Moontanman

I am very thankful for every reply but I am still sort of confused. What, exactly, is radioactive decay?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

 

What is it that happens to an atom? Does it loose an electron/proton/neutron and is now a different element/isotope? Does the speed of any particle in it slow down and this is what a lose of energy means? Does a particle in it evaporate and ultimately I would end up with no atom at all?

 

An atom emits one or more of several particles, resulting in a new atom of either lower energy or a different element and lower energy. In some atoms they do indeed split into two smaller atoms but more often a particle of some sort is emitted. if the process continued on down to it's lowest possible denominator you would end up with a hydrogen atom, protons are believed to be ultimately stable.

This is why I was arguing that "UFOs" should stick to the "Unidentified Flying Object" definition. There's absolutely zero questions that those exist. We see them, we know of them.

I've been trying my best to stick with that definition.

They stop being UFOs when we identify them (obviously).

 

They aren't necessarily alien visitations just because we can't explain them.

I have never said that.

I think we should do a better job separating alien visitations vs. ufos in this discussion, if we want it to make any sort of sense.

Other than UFOs there is no indication of alien visits.

If I see something flying in a weird way in the night's sky, it's a UFO. That doesn't make it an alien aircraft. To be convinced that it's an alien aircraft, I need proof that (a) alien aircrafts exist and that (b) in this particular case it was an alien aircraft.

No it is not an UFO, see the official definition of UFO I posted earlier.

You can see, then, how the two (UFOs and Alien Visitations) are said to be different arguments here.

 

~moo

No I do not see how to separate them, UFOs are the only indication of alien visits we have. a great many of them have no other reasonable explanation, even science has admitted this in some cases. That still proves nothing but i can show many sightings that have no other reasonable explanation I feel very strongly that no reasonable evidence will ever be considered at all much less as a possibility in UFOs being aliens.

Again, the veracity of UFO sightings is not what i am trying to discuss here, that would be a different thread altogether.

Merged post follows:

Ok, everyone seems to be insisting there is no science in this, that science does not think there is anything to this, that nothing scientific can be gained by even looking into it. here is what science has to really say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object

Allen Hynek was a trained astronomer who participated in Project Bluebook after doing research as a federal government employee. He formed the opinion that some UFO reports could not be scientifically explained. Through his founding of the Center for UFO Studies and participation at CUFOs he spent the rest of his life researching and documenting UFOs. The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind had a character loosely based on Hynek. Another group studying UFOs is Mutual UFO Network. MUFON is a grass roots based organization known for publishing one of the first UFO investigators handbooks. This handbook went into great detail on how to document alleged UFO sightings.

more

Jacques Vallée, a scientist and prominent UFO researcher, has argued that most UFO research is scientifically deficient, including many government studies such as Project Blue Book, and that mythology and cultism are frequently associated with the phenomenon. Vallée states that self-styled scientists often fill the vacuum left by the lack of attention paid to the UFO phenomenon by official science, but also notes that several hundred professional scientists continue to study UFOs in private, what he terms the "invisible college". He also argues that much could be learned from rigorous scientific study, but that little such work has been done.[3]

then again

There has been little mainstream scientific study of UFOs, and the topic has received little serious attention or support in mainstream scientific literature. Official studies ended in the U.S. in December 1969, subsequent to the statement by Edward Condon that the study of UFOs probably could not be justified in the expectation that science would be advanced.[9] The Condon report and these conclusions were endorsed by the National Academy of Scientists, of which Condon was a member. However, a scientific review by the UFO subcommittee of the AIAA disagreed with Condon's conclusion, noting that at least 30% of the cases studied remained unexplained, and that scientific benefit might be gained by continued study.

even more

It has been claimed that all UFO cases are anecdotal[30] and that all can be explained as prosaic natural phenomena. On the other hand, it has been argued that there is limited awareness among scientists of observational data, other than what is reported in the popular press.[3][31]

This stuff goes on and on, I contend that the ridicule of the idea of UFOs as "nothing to see here move on folks" is counter productive to science and against the scientific method as well.

There is much more to UFOs than sillyness we must stamp out!

I bet they got the technology from UFOs...

if the reality or non reality of UFOs is what every one wants to discuss i can offer evidence that is really convincing, far less convincing evidence has been used to put men to death. Do we really want to go there ?

no, by definition is an object that has the power of flight but has not been identified.

