Two of my coworkers frequently mention shows like “Encounters” or “Ancient apocalypse” or whatever. I’m not the best at debating or forming arguments against these though I do feel strongly that bold claims require better evidence than a blurry photo and an eyewitness account. How do you all go about this?
Today I clumsily stumbled through conversation and said “I’ll need some evidence” and was hit with “there’s plenty of evidence in the episode ‘Lights over Fukushima’”. I didn’t have an answer because I haven’t watched it. I’m 99% sure that if I watch it it’s gonna be dramatized, designed to scare/freak you out a little and consist of eyewitness accounts and blurry photos set to eerie music. But I’m afraid I just sound like a haughty know-it-all if I do assert this before watching.
These are good people and I want to remain on good terms and not come across as a cynical asshole.
(Sorry if language is too formal or stilted. Not my native tongue)
I went to training with coworkers from another site. They were raving about some “documentary” that said the government had alien technology. They kept trying to get me to watch it all week but I just kept saying I forgot.
In reality I watched about 10 minutes and it just set up these alternative history hypothese then reenacted them. It was moronic so I just steered the convo to football or whatever to get them to shutup.
This is not worth challenging, especially if you are outnumbered. You are not likely to change their beliefs with evidence. The beliefs are flexible and can be endlessly swapped out with new beliefs that demand new evidence. I don’t know what you should do but you definitely shouldn’t attempt to change their minds like that.
I used to watch this YouTube channel ~5 years ago, called Lets Chat, where a guy would go to different places and have conversations with people about their beliefs.
Digging through my history, it looks like the technique is called Street Epistemology. It’s basically a way to understand deeply held beliefs without coming across rudely. Here’s a site I found that explains the process well
Ignore it or mock it. I start preaching about Great Cthulhu at people who have loonie beliefs, and let them try to debunk me.
I’ve got good at reciting “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” in a high-pitched preacher voice.
Let people be wrong.
I’m with this. Unless it is about work, let people believe what they want. Or else you end up discussing a lot of stuff like religion and politics in a place it doesn’t need to be.
I mean, if you are so disinterested in the conversation that you would ask the internet how to have your side of it rather than check out the show, maybe you just shouldn’t have that conversation. Change the subject or tell them you’re not into it. Who cares if they believe there are aliens?
Personally, I find it impossible to believe there isn’t other intelligent life out there. It’s not because of blurry photos or spooky stories. It’s that the universe is just so vast and there’s so much we will never understand about this place we are in. How can it not be out there? Frankly, it takes more faith to believe there isn’t something.
With that perspective, I do occasionally find those shows interesting. Not because it’s proof of anything but because it’s fun to watch and wonder what it is. It doesn’t have to make you a believer or a non-believer. There’s obviously something in the videos. What it is and where it comes from is entirely different. It’s just entertainment for people who like to indulge in a little speculation.
Personally, I find it impossible to believe there isn’t other intelligent life out there.
If the universe is infinite, and there’s no reason not to believe that this very well may be the case, then it’s almost certain that there is other intelligent life out there. However, just as the vastness of an infinite universe guarantees other intelligent life, it also guarantees that we’ll never meet. We may find evidence of them, or they may find evidence of us, but the odds of intelligent life concurrently existing in near enough proximity for our independent geneses, evolution, and advancement to interstellar travel before either people managed to die out is effectively zero. And mere radio communication between interstellar civilizations would literally take generations for a basic conversation at best. Humans may not even last another thousand or even hundred years. Can you imagine history textbooks in 3000 talking about current times the way that we talk about the Norman conquest of England or the first crusade? It’s weird to imagine where they’ll be to look down upon our ways of life now.
That’s fair, thanks. Reading this and other comments I think I’m taking this too seriously and furthernore, they’re having fun. It feels silly now to have asked but still, bouncing this off of strangers helped. I can only echo chamber in my own head.
I tried to engage them with exoplanetary research. I am also in the camp that surely we are not alone in the universe. Why assume we’re special in a seemingly homogenous universe? I am looking forward to humanity finding their first reliable biomarker in space.
I guess we’re just excited about the same thing, really.
Cool! The exo-planetary stuff and astronomy is interesting to me. I’m loving the data we are getting from JWST. There was recently an article about possible biological chemical processes on a faraway planet. The asteroid sample NASA collected also contained the building blocks for life. Not too long ago, we got to see the first picture of a black hole. There’s just so much out there to explore.
I wonder if we would even recognize other intelligent life if we found it. Could we figure out how to communicate? We can barely recognize intelligent life on Earth. Humans eat octopus and it’s one of the most intelligent creatures we are aware of. We still look right past them.
