Thursday, July 22, 2021

Aliens?

     Recently there has been a lot of talk and speculation about aliens and UFOs due to the release of an unclassified report from the US intelligence community regarding unidentified flying objects. The report examined over 100 instances of unexplained objects caught on camera in order to look for both signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life or advanced technology from another country. The report essentially concluded that there is not any sufficient evidence of either of these, yet offers no definitive answer for what the objects are. Because there is an absence of explanation people on social media have jumped to the conclusion that because the sightings have no perfect explanation, it must mean there are aliens coming to earth in futuristic spaceships that defy physics as we know it.

These claims fail to consider the parts of the report that say there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that these sightings were signs of extraterrestrial life, and because of this the people who are immediately jumping to the conclusion of aliens are displaying fast thinking. For one thing most of these people likely have believed in alien activity on earth already, or they want to believe it, and because of this bias and presumption they have used  this report as confirmation bias. They also likely fall victim to theory induced blindness due to their willingness to believe in aliens as a result of their theory and belief that extraterrestrial beings have visited earth. However believers are not the only ones who have fallen victim to fast thinking in this situation, as many deniers have displayed similar behavior in order to defend their theories and confirm their biases. A slow thinking fair minded critical thinker in this situation would acknowledge the fact that the explainability of these occurrences is likely due to things such as lens flares, party balloons caught in high speed atmospheric winds, or other logical explanations while also admitting that while the existence of extraterrestrial life is likely, it is not confirmed by these occurrences.  



Video: https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/see-neil-degrasse-tyson-debunk-alien-believers-after-biden-pentagon-s-ufo-report-115788869792 


Article: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/ufo-report-pentagon-odni/index.html 


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