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Comment by binbag | Hacker News Reader

Mick West is very sure he is correct. I'm not sure that's enough.

Have you actually watched his video on the Gimbal craft? I thought that was a big piece of evidence myself, went into his video at the recommendation of someone here on HN with heavy skepticism, and came out sufficiently convinced it was not actually a UFO. He's also classy with his debunkings. To me that's a big bonus. Other YouTubers whose niche is debunking things seem to love being snarky, sarcastic, and condescending. Doesn't make his points any more/less valid though.

I'm not generally a fan of Mick West, particularly when he gets into specific debunkings of videos, because his argumentative framework depends on the same flawed approach as those he's debunking: he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here, and then claims any evidence offered against this conclusion is insufficient. He depends on the same fallacy as his opponents. The only difference is the conclusion from which he starts. And of course he has an inherent advantage of credibility because his conclusion doesn't require any extraordinary evidence. That's why it feels like he's just taking cheap shots - in many ways he's on the easier side of the debate (but ironically it's become the harder side because it's nearly impossible to deprogram his opponents out of their cult).

However, I did enjoy his recent video [0] on Grusch, where he focuses on the meta arguments against the narrative itself. He does a good job of describing the logical and dialectical flaws in the claims of the so-called "whistleblower" (who needs to get approval to speak publicly), and the reporting of the story itself (which was rushed and published by the same group of people with monetary and reputational incentives to uncritically promote the same narrative for which they've previously lost credibility).

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0

> he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here

I'd say assumption not conclusion. It sounds like a good assumption to me.

It's called circular reasoning. Conclusion cites the premises, which in turn the premises cite the conclusion. Evidence (or lack of) is used to prove it self. When you start with a false or circular premise, anything that follows is technically true. It's a powerful (bullshitting) tool that can be used to prove or disprove anything.

It's bayesian reasoning. If I tell you that I predict the sun will explode tomorrow, you should consider the sun's track record of not exploding when evaluating my claim.

There's no bayesian reasoning here, just someone assuming something to be proved to be already true. Statements don't become self-evidently true just because someone assigned probabilities on them.

Also, using only past billion occurrences of the sun not blowing up, and then still concluding that the sun will not blow up despite of any recent indications of the sun showing anomalous activity seems a more accurate analogy.

Mick West presents rational reasons for why his assumptions are true, he's not simply asserting his assumptions as correct.

> despite of any recent indications of the sun showing anomalous activity

The whole point is that the videos are not in fact the indications of anomalous activity that they're made out to be. There are mundane explanations for all of them.

absence of <anything> is a better default than presence

You're right, Mick West simply insisting a thing wouldn't be enough. Luckily, Mick West presents rational arguments for you to evaluate.

This comment makes it seem like the video does not contain rational arguments. It very much does. If you're skeptical about them, why not address them.

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