One of the splendid people I met in Denver told me about her attendance at a bizarre lecture a few months ago — and she sent me a link to her summary. If you want to experience a second hand glimmering of Native American woo, with UFOs, magic origins, transparent white people, anti-evolution, and quantum physics, there you go.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The next L Ron Hubbard?
But where do sasquatch fit into this?
How about “Rainbow Jelly Brains” or “Brains In The Ass, Ash In the Belfry”. Religionists think UFOers are nuts, they in turn think goddists are full of shit, and the mental telepathers is going to levitate them all to cloud-cuckoo land. Of course,if there is nothing on cable, what better form of entertainment than the whole bunch calling each other nuts!
hmmmm… whatever happened to the california drones.
Not necessarily.
I’ve pointed this out in other forums, but I’m really tired of woosters using “quantum physics” as a catch-all for what they themselves don’t understand. It seems that laypeople, by and large, have somehow gotten the misunderstanding that quantum physics is “mysterious.” True, the philosophical implications are difficult to understand, but the basic theory behind it is remarkably solid, even if counter-intuitive and unsettling in its implications. We don’t know everything about quantum physics, but we don’t know everything about anything. It’s just not fair to throw woo on quantum theory all the time. Why not onto string theory, just for a change, or even orbital dynamics (or is that last one just astrology)?
Don’t know. But, what about PIGMIES + DWARFS!?!
Speaking of Native American woo, I read recently that mamy Native Americans in the southwest refuse to participate in genetic studies. Why? Because ascertaining their historic migrations in this way might contravene their creation myths.
Does this sound familiar at all?
jpf @ 5 Okay, they’re both still nuts! What a rendering of abject insanity that site is!
If there’s strings, WHO’S PULLING THEM!?
@#9 That was just a random site. There’s a whole subculture of “UFOS ARE DEMONIC! IT SAYS SO IN THE BIBLE!” out there.
Wasn’t this an episode of Voyager? Oh yes, this one…
http://stvoy.epguides.info/?ID=460
Christopher Granade @ 6 How does one apply philosophical implications to quantum physics? It is physically existent or it isn’t, and from what we know so far it is alive and well as quantum theory. To ascribe philosophy to this theory almost smacks of religious implications, and of that I will have nothing to do with. One is cosmic in origin, the other is unnecessary application.
Ufology has sure changed, but not for the better. That’s an odd thing to be saying, but I miss the old fashioned UFO fanatics who had pictures and diagrams and theoretical engineering designs. The old ufology was evidence-based. Yeah, all the evidence turned out to be total crap (either faked or misunderstood), but fun-loving wackos like Stanton Friedman were out to prove something. I was at one of his lectures back in the early 1970s when he was showing off his “reverse-engineered” designs of flying saucer propulsion systems. It was not entirely persuasive, but it was fun and intriguing.
The ubiquity of camera phones and what-not has driven the notion of solid-object UFOs out of public discourse. (Perhaps the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.) UFOs have been reimagined as psychic manifestations and trans-dimensional ghosts. The less tangible version is more amenable to lengthy New Age analysis without fear of disproof. No evidence? No problem! Speculate away! Woo woo!
It’s really quite depressing and not at all entertaining to a child of the Space Age (with rocket ships! and sf novels and movies!). Klaatu barada nikto, guys!
I’d like to know when, how and why white folks stopped being transparent. Also, what did the children of racially mixed parents look like? If Blacks were blue and Asians were green, would a mixed Black-Asian child be aqua?
Christopher Granade #6
Leave it to quantum phycilosopher Jewel (yes, that Jewel for you string theory research needs:
Why, it depends by what she means by alchemical, of course. Newton believed in alchemy, therefore Jewel=Newton. And we all know Newton was too clever for pop music!
My theory: too much coffee.
They seem to have left out the Underpants Gnomes.
I wonder if we had luminescent properties when we were transparent. That would be kinda cool.
I wonder what impact transparent people would have on the porn industry. After all, no porn, no internets. It’s the wankers that underwrite teh internets.
Its boggling my mind like too many quantums.
jpf: In the Old Testament, surely UFOs would just be Fs.
People, people, people. I do not see what is so hard to understand here. We do not have 100% of all the fossils of every branch and twig in the evolutionary tree of everything that ever lived. That means Gaps! I’m a show me, don’t interpolate for me guy. Plus, I regrettably did not take biology in college, so there are many things about biology I do not understand..how genes really work, alleles, phenotypes, etc. Nor do I have all the data from biologists so-called, that I am unqualified to interpret. Nor am I personally able to conceive of processes taking millions of years. The only possible common sense explanation that follows is that evolution is in deep trouble and there is a Creator/Designer/Redeemer (who loves you!).
The tie-in is this. There is ample evidence given by scholars over many years that when the Israelites had the Exodus from Egypt, a cloud or fire pillar guided them. Well, we know God is not a pillar of fire. The only explanation left is a U.F.O. God was using aliens in His mysterious ways. (Just to preempt.never mind the lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus, your faith is being tested….ummm…until evidence is found). Also, it is pretty much beyond doubt now that the transfiguration of Jesus was a U.F.O. encounter. The only real question is whether or not Moses and Elijah were actually aliens or guests. Angels, demons, djinns, are all aliens used by God, although some evidence suggests that some of them could be spirit beings. Figures seen in ancient drawings that kind of look like modern astronauts can be nothing other than aliens.
Plus, it makes sense that white people were transparent. I mean it it not hard to understand that transparency is simply lack of reflection (that’s a scientific term) with light passing through or wrapping around (probably a quantum mechanical effect, having to do with black holes, Hawking evaporation, and photon tunneling). It is also pretty common knowledge that white people lost this ability when the one ring was burned in the volcano. There were at least 3 documentaries about this.
Now..loose ends!!! Evolution due to gene splicers from planet X sounds pretty cool and mysterious. So, I’m trying to figure out how to work this in. Isn’t science great!?
scooter,
Invisibility would a great boon to pr0n industry. It’s already quite popular to circumvent Japanese cencorship. Link NOT SAFE FOR WORK!
My ancestors were *green*?
Oh, man! That explains sooo much! That’s why I feel such sympathetic affinity for my stir-fried in a giant WOK bok choy!
This brain ride is making me wanna throw up. Lemme off, please.
@13, Holbach: I think you misunderstood me, though I suppose I wasn’t the clearest. What I meant is more along the lines of Bell’s Inequality meaning that some of the more counter-intuitive features of quantum mechanics are inherent, and not simply that “we don’t understand enough.”
Moreover, our idea of locality has changed somewhat as a result of the Bell Inequality and the Aspect experiment. Entanglement doesn’t let you communicate faster than light in any way, but it does lead to “spooky action at a distance,” which is unsettling to some very intelligent people (though it is not at all unsettling to some other very intelligent people).
It seems to me that those of a mystical bent (like Jewel, for example– I shutter to think that she’s from my home state!) latch onto any little utterance like “spooky action at a distance” or “God does not play dice with the universe” to immediately justify whatever inane bastardization of the theory they want. Frankly, it annoys me, and justifying ufology with this kind of handwaving nonsense is particularly annoying. I guess, though, it’s only fair, since biologists have ID, since statisticians have insane priors in Bayesian reasoning, mathematicians have crank proofs of all sorts of open problems and computer scientists have P = NP cranks.
some times I despair at the shear volume of the varieties of unreality that people are drawn to believe in. The level of fear and isolation is overwhelming making so many of us vulnerable to frauds, charlatans and the Insane.
Zeno at #14 wrote:
“Ufology has sure changed, but not for the better. That’s an odd thing to be saying, but I miss the old fashioned UFO fanatics who had pictures and diagrams and theoretical engineering designs. The old ufology was evidence-based.”
You obviously know *nothing* about UFOs. All of the UFO researchers I am aware of base their conclusions on the evidence.
Zeno wrote:
“Yeah, all the evidence turned out to be total crap (either faked or misunderstood),…”
Care to cite some examples?
Zeno:
“…but fun-loving wackos like Stanton Friedman were out to prove something.
I love it. Anyone you disagree with is a wacko. Have you ever read any of Friedman’s books?
Zeno:
“UFOs have been reimagined as psychic manifestations and trans-dimensional ghosts.”
Carl Jung wrote a book in *1958* about UFOs as possible psychic manifestations. 1958! Where have you been?
Zeno:
“The less tangible version is more amenable to lengthy New Age analysis without fear of disproof. No evidence? No problem! Speculate away! Woo woo!”
I would be curious to know what books (if any)on UFOs you have actually read.
Ah! you’ve hooked one (gleaner63@26), PZ! Lay out the kook bait and they can never resist for long!
#26
UFO turned out to be the moon
Google is your friend.
I just recently watched Cosmos again, which had the re-enactment of the Betty and Barney Hill case. That, along with this and the other posting about UFO-followers, reminded me of this rigorous analysis of that event, from Making Light:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html
There’s even a picture of the
UFOIdentified Object.Nick Gotts at #27,
Well Nick, If I’m a “kook”, then you’re a boot licker. Why not tell us about all the hours you’ve spent looking at the UFO question? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have to, because you already know;
“I had started out as an outright”debumker”, taking great joy in what seemed at first to be puzzling cases. UFO groups were all “crackpots and visionaries.” My transformation was gradual but by the late sixtiesit was complete. Today I would not spend one further momenton the subject of UFOs if I didn’t seriously feel that the phenonenon is real…”
-Dr. J. Allen Hynek
Now Nick, let me guess. Dr. Hynek is a kook, right? And you have a high school diploma, but we can disregard Dr. Hynek’s research but trust everything you say about UFOs, right?
JoJo at #26,
Well, of course some UFOs are misidentified objects. But are you suggesting all of them are?
Owlmirror at #29,
“I recently watched Cosmos again…which had the reeanactment of the Betty and Barney Hill case…”
You need to do some updated reading…Friedman’s new book about the Hill case has been out less than a year. Have you read it? Also, Carl Sagan was a famous “debunker”, although he did no original research into the subject. As proof of Sagan’s kookiness, he thought there may have been complex life on Mars before the Viking missions…
@#26
Links on how people misidentify various stuff as being alien UFOs: 0, 1 and 2
@ #5: I’m greatly disappointed in those whackballs. There are plenty of real holy UFOs in the Bible. I don’t know why they had to make some up.
Vanity of Vanities, sayeth the Preacher’s Kid: All is Vanity.
SEF at #26,
Thanks for the links, I will read them in full when I get time. It’s important to read both sides of the question and that is one of the points I’ve been trying to make here. It seems apparent that a lot of people who assign UFOs to the “kook” category simply will not read the other side (pro-UFO). Methinks this would be to upsetting to some, better to stick with Shermer and the gang and we can all rest easier that these guys are doing their homework.
Here is a quote from one of the links you gave me:
“If real alien spacecraft were whizzing around in orbit they would rapidly be noticed by amateur satellite spotters and defense radars.”
Couple of questions. If these were in fact alien spaceships with the tech to get here from another world, wouldn’t it be possible for them to have some sort of stealth capability? And secondly, how does this gentleman know that defense radars have not spotted UFOs? Does he have a security clearance for NORAD? There’s no way anybody here would have access to those records.
@#34 I actually have a 1974 copy of The Spaceships of Ezekiel by Josef F. Blumrich on my shelf. It has this wonderful technical mock up of what the ship looked like, including four landing feet with helecopter blades and mechanical arms built in.
Quantum physics, string theory, links to intelligent design….sheesh, doesn’t anybody just get a good old fashioned anal probing anymore.
gleaner63,
Whose boots do you suppose I’m licking? I could profess belief in flying saucers from tomorrow on, and it would harm my career not a jot – it would just be seen as a harmless eccentricity. PZ’s, perhaps? He has no power to punish me, beyond banning me from the blog, and no power to reward me. As it happens I know a little about flying saucers, as a regular reader of Fortean Times. I’m not going to waste my time ploughing through interminable and tedious tomes on the subject. If aliens were here, they’d either make themselves known, or have technologies sufficiently beyond our own to stay undetected. The “evidence” exactly resembles, in its form, that for telepathy, ghosts, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster – whenever one piece of evidence is debunked, there’s always another that will finally prove the sceptics wrong. Even when the evidence of fraud is clear, the believers invent fantastic explanations for why the fraudsters falsely admitted their fraud. The government, or scientists, or whoever, is always engaged in a conspiracy to hide THE TRUTH.
gleaner63 @ 26, 30, 31 I wish Philip J. Klass were alive and a guest on this site for just one session. He would made mincemeat of you, Hynek, and all the other UFO cretins. You do know who Philip J. Klass was, don’t you?
I think the ones that aren’t misidentified are, uh, unidentified.
I mean, of course the “UFO phenomenon” is real; people see flying things they can’t identify all the time. I’ve seen a flying thing I couldn’t identify at least twice that I remember.
But the logical jump from “I don’t know what that is” to “aliens from other planets are visiting” (or, for that matter, that “the government is testing secret weapons”) is formally the same as the creo’s leap from “I don’t see how X could have evolved” to “Goddidit.”
And oh, yeah, that Carl Sagan sure was a kook, wasn’t he?
I had to scan and post some of The Spaceships of Ezekiel. Here’s the cover and a diagram of mechanical arm and control rockets. A NASA engineer confirms it: Roboarms are in the Bible!
Ed Ruppelt, Aime Michel, Frank Edwards, Donald Keyhoe,etc. I’ve met Friedman, Hynek and others over the years. Read this stuff since the 50’s. If you immerse your head into this, it all seems so very real. I know the frustrating feelings that if only people knew what you knew… Valee’s later writings began to question more than accept. Remember, most of this stuff is third-hand repeated stories at best.I’ve interviewed people who claimed to have seen things. Mostly lights at night. Some, even some friends, I realized had serious mental problems. And yes, the other-dimension rabbit is often pulled out-of-the-hat. Friedman was too gullible.Recent writers have just made up crap.
Holbach at #39,
Every UFO “nut” knows Phillip J. Klass. He’s debated Stanton Friedman. He was editor of an aviation magazine. He may have coined the tern “avionics”. He was king of the debunkers. I now of at least one book he wrote; “UFOs: The Public Deceived”. He was on ABC’s Nightline some years ago opposite Stanton Freidman. But I rmember one famous quote from Klass when debating a UFO researcher; “Mr Klass, how many of the Roswell witnesses have you interveiwed?” Klass answered, “none”. Klass was a good guy, just deluded.
gleaner63,
First of all, you asked “Care to cite some examples?” So I spent all of two minutes googling “UFO evidence.” On the first search page was a news story from yesterday with a story about a UFO that wasn’t.
Secondly, there are such things as UFOs. Some objects in the sky are seen and not identified. But the chances of them being extra-terrestrial ships sent by extra-terrestrial beings are between slim and none.
Lastly, the people at this blog tend to be rationalists. If you want to make claims about UFOs, it’s up to you to prove them. Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proof.
