huff post article

[Chuckleberryfinn]

My God! What's happening to me?! I am actually sort of in agreement with Seth Shostak!

The old chuckleberryfinn would never approve.

UFOs: The Trail Is Stale

 

[Muadib]

Even though good ole Seth is usually a bit of a bore, he makes some well reasoned points in this article that are difficult to argue with. However, what Seth doesn't know, due to the fact that he obviously doesn't really follow todays UFO scene all that closely, is that all the good evidence is right around the corner. Just listen to some of these fine folks and you can rest assured that all will be brought to light in due time.

Ray Stanford is about to rock the world with his ufo films any decade now, featuring saucers so close you can see inside them! Let Mr. Shostak try arguing with that!

Steve Greer is about to drop various video and photo bombshells any day now featuring him, an alien baby and various interstellar craft of all shapes and sizes! He'll tell you all about it at the next conference, but he won't have any photos or video with him cuz, y'know, the government and stuff.

Steve Basset and Co. are going to single handedly end the cosmic Watergate and force the government to disclose all it knows, and it's going to happen really, really soon, trust me. And send a few faxes/emails/tweets/whatever to the White House, while you're at it.

Need I go on? Those are just a few right off the top of my head, do a bit of digging and you'll find skads of researchers and UFO personalities that will be happy to reassure you that this whole thing is about to break big any day now, all the way back to the beginning of the modern UFO phenomenon.

Seth has it all backwards, the best evidence in ufology isn't in the past, it's in the all too nebulous future.

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

You're right, desert mouse. Totally right on! Thanks for keeping me from going over to the bad side.

 

[boomerang]

Speaking of stale, Shostak starts with the long overworked assumption that the UFO phenomenon could only be hypothesized as nuts and bolts spacecraft visiting from outer space and operating according to our current understanding of the laws of physics, which is frankly still in its infancy. Since the evidence we have in the form of high strangeness personal experience-- on the part of numerous credible witnesses -- fails to conform to his hypothesis, he then proceeds to write the whole thing off with utter disregard for the core mystery. Apologies for my stating it yet once again: Why have so many sane and credible people over the last 70 years experienced some variant of high strangeness things in the sky ?

Shostak's argument is classic "straw man". `

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

Boomerang:

The high strangeness experiences reported by witnesses are interesting, but they unfortunately cannot function as evidence for the reality of the phenomenon you're describing. Stories in and of themselves can be fascinating and mystifying (even scary - they've kept me awake some nights), but they do not constitute evidence. Even a group of people reporting a group experience, I'm afraid that even it isn't proof of anything other than that something unexplained and not understood happened. It is not evidence of any underlying phenomena that can be pinned down and clearly defined as this specific pattern of high strangeness activity.

Or maybe I'm just too stoned on legal weed to think really clearly about it. Ever since it ceased to be criminal here, I cannot put the stuff down, and often write in the evening what seems silly in the morning.

 

[Constance]

My God! What's happening to me?! I am actually sort of in agreement with Seth Shostak!

The old chuckleberryfinn would never approve.

UFOs: The Trail Is Stale

I agree with Shostak in these two paragraphs:

"One obvious possibility is that the extraterrestrials are just plain done with us. They've abducted enough folks to satisfy their curiosity about our anatomies. The Cold War has ended, and so has their fascination with our nuclear missile silos. They've tried visiting New Mexico, but that didn't work out.

So maybe they've just declared "mission accomplished," and gone away. That would be analogous to Charles Darwin's visit to the Galapagos Islands -- after he probed, bottled and cataloged some of the natives, he weighed anchor and withdrew."

The statement I've highlighted in blue is true enough. It was the production of, testing of, and actual deployment of atomic and nuclear weapons that drew the observed attention and observation of evidently more advanced species to this planet during WWII (see the history of the Hanover atomic/nuclear production site from the early 1940s onward). Decades of intrusions of ufos at SAC missile bases, here and in Russia, followed and continue into our time, but with less frequency. We might still be monitored by non-terrestrials, but less intensely and from a greater distance given the reduction of the threat of mutual assured destruction we had created. We were in fact poised to destroy life on and the ecology of this planet during the decades when ufo presence near earth was intense. This is the most logical explanation for the initial ufo wave of 1947 and the waves that followed and for what appears to be a 'withdrawal' of intense monitoring of nuclear weapons and production sites in the years after we achieved relative control over the cataclysmic risks we had created. And this way of looking at ufo history here does account for Shostak's speculation that we are no longer so interesting to other species in our galaxy and potentially beyond our region of the universe.

