Two of my coworkers frequently mention shows like “Encounters” or “Ancient apocalypse” or whatever. I’m not the best at debating or forming arguments against these though I do feel strongly that bold claims require better evidence than a blurry photo and an eyewitness account. How do you all go about this?
Today I clumsily stumbled through conversation and said “I’ll need some evidence” and was hit with “there’s plenty of evidence in the episode ‘Lights over Fukushima’”. I didn’t have an answer because I haven’t watched it. I’m 99% sure that if I watch it it’s gonna be dramatized, designed to scare/freak you out a little and consist of eyewitness accounts and blurry photos set to eerie music. But I’m afraid I just sound like a haughty know-it-all if I do assert this before watching.
These are good people and I want to remain on good terms and not come across as a cynical asshole.
(Sorry if language is too formal or stilted. Not my native tongue)
You should pick your battles. Think pretty carefully about what you actually want to debate/pushback on because it’s exhaustive and requires you to research the topic. It’s probably a waste of your time doing the research to debunk these alien sightings since a new one pops up every few months.
Yeah. Maybe I should ask general questions but not push back on anything. Like “What about this episode convinced you?”. “Do you think that’s enough evidence or would you like to see something more?”. “Wow, so why isn’t this all over the news, do you think?”
Or is this line of questioning too obvious?
Those questions are just going to open a can of crazy. Some battles aren’t worth fighting and in the workplace you’re going to see a lot of them.
To me those shows are fantasy and i let the person enjoy telling me about the episode. I’d ask questions like wow what do you reckon the aliens are doing here or have you had any extra terrestrial experiences. Generic smalltalk stuff that let’s the person feel like they are telling you something cool and interesting because to them it is.