 

for instance, to a baby, a bird is a ufo. or to someone who has never seen an aircraft before, then they are UFO's

 

or if there is a mirage in the sky, then that may be seen as a UFO..

No, I have already been admonished for using that definition of UFO, this is the scientific definition of UFO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object

The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators

Popular usage, which i have been told cannot be used here, means an alien space craft.

From the same link...

The term UFO is popularly taken as a synonym for alien spacecraft and generally most discussions of UFOs revolve around this presumption

there are many things that would hinder identification without their being a lack of known explanation.

Yes, and there are many unknown sightings that do not have that hindrance as well. The fact remains the reality of UFOs is not what i want to discuss in this thread as I have said many times, that would be another thread, another discussion altogether.

Happens often enough that some tards think flying is more dangerous than driving. But are airplanes truly comparable to alien craft? How about if you compare it to spaceships? Remember also that repairs/maintenance/checking is done on airplanes and spacecraft after every flight.

 

So aliens don't check out their craft or do not at least try as hard as we do to keep them from failing in mid "use"? I do not understand your point here.

 

 

Also, one would think the military would have shot down an alien by now. They can't be bulletproof.

 

Bullet proof? Why not? Try to shoot down a F-16 with a Sopwith Camel. Advanced technology should be extremely hard to shoot down at the very least.

 

 

 

But see, that's the problem. What else could it be, it must be aliens. Yet, the alien hypothesis doesn't seem to explain it either, it's just somehow magically assumed that because its an alien it explains why it would irradiate things.

 

 

I am curious, I have just presented you with evidence that is not only unexplainable by any terrestrial means but it was seen by witnesses not connected with the three people harmed. No conventional explanation fits at all, why is it so despicable to suggest the ETI explanation? Radiation proves it was not only real but totally unnatural and unconventional and not a hallucination. Please name a possibility that makes sense other than the ETI idea?

 

What else could it be? What else flies, is obviously technology, leaves behind real evidence of it's reality in the form of radiation, and flies away into the sky? Nuclear powered birds?

 

So the hypothesis is that aliens irradiate things when they're in trouble?

 

No the hypothesis is that this alien space craft did which specks to a another idea that alien space craft would be nuclear powered. It is not a huge leap to think a alien space craft would be nuclear powered in some way and a craft having problems might release radiation.

 

To be honest this sighting is not my favortie and i think it has a another possible explanation but the alien explanation is at least a reasonable one to suggest in this case. i am amazed you cannot see the possibility is quite good in this case if it weren;t for one small thing most people ignore but you haven't even brought up.

 

As i said before i do not want to debate the evidence for UFOs being alien space craft, if you do start another thread.

 

 

Careful now. UFOs are most definitely not known to have no conventional explanations. Just that experts tried, but failed to find one. Not the same thing, not by far.

 

 

UFO by definition is an unknown with no conventional explanation, doesn't mean alien space craft but it doesn't apply to every light in the sky either.

 

 

Think of it as you may, but I have much more of a problem accepting UFO aliens specifically than aliens visits in general. I doubt I'm the only one.

 

I am nothing if not flexible, if that makes a difference then please change the post to alien space ships and not UFOs, I doubt very seriously it will make any difference but feel free to change it, i cannot.

 

The UFO aliens premise is an extra premise, an overly specific premise, a premise that has no bearing whatsoever on the question, and a premise I do not wish to publicly lend any credence to by accepting for the sake of a discussion. That you wish that specific premise to be accepted by others when it is unnecessary to your question, is the sort of reason that in fact I don't want to help out with it.

 

It is premise that most people have, i used it to illustrate a point, UFOs are the only indication we have of frequent alien visits, I see no reason to even suppose alien visits with out specking to the phenomenon of UFOs. No other phenomenon suggests there is any reason to even consider the possibility.

Ah, I see. Invulnerable aliens then? This just gets better and better.

 

 

Not invulnerable but i am not contending that aliens fly over head with the regularity of airliners either and yet how often do airliners fall out of the sky on any one place? I would also like to point out that airliners fall out of the sky not only very seldom they do so with less frequency as our technology gets better.

 

I'm not sure how many aircraft fall out of the sky per millions of air miles or flights but it is a very small number. i see no reason to not expect high tech aliens to do much better and since their flights numbers are very small the expectation of one falling out of the sky is unreasonable over any but the largest time spans.