Re the abduction phenomena, about which I am not well read, if it has involved genetic experimentation and possible physical, mental, and psychological changes introduced into our species, the explanation might be as simple as an effort to moderate the extreme risk-taking --and thoughtless indifference concerning consequences -- that are dominant characteristics of our species. If that works, all the better for us I think.

 

[Randall]

... So maybe they've just declared "mission accomplished," and gone away ...

I liked your post overall, but the part extracted above is IMO really the best. I've mentioned in other long lost posts that a mission accomplished scenario might be a possibility. We don't really know enough about alien visitation to explain all the curiosities posed by Shostak, and I don't know with certainty that UFOs are of ET origin, but I do think the ETH is the leading contender, so if we assume something like a mother ship on a fly-by to another destination, then temporary frequent sightings would be reasonable followed by a sharp decline. The occasional good sighting afterwards might be from automated craft or a small base with an away team left behind to do research until the mother ship returns some months or years later. We don't even need to inject any contactee scenarios into it at all.

Another thing to consider is that sightings do continue to happen, but the Air Force shut down any publicly known UFO investigative operation, and therefore we just don't have access to information analogous to the Blue Book files. Shostak also mentions that we should have all kinds of satellite photos by now, and while that's a good point, we also have the testimony of Donna Hare who says she witnessed the removal of UFOs from such photos. Why should we assume the cover-up has stopped? Anyone who takes the time to really dig into it can figure out for themselves that the cover-up is real.

What about cell phone and dash-cam photos? I don't know why we don't have better pictures, but even if we did, pictures alone still don't qualify as conclusive evidence. So what is the upshot? I've given up trying to convince the skeptics. I'm convinced that alien visitation is real along with many other folks. So we're not alone, and the rest will just have to figure it out for themselves. In the meantime, what if the "mission accomplished" theory is correct? Then we ( the witnesses ) might be the only generation in history to have experienced it, and that makes the history even more important to try to preserve. So unlike Shostak's position that evidence from the Early Modern Era in ufology is "musty and fusty", it could very well represent some of the most significant events in human history, and we ( ufologists ) have a responsibility IMO to do what we can not to let it slide into obscurity.

 

[Wade]

I liked your post overall, but the part extracted above is IMO really the best. I've mentioned in other long lost posts that a mission accomplished scenario might be a possibility.

So maybe they've just declared "mission accomplished," and gone away.

Any off the cuff guesses as to what the mission would have been? As a culture we seem to have a long ways to go and we're certainly not done writing history yet.

 

[Constance]

​

Any off the cuff guesses as to what the mission would have been? As a culture we seem to have a long ways to go and we're certainly not done writing history yet.

I think the 'mission' was primarily motivated by the emergency conditions here, the possibility that we would destroy life on the planet (and possibly produce negative effects in the vicinity). Who knows how many nonterrestrial species might have responded to this knowledge? One or more might have been interested in finding longterm preventive measures against our species' self-destructiveness and its effects on all life here and on the viability of the planet. The message concerning nukes has been unambiguous in my opinion.

 

[Randall]

Any off the cuff guesses as to what the mission would have been? As a culture we seem to have a long ways to go and we're certainly not done writing history yet.

I don't think that humans necessarily have anything to do with alien visitation. If we assume an ET origin, it could simply be the case that like us, they developed the technology to scan the heavens in search of good candidates for life. Then when they were able to build interstellar craft, they sent one or two out to check out the list of candidates, and along the way they ended up checking out Earth because it's one of those rocky planets that's about the right size with the right kind of star and in the Goldilocks zone. Then after some years en-route they discovered that there is life here, and decided to do a little bit of studying before their ship arced around the Sun in a slingshot maneuver to put them on course for the next star system.

 

[Burnt State]

I don't think that humans necessarily have anything to do with alien visitation. If we assume an ET origin, it could simply be the case that like us, they developed the technology to scan the heavens in search of good candidates for life. Then when they were able to build interstellar craft, they sent one or two out to check out the list of candidates, and along the way they ended up checking out Earth because it's one of those rocky planets that's about the right size with the right kind of star and in the Goldilocks zone. Then after some years en-route they discovered that there is life here, and decided to do a little bit of studying before their ship arced around the Sun in a slingshot maneuver to put them on course for the next star system.

This scenario sounds implausible for me on a number of fronts. The resources and personnel extended to do something that could be done remotely, with probes and have no contact at all with us is much more likely. Information gathering does not require the the kind of evolution of a phenomenon that has existed well prior to the golden age of UFO's and is just as robust today in terms of number of sightings and changing forms. That we don't have the same large organizations investigating, nor do we have the same media hype in either reporting or cultural production, and the lack of social/military hype in general, tells us it is simply not a focus for our times. If anything it's a fait accomplis in the minds of the masses. Sure we believe in UFO's; so what?

