Its hard to imagine so many people could have known about this for so long, yet it remained secret. I expect you could keep something like an assassination secret since everyone who knows about it is probably in some way complicit. Wouldn't be the case here.
Also of course the energy required to get to Earth from somewhere else, for an organism that used any kind of "vehicle" we could recognize as such, would be enormous.
Worth remembering that if in 2010 you claimed that the US government was spying on everyone via everything, you'd be called a conspiracy-nut, we now know that it was true, what so many people were claiming before that.
I agree that probably there needs to be more evidence than "trust me, I've done this for a long time" in order for us to assert there is extra-terrestrial intelligence. But, I wouldn't believe it's false just based on "it couldn't have been hidden for this long".
Worth remembering that if in 2010 you claimed that the US government was spying on everyone via everything, you'd be called a conspiracy-nut, we now know that it was true, what so many people were claiming before that.
For one thing your assumption here just isn't true. You might have been called that in major media outlets -- but within the tech community it had been widely acknowledged (since the late 90s or so) that such surveillance was most likely happening. And precursors of such technology were referenced in congressional hearings back in the 70s. This was all discussed openly and there was nothing conspiratorial about the topic at all.
For another -- just because certain things in the past that have been derided as conpiracy-fodder and then turned out to be true (MKULTRA, say) doesn't mean that some other thing X (that you happen to find nifty to believe in at the moment) just might be true, or will also be validated as such some day.
In short -- the presence "conspiracy-nut" stigma about something has no bearing on its scientific validity whatsoever. Either for or against.
But, I wouldn't believe it's false just based on "it couldn't have been hidden for this long".
No - one wisely judges them to be most likely false based on (1) lack of physical evidence, (2) Occam's Razor. Not because of what you're saying (which doesn't have any bearing on the topic at all).
> might have been called that in major media outlets -- but within the tech community it had been widely acknowledged...
There is a huge UAP community of believers. I don't see why a community belief makes it more legitimate. It's speculation until you have hard evidence, for the NSA thing that evidence was a whistleblower, what's the difference here??
You might have been called that in major media outlets -- but within the tech community it had been widely acknowledged (since the late 90s or so) that such surveillance was most likely happening.
You realize how easily this point can be applied to UFO discourse, right?
Not only is there an enormous backstory attached that people willfully choose to remain ignorant to, all kinds of people holding active positions in the highest relevant places are corroborating this.
Even more importantly perhaps, part of the story is a decades-long disinformation program conducted against the US population and government itself, by rouge elements in the intelligence community.
Well, did it remain secret? Seems like this has been openly recognized for quite awhile, but propaganda forces at play made it seems like you're a nutjob to believe it.
It wasn't secret. It was covered in disinformation so you would dismiss it, as you have, until it was officially confirmed, like it seems to be now. Previous government insiders have come forward with the same story, but have been dismissed, and the whole topic seen as crazy, because the carefully crafted disinformation counterintelligence campaign was working as intended.
That, along with black special access programs (like described in the article), covered with classified programs, is how you keep it, not secret, but "partially occluded."
The question is not: how? But: why? The answer is because they were afraid and in denial because it challenged their authority, and they wanted us to be in the same fear and denial, because then they can maintain "control".
Maybe now it's shifted. And that's good. Not because everybody gets to know there's aliens, but because the governing corporate superstructure is choosing to no longer continue to act like scared little idiots. And I think that will be better for all of us.
One thing that might be a problem here, is the ongoing oversupply of advanced degrees. This creates a ready supply of replacement faculty whenever needed. As science faculty leave the university, the university has the option of easily replacing them one-by-one, probably at lower cost, and are left with no need to hire the new scientists' organization. The research quality might drop, but the university's reputation would paste over the difference for a while at least.
Or, the individual scientists' reputations are enough to pull along the grants when they go.