 

But what evidence is there that it is alien? And how would it's being alien explain the radiation? It seems contradictory to the traditional alien UFO idea.

 

Believe it or not I do see your point but what evidence is there is was anything else or could have been anything else? Why would radiation be contradictory to the traditional UFO idea and what is the traditional UFO idea?

 

To put it another way, what hypothesis would predict that aliens would irradiate these people?

 

An alien craft in trouble, this would seem to be exactly what you are looking for as evidence, many different witnesses and some physical evidence that is not explained by natural, conventional or hallucinogens.

 

So then, you are saying that there are no such thing as a sighting known to have no conventional explanation? I say this because of your choice of comparison -- there is no half dog half cat.

 

 

I am not saying that at all, I'm saying you are looking for totally unreasonable evidence and while there are many sightings known to have conventional explanations UFOs by definition have no conventional explanations.

 

As you wish, but it is up to you to convince people to entertain your assumptions. It is necessarily easier to do so with one assumption than with both, regardless of how well they fit together. Do not be surprised if people refuse to assume an issue of historical fact even though they are more than willing to entertain other sorts of assumptions.

 

The assumption is that UFOs are alien space craft, I have said that I understand that some people have a problem with the idea of UFOs being anything but bullshit to begin with but in this context we are talking about UFOs for a reason. i am not talking about a one time visit thousands of years ago. For a very real reason i am talking about relatively frequent visits in modern times as well as historical times. Almost anyone would recognize the label UFO as speaking to this premise. I think you are picking nits.

lots of raw beef/mutton fat(depends on where you live)

 

or did you mean soot?

 

I'm sorry soot is what i was trying to say,

I picked up an old vinyl LP yesterday in the record store. Maria Muldaur "Waitress in a Donut Shop" Absolutely great shape, plays like it was 1974! I love to make a find like this! I'm listening to it now!

Good point IA, I've seen a candle burn in chlorine, a smoky fire with lots of soot.

First of all i would like to point out his contention is not new, many people have conjectured any meeting between humans and aliens would result in us getting the shitty end of the stick.

i think to the everyday person Hawking is an authority much like Einstein is. In many ways a cult of personality describes both of them quite well. I know it was just speculation, i disagree with his premise but no one would care about my ideas but his are taken almost as some absolute truth, if not by science then almost certainly by average people.

In science, you only consider something to be evidence for one theory over another if it fits one theory's predictions but not the other.

I understand that but it doesn't fit in this case IMHO

How can it be informed, if there is no positive evidence? Just a lack of conventional explanation.

As i have stated many times, you are not going to get a piece of an alien no matter how bad you want it, aliens seem to frown on leaving their dead or parts there of behind.

There aren't any aliens mentioned in that explanation. Sorry.

Only an alien space craft, i guess aliens needed to land and apologize?

No, it is impossible to tell 100% that a sighting does not have a conventional explanation. Just because we don't know an explanation, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Then i guess creationists demanding a half dog half cat is indeed reasonable.

Right, but where it matters for the poll is that it is in the poll question. So were you wanting the two assumptions, or just the one?

Skeptic, are you trying to be funny or do simply not pay attention to what i type? Even though i take exception to your contention they are separate ideas or issues i want to assume both, they make perfect sense together and i see no reason to separate them for the point of this discussion.

I think the problem is a problem of communication. Consider what is considered scientific evidence in favor of a theory. For example, if I propose a theory that molten cheese at the center of the earth causes gravity, people will say there is not a shred of evidence for that theory. No one will care that things do in fact fall down as predicted by that theory -- because it is predicted better by other theories. Hence a scientist would not consider things falling down as evidence for said theory, "not a shred of evidence for it".

I honestly do not understand the connection here, no one is making an impossible claim, improbable possibly but not impossible.

Again though, it is an argument from ignorance.

But is an argument from informed ignorance, not just baseless claims of cheese in the center of the earth.

The trouble, of course, is that the alien hypothesis likewise cannot explain the radiation poisoning.

Actually it does, no other explanation comes close.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/cash-landrum-ufo-incident.htm

Of course not. There is illusions and misinterpretations as well.

Again, the sightings i am talking about do not include those sightings explained that way.

Well, be sure to state very clearly exactly what you want assumed. Do you want the assumption that aliens have/are visiting earth? Or do you want the assumption that some UFOs are aliens? Note how the second example is in fact two assumptions: both that aliens have been visiting, and that they have been seen. We're all perfectly capable of reasoning based on assumptions that we don't believe, but be sure that the assumptions stated are the ones you want.