P.S. I have to ask for a citation for your comment “As proof of Sagan’s kookiness, he thought there may have been complex life on Mars before the Viking missions…” I’d like some verifiable evidence that Sagan said such a thing before 1976. The last notable astronomer to make such claims was Percival Lowell, who died in 1916.
I just remembered another wonderful site I discovered last month: Flying Chariot Ministries, which includes not only UFOs but giants, the connection between Nazis and the Church, and the truth about Golems. What makes it even stranger is that the guy who runs it is (I think) some sort of Messianic Scottish Jew (you can buy “The world’s only Official Jewish Tartan” from him).
Ask and you shall receive!
gleaner63 @ 43 I never interviewed a UFO retard either; if I had, would that lend credence to that bullshit? I never interviewed a god either, but this still makes it’s existence imaginary, though millions of people swear by it’s existence with imaginary sightings. You unstable people are so standard; if your wacko theories are ridiculed by reason and debunked by non-existence, you are on the defensive with irrational self-defense and other non-sensical crap which makes your position all the more insane and ridiculous. Choose another line of irrational seeking, like the tooth fairy.
Zeno
Was having a shite morning and that cheered me up immensely. Hilarious, thanks.
Just tell them they are the secret Dean drive starfleet that Ike built. Then walk away.
JoJo at #44 said:
“First of all, you asked “Care to cite some examples?” So I spent all of two minutes googling “UFO evidence.” On the first search page was a news story from yesterday with a story about a UFO that wasn’t.”
No disagreement here. The question was that since one UFO can be easil explained, do ALL of them fall into the same category?
JoJo:
“Secondly, there are such things as UFOs. Some objects in the sky are seen and not identified. But the chances of them being extra-terrestrial ships sent by extra-terrestrial beings are between slim and none.”
Why are the chances between slim and none?
JoJo:
“Lastly, the people at this blog tend to be rationalists.”
Rationalists dont make claims about subjects they know little or nothing about.
JoJo:
“If you want to make claims about UFOs, it’s up to you to prove them.”
What proof do you require? We have eyewitness testimony, landing marks, radar plots, etc…
JoJo:
“Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proof.”
Unfortunately for you that standard of evidence exists only in the heads of “rationalists” like you and Carl Sagan. I am aware of no such standard as it applies in a US court of law, are you? You only need evidence.
JoJo:
“P.S. I have to ask for a citation for your comment “As proof of Sagan’s kookiness, he thought there may have been complex life on Mars before the Viking missions…” I’d like some verifiable evidence that Sagan said such a thing before 1976. The last notable astronomer to make such claims was Percival Lowell, who died in 1916.”
And again, you would be completely wrong. I believe the book was simply titled “Life on Mars”, or, it may have been Zubrin’s book “Mission to Mars” (I read alot so sometimes the titles run together). If you are familiar with the Viking missions, then you know it was a very small spacecraft. There was a limited amount of room and the scientists had to decide what it could carry and what it couldn’t. There were geologists on the team who thought that their experiments should get top priority, since, as everyone knew (except Sagan) Mars was a dead planet covered in rocks. Sagan however argued for the inclusion of a high speed camera, because, what if something “walked” by the lander at night and the regular camera missed it. I want to think Sagan used the term “purple blob” to describe said creature. A heated argument ensued, but Sagan got his camera, and someone else lost space on the lander because of it. So, Sagan was completely convinced that any life on mars would be of the microbial type, but perhaps somewhat advanced. Kooky enough? I will dig out the reference if it means that much to you.
“sheesh, doesn’t anybody just get a good old fashioned anal probing anymore”
Bride, ya gotta get these from a Republican senator nowadays- aliens slackin’ off.
Holbach at #47:
“gleaner63 @ 43 I never interviewed a UFO retard either;”
Please keep in mind some portion of these “UFO retards” are jet fighter pilots, doctors, lawyers and astronomers”
Holbach:
“if I had, would that lend credence to that bullshit?
It would mean you are doing the research, which seems rational, not simply dismissing something because it doesn’t fit neatly into your own worldview. Remember, Hynek only began to question his own beliefs when he began to interview people.
Holbach:
“I never interviewed a god either, but this still makes it’s existence imaginary, though millions of people swear by it’s existence with imaginary sightings. You unstable people are so standard; if your wacko theories ”
You call people names, you thumb your nose at simply reading both sides of an issue, and your saying that I am wacked? Good lord
Holbach:
“are ridiculed by reason and debunked by non-existence, you are on the defensive with irrational self-defense and other non-sensical crap which makes your position all the more insane and ridiculous. Choose another line of irrational seeking, like the tooth fairy.”
Maybe our definitions of “rational” are very different. You refuse to read; you call people retards who are better educated than you; you curse like a sailor (I am an ex-sailor so I should know), but you consider yourself rational?
Bride, ya gotta get these from a Republican senator nowadays- aliens slackin’ off.
Nah, from Republican Senators you get scat play.
gleaner63 @ 50 Why is it that these UFO’s only show up in the shittiest of places with intelligences ranked with that of UFOlogists? Why is it Mississippi, southern Illinois and Indiana, and even then out in the swampy woods and unpopulated rural roads? And they are always in the night sky with always hazy blinking lights, sometimes a whole bank of them to prove the power of wattage! Why don’t they land on the Sheep Meadow of Central Park in Manhattan, on the White House lawn, in front of the Pentagon, ot even in your front yard? And how come they don’t land on your roof like Santa Claus(get it?) delivering cosmic wonders from another galaxy? It’s all ensconced in that well worn saying, that if you believe in god, you can believe in anything. I don’t believe in any gods; I sure as hell am not going to buy that UFO crap.
Nick Gotts at #38
“Whose boots do you suppose I’m licking?”
I have no idea. If you hadn’t called me a kook, I wouldn’t have called you a boot licker.
Nick:
“I could profess belief in flying saucers from tomorrow on, and it would harm my career not a jot – it would just be seen as a harmless eccentricity. PZ’s, perhaps? He has no power to punish me, beyond banning me from the blog…”
Given what passes for debate on this blog, no matter what you called me or anyone else, you won’t get banned.
Nick:
“As it happens I know a little about flying saucers, as a regular reader of Fortean Times.
I agree with you here, you know a little…
Nick:
“I’m not going to waste my time ploughing through interminable and tedious tomes on the subject.”
Remember that the next time you are arguing with a creationist and the *refuse* to read anything written by an evolutionist…
Nick:
“If aliens were here, they’d either make themselves known…”
Absolutely insane. Maybe they don’t want to make themselves known
Nick:
“…or have technologies sufficiently beyond our own to stay undetected.
Agreed.
Nick:
“The “evidence” exactly resembles, in its form, that for telepathy, ghosts, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster -”
I take it your also an “internet expert” on these subjects as well.
Nick:
“whenever one piece of evidence is debunked, there’s always another that will finally prove the sceptics wrong. Even when the evidence of fraud is clear, the believers invent fantastic explanations for why the fraudsters falsely admitted their fraud. The government, or scientists, or whoever, is always engaged in a conspiracy to hide THE TRUTH.”
The right in this country has no monopoly on the word conspiracy. Every website I’ve ever seen about 911 being an inside job is owwned by a left-wing loon.
Holbach at #54:
You asked why UFOs show up at (insert curse word)places like Mississppi, Illinois and Indiana. Well, personally, having lived in one of those states, my boss hailing from the latter, I don’t think those places are all that bad. Tell me, what paradise do you come from?
Seriously though, neither of us has any method in which to detect the motives of an alien race. I can tell you one thing however. Having been born and raised on a farm in lowcountry SC, and sometimes driving a tractor at midnight in a 40 acre field with home two miles away through the woods (and a swamp and two creeks), if they aliens are in fact explorers/scientists as friedman has suggested, I wouls have been an easy target; not so much for city slickers. Maybe aliens are out there, maybe not, but it’s cool to think about it…
gleaner63 @52 Wow, you are more unbalanced than I can imagine! Actually, I can imagine anything from irrational people because they have teethed on religion which is the origin of all irrational thought. So, these UFO sighters are lawyers, doctors, astronomers, and even jet fighter pilots? So by dint of these professions they are immune from wacko ideas and their word is accepted as the truth? Here is an odd fact: why is it that priests and other religious morons of sheep authority never report seeing these imaginary objects? I know why but it will take too long to explain it and will only serve to make you all the more ridiculous. In a similiar analogy, I may be in the best of health, but I may also develop cancer. As those positions who sighted UFO’s are not free of irrational nonsense, so am I not free of cancer. But the chance of me getting cancer far outstrip the chance of me or those wackos sighting a UFO. You are in a losing proposition here because there has never been actual visible or tangible proof of UFO’s, and the intelligence of these sighters makes it all the more reason to treat it for what it is; wishful thinking and hoping that we are being visited by beings who probably have the better intelligence to steer clear of this wacko infested planet.
I think that’s the crux of the matter: “It’s cool to think about it…”
The right in this country has no monopoly on the word conspiracy. Every website I’ve ever seen about 911 being an inside job is owwned by a left-wing loon.
the operative word of course being “loon”.
Holbach at #57 states:
“Wow, you are more unbalanced than I can imagine!”
Maybe you just don’t have much of an imagination:).
People who report UFOs don’t seem to fall into any one category. And yes, there are doctors, lawyers and fighter pilots among them. If you are interested, the best book I have ever read on the subject is “The Hynek UFO Report” by “Dr.” J. Allen Hynek. It’s basically a catalog of the “best” reports. But what it rally points out is that the average UFO reporter is not a looney bird. As one example of which I have first-hand knowledge. My father saw a UFO in May of 1969. MY dad was a combat veteran of WWII, having logged 31 combat and three transport missions as a tail gunner on a B-24 liberator. He was very familiar with aircraft. He was also a 1950 graduate of Clemson Universiity. Not a dummy by any means.
DO religous people report UFOs? Certainly. One of the more famous cases involves a “religous” in Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Interestingly, one of these reasons some debunkers thought this was a case of fraud was because of the faith of the reporters. By the way, my Dad was an outspoken atheist
You further state:
“You are in a losing proposition here because there has never been an actual visible or tangible proof of UFOs…”
There is quite a bit of “visible” evidence. It’s up to you to believe it or reject it.
Holbach
“…and the intelligence of these sighters…”
You really have a tough time with this intelligence part, don’t you? Is it because you simply can’t believe anything out of you normal experiences? Tell me, how intelligent does one have to be to fly a jet fighter? When I was in the Navy, it was very difficult to get into the program. Some of the pilots I knew had advanced degrees in enginnering. They also had to be physically fit and the attrition rate was very high indeed. You don’t put retards into 20 million dollar aircraft. SOme of these same pilots were later chosen for the astronau program. If you have the time, check out the backgrounds of the Apollo astronauts and space shuttle pilots. I don’t know what profession you are in, but just judging by what you write (you write well, little on the angry side), I would say those pilots could match you on an IQ test.
Holbach:
“makes it all the more reason to treat it for what it is; wishful thinking and the hope that we are being visited by beings who probably have the better intelligence to steer clear of this wacko infested planet”.
If I read you correctly, you accept an old universe, right? Somewhere bewteen 15 and 20 billions years old. You accept evolution, and evolution that is not guided by any outside agency. Why is it so hard to believe that in such a vast almost timeless universe other creatures could have evloved and may be visiting us?
In regards to UFO. Plait has a post regarding the people confusing the moon with a UFO :)
baryogenesis at #58:
It is cool to think about it. I remember watching the original Twilight Zone when I was a kid (born in 1963). Silly as it sounds, a lot of the episodes made me curious about life elsewhere in the universe. And having a Dad who wasn’t afraid to talk about such things…
@gleaner
It is not the fact that there may be aliens, it is the fact that the best evidence for UFO has been blurry at best. Also, eyewitness stuffs are known to be very inaccurate in some cases, leading people to see weird things that are not there.
To make it clearer, there hasn’t been good evidence of UFO sightings, not that there might not be intelligen life out there, because ther could be.
IBY at #61:
Not everyone is familiar with the night sky of course. The fact that most people now live in large urban areas, light pollution and just a general lack of education all contribute to this. Having been rasied on a 200 acre farm, we often worked well into the night and had a decent grasp of things in the sky…how I miss those days.
“Why is it Mississippi, southern Illinois and Indiana, and even then out in the swampy woods and unpopulated rural roads?”
The answer to this question is simple, just look at the obesity statistics for the U.S. These areas tend to be inhabited by the heaviest Americans:
http://www.obesityinamerica.org/geographic.html
The fact that Middle America has been the equivalent of Wendy’s for extraterrestrials has long been known to the One World Government, and the multinational corporations. In fact, in 1977, the bubblegum brand Bubblicious (Bubba-licious) was introduced by Cadbury Adams to desensitize the public to the fact that Bubba was indeed the main course for bug-eyed monsters, reptoids, blancmanges, and other extrasolarians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblicious
Face it folks, we’re delicious!
gleaner63,
I am not going to do a line by line rebuttal of your comments as you did in post #50. Here are some general comments.
The chances of extra-terrestrials coming to Earth are vanishingly small. As a long-time science fiction reader, I wish this wasn’t true, but it is. FTL travel would be required because the nearest star to the Sun is so far away it takes light, traveling at 300,000 km/sec, over four years to get here from there. But you knew that already.
You wrote “Rationalists dont make claims about subjects they know little or nothing about.” There are some things, like the teapot in orbit around Mars, that are automatically suspect. UFOs fall into this category. You claim there are eyewitness testimonies, landing marks, radar plots, etc. There are also reports of a man rising from the dead some 2000 years ago, miraculous healings at Lourdes, and Marine sergeants dying in Iraq because George Bush coddles homosexuals (see Fred Phelps about this last one). My skepticism puts UFO landing marks on the same level as Phelps’ inanities.
You said “I am aware of no such standard as it applies in a US court of law, are you? You only need evidence.” I can go to court and say I’m Bill Gates’ long-lost love child and so he should pay me for pain and suffering caused by an absent father. You and I both know that evidence would be laughed at. Evidence needs to be credible. Your evidence fails to meet this criteria.
In regards to your claim about Sagan, you offered “I believe the book was simply titled “Life on Mars”, or, it may have been Zubrin’s book “Mission to Mars” (I read alot so sometimes the titles run together).” So my request for a citation ends up being “possibly book A (presumably by Sagan but you didn’t specify) or maybe book B by some guy I’ve never heard of.” Sorry, you failed again.
I have also talked to pilots who have seen strange things…this isn’t proof of aliens. Granted it is a vast universe, and that there is an almost certain probability that life exists out there somewhere. Will we ever meet? Can the speed of light be conquered, let alone approached? Would alien races travel for generations to discover life on another world and then play hide-and-seek or peek-a-boo? Most of us would need more than “it would be cool” as evidence. Please try to separate sci-fi, wishful thinking, sightings of strange lights and people’s anecdotal tales from the real world.