Still we have to consider that it has been an ongoing, ever shifting phenomenon that is well interwoven with our culture. Reflections on it as a static or focussed singular event don't make sense to me either, but these bursts of the phenomenon as being culturally significant tell me that to understand it requires astute sociological analysis, along with many other disciplines. Case reports continue, just as our affection and consolidation of the past history of UFO's continue to be agents that shape not just what we know about it, in terms of its rhythms and motivations, but even how we experience it. Perhaps my distaste for the ETH is that it asks for these very concrete, or even traditional narratives and speculations, about the history of something we know so little about and have scantly proven, only indirectly at best.

In order for the ETH to work we have to keep inventing possibilities and narratives to fit the theory. I don't have a problem with this approach, after all, with excellent & interesting research Nick Redfern has created a robust career of examining creative possibilities for paranormal events. I would rather ask why is it that something wants us to believe in the reality of extra-terrestrial visitation? Sure it may be more abstract but it also feels a lot more accurate, even if we are to only consider that a fraction of the ongoing sightings are truly unidentified aerial phenomenon, that may be under non-human sentient control, often displaying what appears to be an unearthly technology.

 

[Randall]

This scenario sounds implausible for me on a number of fronts. The resources and personnel extended to do something that could be done remotely, with probes and have no contact at all with us is much more likely. Information gathering does not require the the kind of evolution of a phenomenon that has existed well prior to the golden age of UFO's and is just as robust today in terms of number of sightings and changing forms. That we don't have the same large organizations investigating, nor do we have the same media hype in either reporting or cultural production, and the lack of social/military hype in general, tells us it is simply not a focus for our times. If anything it's a fait accomplis in the minds of the masses. Sure we believe in UFO's; so what?

Still we have to consider that it has been an ongoing, ever shifting phenomenon that is well interwoven with our culture. Reflections on it as a static or focussed singular event don't make sense to me either, but these bursts of the phenomenon as being culturally significant tell me that to understand it requires astute sociological analysis, along with many other disciplines. Case reports continue, just as our affection and consolidation of the past history of UFO's continue to be agents that shape not just what we know about it, in terms of its rhythms and motivations, but even how we experience it. Perhaps my distaste for the ETH is that it asks for these very concrete, or even traditional narratives and speculations, about the history of something we know so little about and have scantly proven, only indirectly at best.

In order for the ETH to work we have to keep inventing possibilities and narratives to fit the theory. I don't have a problem with this approach, after all, with excellent & interesting research Nick Redfern has created a robust career of examining creative possibilities for paranormal events. I would rather ask why is it that something wants us to believe in the reality of extra-terrestrial visitation? Sure it may be more abstract but it also feels a lot more accurate, even if we are to only consider that a fraction of the ongoing sightings are truly unidentified aerial phenomenon, that may be under non-human sentient control, often displaying what appears to be an unearthly technology.

I suppose that with any hypothesis, we could list a number of reasons why it is more or less plausible. But at least interstellar travel is scientifically possible, whereas so many other theories are 99.876% nonsense, and the one or two that aren't, like breakaway societies or secret projects don't hold together well enough for me to buy them. The only other theory that seems logically possible to me is the alternate universe theory, but it's even farther out there than the ETH.

So personally, I don't get all the anti ETH sentiment. It's like there's some notion that it's more fashionable to advocate the idea of some hip new theory, or anything but the ETH. Even as of yet unformulated theories are all better than hanging onto that boring old space traveler cliché of a century past. That attitude reminds me of high-school politics where you weren't cool unless you were a fan of the right music and wore the right clothes.

We didn't have to climb Everest or put a man on the Moon either, but we did. There's even people who want to go to start a colony on Mars! But even if an ET race isn't compelled by similar forces to explore space personally, I don't recall saying in my example that the interstellar craft had to contain aliens from their home world; but if it did, there is also the other possibility that space was their last resort for survival due to some planetary disaster that made their world uninhabitable.

Now all that being said, give me enough good reasons to consider some other theory as the leading hypothesis and I will. In the meantime I'll stick with my classic rock and herringbone jackets .

