Thank you for kickstarting an interesting discussion around this topic. I won’t bet against you; I, too, think most LessWrongers dramatically underestimate the plausibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
The UK’s Project Condign concluded UAP were real and exotic, but were unknown natural atmospheric plasma phenomena (similar to the Hessdalen lights and reports of black or metallic-appearing ball lightning) generating electromagnetic fields that interact with human brains to induce psychedelic/out-of-body experiences (hence alien abduction and close encounter reports). Would this category of explanation (something that accounted for most or all weird aspects of the UFO phenomenon without being especially ontologically shocking in retrospect) count as “very weird,” in your view?
Upvoted for quality parody. I read this as a probably much-needed rebuke of some internal community drama somewhere (just an initial impression that might well be uninformed), but taken purely at face-value, I’m not sure I agree with the overall thrust of the post and associated commentary, at least when presented as basics of rationalist discourse (although I might be biased, as I am in favour of turning the Sequences into a series of belligerent TikToks myself, which I noticed a reference to in the comments; I can only assume this has been a recurring suggestion).
Specifically, I think there is a distinction that needs to be made between good epistemic hygiene and associated pro-social norms of discourse within the rationalist community (in which careless usage of terms like “gaslighting” would be clearly harmful and inappropriate, to pluck an example that particularly resonated with me from Duncan Sabien’s original post), and instrumentally rational techniques best employed when interfacing outside the community (including performative overconfidence and hyperbole). Some of the communication strategies slated here are simply methods of winning, so I would suggest a distinction between “suggested basics of discourse between rationalists to maintain community cohesion and foster a high-trust environment” and “basics of discourse as (potentially ‘dark’) arts used by rationalists.”