JoJo at #67:
Thanks for your comments. A few general observations. When you say that you think that interstellar distances are a problem for visiting ETs, your making an awful big assumption that our present technology is the best there is. If aliens are thousands of years ahead of us, do you still think they’ll be using chemical rockets?
On the issue owhat constitutes “good” or “acceptable” evidence: if you are familiar with US Courts, standards of evidence differ from state to state. I believe I asked before, but for you, what would constitute evidence beyond a reasonable doubt (a REAL standard of evidence) that aliens may be visiting the earth? If you answer this, I think it will be very telling on how you feel about this subject. As I am sure you are aware, in the last Trial of the Century, the OJ trial elicited quite a bit of opinion on both sides as to his possible guilt. On one side I heard comments that there was “no way” OJ did it. THis before the trial. Clearly, if a person ruled out Oj’s guilt a priori, then *no* amount of evidence would be sufficient. ON the other hand, some convicted OJ before the trial based on a similar standard; “there’s no way you’ll ever convince me he didn’t murder those people”. Do you see the problem here? It’s wasn’t about the evidence at all; it was about protecting a deeply held belief.
ON the book about Carl Sagan; I had asked you that if you didn’t trust me on what I said, I would dig out the book. Do you feel that Carl was just untouchable, and not capable of making mistakes? Sure, he was brilliant at what he did, but he wasn’t perfect. I’ll find the book, but it may take a few days.
Also, you’ve never heard of Robert Zubrin?
baryogenesis writes at #68:
“Would alien races travel for generations to discover life on another world and then play hide and seek or peek-a -boo?”
What makes you think aliens would have to travel for generations to get here. Let’s not be so smug to think we know all there is to know about propulsion systems. The second part of your questions assumes you know the motives of the aliens; you don’t. If someone from Georgia can’t understand someone from India, how much more improbable is it that we can even begin to understand the motives of an alien life form? Allow me to ask you the same question I asked an earlier poster; what evidence would convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that aliens are visiting the earth?
gleaner63 @ 60 Oh but I do have an imagination, that is why I can imagine and know that you are of unsound mind,at least when it pertains to this nonsense. You are suggesting that I read Hynek’s wacko book, perhaps to glean from it a tidbit of nonsense that I may have missed from the general wacko screed already written, to be written, and puked to irritation on the History and assorted quasi-fact channels? It’s like telling me to read that much older book of insane nonsense, that dreck of all that religious nonsenses hinges on, the bible. I know what is contained in that dreck for the masses, and will no more waste my time in deadening my mind with that insane bullshit than I would read Hynek’s and ilk similiar tome, but on a more cosmic bullshit. Your Dad was an outspoken atheist? So now you are trying to disgrace him with a path he was also wont to disparage? My profession? Shh, come closer, I don’t want this to get out. I am really an alien in disguise from the Andromeda Galaxy, on one of the outer arms from the center, in an almost the same position as your earth. I am in this nondescript human form; heck, someone even told me that I look like the recently dead Jesse Helms, a human I am told was a religious cretin of a god that we have no knowledge of. We are so advanced over you that it has taken me a million light years to get here by using the energy of dark matter which you puny humans are still in the dark about. Dark, get it? That’s a joke son! Anyway, I have no time to spend with you as I have to get down to Mississippi and stir up those good ole swamp boys and keep this alien bullshit alive.
Of course I believe that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, but the cosmos is so uncomprehendingly vast, with distances measured in light years, and that vastness and the energy, time, and materials reguired to effect a visit to us will never come I believe, in any humans lifetime, let alone our particular galaxy. You mentioned my writing as being on the angry side. If this topic were religion it would be a lot more angry. After all, UFO nuts do not pose the danger that demented religionists do. You may not harm or bother me, but I am repelled by all manner of irrational nonsense, and until we are visited by certified aliens, then you will be the object of ridicule almost on a par with religion, but not as subject to the most vicious of attacks.
gleaner63 #69
What use are legal proceedings to verifying UFO evidence? Surely scientific analysis is more appropriate – or does that not work because the ‘evidence’ is so woefully unreliable?
The plural of anecdote is NOT data.
Holbac at #71:
You keep bringing God and the Bible into this…I don’t understand that. This has been, for the most part, a civil discussion about UFOs. Where in my posts have I said anything about God or the Bible?
You know what? It’s true that Klass wasn’t very good. Aviation Week was good and he was very good at that. Ufo’s? Only somewhat. He began by speculating that there was some sort of plasma phenomenom from hydro lines that explained a certain type of ufo sighting and did much speculating from a distance without the engagement of an interview or actual field work. In the long run though, it almost doesn’t matter. It’s all still too speculative, “mysterious” and wishful thinking. Where are all of those strange metallic bits that should be evidence that always seem to be stolen by a gov’t agent….and on and on…? Sorry. Pfffft.
Narrator: In A.D. 1947, Cold War was beginning.
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the balloon.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It’s you!
Aliens: How are you gentlemen?
Aliens: All your base are belong to us.
Captain: Can we just give you that one base in Nevada?
btb at #72 said:
“Why use legal proceedings to verify UFO evidence? Surely scientific analysis is more appropraite-or does that not work because the evidence is so woefully unreliable?”
You need both. Eyewitness reports are part of the UFO evidence. What scientific analysis would you apply as to the integrity of the witness? Establishing the veracity of the witness is of vital importance. Legal precepts are one of the ways to do that. If someone is involved in a car wreck, witness testimony is crucial. While you can scientifically examine the wreckage, the science is not so precise that it can answer all of the questions about what happened. Almost eveyone in this thread has questioned the reliability of the witnesses in some fashion (wackos, rednecks, etc.).
baryogenesis at #74 states (in part):
“Klass…did much speculating from a distance without the engagement of an interview or fieldwork. In the long run though it almost doesn’t matter…”
I would argue that it does matter. What kind of scientists writes books but does no field work? I think Klass fits nicely into the “It can’t be therefore it isn’t” category. He’s already decided there aren’t any aliens here…so why investigate? Let’s hope this guy never becomes a District Attorney or something :)
gleaner63 @ 73 Let’s not belabor this, but my reference to a god and the bible (notice MY lower cases) was just an aside and in no way was used against you, as you did not bring it up, but will slip into conversations in any discussions about nonsense, in my discussions anyway. I don’t see in my comment any dig at your religious beliefs; I only used the reference to state a corollarly between religion and other forms of nonsense.
Probably not. The likelihood of an FTL drive using chemical rockets is quite small, but not actually zero.
One of them making a public announcement on national tv might help. The trouble is, all of the “sightings” show the aliens to be very secretive. They may snatch Nebraska gas station attendants for anal probing, but they never appear on the While House lawn saying “Take us to your leader.” An alien appearing on Larry King would go a lot further than a blurry picture of a frisbee.
In regards to Sagan, I must apologize to you. I didn’t read all of your comment. I remember hearing that Sagan pushed for a more sophisticated life detection experiment on the Viking lander. However, Sagan wanting apparatus capable of detecting microbiotic life is not the same as Sagan believing the microbiotic life is present on Mars. “What if” does not equal “there is.”
To paraphrase Sagan, there are billions and billions of people I’ve never heard of. The only Zubrin I’ve ever heard of is a nuclear engineer who proposed the so-called “nuclear saltwater rocket.”
Holback at #78,
Thanks for clearing that up. I didn’t *think* I had mentioned anything about religion in this thread, but then again I didn’t go back and re-read all of my earlier posts either. If I did say something that was offensive to you please accept my apologies, it certainly was not my intent. UFOs just happen to be one of my many side interests (my college major was history, with a minor in secondary eductaion). My main area of interest is the Civil War. I grew up, and still live on a farm directly on the line of march when General Sherman left Savannah, Georgia headed toward Columbia, SC. It was hard *not* to get interested in the Civil War as a youth.
gleaner63 #76
“Eyewitness reports are part of the UFO evidence. What scientific analysis would you apply as to the integrity of the witness? Establishing the veracity of the witness is of vital importance. Legal precepts are one of the ways to do that.”
Eyewitness reports in court cases are often extremely unreliable though. Claims of UFO phenomena happen rather frequently and with the modern ubiquity of cellphone cameras, camcorders etc. it seems, to a skeptic like me, incredible that we would need to rely on eyewitness accounts as evidence at all.
Eyewitness accounts of UFOs could be explained by:
-attention whoring/dishonesty
-mistaken identity
-genuine alien spacecraft sighting
Given the enormous number of sightings but lack of hard evidence, coupled with a common “I wanna believe” mentality, that 3rd option doesn’t seem too likely to me.
gleaner63 @ 77 Say all you want about Philip Klass, but it does not erase his tireless battle against UFO wackos(why do we keep referring to them as wackos?), and his honest opinion that it should not even be a field of study. Heck, someone had to counter these demented hordes from throwing the country into an insane uproar. The rabble hordes were just too numerous to be dealth with rationally. And no fear of Klass becoming a district attorney to try and quell the alien hordes; Philip Klass died on August 9, 2005. You’re safe, for now.
JoJo at #79:
“One of them making a public announcemnt on national TV might help.”
Yep. I think that would probably do it :).
Holbach at #89,
I certainly didn’t mean to disparge the character of Phillip Klass. He believed what he believed. There is a picture I’ve seen on the internet of Klass and Stanton Friedman laughing after one of their debates. I’m sure Klass was a smart, rational person. Friedman was actaully a classmate of Carl Sagan at the University of Chicago. Clearly Friedman respected him saying that in the case of UFOs, “Carl got it wrong”. You can still respect someone as a person and disagree with thier opinions.
JoJo @ #79
“They may snatch Nebraska gas station attendants for anal probing”
Now we’re talking. Good, old-fashioned, alien abduction and anal-probing reports. That’s the aliens I like to think are hanging around Earth.
Nice, JoJo
Russian Captain: Take off every MiG! You know what you doing. Move MiG, for great justice.
Would anyone mind if I asked where they are posting from? I am here in South Carolina late at night at work, at 12:00 midnight.
Gleaner63; if you look at recent research on witness observations and memory they rarely match fully with reality, even in controlled conditions. Unfortunately, it is now known that the mind builds a memory of an event based on many things, such as peoples preconceptions, their beliefs, how they felt when the even happened, etc. Even how you phrase the questions when asking them to recollect an event can change the memory of the event. Police are already at the stage, at least in the UK, were witness statements on their own are often not considered reliable enough without other corroborative evidence. Hence the phrase, the plural of anecdote is not data.
The problem with UFO sightings is that the individual seeing it will respond depending on their existing preconceptions and beliefs. As to the memory issue, it is interesting in some of the more in/famous sightings or close encounters to go back later and reinterview those involved. Those who are invested in the belief that what they saw was an extraterrestrial craft will have, often unconsciously, changed the memory to a much stronger one than the initial one. This does not mean that they are lying or imagining what they see, well not necessarily anyway. However, it does mean that witness statements must always be treated with a great deal of care.
Finally, the level of evidence in a court of law is nowhere near the level of evidence required for science to accept something as approaching reality. In a court of law all you have to do is to convince the majority of the jury one way or another. Change the jury and you might change the outcome. Why do you think that, where allowed, the two sides make a great deal out of choosing the jury. In science it doesn’t work like that and for evidence of Alien UFOs we would require the level of evidence that science requires. Accepting anything less is not being truly sceptical. As another just above said, perhaps lacking initial scientific evidence, an appearance on a top TV news program with full follow up investigation.
Bristol, UK 05:05 BST.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Eyewitness reports can be incredibly unreliable.
1. The number of people who claim to have seen Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Vishnu, Buddha, Allah, angels and demons is huge, millions at least. Of course there are no photos, just blotchy tortillas.
2. I knew someone once who claimed that a UFO landed in his backyard. Of course he had serious brain damage from an accident and was a heavy user of any and all drugs. He also once stayed for a week out at a mountain cabin. He left because witches came out at night and haunted him and was so genuinely terrified that he was shaking uncontrollably and incoherent. This guy wouldn’t even go back to retrieve his belongings so someone else had to do it.
Until there is some hard evidence, flying saucer aliens will be a fringe subject.
Gleaner @ #87
Australia, 2 pm Sunday arvo…and I should be doing some ironing of the pile bigger than my 3 year old, not farting around on Pharyngula.
Hi gleaner, you seem to have missed a crucial point, and JoJo hasn’t pressed you on it. Unless there are some very strange phenomena, such as wormholes, etc, that we do not yet know about, it would take a ship 4 years to reach us from the nearest star, traveling at the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s). The method of propulsion is almost irrelevant.
So, the question remains: is it even possible for carbon based life forms to travel at the speeds that would be necessary to reach this planet (or is there another way to get here)? Traversing the diameter of the milky way — at the speed of light, no less — would take 100,000 years! And don’t forget, we are now finding planets that we believe may be suitable for life, but the closest one that we have found so far is 20 light years away. Obviously, traveling at any speed less than that of light is only going to increase the amount of time it would take to get here.
These are the issues that need to be resolved for this to even be plausible, and this is really the basis for the skepticism. I respect the fact that you have clearly read up on this issue, but we are perfectly justified in our skepticism until you provide some fairly compelling evidence of visitation, as well as a plausible method of getting here.
Damian at #91:
Thanks for your comments. In the book “Unconventional Flying Objects” by former NASA scientists Paul R. Hill, there is a chapter on interstellar flight. According to what I remember (the book is at the house, I am at work), at some point approaching the speed of light, time dilation effects would then come into play. According to him, the time for the crew would be significantly shorter than the *observer* time. I think this is covered in one of Einstein’s relativity theories. Does this ring a bell?
On a side note, I used to work with an engineer named Damian back in the 90s.
Maybe I should send that link to my former Significant Other, who bears the very Scottish surname of Ross and was a wonderful guy until he decided to go all observant on me, threw me out of the house, and married a Fucking Goddamn Yenta®.
Unless you happen to be an underage page boy with a cute butt – and a cuter face. (Honi soit qui mal y pense.)
There may be something to that. Some aliens do prefer parts of the world that have high obesity rates. The Slitheen, for instance – fat human suits are much more comfortable than skinny human suits. The Adipose are partial to fat people too.
True, but they do have a highly advanced musical culture. They head for the nearest sheet-music store and say, “Take me to your lieder.”
Damian,
Stanton Friedman has a new book out called “Science and Flying Saucers”. I haven’t gotten it yet, but from what I can tell, the focus of the book are the potential propulsion systems for interstellar flight. Friedman has a degree in physics so it should be pretty interesting.
True, but they do have a highly advanced musical culture..
Is that why playing Slim Whitman makes their heads explode?
for “gleaner”:
http://www.truthinjustice.org/lawstory.htm
At least he talked about potential aliens… Not too long ago, Auraria Campus (Downtown Denver, Colorado – you can’t miss it), some guy showed an actual video of an alien supposedly peaking out over a window sill. Not only that but he had all the major newspapers around here come to view this thing…
I will call it a hoax but check out the Denver Post archives to see for yourself.
