David Biedny
Paranormal Adept
The reason that Paul was invited on The Paracast is due to his objectivity and reasonable stance in this whole situation - while I might not agree completely with his conclusions, I very much respect his thought process and logic - structure and deductive reasoning are seriously lacking in the discussion of the paranormal, IMO. The fact that Paul disagrees with us on a specific point is not a problem, in fact, I welcome thoughtful skepticism and am not afraid of differing opinions. NONE of us have a monopoly on truth, the whole idea of healthy debate is to sort through all viewpoints and try to come up with a selection of ideas that withstands the process of elimination. I'll go out on a limb here and guess that Paul will accept any explanation for the UFO phenomenon, if it proves to be logical, reproducible and verified by multiple trustworthy sources. I personally have no vested interest in any specific school of thought or explanation, and will not defend any specific theory to the indiscriminate exclusion of any other theory.
As my friend Paul Mavrides says, "without lies there can be no truth". Somewhere in the jungle of BS, there is an answer waiting to be discovered. That's the nature of reality as I see it, and although we might not know the answers in our lifetime, we've got to try and find them. That's why the Paracast exists.
As far as time helping the investigation of a case, I respectfully disagree, all you have to do is look at the effects of time on the way that the politics of the US work: enough time has passed since the Valerie Plame revelations that there is not much of a chance that Rove/Cheney/Bush will have to answer for their part in a heinous, harmful retaliatory crime that was more than likely planned at the highest levels of the Bush administration. That's just one example of many I could cite, there are so many that it makes my heart ache. Time obscures the facts, and the perception of reality changes over time, human memory is a very flawed device. There are people in this world that would debate that the Holocaust ever happened, and as the child of a Holocaust survivor, I know all too well about how time distorts memories. I suspect that Paul's statement about time is based on the context of a perfect, rational society, which is pretty far from the current situation. Getting the O'Hare sighting into the mainstream media was useful in keeping this topic on the minds of the masses, and while I'm not thrilled with the way it's been handled by said media, you gotta start somewhere. By planting the seeds in the collective mind, perhaps people will actually pay attention to a deeper analysis of the episode if and when it occurs.
Jeff writes:
As it stands now, forget it. The case is getting older, and fast. The more time that passes, expectations are built, witnesses are playing it over and over in their heads, embellishments are happening, and the actual event is getting clouded. Thats a simple fact. Nevermind that as the case ages, you'll have people coming out of the woodwork who weren't even there, but claim to be a witness.
I absolutely agree, he's nailed it. We're talking about the imperfections of human perception, not the objectivity of events.
Given enough time, folks will believe any kind of crap. Reagan was hailed as a saint when they stuck his body in the ground, which made me cringe. How much damage did that one person inflict on an entire country? Jeez.
dB
As my friend Paul Mavrides says, "without lies there can be no truth". Somewhere in the jungle of BS, there is an answer waiting to be discovered. That's the nature of reality as I see it, and although we might not know the answers in our lifetime, we've got to try and find them. That's why the Paracast exists.
As far as time helping the investigation of a case, I respectfully disagree, all you have to do is look at the effects of time on the way that the politics of the US work: enough time has passed since the Valerie Plame revelations that there is not much of a chance that Rove/Cheney/Bush will have to answer for their part in a heinous, harmful retaliatory crime that was more than likely planned at the highest levels of the Bush administration. That's just one example of many I could cite, there are so many that it makes my heart ache. Time obscures the facts, and the perception of reality changes over time, human memory is a very flawed device. There are people in this world that would debate that the Holocaust ever happened, and as the child of a Holocaust survivor, I know all too well about how time distorts memories. I suspect that Paul's statement about time is based on the context of a perfect, rational society, which is pretty far from the current situation. Getting the O'Hare sighting into the mainstream media was useful in keeping this topic on the minds of the masses, and while I'm not thrilled with the way it's been handled by said media, you gotta start somewhere. By planting the seeds in the collective mind, perhaps people will actually pay attention to a deeper analysis of the episode if and when it occurs.
Jeff writes:
As it stands now, forget it. The case is getting older, and fast. The more time that passes, expectations are built, witnesses are playing it over and over in their heads, embellishments are happening, and the actual event is getting clouded. Thats a simple fact. Nevermind that as the case ages, you'll have people coming out of the woodwork who weren't even there, but claim to be a witness.
I absolutely agree, he's nailed it. We're talking about the imperfections of human perception, not the objectivity of events.
Given enough time, folks will believe any kind of crap. Reagan was hailed as a saint when they stuck his body in the ground, which made me cringe. How much damage did that one person inflict on an entire country? Jeez.
dB
