Shadow of a Doubt - June 2022

 

June 2022

NCAS Public Lecture Series

The Uses of Delusion:
Why It’s Not Always Rational to Be Rational

Stuart Vyse, PhD
Contributing Editor, Skeptical Inquirer

Saturday, June 4, 1:30pm - 4:00pm US/Eastern (UTC-04:00)
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center
2nd Floor (West Room)
4805 Edgemoor Lane
Bethesda, MD [map] [directions]
(Bethesda Metro station)
FREE admission – Everyone welcome, members and non-members

 Also a YouTube Live Event with Q and A 

NCASVideo YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/t1-1fof15U8

Although reason and rationality are our friends in almost all contexts, in some cases people are better off putting reason aside. In a number of very important situations, we benefit by not seeing the world as it is, and by not behaving like logic-driven machines. Sometimes we know we aren’t making sense, and yet we are compelled to act against reason; in other cases, our delusions are so much a part of normal human experience that we are unaware of them. As intelligent as we are, much of what has helped humans succeed as a species is not our prodigious brain power but something much more basic.

In behavioral scientist Stuart Vyse’s new book, The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to be Rational, he looks at the aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals.

Stuart Vyse is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College. Vyse’s book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the “Behavior & Belief” column, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Refreshments and socializing after the talk.

https://www.ncas.org/2022/05/june-4-uses-of-delusion-why-its-not.html

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Torn From Today's Headlines
By Scott Snell
Congressional Hearing on "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena"

On May 17, 2022, the "C3" Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing on UFOs (also called UAPs, "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.")  Following the open portion of the hearing, the C3 (Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation) Subcommittee held a closed, classified briefing.  Testifying were Ronald S. Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and Scott W. Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.

Video of the open portion of the hearing is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSDweUbGBow&t=455s

Moultrie was tasked in 2021 by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks to "establish the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG [pronounced "aim sog"]) to synchronize efforts across the [Defense] Department and the broader U.S. government to detect, identify and attribute objects of interests [sic] in Special Use Airspace (SUA), and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security."

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/23/2002898596/-1/-1/0/ESTABLISHMENT-OF-THE-AIRBORNE-OBJECT-IDENTIFICATION-AND-MANAGEMENT-SYNCHRONIZATION-GROUP.PDF

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2853121/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-the-airborne-object-identification-and-manag/

In addition to Moultrie and Bray providing status on the establishment of AOIMSG and answering questions from House members, Bray showed a UAP video:

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/843620/navy-2021-flyby-video

(Right-click the video and select "Speed" of 0.5x for best results.  Pause the video to find the three frames showing a UAP.)

Later, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Fellow Mick West commented on the video:

https://twitter.com/MickWest/status/1526702856408944641

West also participated in a discussion about the hearing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCcfMWVycS4

Perhaps the closed, classified hearing was more interesting, but of course we can only speculate.  It's also worth noting that AOIMSG (which Moultrie said will likely be renamed) is just getting started.  But as of now, nothing very interesting has emerged publicly.

Notably, this was the first Congressional hearing about UFOs since July 29, 1968, when the US House Committee on Science and Astronautics held its "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects."

The ncas.org site hosts an online edition of the 1968 symposium record, created and proofread by a team of NCAS volunteers:

https://files.ncas.org/ufosymposium/index.html

Torn From Last Month's Headlines
By Scott Snell
The Joke that Got Away

The previous Shadow of a Doubt displayed the 1950 Census listing for L. Ron Hubbard...

...but I neglected to make a joke about the entry for Hubbard on "What was this person doing most of last week - working, keeping house, or something else?"  ("Wk" = working, "H" = keeping house, "U" = unable to work, "Ot" = other)

"I wonder if Scientologists would interpret 'OT' as 'Operating Thetan?'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Thetan

(Hubbard's "Operating Thetan" concept didn't exist, at least not publicly, until he debuted Scientology in 1952.)

Speaking of Hubbard, here's an interesting 1968 episode of a UK investigative journalism TV series, World in Action, entitled "The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard," which includes interviews with him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_w-YWwC1lI

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