Gleaner63 As I mentioned, I have spoken to Friedman. He is a very serious dude. Problem is, he got it all wrong about a decade and a half ago by accepting spurious so-called Roswell-area “witnesses”. He blew it so bad that I could never again take him as seriously as he takes himself. He wants to believe *so* badly; do you too? Why do you persist in believing rather than thinking?
Oh, and to be on the friendlier side of thingies Gleaner63, I’m yappin from Toronto via originally Toledo. Cheers.
Hi baryogenesis at #99:
“Gleaner63 As I mentioned, I have spoken to Friedman. He is a very serious dude. Problem is, he got it all wrong about a decade and a half ago by accepting spurious so-called Roswell-area “witnesses”.
Friedman readliy admits that *some* of the witnesses he originally thought were legitimate were in fact bogus. He’s hasn’t tried to hide this.
“He blew it so bad that I could never again take him as seriously as he takes himself.”
If Friedman was not open about all this, then I would no longer take him seriously either. I wouldn’t toss him out based on a few mistakes however.
“He wants to believe *so* badly; do you too?”
My formal college training is in history. So I am well aware of the power of eyewitness testimony as well as the pitfalls. I believe, if you look at the history of meteorites, these claims were at first considered false. Two reasons, if I recall correctly were given. Number one was that *everyone knows* that stones don’t fall from the sky. And number 2, the fact that a peasant could not be trusted in his eyewitness accounts of stones falling from the sky; even when the meteorite itself was found. This is all nicely detailed in a book called “Rain of Iron and Ice” by John Lewis.
“Why do you persist in believing rather than thinking?”
How would you distinguish between the two? Isn’t there an overlap? One cannot believe something unless he thinks it is possible. Likewise, a person cannot accept that which has already been ruled impossible.
baryogensis,
You also asked if I felt the need to believe so strongly.
Of course, it’s hard to evaluate myself on that basis. My wife would probably tell you I am just a very curious person. But who knows? There is a book called “Roswell:Inconvenient Facts and the WIll to Believe” by Karl T. Pflock. I believe he’s right that their are some people who fall into that category. I don’t think I am one of those :)
It seems the aliens revolted against anal probing. Those pesky questioners of authority, I say!
Damn you Zeno! You won.
gleaner63: not ruled impossible but improbable. Think, our galaxy alone is some 100,000 light years across. There are some 400 billion stars in our galaxy. There are in excess of 100 billion galaxies. This means that with an average 400 billion stars per galaxy and more than 100 billion galaxies there are over 40 thousand billion billion stars.
We have had some kind of radio transmissions from Earth for a 100 or so. Thus anyone coming here because of noticing our radio transmissions would have to be located within a 100 light years.
If they are coming here on the off chance, why? After all there are 40 thousand billion billion stars to look at. Thus purely on probability alone it is unlikely, to say the least, that aliens are visiting us.
Thus, we are not dismissing it as impossible, just as very improbable. However, give us real evidence, and by that I don’t mean what the average UFO sighting represents, and we will look at it. Unfortunately, nothing presented so far represents anything approaching the level of evidence required.
BTW, there is a good number of posts about this subject over on BA at the moment which covers some of the points you bring up, especially about witness weaknesses and saves me having to copy and paste over here;
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/05/thats-no-moon-oh-wait-yes-it-is/
“If aliens are thousands of years ahead of us, do you still think they’ll be using chemical rockets?”
“If these were in fact alien spaceships with the tech to get here from another world, wouldn’t it be possible for them to have some sort of stealth capability?”
“Absolutely insane. Maybe they don’t want to make themselves known”
The trouble with those who want to believe is that they so often sound like a kid talking about their imaginary friend. Of course you can’t see the aliens, they’re invisible. But they can get here and make occasional semi-appearances to one or two people at a time, because they got faster-than-light technology, or they can go through wormholes and stuff.
It just doesn’t quite wash with the rest of us, you see?
That’s why I pointed to Jim McDonald’s posting, which is indeed “original research” on the subject. Have you read it?
Carl Sagan merely pointed out that the alleged “star map” was entirely useless. Does Friedman address this?
Rey Fox at #104:
“It just doesn’t quite wash with the rest of us, you see?”
Yep, I see. It certainly wasn’t my goal to try and convince anyone of anything pertaining to UFOs. I think that would be impossible, and even if was possible, an internet blog wouldn’t be the right forum.
I think what I was really more interested in was, those who reject UFOs as completely bogus, did they arrive at that conclusion through research, or just because they heard joe-blogger say it and they happen to love joe blogger. I realize everone has the right to have an opinion, but wouldn’t it be nice if everyone, like Harlan Ellison once said, had “an informed opinion” as opposed to just an opinion. There is obviously a huge gap between the two.
Owlmirror at #105:
Friedman does indeed adrress the issue of the star map. However I cannot remember what he says about it, but it is in the book. I loaned the book to a friend a few months ago so I do not have it with me.
Do you have a link to the Jim McDonald posting? If so I will certainly read it.
gleaner63,
Perhaps a physicist could explain this in more detail, but General Relativity does not imply that if you travel from point A to point B at near the speed of light that you will experience less time. If you traveled at 99% the speed of light for a year, you’d have traveled 99% of a light-year (physicists can come in if the math is wrong).
The difference in time is with the people you left on your reference point A, so if you returned, it would have still passed 2 years for you, but for them it would have been much longer. So, something traveling at near the speed of light will still take just a bit more than a year to travel one light-year.
As others have mentioned, the improbabilities are just too much, against the probability of it being somehow true. The propulsion system doesn’t mean anything. To travel that far, you’d have to do one of three:
1) Break the laws of physics.
2) Travel for generations, which would mean ID4-like huge spaceships, not fast little saucers. (I shudder to reference such an atrocious movie, so perhaps a Death Star might be also an option.)
3) Have to be able to somehow manipulate wormholes at will, which up till now I think they’re still only theoretical, and even then, impossible to manipulate.
Multiply this improbability with the one of life not only beginning, but also evolving to be intelligent, and more advanced than ours.
Further multiply this improbability with the one that they somehow managed to find us out of chance. As someone else mentioned, there is no way for them to find us since we’ve been only sending out radio waves for so long.
You can say that “we don’t know everything,” but that’s a cop-out, one which is all too familiar. That’s the new agers, religionists, and other superstitious people’s excuse. That doesn’t explain anything.
And the fact is that we do know a lot of things. Those things have been established by huge, humongous amounts of evidence by now in the 21st century. Knowledge progresses, it just doesn’t get completely overturned by new findings. If you wanna break the laws of physics, you’re gonna have to have more and bigger evidence than it’s been produced for the last, oh, maybe 100 years or so. Even such a genius as Einstein didn’t overturn Newton’s laws, he just refined them, albeit still revolutionizing our view of the universe.
And accusing “rationalists” of lack of imagination seems to me pretty ironic. All superstition seems so mundane compared with what has been discovered through scientific research. Who in their right mind would have imagined quantum weirdness? All superstition (and even most sci-fi) seems so unimaginative compared to that. Aliens as depicted by “witnesses” suffer the most from this lack of imagination.
You’re not impressing me with your reading comprehension skills. I’ve posted only one link to this thread so far, at #29. If you’re too lazy to scroll up that far:
“That, along with this and the other posting about UFO-followers, reminded me of this rigorous analysis of that event, from Making Light:”
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html
Owlmirror at #109,
Sorry about that. Thanks for the link.
andyo at #109:
Go to Wikepedia and “Time Dilation”. When you get there go to “Time Dilation and Spaceflight”. Apparently the author of this article disagrees with you. Not being a physicist of course I can’t make any claims from my own knowledge base. Are you a physicist?
“We don’t know everything” vs. “But we do know some things”. Okay, regardless of position you hold, it is still accurate to say that for a race that has never traveled beyond it’s own moon, and favorite pastime is killing each other, that we start have a lot to learn. If you’re going to sit there as a human and beat your chest about what we know about the universe-I’m just not impressed.
“accusiong rationalists of a lack of imagination…” Well, if you read the thread, I believe the reference I made, as a joke, was to “Holbach”. He claimed he was a rational dude, but he called me every name in the book and knows more “cuss” words than anybody I know. SO if you have a quarrel with that exchange, take it up with PZ, the moderators, or Holbach-because nobody else would. Would you actually defend his statements?
Sasquatches (Bigfoot to you Americans) are aliens enjoying back to nature holidays on a primitive planet. They are supposed to avoid all contact with the rubes, but a few of them cannot resist the fun of scaring the beejezus out of the odd hiker. This explains why no bodies or scat have ever been found.
The best debunking is the original 1947 Mout Ranieer sighting itself – the craft were described as boomerang shaped and their motion was described as like a saucer skipping accross water. After this report people starting seeing flying saucers and no one saw any more boomerang shaped craft.
Similarly, according to Joe Nichol, prior to Barney and Betty Hill, the aliens who abducted people came in all shapes and sizes. After the Hill case became widely publicized, the aliens became standardized. I am not sure when the anal probings became popular.
This all indicates that the sightings are most likely all bogus and illustrative of the power of suggestion. Sasquatches, however are real because I want them to be.
Yeah, I must correct what I said about time dilation. I read about that years ago, sorry. But still, the distances are so great that any realistic travel even with great technology would have to take generations.
And this still doesn’t take care of the greatest improbability, which is how did they find us? A possible solution could be that the galaxy is teeming with intelligent advanced life, but you can see how that’s a huge leap.
– gleaner63
The difference is, 150 years of solid evolutionary science vs 50 years of smudgy photos, crazy stories, and hoaxes.
gleaner63,
what you need to realize is that time dilatation only starts to take effect at speeds very close to the speed of light.
Just to give a numeric example :
If you wanted to travel to a system which was 5000 light years away (which is still close by within our galaxy), and you were to travel at a speed of 0.5c, the travelers in the spaceship would still experience a travel time of 8660 years
at 0.7c it would be 5101 years
at 0.8c it would be 3750 years
at 0.9c it would be 2421 years
at 0.99c it would be 712 years
As you can see from this example, for it to become interesting, you would have to travel at speeds which are very close to the speed of light. At such speeds, the actual lifetime of the particles of the spaceship itself would be greatly reduced and even if it were to experience a faster travel, it wouldn’t help, it’d be distintegrated before it arrives, whatever new type of propulsion it has achieved to do it.
It would seem that even amongst the rational and non-believing there are those who like the idea of something irrational,mystical and otherworldly to believe in,whether that expresses itself in conspiracy theories,belief in UFOs and giant government cover-ups or alien abductions LOL
That said,Im convinced there is life on other planets(there are amino acids flying around in meteors for gods sake),and I can thoroughly enjoy “Independence Day” or “X-files”.
All the stuff about FTL travel is entirely irrelevant. A technological civilization at most a couple of centuries in advance of ours could set in motion a process that would fill the galaxy with their artefacts within a few million years, without any need for FTL travel, using von Neumann probes – that is, probes that build copies of themselves when they arrive in a new solar system – and build anything else required for exploration/exploitation of that system. So I don’t find it at all unfeasible that aliens could have reached our system – but if they had, I would expect their presence to be obvious, at least in the form of artefacts, more likely in the form of a thriving alien economy. The fact that it is not is actually good evidence that there are no technological civilizations significantly more advanced than our own – and probably none at all – in our galaxy. Of course you can always come up with “Well, you don’t know their technology or their motivation”, but why would these just happen to be such that 50 years of investigation produce lots of anecdotes, lots of dodgy photos, but no solid evidence? I could posit the existence of fairies on more convincing grounds – after all, there are eyewitness reports of these going back centuries from all around the world.
Nick Gotts, and don’t forget the photographs of faeries we have :) At least, even though fakes and IIRC done by a couple of young girls, they are of a quality that puts even the best of the UFO photos to shame.
gleaner63,
Oh I think I’ll answer this question, honestly, I don’t waste any time in research on this stuff. Beyond all the implausibility arguments, it’s very simple, I just assume (oh you might say, this is very crazy, but I don’t think so), that if we do find real solid evidence for UFOs one day, it will make the headline news everywhere in the world. You see, I do trust scientists, and not wackaloons.
In the meantime, I just make the assumption that it’s just people fabulating and based on their very well known and demonstrated tendency to believe in weird things and their need to have seen something unique and exceptional.
That’s all really.
Michio Kaku’s lates book is about the physic of science fiction:
http://www.mkaku.org/books-tv-film/physics_of_the_impossible.php
Haven’t read it but I’m sure he analyzes ideas like wormhole travel, interdimensional travel, gravity or anti gravity propulsion and so on.
I’ve heard him talk about that sort of thing on the radio, but every analysis inevitably ends in, ‘but unfortunately you need to generate as much energy as a star to acheive such a thing.’
gleaner63, you seem to be saying that the aliens are ineffable. That means if you were wrong, you wouldn’t know. And that makes your whole idea useless, like the dragon in Sagan’s garage.
On the probability of intelligent life out there, I heartily recommend
Peter D. Ward & Donald Brownlee: Rare Earth. Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, Copernicus/Springer 2000.
“There are so many stars out there” is a surprisingly bad argument.
Is it a bad argument, or just not as compelling as it would seem at first glance? It seems to me that, since stars are probably the only reliable source of energy for life, the sheer power of numbers is still what could make life “out there” more possible, and therefore even if hugely improbable, intelligent life too.
This is one of the most succinct descriptions of the credibility issue with visitors from outer space: to account for the loose ends in the story, there is this tendency to make ever-wilder claims. We have this enormous capacity for delusion, and there’s something amazing about people’s willingness to make the stories more outlandish to compensate for inconsistencies. Rather than risk saying “I may have remembered things incorrectly”, the tendency it to embellish the story of the aliens with evermore physics-defying “super technology”, making the accounts all the more difficult to prove, rather than less.
There is definitely something worth legitimately studying about the UFO movement; this modern myth undoubtedly has much to teach us about the limits of our faculties of reason, and what it means for us to “believe” that something is real. Its a fascinating collection of stories and memes that seem to outline some of the details of how people handle the task of discerning reality apart from fantasy… and how this process is derailed.
Sounds a lot like theology.
OT but talking of weird, conspiracy theories, etc., BBC2 has a programme on “Building 7” tonight, which I’ll watch, and give a brief report on in this thread.
Jojo, #75:
Hey, I wrote that! And I am deeply and profoundly offended that you forgot the Captain’s uncertain hesitation before delivering the last line. I trust you’ll get that right in future versions, or I will wag my finger disapprovingly at you.
Longtime lurker, #86:
Okay, that made me ROFLMAO.
I *have* read up on some stuff like worm holes and FTL. Fact #1 – They believe it is possible, in theory, to create a warp bubble. Problems include – 1) It would take more power than the sun produces per second to generate one large enough for a ship, 2) as that scale the “field” would be so thin that it encompassed a dimension thinning than the energy used to produce it, 3) it requires the use of an energy state that has the unfortunate consequence that the longer you maintain it, the bigger the “boom” at the other end. Basically, if you maintained it long enough to go from here to the nearest star, the energy used would cause a secondary wash of energy, upon shutting down the field, large enough to vaporize the entire planetary system you where visiting.