There can't be an oversupply of advanced degrees. Rather if there is an "oversupply" it means that we can't adequately absorb the intellectual capacity of the population. This in itself is a problem that needs to be addressed.
> we can't adequately absorb the intellectual capacity of the population
Think that's been true for a long time, yank any early 20th-century factory worker out of their job, you'll find a human intellect not being fully utilized. In fact just use a contemporary worker and the same thing is true. We can't all be getting grants to study something, society has to create some extra wealth first.
Why should that be a problem? But it doesn't even need to be true. If the quality of the advanced degree drops sufficiently, there's no problem, except one of academic credibility.
This seems to happen over and over: something that is working fine is changed. Not to make it better, but in hopes of business growth. Half the time it backfires, the other half there are some mostly middling improvements to the business. The odds aren't great, but there are people charged with "growing the business" and so they must change something, even if there's nothing that pops out as a great idea.
The community of moderators is kind of a symbiote attached to this enterprise. It gleans and curates and makes the end product more helpful to users. "Helpfulness" is a second-order effect of this moderation, and the whole attraction to the business.
After telling moderators to not moderate, moderators should get the message: It's not about AI, its about whether moderation is valuable, and whether helpfulness of answers is valued by the business.
This is just the most recent decline in stackoverflow 8-(
Ever since the posting system was turned into a social score where people are mostly conncerned with increassing their score versus answering questions, stackoverflow has failed it's users.
Just another example in the very long list of for-profit plaforms doing what's best for profit over what's best for the users...
We should assume that what someone says is unrelated to what they meant? That's an interesting viewpoint. I have to guess at your meaning since I can't fixate on what you're saying, but I think you mean that language is meaningless?
One thing is that the CS curriculum at better schools is not "job-skill" focused. At least in the early years it is fundamental theory of computing and languages. How to solve problems with numerical methods and algorithms. OS and compiler stuff. Along with all sorts of other math, science, and humanities courses.
Exactly, came her to say this. It obviously can't be linear, its just the slope at a point, but that didn't stop the headline writer. For "every" 10%, really? I'm pretty certain that for even just the next adjacent 10%, rents wouldn't just fall 1%.
Bill Lear is quoted as having described his creative process similarly. Can't find a reference to it now but I read it decades ago and never forgot it.
>>The entire point is to make the customer do enough work before you show them the actual price, that they just give up and deal with it.
I think a big part of the point is to compete on search (aggregate search like travel sites especially) with the company's competitors. The first company to start, say, charging for a carry-on realizes that they are forcing everyone to copy that, but for a while they'll have an advantage and make more profit. Any business leader doing this first is trying to dishonestly game the system. The others are just doing what they now have to do to keep the playing field level.
On aggregating vacation rental sites, the owners that choose not to do this (at least on sites like VRBO) can add "no service or management costs" to their listings, or maybe "no hidden costs", but it is not very effective because if you are charging $225 and the customer is searching in the range $100 - $200, you loose and the person advertising a $199.00/night charge (with management fee added later) wins.
And, again, as far as fraud goes I think this is on the fairly low end of frauds.
But, “hey, lots of other people are committing this fraud” goes into the bucket of “helps the person committing fraud sleep at night”.
I do tend to hold the platforms themselves (AirBnB, VRBO) more responsible than the individual hosts that list on these platforms.
It just shouldn’t be possible to even present listings with hidden fees on the platforms. So, in general I look at this as 90% AirBNBs fault, and 10% the individual hosts fault.
I agree with you directionally, it's a problem that VRBO et. al. should solve, perhaps in their search algorithm and UI. For instance, the fee-range search should include the hidden flat fees averaged over the number of nights, in the nightly rate.
I notice VRBO has a search by nightly rate and a search by total cost, so at least you can choose "deceive me" or "don't deceive me".
Also of course the energy required to get to Earth from somewhere else, for an organism that used any kind of "vehicle" we could recognize as such, would be enormous.
But, good to stay open-minded.