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rapnietoday at 4:58 AM2 repliesview on HN

The shared causal structure is the absence of facts and denial of science. Nearly every religion on earth also suffers from that in their gospel, where many fictitious and supernatural phenomena are bundled together and sold for truth.


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marshraytoday at 6:23 AM

> the absence of facts

I'd prefer to speak about "evidence in support of/against" rather than "facts", which often conceals a presuming-the-consequent kind of fallacy.

> denial of science

Whether "science" is believed or denied by any particular person has no effect on whether or not extraterrestrial intelligence has or is visiting earth.

Demanding that "science" be believed is un-scientific. I am not drawing an equivalence between science and religion here, but pointing out that your argument is a super hand-wavey appeal to an inviolable "gospel". I'm old enough to remember when a theory like intra-galactic panspermia was regarded like canals-on-Mars.

In my view, ETI theories are lacking any credible evidence and this makes me sad.

hnfongtoday at 6:21 AM

There is nothing anti-science about the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence. In fact its apparent absence is has a name -- it's called the Fermi Paradox.

And the facts are just ... released. It's the interpretation of the observations that are disputed. And unless you think they are all fake, the explanations that do not involve alien tech are non-trivial to say the least.

I'm not sure why you'd think there is any shared causal structure with flat earthers at all.

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