Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them

Why can't we get a picture of a UFO? Why is it that so many people say that they've seen a UFO, but no one has ever been able to take out a camera and take a picture of a UFO? It really drives this wedge of empirical evidence where it splits off evidence from belief. Either you believe that there's something there and that there's some reason why no one has been able to take a picture of it, or you say, you know, like Missouri, show me. If you can't show me, Why should I believe it? What does it actually mean to say that you have evidence for something? What is a scientific claim versus what is testimony? Where it's really just someone's telling you I saw something versus proving that they saw something or proving that something exists. And I say in the book that testimony is what you have when you don't have evidence. I mean, when you have evidence, then the evidence is compelling to everyone. That's sort of what makes Is that everyone who accesses it can show the same thing by doing the same experiment or following the same protocol, and that a scientific sort of investigation, by definition, is not about the person doing it. It's about replicability. Anyone can do it. Anyone anywhere in the world can do it. It'll turn out the same, and that's what shows that you're talking about something objective about the world. So what is your answer to the Family paradox. Where is everybody? It seems like the most likely answer from my completely lay person's perspective is that life must be rare enough and the universe big enough that It is when it happens, it's far apart in space and time, and therefore civilizations life doesn't meet each other either ever or at least not very often.

All right, everybody, it's Michael Shermer, it's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. My returning guest, I should say returning champion guest, Adam Kirsch, is the author of several books of poetry and literary criticism He's a twenty sixteen Guggenheim fellow. He was once at the Wall Street Journal's weekend review section and is now a senior editor at the Atlantic. He's also written for publications including The New Yorker, Slate. The Times Literary Supplement.

The New York Times book review, poetry and Tablet. His previous book was on s was Un settler colonialism and Ideology violence and justice for which he was uh

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