Critical Thinking, a Lost Art in the UFO subculture.

Greetings. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. The UFO subculture, excepting the credible, skeptical, and dispassionate research community, is incapable of putting the aforementioned intellectual exercise into practice. 

Put simply, critical thinking is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, evaluating these justifications through comparisons with varying perspectives, and assessing their rationality and potential consequences. The goal of critical thinking is to form a judgment through the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation. 

The application of critical thinking includes self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective habits of the mind, as critical thinking is not a natural process; it must be induced, and ownership of the process must be taken for successful questioning and reasoning. Critical thinking presupposes a rigorous commitment to overcome egocentrism and sociocentrism, that leads to a mindful command of effective communication and problem solving. Quite a mouthful, but not quantum mechanics. 

Unfortunately, the UFO subculture is incapable of critically thinking about the UFO problem, so quantum mechanics it is.

"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake." Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

Is rational thinking too difficult? I certainly hope not, but as time moves forward, it seems that our species is becoming less and less comfortable with such intellectual endeavors. Too often, people throw caution to the wind, and blindly believe seemingly everything they hear, read (if they read at all,) or are exposed to online. Have we collectively lost our ability to cautiously consider what we are exposed to? Are humans incapable of maintaining a reasonable level of objectivity, or at least rational thought processes? Why is science so often considered out of date, or unfashionable, or simply not believed for polarized political reasons?

Evolutionary processes have provided our species with a tool to consider the unknown, the undefined, the unexplained: our brains. Perhaps, just perhaps, our species might one day decide to take that particular intellectual sword out of its sheath, and begin considering the magnificent possibilities of the universe, including the UFO problem. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.