Professional skeptic Sam Harris on the UFO stuff (long)

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Looks like the influx of new information has made Sam start questioning his skepticism. The full quote: We are just climbing out of the darkness in terms of our understanding of what's going on and there's no telling what spooky things may be true. I don't know whether you've been in the receiving end of recent rumours about our conversation about UFOs likely changing in the near term. There was just a Washington Post article, a New Yorker article. I've read some private outreaches and perhaps you have and other people in our orbit have - people who are claiming that the Government has known much more about UFOs than they have let on and this conversation is about to become more prominent. And it's not going to be, whatever, whoever is left standing when the music stops, it's not going to be a comfortable position to be in as a super rigorous scientific sceptic saying there's no 'there' there for the past 75 years. The short version is it sounds like the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Pentagon are very likely to say to Congress at some point in the not too distant future that we have evidence there is technology flying around here that seems can't possibly be of human origin. Now I don't know what I'm going to do with that kind of disclosure. Maybe there's going to be no follow on conversation to really have, but that is such a powerful strange circumstance to be in - what are we going to do with that if that's what happens? In fact the considered opinion, despite the embarrassment it causes them, of the US Government and all the relevant intelligence services, is that this isn't a hoax, there's too much data to suggest it's a hoax, too much radar imagery, there's too much satellite data - whatever data they actually have, there's too much of it. All we can say now is something's going on and there's no way it's the Chinese or the Russians or anyone else's technology. That should arrest out attention collectively to a degree that nothing in our lifetime has. Now one worries that we're so jaded and confused and distracted that it gets much less coverage than Obamas tan's suit did a bunch of years ago. Who knows how we'll respond to that - it's just to say that the need to tell ourselves an honest story about what's going on. And what's likely to happen next It's never going to go away and the division between me and anyone defending traditional religion is...where is it you want to lie to yourself or lie to your kids, like where's honesty and liability? And for me I've yet to find a place where it is and it's so obviously a strength in almost every other circumstance. It is the thing that allows you to course-correct, it allows you to hope at least that your beliefs, your stories are in some kind of calibration with what's actually going on."

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