 

[Burnt State]

This has got nothing to do with what's fashionable or cool. The ETH was smashed by one of its leading proponents years ago but nothing more concrete has captivated the minds of the Ufological community since. This has left things in a weird position. Many still cling to the ETH as what makes sense; it's what the movies have told us for decades; it's what is railed about against with the military etc. even though it doesn't really make much sense at all. And as no new theory has yet to provide a clear path that everyone can walk on easily or make movies about and integrate more easily into our cultural paradigms the ETH stands. It's the myth we know and love. A more hardcore critic might say to the ETH believers, "wake up already!"

In Malaysia where their cultural mythology speaks to little people, and I mean under a foot tall, the ufological history is filled with all sorts of people seeing very small aliens of six inches tall get out of space ships and shoot beams at people. I offer this up anecdotally to counter the "what's cool" comment as I don't see that happening at all in ufology. What I see is people persisting in what they think they know about the phenomenon as a matter of personal and logical belief, even cultural confirmation at this point in time in the western world, just as its been culturally confirmed by belief systems elsewhere in the world over and over again. But these pieces don't add up and haven't for a long time.

It's not just about the high strangeness that must be dealt with. It's the damn persistence of it and its shifting nature that needs come critical analysis. Holding on to the ETH strikes me as the type of thing that the phenomenon has been aiming to produce as a mythology and apparently has succeeded in spades. It's a distraction with traction.

 

[technomage]

I think the ETH is just as good a hypothesis as any I've seen and I think it makes at least as much sense as any other hypothesis I've heard. We won't really have enough to come up with a theory until we get more verifiable information that can be tested. Perhaps Chris's camera project will provide a breakthrough into this phenomenon.

 

[Wade]

I'd like to suggest something right down the middle here. While i think many people here have mentioned there is some tantilizing observations to suggest that we are interacting with something more cerebral (?) than aliens and this is something i certainly favor, perhaps the ET component to this could be in this way; What if "they" are here to observe us in our interactions with a "force" than was put in place by other-wordly visitors. perhaps this force could be some advanced Artificial Intelligence construct that was built to interact with us and us with it.

If one wants to be open to a mission acomplished answer, i would be interested in hearing what Seth thinks was accomplished as i mentioned earlier we are a work in progress.What's his parameters he's using to make this distinction other than trolling for "best ufo reports" ? I'd be more open to thinking we are just in a lull. many things have highs and lows, rise and fall, waxing and waning, why should anomolous observations be exempt from that ? It could be we ourselves are in a lull and any otherwordly observers have turned their attention elsewhere at least for the time being. maybe we are not unlike a covered pot that has to be monitored, but only when certain conditions apply. Maybe our global angst is on simmer right now and we were at one time near boiling point.

 

[Constance]

I quite like the idea that they've lost interest in us. Now we have more time to spend thinking about other things. Like how to civilize this human world.

 

[Randall]

This has got nothing to do with what's fashionable or cool. The ETH was smashed by one of its leading proponents years ago ...

You might want to be more specific there because I'm quite familiar with the arguments against the ETH and none of them are robust enough to "smash" the ETH, though considering it "smashed" might also be a subjective viewpoint for the sake of expression, in which case it may be valid from a certain personal subjective point of view that I don't share.

 

[Randall]

This has got nothing to do with what's fashionable or cool.

Perhaps not for you personally, but I still get that impression over time as I listen to the various ETH detractors voice their oponions on the subject.

... Many still cling to the ETH as what makes sense; it's what the movies have told us for decades; it's what is railed about against with the military etc. even though it doesn't really make much sense at all. And as no new theory has yet to provide a clear path that everyone can walk on easily or make movies about and integrate more easily into our cultural paradigms the ETH stands. It's the myth we know and love. A more hardcore critic might say to the ETH believers, "wake up already!"

In Malaysia where their cultural mythology speaks to little people, and I mean under a foot tall, the ufological history is filled with all sorts of people seeing very small aliens of six inches tall get out of space ships and shoot beams at people. I offer this up anecdotally to counter the "what's cool" comment as I don't see that happening at all in ufology. What I see is people persisting in what they think they know about the phenomenon as a matter of personal and logical belief, even cultural confirmation at this point in time in the western world, just as its been culturally confirmed by belief systems elsewhere in the world over and over again. But these pieces don't add up and haven't for a long time.

It's not just about the high strangeness that must be dealt with. It's the damn persistence of it and its shifting nature that needs come critical analysis. Holding on to the ETH strikes me as the type of thing that the phenomenon has been aiming to produce as a mythology and apparently has succeeded in spades. It's a distraction with traction.

The type of argument in general above speaks to my previous post about those in the field being bored by desensitization to the same old clichés. It also speaks to the inclusion of phenomena that may be entirely non-related to alien craft, in which case the study of those things becomes the study of dwarves or leprechauns or faeries or whatever else may be the case. But even then, seemingly non-related phenomena could in theory be linked directly to an alien presence of ET origin.

