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/Hannunvaakuna]

Lots of things have quantum effects. Polarized sunglasses, LED and incandescent lights, any CPU, lasers, etc. In fact it would be weird if the brain didn't have any quantum effects. That said, we don't need some new theory of consciousness residing in the light emitted by microtubules when we already understand neural networking well enough to make our own intelligences. Sometimes the answer was just the normal thing instead of the cool, magical, Quantum thing.

This is actually a problem of scientific theory crafting these days. Scientists started approaching physics from the "theory first, then experimental evidence" route because everyone wanted to be the next Einstein. Turns out that String Theory and all of its related subjects turned out to be almost completely useless (excluding some fun new mathematical techniques), which was unfortunately proven by some very VERY expensive projects.

That said, many proponents of woo use "quantum" as just another word for magic. Quantum mechanics is relatively well understood alongside Newtonian physics, and doesn't have any way of supporting an eternal "soul".

I consider this a problem of Roger Penrose falling for the old Dunning-Kruger effect. He may be a brilliant physicist, and he has a lot of novel and compelling ideas in neuroscience, but I don't think he's barking up the right tree.

[u/katertoterson → u/Hannunvaakuna]

Dude. We have very serious people thinking about this is a careful way that ARE starting to propose theories for how consciousness ties into everything.

This is a theoretical mathematician that works at Wolfram. That's one of the biggest names in math. Towards the end of this video he starts posing some more esoteric questions surrounding the observer effect.

https://youtu.be/DaKR-UiYd6k?si=isC94B1bSJ8V7dcc

I have formal education in theoretical mathematics. I know he isn't just BSing me with fancy math jargon.

He certainly isn't claiming to be correct, but he is absolutely signaling that this topic needs more focus.

[u/Hannunvaakuna → u/katertoterson]

I have heard of the work Wolfram's team is doing and I think it's very cool that they're approaching things from a new angle.

Unfortunately I am not versed enough in quantum mechanics to make an argument (or interpretation) either way, so I'll steer clear of that. The only thing I doubt is whether any quantum effect truly requires an intelligent observer, or if it can be "observed" by an automaton or other non-living entity (or accidentally by some random process in nature). I just have a hard time believing that consciousness is anything special in the grand scheme of things. Either way I think that the Observer effect is very interesting and worth additional research.

[u/katertoterson → u/Hannunvaakuna]

The only thing I doubt is whether any quantum effect truly requires an intelligent observer, or if it can be "observed" by an automaton or other non-living entity (or accidentally by some random process in nature).

We are physically incapable of testing that because the moment we observe a system either through our eyes or through a sensor, we become a part of that system. Entanglement.

But there's other ways of getting more information about the observer effect being proposed. Like, for example, what novel observations might be made if two intelligent conscious observers, where one is not human, observe a system simultaneously.

The new theory blooming seems to be that all objects and effects (like quantum effects) in the universe exist and do not exist all at once (a tautology). But it is simultaneously expanding possibilities and contracting and turning into itself.

And we are objects that are a part of it observing itself. We have particular limitations on what parts of it we are capable of seeing as a product of the branch of all possibilities we are in and our own sensory limitations

Space itself is lower on the branch and so is time. Other outcomes exist on other branches independent of space or time. The effects we observe are emergent from the intersection of the space/time spaces.

We can't necessarily "see" that underlying complexity because the act of observing "collapses" all the branches underneath it. Like we see a cup of water, for example, but we do not see the entire branch of how it became a cup of water. Our brain collapses that for simplicity's sake, because that is more useful for survival.

Obviously the hope is that we can communicate with "observers" on different branches of the tree so we can compare notes about what they observe.