Wormholes, are just as big a problem. Forget Star Trek, or Stargate SG-1. Well, actually the later comes “closer”. In the later the “event horizon” actually reduces you to a stream of data, which sends you through the wormhole, then reintegrated you at the other end. This is damn silly, since the whole whoosh opening, unstable vortex, blah, blah, blah, is pure BS in such a case. A worm hole as *they* describe the technology working would still use the same micro-sized hole, which only energy could pass through, as we know is possible, and there wouldn’t be any unstable vortex *or* event horizon, unless its artificial and just there to look cool. Making one *big* and *stable* would, even if you could manage it, involve similar energy expenditures as the warp field system, only.. In this case you need to decide “which” planetary system you want to disintegrate in the backlash of released energy, the one you are “arriving at” or the one you are “leaving”. And, you better hope it collapsed so as to destroy the right one, from your perspective.
Basically, the whole project, without some damn strange and as of yet not even imagined physics, would make the micro-blackhole hypothesis as the end of the world, from the newest super collider, look like a burp.
Its not just that we don’t *have* the technology or physics, its that, without some radical shift in understanding of how the universe works, and thus how to both get the energy needed, and prevent it blowing up on us when we turn things off, its **not possible** to build these things.
You can argue and whine about how someone else *might have* invented it, and point to places where someone’s grass stopped growing properly as a “landing point”, but until you show real evidence, I will go with the real science.
Oh, and BTW. I have seen those sorts of “landing patches” on lawns in yards too small to parks a fracking car on, never mind a space ship. So, I am kind of confused how they “landed” to make them… lol As for radar tracks.. Old systems got bad data all the time. New systems, still have false positives, but tend to be more accurate, yet still can’t “tell” the difference between a flock of closely flying bats, or a cloud of insects, etc. and a UFO. Not the ones being used commercially, and not the ones being used in most military aircraft/systems, since they are all designed to detect “large” objects and track them, not many “small” objects clustered close to each other. And that is just one thing that can generate false detection.
Otherwise, if you have to hypothesis anything, there is some dude building a prototype plasma based, disc shaped, craft right now. We know for the fact that the military has built and tested various things that “look” UFOish. And, well, we have idiots trying to push radical theology in the military and getting by with it because the people already there “believe” the same crap. Its not hard to imagine some nut cases in some black budget project, who are **convinced** as many other UFO people that Roswell was real, and have spent decades funding various idiot attempts to reinvent something that never existed. Even if they succeeded, it wouldn’t make the fracking original UFO real, or prove that aliens are visiting us, it would just prove, once again, that even a complete raving lunatic, with enough public money, can build a Spruce Goose.
#124
How true. We seem to be able to adjust our perception to fit our belief system even in the face of overwhelming proof that we are mistaken.
At a beach fire some years ago I became aware of some lights moving at what seemed to be a great distance away on a moonless night. Knowing the area intimately I knew the locals were doing a bit of night fishing at the low water mark (about a mile away).
Two separate accounts of those lights were told over a period of about an hour:
There are devil worshippers dancing around a fire on the beach.
There’s a UFO out over the sea, nothing else can hover like that in complete silence.
Neither of these people was willing to approach the lights to actually see what they were, out of fear, caused by their perception of the phenomenon they were seeing, because of their beliefs. Both were able to generate enough doubt in their companions to make them also avoid investigating the lights.
The first was a 16 year old whose family is very religious, the second a middle aged man who thinks von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods is the last word in rigorous research. Neither was willing to believe it was fishermen, both spread their version of events as truth.
I’ve since heard about naked devil worshippers using the beach, ‘possibly for human sacrifice’ at some unspecified time, from an unconnected source, and aliens are ‘known’ to have visited the area, possibly in more than one type of craft and more than once! The tales grow in the telling and our big brains do love a good story.
The fishing, however, was, and is, excellent and I still love a good, late night beach fire. Oh, and I would walk the mile to see what the lights were if I didn’t know. If curiosity was to kill the cat – well it was worth the risk!
ARRRRRRRRRRGGGH!
Holbach!!! Take that back! You cannot possibly look like Jesse Helms. I had you at a cross of Sean Connery & Brian Blessed. Uggh! Now my imagination is fried. No twirling that off.
I gotta go lie down. Uggggh!!!
j.t.delaney at #124 stated:
“We have this enormous capacity for delusion…”
Does this rule also apply to you, or just to people who have ideas you disagree with?
negentropeater stated at #120:
“…honestly, I don’t waste any time on this stuff…”
Okay. Then why do you waste time posting about a subject that by your own admission that you are ignorant of? What’s the point?
You said:
“You see, I do trust scientists and not wackaloons.”
Dr. J. Allen Hynek *was* a scientist. He was a professor at Ohio State and Northwestern. You may disagree with him, but he was certainly not a “wackaloon”.
“Building 7” programme report.
Hey, BBC still does some good stuff occasionally. This was one in a series on conspiracy theories, 1 whole hour without adverts, and very well made.
Short summary:
Conspiracy theories about building 7 are crap.
Longer summary:
The programme only covered building 7, not the wider conspiracy theories. They gave both sides around the same amount of airtime, more to the conspiracists toward the start, more to the official story toward the end.
The conspiracists’ claim is that building 7’s collapse was a controlled demolition, because skyscrapers have never collapsed as a result of ordinary fires, it went straight down like a controlled demolition, all the steel from it was taken away and melted down, the first report about it was inconclusive, and a final report is still awaited.
The anti-conspiracists reply that a controlled demolition of a building that size would require months of very noisy and visible preparation, and that this was not an ordinary office fire, because debris from the twin towers’ falls (particularly that of the North tower) smashed into building 7, causing large holes and multiple fires. Building 5, which remained standing, had a partial internal collapse very much like that needed to bring down 7. They interviewed the guy in charge of preparing the final report, who said such a report takes a lot of work, and they’ve had to use computer models because there’s no steel from 7 to analyse.
The removal of all this steel to be melted down is, in my opinion, the strongest point the conspiracists have – it was, at the least, appallingly irresponsible, given what could have been learned about the response of skyscrapers to extreme conditions. The conspiracists’ remaining points are a collection of relatively minor anomalies, and they have (as some admitted) no coherent theory to account for why or how 7 would have been demolished (sound familiar?).
The possibilties of interstellar flight, which some have raised here in an intelligent matter, is certainly a prerequisite for alien visitors. In a nutshell, if interstellar flight is impossible, so too is the idea that *some* UFOs *may* be interstellar vehicles. What follows is an excerpt from former NASA scientist Paul R. Hill’s book, “Unconventional Flying Objects”, from the chapter titled “Time requirements for Interstellar Travel”:
“Much of the general public and a segment of the technical world have misconceptions about the theory of raltivity. Everyone has heard of relativistic time effects, but whenever UFO travels times are discussed, it seems that these effects are overlooked or forgotten.
An example of confusion in the technical world is given by the violent reactions to a paper entitled “Flight Mechanics of Photon Rockets”, given by Eugene Sanger before a congress of leading physicists and engineers in 1956. Sanger’s scientific critics nearly crucified him on two points. One was his statement that, when an interstellar vehicle accelerates at 1g for over a years time, and the onboatrd integrating accelerometer reads a velocity greater than light speed, the on-board reference frame the reading is correct. The other statement was Sanger’s calculations that an interstellar vehicle accelerating and deaccelerating at 1g could cross the known universe, stopping at the most distant galaxy in less then 50 years in passenger or occupant time. Somebody was wrong. I always thought it was the critics”.
Now, if Hill is correct, this is a bombshell, and puts an end to the argument that aliens can’t get here. Of course, I’m neither physicist nor enginner, only a humble guy with a degree in history. So, flame away!
From “Unconventional Flying Objects”, by Paul R. Hill::
“Don’t be misled by the countless statements in the literature that interstellar distance and the speed of light constitute some kind of barrier to space travel. There are only two paths to this conclusion:
1. Nobody in the universe has the technology to approach light speed.
2. Observer time is significant, and onboard time is to be ignored.
Both paths are false ones. The confused second view is the more common. It’s proponents are using the observed time for light to travel as the shortest possible time for passage. Totally false”.
gleaner63,
I tried to answer the most honestly possible to your question, you said that’s what you were really interested to know, why do people reject UFOs as bogus.
I told you, when we’ll find real solid evidence for UFOs, it’ll make the headline news. Which clearly means I don’t reject UFOs as such as bogus, but the current evidence as bogus. When I say, I trust scientists, not wackaloons, it means that when the time comes, I trust that the scientific community will reach rapidly a consensus when real solid evidence for UFOs is found. And that I don’t trust wackaloons who seem to spend so much time on bogus evidence, even if they have a scientific background.
You know, there is so much information available, that you have to chose where you want to prioritize. If you want to focus on UFO stuff, when you say yourself that you are neither a physicist nor engineer, only a humble guy with a degree in history, I think you are going to get the wrong biaises, and store useless information, you might want to learn more about physcis first. I mean beyond wikipedia, real physics, where one tries to solve problems and stuff, understand questions. Starting with the basics, classical mechanics, thermodynamics, then special relativity, then general relativity, then quantum mechanics, there’s so much to learn there, why spend so much time on trying to understand stuff about UFOs, photon rockets, interstellar travel, all these very complicated things, when one probably doesn’t even understand the basics ? Start with the basics, build from there, you’ll see how this is far more fascinating and deeply fulfilling, than all this superficial talk about “this scientist said that…”
But that’s only a personal suggestion.
negentropyeater at #136:
Thanks for your constructive criticism. Here are a few general comments. You seem to echo the sentiments of a lot of people on this board, who, when confronted by the opinion of a scientist who disagrees with their own position, that said scientist is a “wacklaloon” (you’ve used this term twice now). Let’s look at one scientist who believed UfOs were worthy of study:
Dr. James Allen Hynek
-B.S., 1931, University of Chicago.
-Ph.D., 1936, University of Chicago (Yerkes Observatory).
-Department of Physics and Astr., Ohio State University,1936.
-John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, 1944.
-full professor, 1950, Ohio State University.
-Smithsonian Astrophysics Lab, 1956.
This is a *shortened* version of Hynke’s resume. Do you think maybe Hynek knew a *little” about physics? Was he a “wackaloon”? You really need to give serious consideration to the fact that not everyone who disagrees with you is a wackjob. Otherwise, you would have little credibility. I’ve been honest about my education. I have a BS degree in history, having attended West Hills Jr. college and Chapman University in California befor finally graduating from Charleston Southern University in 1999. Care to give us your background which allows you to somehow call credentialed scientists “wackaloons”?
Gleaner63,
you mean this Dr J.A.Hynek :
My background, I am diplomé de l’ Ecole Polytechnique (1987), et de l’ Ecole Nationale des Télécommunications. Also have an MBA from INSEAD.
negentropyeater at #138:
It is well known that Hynek wasn’t completely sure of the origins of UFOs. He was however, sure they were real ojects guided by “…some intelligence…”. Sounds like a careful scientist to me. You have to make sure that when you quote Hynek you keep it in context:
“Today I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didn’t seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real…and could have a profound effect…in mankind’s outlook on the universe”.
-J. Allen Hynek, 1977
“…as a scientist, he would never be a “believer” in the sense of acceptiong something on blind faith”.
As a rational. imperical scientist, Hynek didn’t take the approach of the “true believers”, a reference to many people who believed in anything lacking any sort of evidence. Again, all of this is well known. The people who study UFOs don’t all subscribe to exaclty what they are.
I “favor” the ET idea, though not totally, because it seems to fit the data across a broad range. Most of the reports appear to be of “nuts and bolts” craft. But, I am not so deluded as to believe I couldn’t be entirely wrong.
gleaner63,
as I said, I’m not rejecting UFOs as such, but the current bogus evidence.
First, it’s likely that intelligent life exists elsewhere in this galaxy. We know it’s very rare, but exactly how rare is still quite unclear.
So it’s quite plausible that alien species have indeed already started to explore and/or colonize our galaxy.
But there are three problems ;
1. it would be an absolutely phenomenal coïncidence that it be just at the moment when we start making movies about aliens that these aliens or their artifacts discover earth. Why just now ?
2. If they were exploring, they would be doing it using replicating technologies, and not the kind of bogus UFOs that people talk about
3. If they were colonizing, well, we would know it already
negentropyeater said at #140:
“as I said, I’m not rejecting UFOs as such, but the current bogus evidence.
First, it’s likely that intelligent life exists elsewhere in this galaxy. We know it’s very rare, but exactly how rare is still quite unclear.”
You could be right. I’m of the idea that with more powerful telescopes we’ll be able to see if there are any earth-like planets orbiting other stars.
“So it’s quite plausible that alien species have indeed already started to explore and/or colonize our galaxy.
But there are three problems ;
1. it would be an absolutely phenomenal coïncidence that it be just at the moment when we start making movies about aliens that these aliens or their artifacts discover earth. Why just now ?”
-It could be just a coincidence. Or, perhaps we have been under observation for longer than we realize. Plus, it might depend on how old the alien culture and how long they have been exploring.
“2. If they were exploring, they would be doing it using replicating technologies, and not the kind of bogus UFOs that people talk about”.
-We only have one culture in which to make assumptions about technology.
“3. If they were colonizing, well, we would know it already”
-Understanding the behavior or motives of an alien culture might be the most difficult task of all. You ask excellent questions and I wish my answers were better. I brought a book to work called “First Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”. It includes articles by Asimov, Clarke and Frank Drake. Although it came out in 1990, it should still be interesting.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek *was* a scientist.
so was Michael Behe.
gleaner, you brought up the issue of meteorites not being accepted as “real”, but failed to expound on why they ARE, now.
I highly suggest you explore your analogy just a bit further, to find out why nobody here agrees with your assessment.
Ichthyic wrote at #142
“Dr. J. Allen Hynek *was* a scientist.
so was Michael Behe.”
Michael Behe is *still* a scientist as far as I know.
“gleaner, you brought up the issue of meteorites not being accepted as “real”, but failed to expound on why they ARE, now.”
“Rain of Ice and Iron”, by John Lewis, was where I got the meteorite story from. It’s really quite simple. There was eyewitness testimony, which was rejected. There were the actual meteorites for the authorities to examine. It was rejected that the objects came from the sky. If I remember correcly, only when our view of the heavans became more accuarte did the idea that stones falling from the sky become plausible. Is this what you are talking about?
“I highly suggest you explore your analogy just a bit further, to find out why nobody here agrees with your assessment.”
Okay, help me out. What did I leave out?
