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If a “category of claims” has shared causal structure, then the category’s track record absolutely does tell you something about the next claim in it.

It’s not arbitrary. Alien UFOs, Chem-Trails, and Flat Earth are obviously all generated from the same distribution of bullshit: ambiguous or misunderstood phenomena explained by positing a vast hidden conspiracy.

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Every person on Earth could agree that Earth is flat and it wouldn't affect the reality of whether or not extraterrestrials visit earth even a little bit.
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The shared causal structure is the absence of facts and denial of science. Nearly every religion on earth also suffers from that in their gospel, where many fictitious and supernatural phenomena are bundled together and sold for truth.
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> the absence of facts

I'd prefer to speak about "evidence in support of/against" rather than "facts", which often conceals a presuming-the-consequent kind of fallacy.

> denial of science

Whether "science" is believed or denied by any particular person has no effect on whether or not extraterrestrial intelligence has or is visiting earth.

Demanding that "science" be believed is un-scientific. I am not drawing an equivalence between science and religion here, but pointing out that your argument is a super hand-wavey appeal to an inviolable "gospel". I'm old enough to remember when a theory like intra-galactic panspermia was regarded like canals-on-Mars.

In my view, ETI theories are lacking any credible evidence and this makes me sad.

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There is nothing anti-science about the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence. In fact its apparent absence is has a name -- it's called the Fermi Paradox.

And the facts are just ... released. It's the interpretation of the observations that are disputed. And unless you think they are all fake, the explanations that do not involve alien tech are non-trivial to say the least.

I'm not sure why you'd think there is any shared causal structure with flat earthers at all.

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What about Avi Loeb's theory that 'Oumuamua is an UFO with a solar sail, which would explain its apparently unusually flat pancake-like shape?
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That's an example of ambiguous or misunderstood phenomena explained by a professor who decided that there's more money in UFO BS than in his previous career (or sincerely lost his grip on reality, who knows).
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I don't know, he seems to be really smart. Maybe it's a good UFO theory for a change.
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