Just a reminder that the folks trying to scam everyone
are willing to go to great lengths.
While I'm sure many will (understandably) make light of this low-hanging fruit,
I can't help but be concerned for the 15 & 17 year-old girls,
who will likely be traumatized by this idiotic stunt for decades...
In another thread we had a discussion about pareidolia and the role it played in explaining anomalous things like The Face on Mars. That discussion was generated by a paper that claimed among other things, pareidolia was bias, or at least the use of it can be. The author's suggested something like, just because the Face on Mars can be explained by pareidolia, maybe it shouldn't be. Using pareidolia as an explanation might hide the fact that there really is a Face on Mars and if there is a Face on Mars someone/thing must have built it. So, using pareidolia as an explanation keeps us from seeing the evidence for UFO/aliens. I think.
Note: As is often the case when copying from some PDF sources, it gets kinda wonky when pasted here. All External Content below from the paper linked above unless otherwise noted. And the authors use various terms like NHI (Non Human Intelligence) or cryptoterrestrials and such, I'm just calling them what they are, aliens.
In a nutshell, psychology researchers Tim Lomas and Breandan Case of the Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University along with Michael P. Masters, a biological anthropologist at Montana Tech, argue that we should seriously consider the possibility that aliens are already here and have been. They may be living in the oceans, in caves, in remote areas of the world, on the Moon or Mars or even stealthily in your own town:
This is the ultraterrestrial hypothesis, which includes as a subset the “cryptoterrestrial”
hypothesis, namely the notion that UAP may reflect activities of intelligent beings concealed in stealth
here on Earth (e.g., underground), and/or its near environs (e.g., the moon), and/or even “walking
among us” (e.g., passing as humans). Although this idea is likely to be regarded sceptically by most
scientists, such are the nature of some UAP that we argue this possibility should not be summarily
dismissed, and instead deserves genuine consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.
The authors go on to quote the usual suspects, with Hal Puthoff and Jaques Vallee from the old guard and David Grutsch and Karl Nell from recent times. Without getting into all the details, these quotes amount to a "sum is greater than the parts" argument with the added weight of the US government being involved. Basically, UAPs have been seen forever, even today we can't explain them all and the government is looking into them. Therefore, there is something non-prosaic about many UAPs so we need to consider all possible explanations equally, including their hypothesis that "stealth" aliens are and/or were here:
This denotes a broad category of conjecture centred around the possibility that UAP may involve forms of non-human intelligence (NHI) that are already present in Earth’s environment in some sense, which Puthoff (2022) describes as “sequestered terrestrial cultures… existing alongside us in distinct stealth.”
For centuries, people worldwide have observed aerial phenomena that seemed “anomalous” in some way, some of which crucially we today – even with our more advanced technologies and scientific understanding – might still regard as extraordinary (Vallée, 2008; Lomas & Case, 2023)
Moreover, in June 2023 explosive “whistleblowing” claims were made publicly by David Grusch – a veteran of the National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency4 – who alleged that the US government and private aerospace companies had for decades maintained a secret “crash retrieval” and “reverse engineering” program (Kean & Blumenthal, 2023). At the time of writing there is no way to know the validity of his claims.
. For example, Retired Army Colonel Karl Nell – who served alongside Grusch in the UAP Task Force – said “His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring subrosa over the past 80 years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct” (von Rennenkampff, 2023)
A less well known but perhaps even more striking case was divulged by Lue Elizondo (2021a) – a former intelligence officer closely linked to US investigations into UAP
And is becoming more common lately, we again have Puthoff as one of the original instigators for the authors basic premise:
Consider Puthoff’s claim that there could be an “ancient occult group, isolated pre-Diluvial high-tech society… existing alongside us in distinct stealth.”
As @Giddierone suggested in the afore mentioned thread about pareidolia, this paper may be part of a larger effort by UFOlogist to publish as many papers as possible in various journals in an attempt to legitimize UAP/UFO studies. Something akin to the "Teach the Controversy" ploy used by creationists here in the US back in the '90s. The creationists logic was "If evolution cannot be totally and completely proven, then there is room for other theories like Intelligent Design". Of course, Intelligent Design actually meant the God of the Bible. Here it seems to be, "If each and every UAP cannot be proven to be prosaic, then there's room for other non-prosaic explanations." We're not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens.
The problem these folks run into is they have no actual UAP/UFOs or aliens to study. It's a bit like publishing papers and having discussions about Angels and Deamons. Nobody can produce an actual Angle or Deamon, so they talk about what other people claim to have seen or experienced. Same thing here, as the authors try to make the case that aliens might be living in caves or in secret bases under and in the Earth. They have no actual evidence of this however and that can lead to some issues, like this paragraph that jumped out at me from 1/2 way through the paper. After first suggesting the idea that UAP might come from inside the Earth:
However, other people speculate that some UAP might not only be drawn to such locales (e.g., as a portal, or for purposes such as hiding or gatheringenergy), but might come from underground (i.e., with the NHI responsible residing in a subterranean way).