The fact that Behe is still a scientist is even a more compelling argument that science just doesn’t weed out the “wackaloons” as easily. (Though Ichthyic might have said “was” tongue-in-cheek, don’t know.) It’s perfectly feasible for a working scientist to have one or two wackaloon ideas and still remain functional. Newton is probably the prime example. But just the word of a few scientists, especially without compelling evidence, is not enough to start believing preposterous ideas. Could Newton have convinced scientists about alchemy? Only with compelling evidence.
Another thing that was mentioned is that how would you know if you were wrong? Do you allow that possibility, and if so, what would it take? If you ask us that last question, I’m sure most of us could answer it straightforwardly. Are you considering the likelihood that it’s fake, that all those people, the great majority of whom are very unreliable witnesses, are misinterpreting what they saw, and some of them just plain lying, against the unlikelihood that it’s true (bending/breaking physics, chance encounters, etc.).
Also, the story about Kenneth Arnold and the fuzzy story about the first “saucer-shaped” spacecraft and the subsequent boom in the sightings of those kinds of UFOs (and the fact that Arnold told Edward R. Murrow that the motion was saucer-like, not the shape — apparently contradicting other quotations by him) immediately makes the whole flying saucer subculture highly suspect, don’t you think?
andyo at #144:
Of course I allow the possibility that I am wrong. Why wouldn’t I? I am not so wedded to any position that it becomes so deeply held that it must be defended at all costs. If you believe the “great majority” of people who report UFOs are “very” unreliable witnesses, you obviously cannot have *ever* read a single UFO report by a serious investigator. Just glancing through one of J. Allen Hynek’s books we have; a retired USAF pilot, a Professer of Chemistry, an Airport Tower operator and an astronomer. On the face of it, why would you consider any of these witnesses as defacto unreliable? If you don’t actively read the other side of the UFO question, I think you may have bought into a type of urban myth; that people who report UFOs are, in fact *must*, have something wrong with them. Also, why accept eyewitness tesimony at all? I mean for *anything*? Seriously, if you’ve ever watched someone on a witness stand, do you just automatically dismiss what they say? In fact, why rely on your senses at all? Tell me, do you reject the stories of Holocaust survivors? Surely they can’t be trusted, especially being under duress, to accurately recall what happened at Treblinka, right? If your going to throw out some eyewitness accounts, to be fair, you have to throw ’em all out. But, you can’t pick and choose based soley on personal preference sight unseen. In your opinion, what characteristics make one witness better than another? I’d be really interested to know…
Newton is probably the prime example. – andyo
I don’t think so: in the 17th century, alchemy was not yet the sole province of wackaloons. Nor was Biblical numerology, Newton’s other (from our point of view) crazy idea. That said, Newton was weird.
On the face of it, why would you consider any of these witnesses as defacto unreliable?
Because eyewitness testimony is unreliable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a USAF pilot, a professor of chemistry, or a member of the Supreme Court: your unsupported testimony cannot in general be relied on. There is a whole area of psychological research on this. I don’t have time to find references just now, but use google scholar to search for “eyewitness testimony”.
andyo at #144,
Because I have a degree in history, having taught it at the high school level, and because I still study it, I do place a great emphasis on eyewitness testimony because in a lot of cases, that’s all an historian has to deal with. I visited the Gettysburg battlefield a few years ago, and there is almost no physical trace that a battle involving tens of thousands of troops was fought there. Devils Den, Little Round Top, the field across whick Pickett’s Charge took place are just empty spaces. No amount of science or archaeology can ever accurately describe what happened there as well as the *eyewitness* testimony. On a sadder note, you might find it interesting that one reason that some peolpe deny the Holocaust is because the eyewitness accounts are so faulty; can’t recall dates, times or places or even a good description of Josef Mengle. Not to mention that these witnesses are describing events that took place decades ago. One of the officials at the Yad Vashim museum even admits this, but some accounts would of course contain errors…
Nick Gotts stated #147:
“because eyewitness testimony is unreliable”
Okay Nick, would you apply this same standard to the stories from Holocaust survivors?
Would you have eyewitness testimony thrown out as an admissible type of evidence in a court of law?
Nick stated at 147:
“your unsupported testimony cannot in general be relied on”
Nick, your “nuts”. Can you remember where you to went to high school at? How about certain toys you played with as a child? I’ve been out of the navy since 1985, but I’ll bet you a hundred bucks I can take you back to the aircraft hanger I used to work in NAS Lemoore, CA.. I can name everybody who I worked with including their ranks and their home states and religion, likes and dislikes. Some eyewitness testimony is unreliable, but not ALL of it. And it does matter who you are…else why put certain witnesses on the stand and not others? People also have different capacities as far as memory and recall. Anyway, gotta run, almost through with my shift, this was a fun thread…
But isn’t this different, though? If history could do without eyewitness testimony, and do repeatable experiments, I’m sure they’d prefer that. That’s why history is not as reliable as physics, it’s not even considered a “hard” science, isn’t it?
Another thing is that history tries to deal with mostly perfectly mundane events (in the context of this conversation). The more extraordinary the claim, the better evidence you must have, don’t you? And by the way, how many people have seen Elvis, or the Loch Ness monster? Those reports even have the advantage of not needing to violate natural laws or ultra-low probabilities (the monster might be at the edge though).
And the court thing. Surely eyewitness reports aren’t a surefire way to establish the case. They usually go in combination with other evidence. But in any case, comparing a court is not the same as exploring reality. In court you are trying to prove a single event. In science you need repeatability and prediction.
Oh, and you allow the possibility that you’re wrong, but the more important question is the one that followed. What would it take for you to realize if you’re wrong?
andyo at #151;
You make some excellent points. Some people would consider the study of history and the study of physics as requiring different approaches. I agree. As you said, historical events are not repeatable, so that’s a built-in problem. I’m probably a little overboard on the eyewitness accounts because of how it pertains to the study of history, my favorite subject.
Take care
andyo at #152,
Good question, I will get back to you on this, honestly.
andyo,
I wil be back here this upcoming thursday night after 10:00 EST. If possible I will talk with you then. Thanks for being reasonable and rational…
I can name everybody who I worked with including their ranks and their home states and religion, likes and dislikes.
You think you can. Even if you’re right (how have you checked?) you associated with these people over a long period of time in many everyday contexts – that’s very different from accurately reporting a single, very unusual event.
I’m not nuts. Nor are you – you’re just ignorant of scientific psychology, while I know something about it. There is about 40 years of psychological research on eyewitness memory, of which two key findings are:
(1) It is pretty unreliable.
(2) Most people greatly overestimate how reliable it is.
Here’s just one recent and freely available paper, which reviews some of the work:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/pgsa/Course%20Readings/Clinical%20Issues/Loftus%20(2003).pdf
Gleaner63,
Of course we’ll be able to detect ELPs, we already have, but you do realize the limitations of space interferometry, don’t you ? Direct observation of Earth-like planets is extremely challenging, because their parent stars are about 10^10 times brighter but lie just a fraction of an arcsecond away, so even if we improve much further our technologies, we will still be limited to the study of systems within our very close vicinity, a few 10s of parsecs away. That’s like not even 0.001% of the volume of our galaxy.
So, that still doesn’t tell you much about wether there are alien species out there exploring and/or colonizing our galaxy, does it ?
Moreover, you still don’t seem to want to understand that the laws of physics are the same throughout the galaxy, the size of this galaxy is known, the number of stars is known, the limitations are known, even if we assume that an alien species has indeed developped new propulsion technologies and can travel at much faster speeds than we can, there simply are things that don’t make any sense :
1. sending manned spaceships to explore the galaxy
2.
Do you realize what kind of coïncidence this represents. Do the maths ! And then if not a coïncidence, you suggest these alien scientists have been hovering above earth in exploration mode for a few millenaries ? It’s not because they are alien species that have somehow been able to develop much more advanced technologies than us that they have to be completely illogical !
I found strange that you seem to want to believe so easily in the kind of bogus UFO evidence, but reject the much more logical possibility of replicating technologies.
All I’m saying is that if indeed an alien species were so advanced that they had already explored the galaxy by means of the appropriate replicating technologies, detected that the earth be an ideal place to be colonized, and were ready to colonize it, they wouldn’t be sending some kind of little stealth frisbees UFOs, collecting soil samples, and abducting people for doing it. All of this seems completely illogical and the mere result of people’s very childish imagination, and of having seen too many hollywood movies.
“Crucifixion”? Now that’s some hyperbole. If those were the claims being made by Sänger, then he rightfully deserved ample derision. Assuming that he said what you are saying, there are many things that are wrong with his idea.
So, if a stationary object accelerated at 1 g (i.e. 9.8 m•s-2) for 1 year (i.e. 31,536,000 s), the object would be moving 309,052,800 m•s-1, which is 3% faster than the speed of light, c (i.e. 299,792,458 m•s-1). Since it would already take an infinite amount of energy for an object with any mass to reach c, going faster than c isn’t an option, period. The critics weren’t wrong on this one; the good Herr Dr. Sänger was (assuming that he originally made such a claim; Sänger was a clever man, and I have a hard time swallowing the story of him making freshman physics mistakes like these.)
Setting aside the energy issue of accelerating an object to relativistic speeds, i.e. the kind of acceleration that would make a 93 billion light year trip seem like 50 years, such a spacecraft would undoubtedly encounter a lot of matter along its path… slamming into dust and gas at relativistic speeds isn’t going to be good for the integrity of any would-be living organism that had the benighted misfortune of riding in such a craft.
Of course, there’s the whole issue of travelling 93 billion light years in the first place: assuming that energy was no problem, we are still talking about a trip that would require tens of billions of years, one-way: whatever star the traveler came from, it would be long extinguished by the time they reached their destination.
Again, there are more things wrong with this than you’d expect, and there are reasons that the vast majority of scientists and engineers don’t believe in little green men.
Patricia @ 130 Not to worry Patricia; as an alien I had to choose a recently dead moron, and an ugly one at that, to give credence to the visual manifestation that aliens are uglier than humans. I had to end that crappy repartee with the gleaner63 to give my brain a rest before it ossified from all that UFO crap. Hell, I even tried some comedy on him to persuade him that he has no sympathy from me for that alien shit. Crap, I just remembered that Helms is from South Carolina as is the gleaner63! There’s the connection! He probably is a religionist like Helms, but Helms does not believe in that UFO crap but only his god, and so that is why gleaner63 made no mention of god or the freaking bible. Do you think? Maybe he thinks Helms is on a space ship now, heading for Mississippi to be dropped in the swamps, and then rise out of the muck to scare the good ol’ boys of an alien invasion! Religion and aliens: man what a pair to deaden the brain!
Whoosh! That comedy went right over my head.
Thank goodness that’s solved. Back to your sentorian persona. :)
Sam Harris has his survey posted on his web site, so I gotta buzz off over there to see if he put me in the hard core atheist slot.
negentropyeater at 157:
A constant theme running through your comments is that you simply “cannot understand” why aliens, if they exist, don’t act a certain way; most notably, like humans do. Again, if you have a source in which we can compare an alien culoture with our own, please let us know. If you cannot think out of you own limited frame of reference, exolbiology might not be a good occupation for you. Do you find the notion that aliens, who evolved on a different planet and under different conditions, might see the universe different from you? This is a question you need to ask yourself when musing about why aliens, if aliens they are, exhibit various type of behaviour. You mentioned that perhaps I was childish and had watched to many Hollywood movies. My response is that I really wonder if you can even read what I am writing. Even a child has an imagination, you apparently have none.
Hobach at #159,
For the second time now you’ve brought up the “god” thing again, and I still don’t get it. But here’s an idea. Since you onviously are not a reader, and you fear things that don’t fit neatly into you worldview, your nothing more than a heckler on this thread. So, while you may observe, please don’t comment.
andyo at #151:
“But isn’t this different, though? If history could do without eyewitness testimony, and do repeatable experiments, I’m sure they’d prefer that. That’s why history is not as reliable as physics, it’s not even considered a “hard” science, isn’t it?”
In what way do you suppose that history is not as reliable as physiscs? According to my old history professor, history was defined as; “The scietific study of the fragmentary records of past people, places and events”. In his view, history was something you could apply the scientific method. Is it as good as physics? I don’t know. Not being a physicist, it would be hard for me to compare.
“Another thing is that history tries to deal with mostly perfectly mundane events (in the context of this conversation).”
Sounds interesting, please explain further.
“The more extraordinary the claim, the better evidence you must have, don’t you?”
I don’t know. We are all limited. Give a real-life example of an event from history that we can discuss.
“And by the way, how many people have seen Elvis, or the Loch Ness monster?”
Quite a few I would imagine. But there is a third alternative when confronting such issues. One can simply remain neutral.
“Those reports even have the advantage of not needing to violate natural laws or ultra-low probabilities (the monster might be at the edge though).”
What natural laws would be violated in either case?
“And the court thing. Surely eyewitness reports aren’t a surefire way to establish the case.”
Depends on the case. Sometimes eyewitness testimony is all you have. In others, physical evidence would come into play.
“They usually go in combination with other evidence.”
I agree, see above.
“But in any case, comparing a court is not the same as exploring reality.”
Historical events are based in reality.
“In court you are trying to prove a single event.”
You are, in fact, trying to prove multiple events that lead toward the event that is the crime. Before we can convict OJ of the murders, we first have to get him to the crime scene…
“In science you need repeatability and prediction.”
I agree. Personally, I don’t draw such a huge line of demarcation between the study of science and history. There is an overlap between the two…
j.t.delaney at #158,
Please post your sources that will prove the “vast majority” of scientists and engineers don’t believe in “little green men”.
Nick Gotts at #157:
Eyewitness testimony is “pretty” unreliable. Interesting choice of words. Could you translate “pretty” into something more scientific? You know, like “50% of the time eyewitness testimony is completely bogus”. Or, “sceintists found that 38% of the time eyewitness testimony is a fraudulent…”.
-Thanks
j.t.delaney at #158,
I’ m willing to admit when I am wrong, are you? I was also willing to post my credentials, would you?
I’m sorry to pull rank on you, but I’ll take the opinions of known, published scientists (HIll and Sanger), than someone sitting behind a keyboard with no name.
gleaner63@163
Only an ignoramus (like you) would think there could be a single figure it would make sense to quote: it depends on the population you are sampling from, the criteria used for (in)accuracy, the experimental protocol. I’ve given you a starting point in the literature, whether you follow it up is up to you (you won’t of course).
Sorry, 163->165 @167
gleaner63 said:
For a start, history is not an empirical science. There isn’t even a consensus as to whether it is a soft science or a liberal art. And it is often difficult to ascertain whether the documents that we have are accurate, semi-accurate, or largely exaggerated. The better the document corroborates with other historical evidence, both from around the same time and describing the same historical event, the better. But even then it is necessary to understand the events surrounding the production of the document, as it is entirely possible that it is a direct or indirect copy of another document that would otherwise be seen as independently corroborating evidence.
