Matthew Williams, Circlemaker

[Matthew Williams]

Perhaps the error is mine, You didnt say "some" CCC's are made by people, so i assumed the straightforward fact you presented is ALL CCC's are made by people

Are Complex Crop Circles are made by people (yes we can prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt)
Are Some Complex Crop Circles are made by people (as above yes we can prove this)
Are ALL Complex Crop Circles are made by people
And its also impossible to prove, thus its pointless to make the claim.

I have asked this question to many circlemakers, are there any circles that they didn't know who made them. Sometimes we fill in the blanks for each other but I have never met a circlemaker who ever said "I dont think people could do that one". So it just goes to show - what may seem hard to make for an outsider is not hard for a circlemakers team.

 

[Matthew Williams]

Lest we jump to conclusions about the crop circle phenomenon based on the demonstrated ability of humans to make some impressive crop circles, I recommend that we read and discuss the range of information and critical concerns presented in this essay: "Circular Reasoning: Assessing the Mystery of Crop Circles" by R.J. Vigoda.

http://theconversation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Crop-Circles-Legitimacy.pdf

Don't start me on Suzanne Taylor and her websites and DVDs... urghhhh. Talk about purposefully hiding the facts under the carpet. That woman!

 

[Constance]

To be honest - I don't think we have gone into the paranormal stuff enough here for me to have introduced this concept but I will skim over it now. Seeing as I truly believe that there is a guiding hand behind the circles and we have had mind boggling experiences out in the fields whilst making them I do not think I could ever have the final word on crop circles because we are simply the brush for a cosmic higher hand. It is the cosmic higher hand that will have the final say or laugh. I think this also applied to other circle making teams, even those ones who play games with the way the represent themselves to the public. I think even they are reminded from time to time that they are not in control... this higher hand revealing itself in strange ways. These teams are loathed to admit to their experiences it would seem and appears like they and bloody well hate it because they like to think they are the biggest and best team and totally in control - yet in the end they know they are just pawns in this game/adventure - however you wish to see it.

It is because of this I think circlemakers and researchers should come together to try and understand what it happening on a much grander scale than just designs in the fields. Things that can alter reality are much more interesting to me than bits of flattened crop - but bits of flattened crop get us closer to things that can alter reality.

I agree with that underscored viewpoint. I do wonder how we can expect that to happen in the midst of the current level of vitriol, which seems to me to have been produced precisely because of the 'allmanmade' claim pressed by you and Andrew Pyrka in particular in recent years. What you've said in the preceding part of this post makes me wonder why you have pressed this 'allmanmade' claim as hard as you have.

 

[Matthew Williams]

Spoken to the farmer have you, let me guess, NO

You have done nothing more than watch a vid, where even the townie behind the camera says it is a bird, until he plays it back and realise's he has a ewetube hit, throw in a wooey bit about a tractor stopping as the owl flies by and wham bam thank you mam, a ewetube blockbuster.

Are you referring to the Steve Alexander footage or some other story? I know the farmer was approached in that case and said he saw a ball of light float past him... it didnt freak him enough to stop his tractor for long and watch it for an extended period in this footage tho!

 

[Randall]

I agree with that underscored viewpoint. I do wonder how we can expect that to happen in the midst of the current level of vitriol ...

Are you sure you're not exaggerating things when you use the word "vitriol". Perhaps there are some farmers who might feel vitriolic toward those people who are trespassing and trampling down their crops, but "extreme bitterness and hatred" ( the definition of vitriol ) seems rather unsubstantiated. Are there any examples you or @Matthew Williams can provide to illustrate what you mean with respect to cooperating toward a common investigative goal?

 

[Matthew Williams]

I agree with that underscored viewpoint. I do wonder how we can expect that to happen in the midst of the current level of vitriol, which seems to me to have been produced precisely because of the 'allmanmade' claim pressed by you and Andrew Pyrka in particular in recent years. What you've said in the preceding part of this post makes me wonder why you have pressed this 'allmanmade' claim as hard as you have.

Many have soft peddled the fact that probably most circles are indeed man made because it hurts the believers. I have approached this in my own way by saying "there are always circles that appear ever year and we don't know who makes them." This is true at the time, but usually we do end up finding out who it was. So you can see even I soft peddle the 100% man made thing. You have heard the 80% from Colin... now he adds "and it may be higher than that". Mallett says 95%. It seems the whole world is going the way of the man made theory... and if there was someone in the world who would try not to be influenced by me its Mallett. So if we are all hinting at what we think is going on - maybe its the truth - and its a bitter pill to swallow. As stated earlier some people think its a pill that will kill the golden goose for some and make the money and cult like glory go away for the researchers. Some think it will make the paranormal power of the circles go away if people dont believe in them. Perhaps - perhaps not... theres only one way to find out and that is to see how people react if they know 100% are man made.

