{"id":28260,"date":"2026-07-13T17:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=28260"},"modified":"2026-07-15T16:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T23:47:35","slug":"motivated-reasoning-and-human-gullibility-and-ufos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/07\/13\/motivated-reasoning-and-human-gullibility-and-ufos\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivated Reasoning and Human Gullibility. UFOs!"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>UFO fans aren&#8217;t impressed by the latest government doc&#8217;s;<\/li>\n<li>More about supposed geo-engineering.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p>This is funny. And sad.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/07\/11\/multimedia\/11nat-roswell-1-ftjg\/11nat-roswell-1-ftjg-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, 11 Jul 2026<\/strong> (though in today&#8217;s print paper): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/07\/11\/us\/trump-roswell-ufo.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xVA.sO2t.kiMR-C0XDoQC&amp;smid=url-share\">Non-Disclosure: In Roswell, New U.F.O. Docs Are a Declassified Bummer<\/a> [gift link]<\/p>\n<p>Subtitled: Roswell\u2019s annual U.F.O. festival was supposed to be full of triumphant \u201ctold you so\u2019s\u201d after the Trump administration declassified its alien files. Instead, apparently, the coverup continues.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Like so many earthlings, John Darr came to Roswell, N.M., looking for answers. Yet he left the city\u2019s annual U.F.O. festival this month with even more questions. \u201cTell us one way or the other: Is there or is there not aliens?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">This was supposed to be the summer of revelation. President Trump had promised to unveil all of the government\u2019s secrets about unidentified flying objects and their extraterrestrial passengers. Adding to the hype was Steven Spielberg\u2019s newly-released lore-steeped <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/11\/movies\/disclosure-day-review-steven-spielberg.html\">blockbuster<\/a> with its own convincing footage of the fabled alien crash at Roswell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">But when the Department of Defense began publishing <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.war.gov\/ufo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tranches<\/a> of material on U.F.O.s, or in Pentagon parlance, U.A.P.s, unidentified anomalous phenomena, the promise of a real-life \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d frittered into Disappointment Du Jour.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Lots of interesting photos in this piece. Gift link; browse them.<\/p>\n<p>No, UFOs are not evidence of aliens. The evidence continues to be dicey; the photos are just as fuzzy as they&#8217;ve always been, and suspiciously centered in the video clips.<\/p>\n<p>Like so many things, I am beginning to gather, these are evidence of the biases of the human mind. We want to interpret strange things we see in terms of familiar things we already know. And via social media find tribes of fellows who have the same biases as we do.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Same diagnosis. These are people who don&#8217;t understand how the real world works &#8212; in real, physical and chemical and biological, ways &#8212; and who are tribal to the extent that they attribute things they don&#8217;t understand and that upset them to their enemy tribe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Facebook, Brian Tyler Cohen, 3 Jul 2026<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/briantylercohen\/posts\/pfbid0WDKLKMPnm4JdPrFZmCo6U2ASdJR2L6LXfbrrYtNFk1GZKWgSEiVgqvMzvYET7xzvl\">BREAKING: MAGA is now saying that Democrats have \u201cgeoengineered\u201d the weather to be extremely hot in DC this weekend.<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fb13jul26.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fb13jul26.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nonsense, of course. Also the item from JMG I mentioned yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UFO fans aren&#8217;t impressed by the latest government doc&#8217;s; More about supposed geo-engineering. &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; This is funny. And sad. NY Times, 11 Jul 2026 (though in today&#8217;s print paper): Non-Disclosure: In Roswell, New U.F.O. Docs Are a Declassified &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/07\/13\/motivated-reasoning-and-human-gullibility-and-ufos\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,20,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-psychology","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28285,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28260\/revisions\/28285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}