> Occam's razor seems appropriate here.

Sure, but what's your occam's razor take? I don't think Occam here justifies a denial of all data. That seems more like fantasy or pseudoscience.

> Some of the ideas you raise — I wonder, why aren't non-government individuals finding these objects, parading them around? We have amateur astronomers tracking spy satellites for kicks.

That's a good point. I'm not sure why. It seems some of the reasons could be: they are often cloaked to amateur level capabilities, but advanced sensor systems can detect them; or, perhaps selection bias where there stories from 'credible' military witnesses end up reaching more people, which is likely to be an artefact of CI disinfo as these folks are more controllable than civilians; or, a bias of the objects themselves to do ISR over military airspace; or, even as has been reported by witnesses, anything they obtain (photographs, fragments, objects) are confiscated by people from 'government' who tell them not to talk about it and try to gaslight them that it was nothing; or even because militaries may occasionally be able to bring down and capture these, but given that, individuals would have a harder time securing one.

You don't have read far into the history to find cases that include interactions like the confiscation mentioned, if you doubt there's anything to those last few points (I don't think you doubt that, tho! Haha :))

> And we all know people in government leak — we've had 60+years for troves of classified documents to have been leaked. Instead we get surgery on an alien puppet with grainy After Effects.

That's true about leaks, but it's a common (amateur, sorry to say haha!) error to think that there has been "perfect secrecy" around this topic.

Rather, this topic has very clearly been "hidden in plain sight", surrounded by a moat of protective disinfo and counterintelligence.

There have been many documents leaked about this, many "insiders" have come forward (real or fake), and much data is there already.

These leaks haven't been covered as widely in the media, perhaps, as other big leaks on other topics, which may contribute to an impression you may have that there is nothing out there about this. The craftily engineered 'topic area denial' arising from decades of CI disinfo can explain part of this, as well as more direct connections with media.

David Grusch and his "40 secret whistleblowers" is merely the latest in a long line of insiders, but this one has reached a little further into public awareness it seems.

> To be sure, I Want To Believe, but I also try not be a butterfly to my fantasies.

I think you can do both. Don't be so afraid of your desires and imagination, that you don't trust yourself to investigate something. I mean, it seems only a CI/disinfo engineered aversion to trusting yourself to explore this topic, when the same dynamic is at play in anything: from science, to creating a new product, to writing a book, right?

It is sad tho that you seem to think others are being butterflies to what you see as their fantasies, sad that you need to try to mischaracterize it like that.

And sad that you feel you need to denigrate the minds, beliefs and analysis abilities of others like that, so you can feel safe? Because you can't find a reconciliation of this in your own brain? Rather than being open to that, you have to shut it down?

You shouldn't treat other people like that. But also not treat yourself like that. If you're stopping yourself from thinking about this topic, because you think 'Oh, it's just fantasy', that's ridiculous. It's just like being imprisoned by the decades of legacy CI disinfo programming around this. Don't be like that, you're better than that! :)

i mean that. The more people that look at this, and unblinker, and unleash themselves from whatever imagined limitations have curtailed their thinking on this particular topic, that they would have no trouble deploying elsewhere, the better it is! This thing is a problem or an opportunity for humanity, we need lots of people lookin' at it.

It's ok if you want to stay in the shadows, but just don't try to keep anyone else there with you. That's abusive.

That kind of abusive attitude is sadly an artefact of the decades of CI disinfo that tried to obfuscate the topic by discouraging people from consider it by persuading them it was a fool's game. It's not a fool's game. The fool's game is where you stand right now -- if you think it's too ridiculous to consider.

I get if you just don't want to consider it, because it's too difficult, because no time, whatever -- and that's fine! -- but that's different. Have a good one! :)