UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

That seems incredibly ungenerous, and low empathy. Even for regular human behavior. So, why, in this case?

There's even more respect, in the main, between people of different religious faiths.

So why? Because some big "Authority Agency with Capital A" has not come out and told everyone, "It's OK, it's OK for you to think this is true now, because we can tell you, we checked, and it's True." Is it really driven by fear of stigma and lack of endorsement by authority? Are we really all living in the Earth-centric, pre-Galileo, dark ages?

The sad, and I think the crazy, thing is, yes, to some extent we are still living in that time, with regard to human mindset and the manipulability of people in large groups via narratives and authority. Even in this age, with all our progress, all our tech, all our ideas and discussions and connectedness.

Like why are we trusting all these theorists and commentators over the people who say they have experience?

A striking parallel I think is with the Time's Up / Me Too movement. It strikes me that we as a society, used to, and in many ways still do, treat survivor's of abuse, domestic and sexual violence as "crazy UFO nuts", who no matter how many come forward, often at great personal cost, to share their stories, and to try to establish some equality, healing and justice. Despite this, and despite the obvious reality that (Ca) there must be some reality behind all these stories and (Cb) not all of these people are simply delusional or making things up, people are so ready and willing to just discount them, and to listen to all the theorists and commentators discounting their experiences.

What I wonder is, how can we as a society do that, and how can the people who judge them do that, when we, and those people judging them, have no idea either way, but are ready to do so, to these other human beings who may be at one of their most vulnerable times. Even when multiple people corroborate their stories.

So while it's a different set of stories, our reaction, and lack of consideration for these brave people, is strikingly similar. To me at least. Maybe now's ripe for a Time's Up or Me Too movement for people who's stories of UFO encounters and ET contact have been dismissed, minimized, discounted and ridiculed for too long. No?

The other thing I think is crazy, is how so many of us are prepared to dig in a position on this topic where none of has really has any idea what's going on. Stake out a tiny circle of our own certainty and say, "Now, here is the truth. All those who doubt me, are clearly nuts." Why does this topic trigger such idiotic, low-empathy and crazy behavior from otherwise extremely logical, balanced and productive individuals?

This reasoning applies to all historical mumbojumbo: ufos, bigfoot, ghosts, etc. These ideas are plausible insofar as they are constructed to be almost unmeasurable.

The preponderance of camera phones today means we have 1bn+ people able to measure their environment at abitary frequencies, and all such phenomena have essentially disappeared.

Either somehow all ghosts, bigfoots, aliens, etc. are disappearing because we are measuring them; or they never existed.

NB. These ideas "go together" only socially, ie. believed by a secular-religious community. The objects they describe have no intrinsic relationship (bigfoot is not like a ghost). When you have a class of such ideas, it is likely they are wholesale false (ie. mythological).

It is possible to somewhat statistically predict P(IdeaSet is Mythological) by the degree to which each idea in the set is in a common domain with the other ideas. A conspiracy/mythology is an IdeaSet which is mostly disjoint.