I have already stated several times what i want to assume here and discuss. so far all we have done is discuss exactly what i didn't want to discuss, UFO reports and their validity is not what i wanted to discuss, that would have to be yet another thread. I want to discuss where they come from, after for the sake of argument assuming "they" being aliens, are visiting us. UFOs might have been a bad way to label "them" but none the less i have stated several times what i want to discuss and so for no one has even come close to doing anything but trying to brow beat me with the idea that any UFO sighting cannot be anything but bullshit.

Just some related points to ponder to flesh out the thought process here …

 

I had a son who served in the Marines. Let’s say, for example, that he died in some obscure location in Iraq, and that his remains were eventually found. As it turns out in this piece of fiction, the local Muslims gave him an Islamic burial with all the ceremony and trappings that an Islamic funeral would have.

 

Even though I have a deep and abiding objection to the Islamic faith, I sincerely believe that I would say, “Wow, they thought well enough of him to consider him as their own and to give his remains their utmost respect.” That is, instead of treating his remains like a piece of garbage left to rot or thrown to the dogs.

 

 

I have to agree with this, i would not feel dishonor for him if this happened.

 

Also, let’s say I had a loved one buried in a cemetery with a gravestone. So, as this fictional story goes, I visit the grave and find that some Jews, who also knew this relative, had left pebbles on the gravestone, as is their custom of respect when visiting a grave. Again, this would also gladden me instead of making me fly into a rage because someone supposedly desecrated the grave.

 

Again i agree but we are evidently reasonable men and it is good that we assume everyone else is also reasonable but the reality is that not everyone or even a majority of people are reasonable.

 

Finally, the tree-belts of our roads and the verge of our highways are owned by either the local, state, or federal government. As I travel the roads and highways, I see many crosses permanently erected by their loved ones on these public properties that honor those who died in automobile accidents. I would also venture to guess that some of the dead were not religious at all. It’s strange that I don’t see those crosses stolen or removed with the rest of the roadside trash, and I don’t hear about lawsuits to remove them.

 

This is not the same thing, these crosses are placed by private individuals to honor a specific death of a Christian. These crosses are kept up by the individuals involved and after a period of time are often taken down. They are certainly removed by highway maintenance people when they start to decay because the people who put them there no longer keep them up.

 

I often wonder if were to die in an auto accident and if some of my pagan friends put up a pentacle at the place of the accident how long it would stay there, not long i would bet. most people around here would go nuts if a pentacle were displayed in such a way or at all for that matter. It would be taken down immediately by some concerned Christian, i would bet money on it.

 

Regarding offensiveness, anyone who has read Huckleberry Finn knows that it contains several instances of the “N-word”, which is universally considered offensive (unless, for some strange, it appears in a rap song). Yet, I can go to almost any public library (ie, government-run library), pull a government-owned copy of Finn off the shelf, open it, and see this offending word.

 

I am not sure this is a similar thing, Huck Finn is product of it's time period, to take out the word nigger would take away a large part of the message of the book and that message had to do with racism.

 

 

I believe in separation of church and state, but the Mojave Memorial Cross seems like a gray area because it clearly has a history of sincerity and reverence to it. Perhaps grandfathered rights, or squatter’s rights, or something long-established or traditional? Should we erase all the native American religious symbols that appear everywhere on public lands? Because they are religious structures, should various churches and synagogues in Boston, New York City, etc be stricken from the National Register of Historic Places where they receive official recognition by the United States government?

 

I agree that stealing this cross was counter productive to any realistic public discussion about it. I'm not sure about the Native American symbols, does the government keep them up or were they carved in stone before the Europeans took the land? I see no reason for churches to be stricken from list of historic places, the government doesn't build or keep them up, i don't think that is part of this conversation.

Asked at a Star Trek convention,

"How does your Heisenberg compensator work?"

Answer

"Very well thank you!"

The continuous glow you describe is probably the result of continuous lightening. Many times, if you are far away the lightning is so continuous and thunder so low pitched at a great distance you might not notice it as the individual thunder claps you are used to, also at a great distance the individual thunder claps would be hard to associate with each lightning strike due to light being so fast and sound being so slow in comparison but i would expect a sensitive microphone to pic up what the ear cannot hear.