The laws of the physics don’t change, so we can be almost certain that, except for in a specific set circumstances, they are the same now as they were millions, even billions, of years ago. Also, whereas historical evidence is almost exclusively the product of fallible human beings, physics is entirely concerned with the natural world, which is both more predictable and reliable in terms of the evidence that it yields.
gleaner63 said:
The resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Historicity of Jesus Christ. Or any miracle in the bible, for that matter. None of them are even remotely evidence enough to be believable.
Nick at #167,
When you said eyewitness testimony is/was unreliable, it was *you* that didn’t qualify your statement, not me. As a person who majored in history and studies history on a daily basis, I am well aware that eyewitness testimony has it limitations, you apparently aren’t. And by the way, why the name calling again? Of course I’ll look up your references. But will you read any of the literature I mentioned? Probably not.
Damian at #169:
I think you have raised several excellent points and thank you for being civil about it. I will respond friday night.
Damian at #169 said:
“For a start, history is not an empirical science.”
No doubt, history, as a discipline, is limited, but then so are the “hard” sciences. How accurate is a 365 day weather forecast? Pretty low I would guess. What can astronomy tell us about events prior to the Big Bang? Again, not much. The study of history is not alone in that it has limits. But, what can it explain? Well, take one of the most well known events in history, the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The battleship USS Arizona is still there, so we can study that. There is a film of the magazine(s) explosion, so we can study that. Then there are the eyewitness testimony of thousands, which we can study. Are you suggesting we just toss all of that evidence out the window?
“There isn’t even a consensus as to whether it is a soft science or a liberal art.”
I’m not sure I would want to bet on anything that relied purely on a consensus or majority view. See the recent Supreme Court’s decision that the 2nd Amendment does in fact guarantee the right of the individual to keep and bear arms, an opinion that has liberals going nuts.
“And it is often difficult to ascertain whether the documents that we have are accurate, semi-accurate, or largely exaggerated.”
You are 100% correct. But then that is what historians do. That’s why they have standards of evidence, why primary sources are favored over secondary sources.
“The better the document corroborates with other historical evidence, both from around the same time and describing the same historical event, the better.”
Certainly. Unfortunately for those that study the documents, the records are almost always fragmentary. That’s just the nature of the business.
“But even then it is necessary to understand the events surrounding the production of the document, as it is entirely possible that it is a direct or indirect copy of another document that would otherwise be seen as independently corroborating evidence.”
I agree.
“Also, whereas historical evidence is almost exclusively the product of fallible human beings…”
Depends on the historical event. What would you say about the battles of Falkirk (1298) and Stirling Bridge (1297), which rely *exclusively* on eyewitness testimony? Would you just toss them out as myths?
“The resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Historicity of Jesus Christ. Or any miracle in the bible, for that matter. None of them are even remotely evidence enough to be believable.”
There are multiple questions here. If you don’t believe Jesus existed, why worry about his resurrection? If you a priori rule out the supernatural, why worry abount miracles? What evidence would you require for these things to be believable?
How about an amputee who grows a new limb back?
If you have two matching left feet, genetically matched, that might constitute a miracle.
If Jesus didn’t perform miracles, or rise from the dead… why would anyone care? He’d be just some rebel rabbi.
Seve_C at #173:
“How about an amputee who grows a new limb back?
If you have two matching left feet, genetically matched, that might constitute a miracle.”
Everyone seems to have their own idea about what would constitute a miracle. My wife says I have matching right feet. Would that count:)?
“If Jesus didn’t perform miracles, or rise from the dead… why would anyone care? He’d be just some rebel rabbi.”
I think you have hit upon why Jesus gets in a lot of people’s hair. It’s what he did (or claimed to do). It’s who he was (or claimed he was). No one seems to care if Budda or Mohammad existed, but “debates” on the historicity of Jesus will never end.
That’s because his existence is so unreliable.
People do care if Mohammad and Buddha existed.
And They actually did. It helps that they actually wrote things down.
gleaner63 #161,
the comment I wrote doesn’t refer to behavioural nor cultural hypothesis of hypothetical alien species, but to physical limitations.
If you do not understand Physics, as I recommended to you before, take Physics classes, and then come back and we’ll have a discussion.
Steve_C at #175:
You seem to be saying, at least in part, that for a person to be considered historical, they would have to have written something?
negentropyeater at #176:
“If you do not understand Physics, as I recommended to you before, take Physics classes, and then come back and we’ll have a discussion.”
Okay.
According to a TV programme on recently, that’s not strictly true. Mohammed was said to be illiterate and various members of his family were the ones who wrote down his ravings – which were later collected together. The key thing was that things were written contemporaneously. It would be like a UFO nut having been abducted with a camcorder, tape-recorder or tame stenographer.
Whereas, the Jesus character looks to have been something made up later. His alleged life doesn’t fit what passes for known historical facts and there are other glaring errors in the allegedly holy literature too. There were undoubtedly plenty of people called Jesus back then. Just none fitting the particular profile.
The corresponding UFO situation would be all the people claiming to have dredged up old memories of abduction and/or to have been absent when they weren’t or to have done something known to be false.
gleaner63 161
If you are refering to astrobiology, this is a field of study which is concerned whith the origin, distribution, and evolution of life in the universe. This has nothing to do with the question of what would be the most likely scenarios that an intelligent alien species would adopt for exploration or colonization, in view of the KNOWN physical parameters and limitations. If you cannot understand the difference, I’m really surprised.
With regards to how they would “see” the universe, even if they were very different from us, and they were in a different location, the universe would still obbey the same physical laws, they would just end up seeing the same thing from a different place, with similar technologies such as interferometry.
“With regards to how they would “see” the universe, even if they were very different from us, and they were in a different location, the universe would still obbey the same physical laws, they would just end up seeing the same thing from a different place, with similar technologies such as interferometry.”
When I used the word “see”, of course I was referrring to the differences that might exist between humans and aliens in regard to morality, laws and motivations. I wasn’t talking about physical law. I think there are any number of earth comparisons that might be relevant here. For example, cannibalism, I think is pretty much unknown in the United States. WOuld you agree? However, I would say that is not the case in all parts of the world. Would you agree? Okay, that is the only point I am trying to make. If there are aliens out there, how would you expect their society to be organized? What thoughts might the aliens have on death and the afterlife? Again, you only have one culture to look at. Is that so hard to understand?
“The corresponding UFO situation would be all the people claiming to have dredged up old memories of abduction and/or to have been absent when they weren’t or to have done something known to be false.”
Not sure if I understood your post completely so I apologise in advance if I am taking things out of context here. The abductions are merely one element of the entire UFO experience. A lot of the testimony on record is recorded in a matter of minutes after the event, especially when the observers were military. In that regard, the memory is still “fresh”.
Yes but some people only claim to have been abducted after hypnotic regression or similarly dodgy techniques for “recovering memories” (ie implanting false ones).
SEF at #183:
People’s reactions to ETs and UFOs are almost as interesting as the reports themselves. Talk with the average person and they have no real problem with the idea that we may not be alone in the universe. Ask them again if they think aliens might already be here and the disbelief goes way up. Apparently, most people don’t mind the “idea” of aliens as long as they don’t come “here”. I think it’s safer that way, from a mental standpoint, for most people. It’s kinda like some enviromentalists, who while wanting to save the rain forests wouldn’t ever want to live there (to many bugs and not enough air conditioners).
gleaner63 #181,
how is their society organized ? Their thoughts about death and after life ? Are they cannibals ? Are they bipedals ? Do they like to eat freshly born babies dipped in sweat sour sauce ? Heck I have no idea, how is that relevant to this discussion ? Of course I don’t assume that they have similar cultures, nor beliefs, nor societies as us crazy humans, why should I ?
But it doesn’t change the fact that if they have become sufficiently intelligent and adavanced as to be capable to explore and colonize the galaxy, they would still encounter the same physical limitations as us, and that even if we can assume that their technologies may be more advanced than ours, we can already foresee what is plausible from what is not.
negentropyeater, I doubt gleaner63 has much idea about the High Frontier.
negentropyeater at #185 said:
“…how is their society organized ? Their thoughts about death and after life ? Are they cannibals ? Are they bipedals ? Do they like to eat freshly born babies dipped in sweat sour sauce ? Heck I have no idea, how is that relevant to this discussion ?”
It’s relevant when you, and others, have made reference to the motives of the alledged aliens. When I went back through this thread here is what I found:
You at #157
“…they wouldn’t be sending some kind of little stealth frisbees UFOs, collecting soil samples, and abducting people for doing it. All of this seems completely
illogical…”
Really? Illogical to who? You?
JoJo at #79:
“One of them making a public announcement on national tv might help.
Holbach at #54
“Why don’t they land on the Sheep Meadow of Central Park in Manhattan, on the White House lawn, in front of the Pentagon, ot even in your front yard?”
In each of these cases, the posters, including you, are imparting *motives* to the aliens. What to you might be “illogical” might not be to an alien. You haven’t a clue on why they might collect soil samples or abduct people. Otherwise, retract your statement that what the aliens are doing is not logical.
John Morales at #186,
If you are talking about Gerard K. O’Neils book, then yes, I read that book back in the 70s. What about it?
gleaner63: No, I’m not.
You’re pretty slow, aren’t ya?
gleaner63,
I can’t speak for the other commenters, if you read my comment once again, I am distinguishing between exploration and colonization, which seems to be something you still do not understand.
Aliens might be completely different from us, but the dimensions of the galaxy remain the same, the physical limitations the same, the limits to interferometry the same.
So, their motives for doing such things might be different, but there are important aspects that we already know :
1)exploration of the galaxy CANNOT be undertaken by sending live humans nor live aliens in a spaceship
2)most plausible means for exploration are automated replicating technologies and any variations thereof, which has nothing to do with what all those people who pretend to have seen UFOs
3)colonization: the definition is when one starts sending live humans or aliens for the purpose of leaving these individuals on the host planet which has been discovered by the exploration undertaken in 2)
-even if one is capable of propulsing a spaceship at speeds way beyond our current capabilities, most physicists agree that the maximum limitation will be way below c, because of the problems of radioactive disintegration of the particles of the spaceship when the speed increases towards c. We do not know exactly what the practical limit will be, but it is fair to assume that somewhere above 0.9c, it will be physically impossible to maintain anybody alive in such a spaceship.
Even at 0.9c, within a radius of 5000 ly, which only represents approx (5/100)^2 = 0.05% of the dimensions of the galaxy, ie a potential for colonization which is extremely limited, the aliens would need to remain in such spaceship for a duration of 2421 years, even taking into account the beneficial effects of time dilatation.
So, the question is now, why would an alien species, who has explored the galaxy and discovered a host planet, the earth, send a small frisbee UFO with a few aliens who would have to remain in that spaceship for a few thousand years, and remain hovering around the earth, collecting soil samples, abducting people, and god knows what else ? And why would they just happen to arrive at earth just at the precise moment when those crazy humans start thinking about aliens ?
negentropyeater at #190:
“I can’t speak for the other commenters, if you read my comment once again, I am distinguishing between exploration and colonization, which seems to be something you still do not understand.”
I have read your comment again. Would you like me to post the important part of it again?
You stated at #157:
“…they wouldn’t be sending some kind of little stealth UFOs, collecting soil samples and abducting people for doing it. All of this seems illogical to me…”.
I am sorry you cannot see this but”…collecting soil samples and abducting people…” IS a type of behaviour. Saying “…all this seems illogical to me…” IS a comment on their MOTIVES, based on the notion that YOU cannot understand it. If you want to put limits on their technology, then go ahead. But please do not tell me their ACTIONS are illogical. You are trying to infer a motive, and you are simply not in a position to do that.
“So, their motives for doing such things might be different…”,
That’s ALL I am trying to say. If you agree with what you are actually saying, then stop telling us why collecting soil samples and stealing farmers off of tractors is illogical. To them, it may be very logical.
“So, the question is now, why would an alien species…”
Well, there you go again. I, nor you, haven’t a clue as to why; again that’s in the motive category. I wonder what the Aztecs thought of the motives of the Spaniards?
John at #189,
I went to the site that you referenced. It is not run by scientists nor do any scientists post there. Is this your idea of a good place to get info on space travel and colonization? Judging by your other posts, and your apparent lack of education (common around here), I think that would be a good guess.
gleaner63, you did note my original comment was not addressed to you, right? It was supposed to make sense to someone with a clue.
Basically, I was alluding to the energy requirements of interstellar travel, the link points to an opinion piece by a SF author which raises some interesting issues and discusses the technological challenges.
Your facile dismissal of it (obviously, not having even followed the link) indicates how well you conduct research.
Sheesh.
Sheesh you’re clueless.
Saying scientists don’t post at Charlie’s place is kinda like saying scientists don’t post here.
And, no, I’m not a scientist. Don’t even have tertiary qualifications. I must have an apparent lack of education, eh?
Sheesh.
John at #193 and #194:
If you attach some importance to the opinions of a science-fiction author as to the possibilities of interstellar flight, or to anyone who posts at that site, then be my guest. As for myself, I’ll stick with the literature written by real scientists. As to your admission that you lack an education, well, you know, *that* wasn’t hard to figure out. So, I’ve posted my background on this thread, why don’t you? Or is high school the best you can do? I am willing to have a serious discussion with you about the topic of this thread, but you’ll have to stop with the constant stream of insults (another clue that you are either very young, very angry or very uneducated). Also, yes I am aware one of your prior comments was not directed “to me”, rather, it was directed “at” me. That’s an 8th grade thing John. “Sheesh”
When you said eyewitness testimony is/was unreliable, it was *you* that didn’t qualify your statement, not me.,/I> – gleaner63@170
I said unsupported eyewitness testimony cannot be relied on. Which is true, and backed by extensive research in psychology. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable enough that it should not be accepted without corroboration when the likely consequences of wrongly accepting it are significant – i.e. in legal or scientific context. That you think any such statement has to have numbers attached to it to be meaningful and true simply demonstrates your lack of understanding of the human sciences.
gleaner63, nice conflation of an appeal to authority and the genetic fallacy.
I’m not judging you by your claimed education; I’m judging you by your postings.
And your trilemma is false, by the way.
Nick at #196,
Again, I have an undergraduate degree in history, so *I* am well aware that eyewitness testimony has it’s limits. This is not in dispute and apparently you are the only one who thinks it is. Go back and read my posts and get me a quote where I said “eyewitness testimony is completely and absolutely reliable 100% of the time”. I never said it. But you did say:
at #147: “…because it is unreliable”.
at #156: “It is pretty unreliable”
You also said that the qualifications of the witness don’t matter; yes, it does matter. Here’s what you’d have to do Nick. You need to cross examine the witness. Why do you think lawyers put some witnesses on the stand and not others? As for your qualifications in the field of psychology, please share them with us, otherwise, your just blowing smoke “dude”.
I wonder what the Aztecs thought of the motives of the Spaniards? – gleaner63
Whatever they may have thought at first, they pretty soon understood the Spaniards were there to conquer and enslave them – as they had done to others. Your point is?