They explain how this idea might have originated, including the writings of Richard Shaver:
Then, building on this possibility, people have speculated these realms could potentially host ancient civilizations – whether human or some other species – which chose to conceal themselves there. Among the earliest modern proponents of this idea is the writer Richard Shaver. According to Ray Palmer (1975), editor of Amazing Stories magazine, Shaver argued in a 10,000-word manifesto that advanced prehistoric races had built cities inside Earth but fled to another planet due to concerns about radiation damage from the Sun, leaving a cohort of offspring who remained underground. Palmer revised the manuscript and published it as “I Remember Lemuria!” in the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories, a tale which became the foundation for a genre of science fiction on this theme. Although many people condemned Shaver’s narrative as a “hoax” (Dash, 2000), he and Palmer continued to maintain its veracity. Furthermore, over the years, UAP scholars have begun to contemplate similar ideas in relation to the burgeoning UAP observations, most notably John Keel (1983), who – without believing Shaver per se – was persuaded of the notion of cryptoterrestrials living underground.
Most notably is this line from the above paragraph:
Although many people condemned Shaver’s narrative as a “hoax” (Dash, 2000), he and Palmer continued to maintain its veracity.
I'm reading that as "maybe it wasn't a hoax" or "maybe Shaver was on to something". It certainly doesn't come out and say "It's just a story". Which is what it was. These guys seem to be using what is collectively known as The Shaver Mysteries as possible evidence for their claim?
Briefly, Richard Shaver claimed that his welding set up at work could transmit other people's thoughts:
Shaver "began to notice that one of the welding guns on his job site, 'by some freak of its coil's field atunements', was allowing him to hear the thoughts of the men working around him. More frighteningly, he then received the telepathic record of a torture session conducted by malevolent entities in caverns deep within the earth."
And a whole host of other things were told/transmitted to him, including the make up of the various people/aliens living inside the Earth:
Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human "Teros", while most degenerated over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as "Deros"—short for "detrimental robots". Shaver's "robots" were not mechanical constructs, but were robot-like due to their savage behavior.
One could go on for pages with The Shaver Mysteries, but most people recognize now that Shaver suffered from some mental health issues and that Ray Palmer was both a friend and exploiter of him. His writing was possibly cathartic for Shaver, and Palmer would rework them to sell his magazines, claiming that it was all true (wink, wink). Shaver later went on to publish books about rocks he thought contained all kinds of writings and messages (pareidolia) as noted by @Giddierone in the pareidolia thread.
Why any academic paper would mention Shavers writings as anything but literary background is strange. But the authors go on to cite John Keel, famous for his Mothman Prophecies, as confirming, or at least legitimizing Shaver's claims, even if he didn't quite believe them:
Furthermore, over the years, UAP scholars have begun to contemplate similar ideas in relation to the burgeoning UAP observations, most notably John Keel (1983), who – without believing Shaver per se – was persuaded of the notion of cryptoterrestrials living underground.
Indeed, in an article titled “Secret UFO bases across the U.S.”, Keel (1968) suggested that the idea of such entities being responsible for UAP was more reasonable than the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) which was gaining some momentum at that time. Given that UAP have “been consistently active in the same areas for many years,” he argues “it is quite reasonable to speculate that these objects originate in some unknown manner from these areas, rather than traversing great spatial distances to make brief random and apparently pointless “visits.” In short, many of the thousands of observed “flying saucers” and “spook lights” are more apt to be a part of the Earth's environment than extraterrestrial craft flying in from some distant point” (p.9)
Further supporting the idea that aliens live underground is information from Nick Redfern:
in his book The NASA Conspiracies, for example, Redfern (2011) includes an interview with someone seemingly associated with the Gemini program who claimed there was a small band of individuals who represent the last vestiges of an ancient advanced, isolated civilization – responsible for the legends of Atlantis and similar stories – forced by circumstances to retreat into remote sequestered locales for survival.
And the notion that Einstein talked to the Roswell aliens who told him they lived underground:
Indeed, comparable testimony continues to emerge that lends further support to the CTH. An example is the apparent testimony of Dr Shirley Wright, Albert Einstein’s assistant in 1947. Speaking in 1993 – in recordings which only became public in 2021 – Wright claimed she and Einstein had helped investigate the famous Roswell UAP crash (Verma, 2023c). Incredibly, she said this was not only a genuine UAP, but that biological entities had survived the crash and were subjected to questioning. Most relevantly here, she suggested these were actually “just humans, but an advanced form,” and as Verma summarizes it, that many of their “species” actually “reside underground on our planet.”
Shaver, Keel, Redfern an old recording of Eistien assistant, not exactly compelling evidence. Nevertheless, after piling up these dubious claims, we once again find the UFOlogist making the reverse burden of proof argument (bold by me):
We are not arguing that UAP do have a cryptoterrestrial explanation, but simply that they could, and the judicious approach is to consider all valid theories until the evidence decisively demonstrates they should be rejected.
So, once again, the UFOlogists have made a claim with little to no evidence, but until that claim can be decisively countered, it's as valid as any other claim. The UFOlogist need not prove their point, only say that the skeptic can disprove it, thereby proving for them. I'll read through some more latter.
