My thinking is aligned with what you have written here. It is disappointing to see rationalists put up a straw man to confidently tear it down and consider the case closed. No matter what is going on it’s clear that the best way to control a narrative is to manufacture a cultural taboo surrounding what would otherwise be a subject open to scientific inquiry.
I hesitated to use the term strawman, but yes, that’s exactly it. I don’t think skeptics are intentionally attacking a strawman; they just aren’t remotely familiar with the subject, so are attacking what they think UFO proponents actually think without realising that there are good reasons why sober and serious thinkers (Hanson, Hynek, Vallee) who overcome the stigma to actually examine the evidence end up tanking complexity penalties to generate pretty out-there-sounding hypotheses to explain the bafflingly compelling (relative to ghosts, Bigfoot etc) data.
My thinking is aligned with what you have written here. It is disappointing to see rationalists put up a straw man to confidently tear it down and consider the case closed. No matter what is going on it’s clear that the best way to control a narrative is to manufacture a cultural taboo surrounding what would otherwise be a subject open to scientific inquiry.
I hesitated to use the term strawman, but yes, that’s exactly it. I don’t think skeptics are intentionally attacking a strawman; they just aren’t remotely familiar with the subject, so are attacking what they think UFO proponents actually think without realising that there are good reasons why sober and serious thinkers (Hanson, Hynek, Vallee) who overcome the stigma to actually examine the evidence end up tanking complexity penalties to generate pretty out-there-sounding hypotheses to explain the bafflingly compelling (relative to ghosts, Bigfoot etc) data.