As for your qualifications in the field of psychology, please share them with us, otherwise, your just blowing smoke “dude”. – gleaner63@198
You can google me (I use my real name here) if you want to know my qualifications. If they are not readily available online (I haven’t checked), you’ll certainly find an email address for me – email me and I’ll send you a cv. You are being (perhaps deliberately) obtuse: my claim is not that the identity of the witness makes no difference, but that no-one’s unsupported eyewitness testimony should be accepted without ocrroboration.
“gleaner63, nice conflation of an appeal to authority and the genetic fallacy.”
I am not making an appeal to authority. Obviously, the “authorities” disagree on the possibilities of interstellar flight. Seriously John, if someone asked you for a good reference on the possibilties interstellar flight, you would point them to the website of a SF author??!!!!!
“I’m not judging you by your claimed education;”
Okay, let’s look at it. I am a 1999 graduate of Charleston Southern University, and I can back up that claim. Care to put it to the test? You seem not to want to tell us about your education other that you don’t have one. So, I am well in bounds to say you have no formal education unless you claim otherwise
“I’m judging you by your postings”.
On what basis John? If you have no education, if you are not well-read in what we are talking about here, how could you evaluate anything I said? However, let’s look at your “postings” and see what can be gleaned from them. You have hurled insults; you have used foul language; you have not addressed the specific issue which is the topic of this thread. So, you fail on all accounts. So, do you want to discuss the topic at hand, or do you just want to continue this all night?
So you’re rather ignorant of science and evidently (from your posts, regardless of your alleged education) not fit to judge the relative plausibilities of alien life arising elsewhere in the universe vs alien life of a specific model somehow managing to turn up on Earth only to play silly games with largely delusional types.
So you’re ignorant of the actual practice of law too. Lawyers choose to put certain witnesses on the stand because they think those ones are more likely to be believed by a (relatively incompetent) jury and not because they think those ones are more likely to be telling more of the truth in reality. The two things (believability and reliability) are not at all the same.
SEF at #202″
“So you’re rather ignorant of science…”
Compared to who? You?
“…and evidently (from your posts, regardless of your alleged education) not fit to judge the relative plausibilities of alien life arising elsewhere in the universe vs alien life of a specific model somehow managing to turn up on Earth.,..”
Are you fit to make a similar judgement? Based on what? Would a US court of law qualify you as an expert on this topic? If your going to make these assertions, can I hold you to the same standard? Or does this just apply to people you disagree with?
“only to play silly games with largely delusional types.”
Again, you make the same mistake of assuming that all people who report UFOs are delusional and the motives (silly games) of the aliens.
“So you’re ignorant of the actual practice of law too. Lawyers choose to put certain witnesses on the stand because they think those ones are more likely to be believed by a (relatively incompetent) jury and not because they think those ones are more likely to be telling more of the truth in reality. The two things (believability and reliability) are not at all the same.”
I’m not a lawyer. Are you? I am aware of why lawyers put ceratin people on the witness stand
I’m sure everyone is tired of all of this so maybe we should just call it quits and see each other some time on another thread. No hard feelings and I apologise if I was rude or offended anyone. I certainly didn’t think UFOs was such a “hot” topic.
Yes, me and everyone else here who has a science degree (and possibly quite a few who don’t but have studied science anyway) unlike you!
I’m not in the US. I do know that courts routinely have alleged experts who are demonstrably no such thing though. So, I don’t regard your court standard as a valid or decent standard of measurement.
No, I don’t. Firstly read the words I wrote and don’t misrepresent them that way. Secondly, it’s not an assumption at all but based on the evidence about these people and their claims.
I used to help mark the Law Exams in this country but I declined to become a lawyer (because I worked out early on that they were evil). Besides which, this is one of those situations where the knowledge you are pretending is of the expert type, viz of what lawyers do, is not actually expert at all but relatively common knowledge instead. Either you are too incompetent to notice that or you are too dishonest to admit it.
SEF at #205:
Unlike most people here, I been upfront about my level of education. So, it doesn’t bother me to say “I am not a lawyer…”. That was a question I asked you but to which you didn’t respond. Also, if you are not a lawyer, what exactly is your background in law?
You indeed mentioned that something is wrong with people who see UFOs: “…based on the evidence about these people and their claims.”. What evidence? This assertion has been made repeatedly, but as yet no one has offered the actual data. My contention is, that as a group, the typical person who reports a UFO differs in no discernable way than any other “group”. Again, let’s see the evidence. I am open to being proven wrong, as I have no emotional (unlike some others on here) investment in this topic.
What you fail to understand is that people here aren’t particularly interested in claims of education etc but in demonstrations of it, ie in the form of arguments which are actually logical and based on evidence. You’ve most tellingly failed to demonstrate any such ability and aren’t even attempting to address the substantive points, including the ones about why even your questions are fallacious (not just your claims). You are every bit like a fundy, expecting authority in lieu of merit and being unable to recognise merit because your world-view is so warped. It doesn’t matter what your or anyone else’s background is claimed to be. All the matters is whether you make sense – and you don’t.
Here’s an example from your post @ #35:
If they had stealth they wouldn’t be being spotted at all, would they?! There would be no UFO reports (or, if malfunctions were possible but rare, there would be only a few but a disproportionately large number of abduction reports etc with the relative absence of the UFOs themselves being the notable thing). With unseen UFOs, if there were abduction reports (due to sleep paralysis, delusions etc) they would still be blamed on demons as previously (by the religious nutters) or perhaps on a race of underground people – the probe-gnomes.
SEF at 207:
I think the question was pretty simple. You, and others on this thread have made repeated claims about the people that report seeing UFOs. You said:
“Secondly, it’s not an assumption at all, but based on the evidence about these people and their claims”.
Well, where is the evidence? That’s all I am asking you to show. Also, education *does* matter, at least in this country. For starters, it would give you a sound basis for evaluating what I am saying. Insults don’t count.
SEF,
Those are just my opinions, and certainly not worth a flame war. It really doesn’t mean that much to me, just trying to get some conversation going at 4:45 AM. I wasn’t taking shots at your background either, I’m sure your a bright fellow regardless of your credentials. And your right, education doesn’t matter if one can’t properly apply it. My background is not technical in nature, so I am severly lacking in that area, as negytropyeater has pointed out and to which I readily agree. No hards feelins my friend…
Of course it does but claims of it don’t. It’s your posts themselves which let you down. They are illogical and ill-founded. Any claims you make about your education are irrelevant in comparison with the visible evidence. Meanwhile, it’s rather stupid asking anyone else for their credentials – it’s just a fallacious appeal to authority combined with the additional problems of being on the internet (lack of verifiability unless sufficient information is given away to attract stalkers).
However, the fallaciousness of it is the really important and damning part. People’s posts should stand on their own merit, not on any claim they make to authority. You really should be able to work this out for yourself, but apparently you need metaphorically beating over the head with it for you to stand even the slightest chance of noticing.
Meanwhile, if you want to see the collected craziness of assorted bad witnesses, the UK government has published many old reports of UFOs and commentaries on why they were/are considered rubbish:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7398108.stm
I am open to being proven wrong, as I have no emotional (unlike some others on here) investment in this topic.
…and the prize for lack of self-awareness goes to gleaner63!
A little more background reading for anyone not as blinkered as gleaner63:
PDF on what really lies behind alien abduction claims (and their predecessors).
PDF (esp. Tables 4 & 7) on common hallucinations. Amusingly, “coloured octopus legs” made the list!
SEF@613 – Thanks for those links, they look very interesting.
I am astonished by the ignorance of people on this forum. I see UFO’s all the time–all the time. Why? Because I look up. I open my eyes. There are tens of thousands of them in the stratosphere at this moment. Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut, is no longer playing games about his experiences. He openly states that UFO’s are real. He is joined by hundreds of thousands of honest men telling the truth. Friedman, Klass, Sagan were/are disinformation specialists who were/are paid to debate/debunk/ridicule.
UFO’s are regarded by the U.S. government as ultra top secret. There is nothing more secret than UFO’s. Why? Because the aliens can contact anyone they choose. This means that any human on this planet can become as powerful as the aliens, if the aliens choose to grant that power. When I was being visited, circa 2001, I was under constant surveillance by the military and police. Helicopters buzzed my home night and day. What I recall of the visitations is minimal, and I wasn’t given any information that I consciously remember. I don’t believe aliens trust us at all. And they are absolutely right not to. If I had any power, I would wipe out the entire government and military. Do you see how dangerous alien power could be?
I have always felt completely different from everyone else. My beliefs were not shared by anyone I ever knew. My parents tried to beat me into submission/death. I was denied the Ph.D. and barred from working in my profession. I have been on the watch list since 1998 and fired from or forced to quit most minimum wage jobs. Thousands of fascistic morons have willingly participated in persecuting me and destroying my life. I regard most of you as among those fascists. You are so blind and so narrow-minded.
There are many different types of aliens
Nearly all the reports of sightings/contact are believable to me. There are a few psychotic individuals that I can easily spot. I have to go now.
Mara Poe Troll.
I have no idea why you labeled me a troll. Either you are a paid shill or you are too incredibly stupid to comprehend the truth. I welcome questions. No other poster received the label of troll. And you do not define what you mean by the term. If you are so afraid of the truth, then you are a brainwashed automaton and very dangerous.
1)only trolls revive old threads
2)only paranoid, schizophrenic trolls actually believe in black helicopters
3)UFO’s are real, alright, until they stop being unidentified
4)Visiting aliens are an absurdity. aliens with the capability of interstellar flight wouldn’t be stymied by our primitive governments.
5)go away
Mara, whether you are a Poe or not has yet to be determined. This blog is scientific, which means it is physical evidence based. Your word is not considered physical evidence. So, can you show us any reliable evidence that has not been debunked and proven false? Most UFO sites and the contents therein have been repeatedly shown to be lies and fakes.
LOL! Thanks for laugh Mara. I’m so used to dealing with creationist trolls that I forgot how funny UFO conspiracy theorist trolls can be.
I did not know the rules. But, by your rules, all of you who have responded to an old thread are trolls.
I probably won’t return because I see no evidence of rational thinking here. I did not say the helicopters were black. Some were white. Alt first, the helicopters came straight in across a field, buzzed my house, turned around, and buzzed me again on their return to MacDill AFB. The newspaper claimed they were DEA looking for drugs, but the DEA doesn’t just look at one home over and over again.
There were roadblocks on the two access roads to my home, and unmarked police cars staked out around my house 24/7. I was constantly being stopped by the police. They always called for back-up and k-9 units. During one sting operation, I avoided being arrested by flagging down several cars and another officer. My home was broken into and all the locks were broken, but nothing was stolen. I was under constant pressure at work and home, and I would like to sue every person who participated in this terror. You want to talk about evidence? Thousands of Americans willingly participated in terrorizing me outside the court system and rule of law. To this day, the employers who received National Security Letters about me cannot discuss them or else they will be fined and/or imprisoned.
I’m appalled by the responses I’ve received here. You people are really in denial.
Norman Finkelstein has had similar experiences to mine. Gloria Naylor’s book 1996 discusses some of these issues.
The Terrorist Watch List now has a million names; and if you aren’t on it, then you are a brainwashed automaton who represents no threat to the NWO.
No evidence of paranoia similar to yours here. We have plenty of rational thinking, but then again, you demonstrated no physical evidence to back up your claims, merely hearsay and paranoia. Which has the weight of an electron, both in science and courts of law.
Mara,
Please seek professional psychiatric help.
Mara, I tell you that your current communiqués have triggered a Potential Of Exposure flag.
Whichever way you look at it, you’ll not find satisfaction here.
[to John Morales]
John, isn’t it about time you started sharing out some of those shill dollars you’re getting? We’re working pretty hard on the cover-up as well; where’s our cut?!?
once again. a species intelligent enough to have discovered a form of FTL would not be stopped/intimidated by our primitive world. you’ve seen too many old sci-fi movies. plus, if they wanted people to know about them they would be fully capable of doing so
((as a side-note, I’ve always found it interesting how conspiracy theorists of all sorts ascribe great competency to our governments. I mean, those are the idiots who can’t keep their sex-lives secret, nevermind an alien invasion))
I’ve been watching Cosmos recently, and it’s really hard to imagine that Carl Sagan would ever suppress information related to alien discoveries. You just can’t get that guy to stop talking about alien life and adding conjecture to how life could exist on different worlds. So to call him a disinformation specialist who was paid to ridicule is really misrepresenting his character. If on penalty of death he was forced to be silent, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything other than sacrificing himself for the sake of getting any information out there. Even in his dying days where he had nothing to lose, he didn’t say anything.
Deluded troll is deluded
Oh come on – we know it’s not the government keeping it all a secret – it’s the cabal that runs the government that’s the real conspiracy.
To those running this conspiracy, I’m not getting any money. Please send me money or I’ll expose the truth ;)
One of the guys who writes on occasion for Skeptical Inquirer gave up chasing down UFO stories, because invariably when he traced it back far enough, there was a couple of good ol’ boys with a shit eating grins. Any conspiracy with more than one person in it will be leaked eventually. Games by gomers will be covered up.
Wowbagger, “shill dollars”? Bah, I laugh.
Us high-level shills get “paid” by temporary activation of our nucleus accumbens tasp implants.
Er…is that good?
i see how it is. it’s always the other atheists who get to go to the orgies, and it’s always the other NWO automatons who get their pleasure centers stimulated
phhhhht. i never get to have any fun.
Mara doesn’t look like a troll to me – just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill paranoid schizophrenic. Sad.
Nick, in all seriousness, I’m harboring doubts myself. If so, yeah, sad – but it’s not like we can help; whatever we say will be incorporated into the delusion. Thus my #224.
I have read a few more threads, and it is obvious that nearly everyone here follows the party line. You are the really sad and pathetic schizos. While you contemplate your Neanderthal beliefs of what is and is not feasible, normal humans are examining the evidence. There is so much evidence available, but no one dares speak about it here. You have no legitimate arguments and no ability to form questions outside your narrow belief system, so you resort to name-calling. Truly sad and pathetic. You are scared to death that you know nothing and that you’re wrong. Goodbye losers.
You’ve “read a few more threads”?
I doubt you’ve even read this one.
I know I shouldn’t enable the conspiracy nut, but what evidence? Please show conclusive evidence of not only extra-terrestrial intelligence, but evidence of the mass cover-up too. There’s got to be a hell of a lot of people involved in the conspiracy…
Poe or projection?
Guys,
mental illness is serious,we shouldnt be aggravating it.
Governments are quite bad at keeping secrets. A president gets a blow job from an intern and within weeks everyone knows about it. The Americans and British develop nuclear weapons and within months the Soviets had the plans. The military is “overly optimistic” about the efficacy of Patriot missiles and within a year detailed analysis of the missiles’ performance is in the public domain.
However the UFOers, 9/11 truthers, and other conspiracy adherents are convinced that governments have been keeping complete secrecy for years about whatever the adherent believes is being kept secret.
What are you, some sort of doctor? ;)