I never believed until today

[u/Possible_Use3849]

I was outside, grabbing stuff out the car after me and my husband went shopping for our daughter. It was just me and him, of course I saw it first and he didn't so he's been busting my chops since. I saw a freaking ufo and I couldn't believe it. I didn't even have a phone. The weird thing is you could see search lights after I spotted it. It had blueish green lights and it was definitely a ufo I feel crazy but I figured I'd join here and let others know.

I'm sorry I didn't believe any of you who did before, but now I know it's real.

Time: ECT Location: Princeton NC Date: 12/27/24

Update: changes drone to ufo sorry if it was misleading! Update: https://imgur.com/gallery/art-EZZ9mtm

I drew this image above I am by no means an artist but this is what I saw.

[u/Arroz-Con-Culo]

No need to “believe” this is our reality whether we like it or not. you have a right to know.

Believing implies it may or may not be true, like if we believe in fiction or fairy tails.

[u/confusers → u/Arroz-Con-Culo]

I was going to take your side when responding to another comment, but as I started to piece together the point I wanted to make, I realized that I think "your side" needs some clarification. So, rather than oppose or defend anything, I'll just state my own perspective, and it may or may not be aligned with your intent.

What are things that can be believed? The Oxford dictionary has two definitions for "believe," the main difference between them being whether the focus is on opinion or truth. The thing is, neither opinion nor truth are compatible with empiricism. Empiricism (by which I mean, essentially, the scientific method and falsifiability) is one of the few tools we have for examining reality that is hard to argue with, other than that it does not accept inductive reasoning; although this is merely a fact about what it means to be empirical, it can be upsetting to people that a chain of thought that they find completely intuitive and that "proves" something about reality (that is, claims a truth, which is one of the things that "believe" can apply to) can be so easily dismissed. Empiricism is not the only way to reach some sort of conclusion about the world. Inductionism is a perfectly valid approach. Empiricism can explore the entirety of falsifiable physics, but there is a lot of our reality that we cannot observe (metaphysics) and a lot of theories that are unfalsifiable. Induction can break right through these barriers, and is arguably the method of thinking we as a species are more inclined toward, for whatever reason.

When it comes to UFOs, there is only one thing I can think of that is both falsifiable and for which there is tons of empirical evidence for but which is not widely accepted outside of the UFO community: there are things in the air that seem to move kind of like aircraft but do not have human origin. Note the absence of any kind of interpretation. It's also falsifiable, but has not been falsified. The thing that makes people so doubtful about it, I think, is that most of the overwhelming amount of data is utter horse shit. Only a small percentage of it (which still amounts to a large amount of data) supports the existence of UFOs. If most of the evidence you see for UFOs is clearly identifiable, you won't be convinced by it. Worse, this is a subject that people make hoaxes about, meaning our filter for whether data is good or bad is low quality, and so we (correctly!) become accustomed to not trusting our own eyes.

So, UFOs are "real." Does that mean their existence is "true"? Truth and reality are very different things. Truth goes beyond the real, and both it and "existence" are rabbit holes. We don't want to get too hung up on such ideas. This is the point I've been trying to build toward. "Belief" implies a search for "truth," which is not empirical. We don't need to believe anything, in particular, for empiricism to work. Empiricism has the best track record, so far, of producing results. If we want to create change, coming to believe something or convincing somebody else to believe something is not the way to do it.