The original post: /r/aliens by /u/overmind87 on 2024-09-22 05:50:57.
That kind of social upheaval that witnesses and whistleblowers seem to hint is the reason why things haven't been disclosed? That's not going to be any worse than what we have going on right now, with all the social and economic issues we have and all the military conflicts going on everywhere.
The reason for that isn't because people have become more enlightened or accepting of social change. Nor is it because people have their own life issues going on that they are focused on. And it's definitely not because people are more accepting of scientific discoveries, or science in general, than they used to be.
It's actually a combination of everything, or nothing, which can be summed up pretty succinctly:
As long as it doesn't physically disrupt their daily routine, people will find a way to make it work for their own personal world view. That's because the majority of people don't actually care about how the world works. They don't care about how anything works. They only care that it does, so they can continue doing their own thing.
Let's use a recent event as an example, the terrorist attack with the papers. The civilian population is now terrified of electronics, because they may also be boobytrapped. Which is understandable. But a great part of that fear could be relieved if they better understood how electronics work. What does or doesn't belong inside electronic devices. That kind of thing.
Obviously, the average person isn't expected to know the scientific principles behind every item they use. They simply expect them to work, so the people can seamlessly integrate those devices into their daily routine, with the hopes that it will make their lives better or easier in some way.
Which is what makes terrorist attacks so effective. In this case, not only did an item not work how it was intended or provide any benefit to people's lives, but instead it tried to harm or kill anyone using that device, despite the fact that it is a commonly available item that anyone can use, and thar no one expect to function as a weapon in any way.
As to how that relates to the original topic? Well, the reason why that group of people is under a lot more social unrest right now is because their lives have actually been physically disrupted. And while that event might have a psychological impact on people who were not physically affected by the event, as terrorist attacks are meant to do, that mental impact is directly connected to a physical event. And they are by extension affected by that paranoia about electronics because they can trace their fear back to an event that actually happened and actually hurt or killed people.
Whoever, even when an every of great importance happens, like the discovery of penicillin, most people won't care until it actually impacts their life in some practical way. Which will be the same case in the event that NHI existence is finally disclosed. By and large, people will be surprised by the truth. But as long as it doesn't have a direct disruptive effect in their daily routine, things will carry on more or less as they do now.
Why? Because people, regardless of their social or religious background, will figure out a way to make that truth fit into their current worldview. Since that type of disclosure is merely information, that means people are free to do what they want with that new knowledge. Which means that any significant impact it may have on their lives would come from behavior changes they deliberately choose to act on.
Maybe a person decides to start a cult around NHIs, and some people chose to follow it. That's still a result of people deciding to do that because they want to. Not because of any particular reason. People start cults nowadays about all kinds of random shit. And they may genuinely believe the cults' ideas. There's probably a cult around NHIs right now. And that's the point. Verification of NHI existence would only maybe convince people to join the cult. But the verification of that knowledge didn't lead to the creation of the cult. The cult came first. So that means its creation was entirely driven by human decisions.
That's probably the most apparent effect you'd see in society. Weird people being weird about things. Which they already are. But most normal people will find a way to reconcile that new knowledge with their previously held beliefs, no matter what they are. And that's because humans have been doing that for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
It took a while for people to come around heliocentrism. And sure, some people got executed because of believing in it. But eventually astronomers figured out the math to prove it. And people accepted it because they trusted on those calculations, and the people behind them. And it's likely that they accepted it because learning advanced math to verify those calculations themselves would be much harder and more disruptive to their lives than simply saying "Yeah, ok, whatever." Ever if the topic at hand is as important as determining the structure of the universe as we knew it
On the other extreme of that acceptance spectrum, we also know that people will go through great lengths to interpret information in a way that makes it fit neatly into their beliefs. For example, the old testament mentions a guy named Onan that pulled out when having intercourse and "spilled his seed". God didn't like that so he killed the guy on the spot. Old testament God was hard-core like that.
From that short passage, and other more nebulous sources, religious folk eventually came to the conclusion that pulling out, birth control, IVF, abortion, condoms, masturbation, etc. were all evil because they represent that "spilling of the seed" in one way or another.
As it turns out, what God didn't like about it was that he was violating an important social contract of marrying your brothers widow and giving her heirs to the family. The "pulling out" being the equivalent of writing a fake signature on a contract, to get all the benefits of your side of the deal, but not being bound to honoring your part of that deal when the time comes. No pun intended. The point is that condoms have nothing to do with any of that! But because it fit people's preconceived religious notions, that's why there's still a "disagreement" about it 3000 years later.
When it comes to disclosure, however, the evidence has to be irrefutable. And even if it is, some groups of people who are the most set in their ways will just remain in denial about it. Like modern flat- earth believers. Those kinds of people will always be around, because they are dumb and self- centered. Which means they will always refuse to believe anything they don't agree with in the face of irrefutable evidence, simply because they're too dumb to wrap their head around it.
But the average religious person, like all other average people I mentioned earlier, will simply find a way to fit that new knowledge into their beliefs, in a way that doesn't disrupt their lives too much. And unless we actually are physically affected by the situation, like if we are all NPCs in a simulation, or there's an impeding alien invasion, the mere revelation that other intelligent life exists isn't going to cause a social collapse, "Mad Max" style. Probably not even "Escape from NY" style.
So just come out with it already, won't you?