It is quite possible you witnessed a tornado from a distance, tornadoes often have continuous lightning and they used to say you could pic them up on a UHF TV channel, I'm not sure if that is really true.

I had a dog that was terrified of thunder and would do her best to hide from the sound way before any sign of a storm appeared to us. She would start acting crazy before the storm even appeared on local radar. Hurricanes were an ordeal for her that lasted a couple days at least.

Perhaps you would have preferred if she had said, "The data do not support a hypothesis of alien visitation to any significant level of confidence." In most fields of science, any hypothesis that does not have a minimum confidence level of 95% is considered insignificant. Even with this restriction, the majority of published research in some fields is in fact wrong, due to that 5% allowed error and the fact that the "surprising" results are more often published and tend to have a large portion of that 5%.

 

Actually this is quite a bit less hostile and dismissive than no shred of evidence supports alien visitation.

 

 

Alternately, perhaps you would have preferred, "The data do not support rejection of the null hypothesis." or "The data do not suggest the hypothesis of alien visitation more probable than more mundane explanations." By default, science goes with the more boring explanations, and only once the data supports the rejection of more mundane explanations can the more interesting ones be considered.

 

Yes but in many cases the mundane has in fact been eliminated as a possibility, every one seems to assume that all sightings are either easy to debunk of suffer from alack of data, this is not true, many sightings are totally inexplicable by conventional explanations.

 

 

Please do remember that all arguments we have seen in favor of alien visitation are in fact arguments from ignorance. This sort of argument is generally considered a logical fallacy. "We can't explain it therefore it's aliens" is not really very convincing. Either alien technology or alien biology would immediately convince most of the skeptics. Photographic evidence is more ambiguous, and also much more easily forged, so much less convincing. To put it another way, the more mundane hypotheses predict photographic evidence as well, so the "expected" photographic evidence does not support the rejection of the null hypothesis.

 

We cannot explain the radiation poisoning of at least one sighting much less the sighting it's self. Many sightings are not explainable by any hypothesis that assumes a natural mundane cause. The idea of alien space craft parts or alien body parts is totally untenable by any reasonable standard. it's almost like evolution skeptics needing an animal that is half dog and half cat to believe in evolution, the expectation is completely unreasonable.

 

Also, remember science is not about finding what is "true". Philosophers and mathematicians do this with formal proofs based off formal axioms, but some of what they do is fairly useless (eg, do I exist?). Science is about making predictions in the real world. So, for example, take the theory of General Relativity back 300 years ago, and there would be no evidence to support it due to insufficient technology. Same with quantum. Both these theories would have had to be rejected by scientists 300 years ago, not because they are untrue, but because they would have been more complicated and not provided any superior predictive capabilities. (for this assume just the theories themselves were taken back, without the technology of today).

 

I'm not looking for science to announce UFOs or even some UFOs are alien space craft but as I said the evidence in many cases simply does not add up to hoaxes and lairs being the cause, assuming this is simply unfair and wrong to everyone involved.

 

Now, the hypothesis of alien visitation would introduce a few additional premises (alien life having evolved intelligence, the technology to travel here, the various requirements for us to not have spotted them, and the reason they would be showing up in the pattern of UFO sightings as opposed to some other pattern) and for all this trouble, it would still not explain the vast majority of UFO sightings. Are the unexplained sightings really so convincing as to warrant a dozen new fairly unlikely assumptions?

 

This is much of what I would like to discuss if we can get past the assumptions of deceit and fraud that keep us from even discussing this in a manner that allows for the dignity of the people who made the sightings. I do not want to discuss the veracity of the vast majority of UFO sightings, i want to start out, for no reason other than the sake of argument, that some UFOs indicate the possibility of alien visitation and if that is true what are some reasonable ideas of how and why they are here.

 

I'm not asking anyone to convert and get a body part cut off to show they beieve...

I don't know Moon, being agnostic myself, when a person blesses me, forgives me or in some manner rewards me under the name of their God/Religion, it certainly does not offend me. When thanking the person, I assume those intentions were honorable. To assume they were not would seem to me be selfish and hardly the time to begin spreading my belief's...

I honestly do not care about that cross on way or another but rest assured that many of faiths other than Christianity would not agree it honors them.

I doubt even the most ardent of Evangelicals would advocate for their own understanding be mandated by Government.

