The Epistemology of UFOs & Lab Leaks | Michael Shellenberger & Peter Boghossian
There’s one topic people around the world want to discuss more than any other: Aliens.
No matter where in the world Reid Nicewonder and Peter travel, this is always the most requested topic. Specifically, people are fascinated by the claim, “Aliens are currently visiting Earth.” If this claim interests you, then you’ve come to the right place!
Over the next two weeks, we’ll release two Spectrum Street Epistemology discussions measuring participant confidence in alien visitations. We’ll also release two long form conversations on the topic. The first is this video with author and investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger. Next week, we’ll hear the viewpoint of author and skeptic Michael Shermer.
Michael Shellenberger appreciates the challenge skeptics offer regarding the existence of UFOs (also termed UAPs, "Unexplained Aerial Phenomena"). Skeptics, true believers, and everyone in between have taken note of Michael’s reporting on the topic. In this conversation with Peter Boghossian, Michael explains his level of confidence about visitations by non-terrestrial spacecraft. (Peter says the verified discovery of alien spacecraft would be a revolution comparable to humanity’s domestication of fire—and he wants it to be true but requires evidence.)
Peter and Michael also discuss a more down-to-earth possible cover-up regarding the source of COVID-19. They explore free speech, censorship for adults vs. children, the Orwellian “Institute for Strategic Dialogue,” levels of societal hate, “crazy-making,” the attitudinal disposition to the truth as a basis of friendship, their friendship, and much more.
Michael Shellenberger is an author, investigative journalist, and the founder & president of Environmental Progress, a nonprofit research organization. He also co-founded the California Peace Coalition, an alliance of parents of children killed by fentanyl and parents of homeless addicts. Michael is the author of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (with Ted Nordhaus), Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, and most recently, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. He also coauthored An EcoModernist Manifesto.
Twitter: @shellenberger
Substack:
I suggest that everyone read "Unsettled" by Steven Koonin or "False Alarm" by Bjorn Lomborg. Both of these books examine the actual scientific evidence about climate change. They are very enlightening reads.
Although Shellenberger's reporting on the TwitterFiles has been excellent, he can't hide his history of warmed-over Bjorn Lomborg anti-environmentalism and fossil fuel shilling. See Paul Thacker's detailed 3-part expose on Substack about Shellenberger's fake environmental group, the "Breakthrough Institute".
I couldn't care less about imaginary UFOs, but climate change denial/delay has serious consequences (and has ZERO to do with woke/culture war issues).