“Stilted”?
You sir, are one of those fucking amazing people who profusely apologize for not being a native English speaker and then blurt out 37 paragraphs of perfect English.
You have nothing to be ashamed of - your English is better than a lot of them native speakers ! And always remember this :
“You are speaking English because that is the only language you know; I am speaking English because that is the only language you know. We are not the same.”
And as to your original question - if I ever ask them “what evidence did you see which proves X happens?”, I have almost always been hit with the reply, “Oh yeah? What proof do you have that says X does not happen???”. And then I tell them the anecdote of the Invisible Dragon by Carl Sagan. Look it up if this is new to you, and for a more formal treatment, check out Karl Popper’s theory of Falsifiability.
I have personally converted at least one conspiracy theorist to being an Agnostic. So I know it works. Try them out, it’s fun.
And I also am not a native English speaker to be honest :-)
Haha thanks. I know I’m being silly, on a certain level, apologizing for my English but as an anxious person I’m being defensive up front. I still feel like I don’t sound like a native, an outsider, and I want people to know I’m not native if they pick up on my English being off.
Thanks for the advice. Though reading all them comments I’m starting to lean towards letting them have their fun. I am not great at debating anyway and maybe questioning without confronting is best.
Yeah I agree. Let them die alone, thinking about Alien abduction and crop circles.
Patiently explain that “alien encounters” are just the playful trickery of the Fae, who have been pulling this sort of thing for much longer than anyone was imagining spaceships.
Cass, you idjit! You have been on earth from how long and still don’t know how humans work! They are just going to think the OP is delusional!
Woah woah woah. Hold on a second. There are actually people who take Ancient Aliens seriously?! I thought we all watched it because it was hilariously stupid.
Just ignore and avoid the topic the best you can. Don’t confront. Just go, “ohh ok” and move on. Pretend you need to go to the toilet or that you have something else to do if you can’t break free from the conversation.
It’s about as futile as trying to convince a religious fanatic that their views may not be ideal for everyone; you just don’t. Ignore and avoid.
Ignoring is so hard 😅 I never bring it up.
I don’t think they’re fanatics. I just think their curiousity, with inexperience in healthy skepticism, has found a very easy outlet.
But I guess you’re right. The current state of astrobiology isn’t as exciting and people want to wonder. Maybe hard science is too difficult to sell in this case.
Have fun man. Start coming up with even crazier theories and one up them to the extreme with ever bolder madness, get creative. “Pfft you think Japan it real? They don’t want you to know that we bombed them out of existence and we gave the country to the Venusians! It was all part of Reagan’s contract in exchange for more nuclear power, but he was a lizard…”
The Italian military has been simulating Japan with AI for centuries now. The Italians took one of their own words, tiramisu, and made up a whole language from that.
It’s no coincidence ちらみす looks like spaghetti. They literally made this alphabet by throwing spaghetti at the wall and then started borrowing evolved bone-script from the Chinese when they got bored with pasta-to-wall terrorism!
I used to get annoyed too but then I started doing this! I NEVER disagree or challenge their opinions I just always agree with everything and answer “wow! really?? I don’t watch much tv, then what ?!!” They LOVE me, and helped me a lot at work being friends with thos guys.
It’s imoortant to focus on the silliness, they are not hurting anyone let them talk nonsense and have fun
Highly recommend the podcast ‘It’s probably not aliens’ if you want to find out more about the real history of the claims made in these kind of shows, and how the claims of aliens are often rooted in racism and colonialism
(not OC +__+)Thanks. I’ve been needing more podcasts anyway :)
That being the case, the excellent podcast Our Fake History talks about aliens in Who Built The Pyramids part III (obviously you should listen to part 1 and 2 first). This episode builds on some other episodes (Sebastian debunks all kinds of other garbage historical myths) and some familiar names tend to come up over and over. Who Are The Magicians Of The God and Was There A Real Atlantis are other episodes that might have some relevance to the KIND of arguments your coworkers are likely making.
You can’t reason people out of a belief they didn’t reason themselves into.
Just say you’re not interested in their weird hobby.
This.
Just let them run. Talk about something else.
Wow. Three hours 😅. Not before bed lmao
You might be taking some friendly debate as more sinister than it is. It’s okay to tell them you straight up don’t believe and need some better evidence than a show on Netflix. When they tell you to watch it, ask them to sum it up for you, and go from there.
You can laugh at the absurdity without being mean-spirited. Most people who get hooked into that stuff don’t really believe, they like the “but what if?” Aspect of it.
