO community), and they seem reasonable, competent, pro-rigorous methodology in general, but on one topic they are very willing to believe claims (that would involve scientifically groundbreaking factors if true) with seemingly no evidence. You all briefly discussed the "lived experience" factor. I think there's something to that. If the person has had a very personally-significant experience (whether real or imagined/misremembered), it causes an in-group affinity with other people who claim to have had similar experiences, and those claimed experiences are much more likely to believed, on much less evidence, because having more people saying roughly similar things to them validates their perception/memory of their own experience.
Kyle Ferriter
2023-06-10 19:34:23 +0000 UTCThe question that came to my mind regarding the belief system of the "true believers" in the UFO mythopoetic milieu is, whether it's useful or a hindrance to think of it as a "new religious movement"? Obviously I'm aiming the question primarily at Chris here. As a layperson, on the one hand there do seem to be very strongly held faith-based beliefs here, a social structure of mutual support for true believers and organised hostility to apostates and naysayers, and an accumulation of persistent lore or mythos. On the other hand, the whole discourse around "new religious movements" seems to have been set up as an attempt to make a clean break from all of the baggage and prejudices that have bogged down "cult" discourse, but maybe some of the same problems have now seeped through into NRM discourse as well? The related question would be whether the core of the faith is the aliens themselves, or are the aliens just a macguffin and the core is the picture of the government as hostile conspirator, keeping the population (sheeple) in the dark?
Paul Bowman
2023-06-09 15:26:30 +0000 UTCKinda cool to see Mick West come on here. I remember showing his website to a collegue in 2015(?) as this person had gone down the flat earth rabbit hole. Didn't really help but at least it was something
William LEGRAIN
2023-06-09 12:05:01 +0000 UTCHow could we get a steelman of the UFO people? Are there rational believers worth engaging with? Could we even have something like a debate without it being silly?
Paul Sees
2023-06-09 10:32:22 +0000 UTCSo glad you asked that question about his area of expertise Chris K . Have heard him labelled by some as “just a video game programmer”(Rogan et al) . When in fact, it provides a great basis to understand correctly, what is going on . Much like when James Randi and other magicians were much better placed to debunk paranormal claims than inexperienced and credulous scientists . For what its worth , anyone who has worked in a 3D virtual space and game engines/3D software in general can attest to how misleading what it is you are seeing can be .
Colin Fardey
2023-06-09 08:22:52 +0000 UTCThis one’s a bit killjoy-y!
Simon Patience
2023-06-09 07:02:53 +0000 UTC