Take for example the work of John Alexander who tells us psy-ops strategy includes the use of cultural beliefs to manipulate enemy behavior. If we assume that we're under study by some highly advanced aliens, what's to stop them from doing the same thing? Nothing. It can all be explained by sufficiently advanced technology and clever planning. Fact is: We don't need a new paradigm. We just need to map out the existing one in a manner that as Gene and Chris say, separates the signal from the noise.

All that being said, I'm still not opposed to people trying new things provided that it doesn't compromise the progress already made elsewhere. By all means post up whatever wildo theories you want along with whatever supporting logic and evidence you can scratch together .

 

[Randall]

I think the ETH is just as good a hypothesis as any I've seen and I think it makes at least as much sense as any other hypothesis I've heard. We won't really have enough to come up with a theory until we get more verifiable information that can be tested. Perhaps Chris's camera project will provide a breakthrough into this phenomenon.

I liked your post but at the same time I don't agree that, "the ETH is just as good a hypothesis as any". Though it may be as good as any you've seen, because I'm not familiar with what you consider to be "good" or which ones you seen. So for example, If you've run across the Transports From Hell hypothesis, which states that UFO are demonic craft from the realm of Hell ruled by the Antichrist, I'd have to agree that's "a really good one" in the sense that's it's so ridiculous that it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, and I would have a really hard time thinking that was just as "good" ( sensible ) as the ETH, and we can apply similar lines of evaluation to virtually every other example we might run across.

 

[Burnt State]

I'd like to suggest something right down the middle here. While i think many people here have mentioned there is some tantilizing observations to suggest that we are interacting with something more cerebral (?) than aliens and this is something i certainly favor, perhaps the ET component to this could be in this way; What if "they" are here to observe us in our interactions with a "force" than was put in place by other-wordly visitors. perhaps this force could be some advanced Artificial Intelligence construct that was built to interact with us and us with it.

i like how you upped the ante there and made things even more spookymulder like by introducing a whole other layer to the conundrum. i'm going to let that one really sink in and settle for a bit, though it does also have an age old aspect to this - the mysterious and mostly unknown forces that we are caught in the middle of....

the idea of the AI construct matches well with Wargo's anti-anti-ETH theory where probes collecting information are in fact interacting with us, creating some handy dandy psych experiments as part of the routine information gathering, just another variant of the control system - see below.

If one wants to be open to a mission acomplished answer, i would be interested in hearing what Seth thinks was accomplished as i mentioned earlier we are a work in progress.What's his parameters he's using to make this distinction other than trolling for "best ufo reports" ? I'd be more open to thinking we are just in a lull. many things have highs and lows, rise and fall, waxing and waning, why should anomolous observations be exempt from that ? It could be we ourselves are in a lull and any otherwordly observers have turned their attention elsewhere at least for the time being. maybe we are not unlike a covered pot that has to be monitored, but only when certain conditions apply. Maybe our global angst is on simmer right now and we were at one time near boiling point.

. .
sounds like Vallee's control system at work as you describe it. I also disagree about the nature of "where have all the good ufo reports gone" kind of thinking, as the fact is that no one is really magnifying any of the contemporary cases - well outside of the infra red video anyway... when you read content about contemporary cases they are highly elaborate and if examined with the same vim and vigour of a young Al Hynek i'm sure that there would be lots for all of us to talk about and to see a continuing trajectory for the most part. whether or not physical trace cases continue to exist, with landings and burned humans etc. is a question unanswered. who is doing this kind of investigation? have all those kind of cases evaporated or are there just no real boots on the ground? or was it all a fad? contemporary cases seem to suggest otherwise.

but I would like to come back at this idea that the horse has left the barn, because it could very well be possible that everything else since is simply nothing more than imaginary figments, the echoes of a phenomenon, logged and catalogued by a culture so impressed and impregnated with such critical ideas as UFO's from outer space, that what lingers is really just an evolution and extrapolation taking place only in the human collective and no where else externally. but such thinking would only validate the theory that we are all just culturally frontloaded by a narrative that pops into the mind as a response to any number of a possible of external stimuli or combination of events including mental hallucinations or odd visual distortions, dreams etc...making the majority of the ufo phenomenon entirely suspect - no ETH required there at all, just a complete re-examination of us as sociological creatures with certain physiological and cultural vulnerabilities that allow for the ingrained myth to become concretized, the way that Catholics might see demons or feel the urge to exorcise their child to death. only the belief is real; only the (human) accidents are remaining.