Sadly, knowing many of them as I do, I think this is naive, many of the fundamentalist mind set actually assert this should happen and a very few even assert violent conversion of the government and masses. On a positive note these last groups do not appear to be gaining ground as fast as other more benign groups.

I wonder if you could separate the religion of those that serve in Government from their actions, or if that would be a good thing.

I'm not sure about their actions but nearly all pretty much claim to be Christians due to it being quite difficult to be voted into office if you are not a Christian.

As for rebuilding, I'm afraid your going to see more legal fighting over the issue, however the following is a good basic feelings of those involved. Personally, I'd prefer to see the original cross found and placed back where it was for it's symbolic value, which includes it's current controversy.

To me the stealing of this cross, if indeed this is what happened was a cowardly act if nothing else.

Sure, but when you construct a 'cartoon' of one extreme vs. the other, the skeptics - as in those who are *your* definition of skeptics, rather than the 'denier who hides behind a 'skeptic' definition' - are not one of the extremes. they are in the middle. Thats the point.

 

I never -ever- said that alien visitations do not exist.

I never -ever- said that alien visitations are impossible.

Yes you did, your words...

There's no shred of evidence to suggest ANY UFO to be alien visitation. If you want to ask "if aliens visit here, where did they come from" then ask that. If you want to ask UFOs, then prepare to accept answers that challenge the "common" "popular" definition that is, quite simply, baseless.

You say there is no shread of evidence to "suggest" any UFO might be alien visitation. this is simply not true and no real skeptic would say such a thing. then you go on to say the common popular definition of UFOs then you say i can't use that definition.

If you want to ask "if aliens visit here, where did they come from" then ask that.

That was exactly what I was trying to ask, i am sorry i was clumsy but I think I'd have gotten a less hostile response if I'd have asserted the earth was 6000 years old and every who didn't believe it was going to hell.

Moontanman, popular usage in this case isn't relevant. We're a science forum , and we go by scientific-minded inquiry. For that matter, "popular" definition doesnt matter at all even for weight/mass confusion. In popular usage, many people measure weight in kilograms, even though that's scientifically totally bogus. In this forum, we try to go by relevant rational inquiry.

I came closest to usign the real definition of the term UFO, I just gave the wrong definition from the same link....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object

The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators,

Everyone else is insisting on using the colloquial use of the term.

today the term UFO is colloquially used to refer to any unidentifiable sighting regardless of whether it has been investigated.

I am a skeptic of UFO sightings' explanations as alien visitations, because those are claims that require proof - proof I have yet to see. Should I recieve such proof, and the proof is found to be valid according to the scientific method (to avoid scams, tricks, and logical fallacies) I am more than willing to change my mind.

Yes but on the way to proof you cannot dismiss out of hand anything that is not absolute proof or use ridicule to pass judgment on any evidence that is not absolute proof. Sometimes you have to admit that evidence is at the very least puzzling, you cannot dismiss out of hand everything that is not absolute.

If you do that you have no place to start any investigation and sometimes it helps to add evidence together to see if it makes sense. IE do various "puzzling" reports or photos have anything in common? If you dismiss everything out of hand you miss things like this that can add to the knowledge.

If you had read some of the links i provided you would have seen I am approaching this in an entirely reasonable manner and do my best to avoid the circus that obscures nearly everything the least bit unusual now days.

I am not the only one. It seems to me, Mootanman, that you tend to group those who share my view with the "deniers" too quickly.

Not at all mr skeptic lives up to his name quite well.

I might be wrong, but thats what i get from your tone and explanations. It's not the case, and it leads to strawman fallacies.

I am doing my best not to do that. I may be inexperienced but i am not trying to troll the list.

So the insistence on defining skeptics in the right 'side' (or rather, mid?) of the debate is important here.

 

~moo

Agreed, but we seem to have different definitions of skeptics.

Only a denier would say there is no shred of evidence to support the contention that some UFOs are alien space craft.

I have a doctor appoinment (no not insanity:doh:) I have to go, i'll be back later. I am sorry my efforts were so clumsy they invited the reaction i recieved, possibly i deserved it, but can we get past finger pointing and try to go to what i was actually trying to ask.

"if there are Alien visitations where would they come from?"

NO inow, the Cross was placed there by CHRISTIANS to Honor all Veterans of WWI, there was no intention to dishonor anybody.

 

Intentions do not really matter, Jews and Muslims would not feel honored by a cross, nor would Pagans non believers and even some sects who profess to be Christians.

