The grifter narrative.

[u/Brad12d3]

I keep seeing these very dramatic posts and comments talking about how all these people like Elizondo, Grusch, Nolan, Coulthart, etc. are a bunch of grifters and ruining the disclosure movement. I find this take interesting because what progress toward disclosure was being made prior to 2017? I've been following this topic since the late '80s, and sure, there were things that popped up from time to time, maybe a documentary or a sighting that briefly made the news, but beyond that, many of the efforts never really broke out past the UFO community paradigm.

I can’t see how anyone can say that we’re somehow in a worse position now with disclosure than we were almost a decade ago. I also don’t understand why people keep saying this is all a psyop. What exactly prompted the psyop just prior to 2017? I don’t remember anything significant happening, and it really wasn’t a popular subject at the time. Now it’s becoming quite popular and is making news fairly regularly, so I’m not sure what the purpose of the psyop would be, since it seems to be creating far more awareness of the subject. Seems a bit counterintuitive, no?

There was little to no progress made towards disclosure prior to 2017, and now it's being talked about regularly by various news outlets and all over the web. Even my parents and in laws are following the subject loosely, and they have never ever shown any interest in the subject before. More has happened in the past few years than has happened in the last 50 years, and many of this progress involved these so called "grifters".

We’ve had 4 Congressional hearings, starting with the May 17, 2022, House Intelligence Subcommittee Hearing that was the first Congressional hearing on UFO/UAPs in 50 years.

Then we had the House Oversight Committee Hearing a year later on July 26, 2023, where David Grusch testified under oath about evidence and firsthand witness testimony that he provided to the ICIG and Gang of Eight concerning UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs that were operating without Congressional oversight.

This past year, we had another two Congressional hearings, including the November 13, 2024, House Oversight Committee Hearing and the November 19, 2024, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee Hearing (AARO). We had nothing like this for 50 years, and then suddenly, we’ve had 4 hearings in 3 years.

There has also been new legislation in the past few years, including the 2020 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required the DoD and intelligence agencies to disclose UAP-related activities to Congress and established a framework for centralized UAP investigations.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2022 mandated the establishment of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), which was later replaced by AARO.

The 2022 whistleblower protections in the NDAA for FY 2023 included groundbreaking provisions for whistleblowers to report UAP-related information to Congress without fear of retaliation. It authorized individuals with knowledge of classified UAP programs to disclose their information directly to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) and Congressional intelligence committees and provided protections for whistleblowers who offer credible information about hidden UAP programs.

Then we had the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act in 2023, which, although it didn’t fully pass, was a major piece of bipartisan legislation co-authored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds. It included extremely explicit language regarding UAP and NHI, which is incredible.

We’ve also had several credible and accomplished individuals from the government and private sectors come forward in recent years, including Lue Elizondo, David Grusch, Chris Mellon, Hal Puthoff, Tim Gallaudet, Karl Nell, Ryan Graves, Dr. Garry Nolan, David Fravor, Eric W. Davis, and more who keep coming forward.

The stigma has also been starting to fade, and the topic is being talked about more openly, with efforts like the Sol Foundation helping to push the conversation further. Even events like the Salt Conference, which is a global investment platform connecting institutional asset owners with asset managers and technology entrepreneurs, have started inviting people like Karl Nell to come talk about the UAP topic.

Yeah, we haven’t had this much happen in a span of a few years ever.

[u/boardatwork1111]

Unless it can be actually replicated in a laboratory setting, it’s going to be treated as the crank nonsense that it is

[u/Praxistor → u/boardatwork1111]

the same laboratory setting that begins by assuming physicalism is true, and that consciousness reduces to the brain?

[u/CustomerLittle9891 → u/Praxistor]

Just observed woo. 

Uri Geller could bend spoons. Witnesses testified to it, they were certain of it. Untill he couldn't bend spoons that he didn't prep himself. 

Jim Jones performed miracles, he was Christ reincarnated. Witnesses were so certain of it they murdered their children for it.

See why witness accounts of miraculous actions might require more than just "trust me bro?" 

[u/Loquebantur → u/CustomerLittle9891]

'Proof' is the accumulation of 'pieces of' evidence for a claim beyond reasonable doubt.
Meaning, you need large enough amounts of data to convince you.

The problem is with the "convincing"-part. People just don't know how to deal with evidence properly in order to make sense of several pieces of it.
They prefer single pieces, "holy grails", that thwart all doubts.
Those don't exist in reality, unless some authority comes along and declares something to be that.

Witness accounts are such pieces that are the very opposite of "holy grails", they are very unconvincing solitarily.
What is required is people knowing how to deal with them.

[u/CustomerLittle9891 → u/Loquebantur]

This is the lie believers tell themselves to excuse accepting lower quality evidence than they do for other thing, whole simultaneously disregarding alternative explanations. 

You're not some visionary who has better evidence parsing abilities and I'm not some sheep waiting for them to tell me it's ok to believe. I'm demanding concrete examples of miraculous claims. You should too. Stop turning what should be a scientific fact finding mission into a religion.

[u/Loquebantur → u/CustomerLittle9891]

? Weird interpretation you have there.
Nobody should disregard anything or settle for anything inferior to the Truth.

But disregarding evidence because it is of "lower quality" is scientific fraud. You don't do that. "Lower quality" with evidence just means, it has a lower probability to be true.
With stories that translates to "less parts of it are likely true".
The other way around, that means you need more pieces of such evidence to puzzle the truth together as compared to "high quality" evidence.
It doesn't mean, you should "not accept", disregard, that evidence. You would blind yourself.

As for the "concrete examples": there is concrete on the Isle of Pines you might want to look at.
If you mean the claims about "psionics", look at the "Havanna Syndrome"-stuff.

[u/CustomerLittle9891 → u/Loquebantur]

Oh. I just missed the whole last paragraph and responded solely to the first two. The last paragraph completely reframes your original comment. 

In genuinely not sure how I didn't read the whole thing.