 

Update; FNC has been reporting the Cross has been stolen or disassembled and removed from the property. IS this what's called American...or what we have come to, when laws are not agreed with.

 

Well if Fox is telling the truth I agree it is sad, illegal acts are not going to help this issue at all.

Moontanman , I think your depiction is a bit unfair.

 

In your cartoon, if anything, the two sides should be UFO believers and UFO deniers. In the middle should be the Skeptics.

 

Skeptics mean they're not on either side, their decision swayed by belief. I don't think any skeptic said "impossible" to alien UFOs. We simply said we need evidence - and since the claim is extraordinary, the evidence should fit.

I see no difference between deniers and skeptics, i used to label myself as a skeptic till i had dealings with real skeptics who simply dismissed all UFOs as hoaxes with no real evidence what so ever. I've found there is good evidence, not perfect evidence but some of it is definitely in the impossible to categorize as natural or man made categories and not due to lack of data either. Skeptics have made the idea of proof an impossible task, there is no possible evidence short of a live alien or alien space craft that is good enough to warrant admitting the possibility of aliens.

I disagree that skeptics are in the center, you say we simply need evidence but any evidence is dismissed as a either not good enough or too good to be true. It is Catch 22 for sure and ridicule is the tool of choice to enforce the idea of No UFO sighting can possibly be meaningful .

On the other hand believers see anything as good evidence, I've seen huge amounts of stuff that my reaction was "you've got to be kidding me" I cannot join either camp. I have been the thorn in the side of believers many times, it would seem my thorniness extends to skeptics as well.

J. Allen Hynek and his studies convinced me there is reason to think Aliens might be in our skies, no to mention the blatant lies and ridicule of the military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek

"Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there ... any residue that is worthy of scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not an obligation exist to say so to the public—not in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists?" (Emphasis in original)[4]

When the UFO reports continued at a steady pace, Hynek devoted some time to studying the reports and determined that some were deeply puzzling, even after considerable study. He once said, "As a scientist I must be mindful of the past; all too often it has happened that matters of great value to science were overlooked because the new phenomenon did not fit the accepted scientific outlook of the time."[3]

In a 1985 interview, when asked what caused his change of opinion, Hynek responded, "Two things, really. One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I still thought they weren't going about it in the right way. You can't assume that everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this."

Hynek, never completely embraced the idea of nuts and bolts space craft but he was deeply puzzled by the evidence and the quality of witnesses.

In 1973, at the MUFON annual symposium, held in Akron, Ohio, Hynek began to express his doubts regarding the extraterrestrial (formerly "interplanetary" or "intergalactic") hypothesis. His main point led him to the title of his speech: "The Embarrassment of the Riches." He was aware that the quantity of UFO sightings was much higher than the Project Blue Book statistics. Just this puzzled him. "A few good sightings a year, over the world, would bolster the extraterrestrial hypothesis—but many thousands every year? From remote regions of space? And to what purpose? To scare us by stopping cars, and disturbing animals, and puzzling us with their seemingly pointless antics?"[11]

In 1975, in a paper presented to the Joint Symposium of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics in Los Angeles, he wrote, "If you object, I ask you to explain – quantitatively, not qualitatively – the reported phenomena of materialization and dematerialization, of shape changes, of the noiseless hovering in the Earth's gravitational field, accelerations that – for an appreciable mass – require energy sources far beyond present capabilities – even theoretical capabilities, the well-known and often reported E-M (sc. electro-magnetic interference) effect, the psychic effects on percipients, including purported telepathic communications."[12]

In 1977, at the First International UFO Congress in Chicago,

He espoused three possibilities for the reality of UFOs

ETI Extraterrestrial Intelligence

EDI Extra Dimensional Intelligence

and

Finally he introduced a third hypothesis. "I hold it entirely possible," he said, "that a technology exists, which encompasses both the physical and the psychic, the material and the mental. There are stars that are millions of years older than the sun. There may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than man's. We have gone from Kitty Hawk to the moon in some seventy years, but it's possible that a million-year-old civilization may know something that we don't ... I hypothesize an 'M&M' technology encompassing the mental and material realms. The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology."[15]

His doubts about the ETI hypothesis resulted in my "aliens colonizing the solar system via asteroids and kuiper belt type objects" hypothesis.

I wish my art skills were better, I would draw a cartoon to illustrate this dilemma.

Two groups of what appear to be primitive people behind stone walls, each group are hurling stones and shooting arrows at each other.

Each has a banner, one says UFO believers and the other UFO skeptics, both banners say "to join us you have to agree with us".

In the middle is a lone man trying to dodge the stones and arrows, he is pointing to the extreme distance where in the sky there is what appears to be a flying saucer, as he dodges the stones and arrows he is saying "No! Really! There is one!

The flying saucer has the caption, " No need to land here, no intelligent life as we know it"

Not negates, not completely. It just means that alternate explanations would be preferred, as they would be more probable. Aliens could actually be visiting and the rational position would still be that the sightings are not aliens. Rationality has more to do with initial assumptions than with reality.

 

I can agree with this for the most part

 

If you don't get paid then yes, you assume they are not real. Anyone you tell it to will think you're yanking their chain, unless you show them that you are filthy rich. But if you tell them the lottery folks won't pay you till next year so you can't show them the money, they will laugh at you.

 

But you think i should at least turn in my tickets to see if i have won?

 

I meant falsification as in fraud. We know there is fraud related to UFOs. We don't know whether there even are any aliens. If the probability of "good" sightings is small enough, the probability is pretty high that any good sightings are in fact frauds.

 

I can even agree with this but there are very good sightings that are not fraud and the current explanations are not any better than alien space craft.

 

Yes, the jury is still out, but I am assuming that the UFOs are not aliens, as that makes more sense to me. Had I had different assumptions on the probability of actual alien visits, I might consider it likely that some of the UFO sightings are aliens. But I don't, so I don't.

 

I prefer not to assume anything

 

I am open to evidence, but since I consider such visits to be extremely unlikely, any evidence that might convince me would have to be very strong. And no, it is not unreasonable to require evidence so strong that it does not currently exist.

 

I admit I've never seen any absolute proof but I have seen evidence that was inexplicable to any conventional explanation.

 

 

And this sort of thing makes me ever more certain of my initial assumption: a bunch of people here mistaking a missile for an alien. Just as I expected. Every single time that a UFO has been resolved, I have been proved right. The predictive capability of "no UFO sightings are aliens" remains at 100% for all resolved UFO sightings.

 

Actually the alien explanation didn't surprise me, the immediate idea that is was an example of an interstellar worm hole opening up seemed a bit much, i mean who would know what that would look like?

 

I expect the alien thing to always come up, i also expect it will be debunked in almost every case but the few that remain do give me pause, i often wonder if our collective desire to believe or disbelieve is getting the the way of seeing the reality.

 

 

What do you think of my idea to search the solar system in infrared?

If the chances for each inhabited planet that an alien would visit from a different solar system and be spotted by the natives in a pattern similar to UFO sightings are less than, say, 1 in a million, then an event that has a 1 in a hundred thousand chance of having some other explanation, such an unlikely explanation still makes more sense than saying it was an alien. Nevertheless, to a "believer" who thinks the chance of said alien visit were 1 in 100, that same evidence would be seen as nearly irrefutable proof (1000 times more likely than any other explanation).

 

Are you saying the low probability of alien visitation negates any possible reality?

 

So the strength of proof required depends on how likely the event is supposed to be. Also, multiple different events need not add up multiplicatively for this purpose (ie two 1 in 100,000 events are not as good as a 1 in 10,000,000 event).

 

So if winning the lottery is 1 in 50 million and I win it three times I should assume the wins are not real?

 

 

Another problem is that at small enough probabilities, falsification is a comparatively significant probability as well.

 

So all evidence is falsified by the small probability of it being real? I happen to not be a believer, i just take exception to anyone who dismisses the evidence that supports alien visitation as impossible because there is so much evidence that does not support it.

 

To me the jury is still out but sadly this is one jury that will be out a long time. I would be surprised if aliens were proved to exist or landed on the White House lawn or what ever but it would be a pleasant surprise, i am not hostile enough to the very idea of aliens to dismiss any evidence as fake because it negates my world view.

 

On the other hand i do not embrace any and all reports because they confirm any world view of mine either. The recent spiral lights in Norway didn't scream aliens to me, my first thought was an odd display of the northern lights. Of course many did immediately see aliens and others saw an immediate need to prove other wise, both positions were extremes in my view. to me the correct position was to investigate what it was, not what it wasn't.

Your review of this book does indeed indicate it would be a great read, I'll have to check it out.