Crop circles seems to be like a pendulum and with another swing perhaps the shift of public opinion will go back to alien made once more. Those researchers try damn hard to find new "olivers castle" type fake footage and "it appeared in 5 minute" stories. You get enough of those and the public wont be having any of us circlemakers any more and the ball would be back well and truly in the researchers court... but god please dont let that happen because its not the truth! We shall see.

 

[Randall]

Are you referring to the Steve Alexander footage or some other story? I know the farmer was approached in that case and said he saw a ball of light float past him... it didnt freak him enough to stop his tractor for long and watch it for an extended period in this footage tho!

I think it's fair to say that birds can and have been mistaken for UFOs on multiple occasions, and small remote controlled drones cannot be ruled out of modern cases. However at the same time, the Noctural Light ( NL series UFOs ) are a reality, and if we can make small drones, I presume the aliens can as well. So an NL series UFO report in the vicinity of a crop circle may be perfectly valid. But are the formations necessarily the work of aliens. I don't think so. That was made very clear in the show and it was an excellent point.

 

[trainedobserver]

TO has presnted a claim of fact, ALL CCC's are man made, Its not impossible hes 100% right.
But to claim as absolute a fact, one must be able to support it with evidence.

OK MIKE OK. You are SOOOOOO right. I have not seen every crop circle in the world. Wow, you really got me there pal. How embarrassing is that? You are correct. I do not have evidence to support a claim about every crop circle in the world.

But Mike, it is my opinion (there you like that better?) that every complex crop circle I have seen has been man-made. Why? Because every single one I have looked at has all the markings of a man-made circle. When I see one that doesn't scream "boards and ropes" I'll have a different opinion. I'm not required nor would any reasonable person expect me to have another opinion if every single last one of the things has comb lines, foot lines, etc., etc., etc.

I challenge you to find a complex crop circle that doesn't.

If you want to entertain fantasies about something other than human beings making them have at it. The pseudo-scientific explanations just don't cut it for me personally.

 

[trainedobserver]

Question for everyone:

How many complex crop circles would you have to confirm before you would come to suspect/expect/believe/anticipate that all complex crop circles are man-made?

I think I had to see less than five before I came to expect that a complex crop circle expressing geometric forms would contain comb lines, foot lines, mistakes, and other signs of humans using boards, lines, poles, and some planning to have made them. I didn't stop looking after five, it just became pretty obvious after that.

Once you start to see them it is hard not to see them unless the photo is just bad.

I think one the latest blows to the notion of non-human crop circles are the sand circles. The greatest evidence against non-human crop circles being the confessions of the crop-circle makers themselves.

Are aliens or spooks trampling crop or shooting them with microwaves guided by quantum computers to make designs in cereal crops as a protest against "The Man" or to pass along cosmic wisdom and the latest blueprint for a trans-warp space buggy? Well, there is that outside possibility that they just make it look like humans make the things. You never know, aliens could just be that corny.

 

[Constance]

Don't start me on Suzanne Taylor and her websites and DVDs... urghhhh. Talk about purposefully hiding the facts under the carpet. That woman!

But the paper isn't about ST and is not at all related to her role in crop circles. She posted the paper on her site because he asked her to in order to enlarge his audience for what he writes there. Why not read it and comment on it, Matt? I wish you would and that others here also would. This conversation is still swimming around in the shallow end.

Here's the link to the Vigoda paper again -- well worth reading:

http://theconversation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Crop-Circles-Legitimacy.pdf

 

[Constance]

Are you sure you're not exaggerating things when you use the word "vitriol".

Yes.

 

[Constance]

Most readers of ufo research in this forum will probably know who Bob Pratt is and recognize the quality of his work in that field. Here is his website on crop circles, fyi:

Crop circles and their message (2)

 

[Constance]

Matt, you might have missed it a few pages back, but I asked for your comments on the Garsington crop formation of May 7, 2005. What are the signs of manmade construction here? If there are none, but you think (or know) it was humanly constructed, how do you think it was done?

Untitled Document

 

[mike]

OK MIKE OK. You are SOOOOOO right. I have not seen every crop circle in the world. Wow, you really got me there pal. How embarrassing is that? You are correct. I do not have evidence to support a claim about every crop circle in the world.

But Mike, it is my opinion (there you like that better?) that every complex crop circle I have seen has been man-made. Why? Because every single one I have looked at has all the markings of a man-made circle. When I see one that doesn't scream "boards and ropes" I'll have a different opinion. I'm not required nor would any reasonable person expect me to have another opinion if every single last one of the things has comb lines, foot lines, etc., etc., etc.

I challenge you to find a complex crop circle that doesn't.

If you want to entertain fantasies about something other than human beings making them have at it. The pseudo-scientific explanations just don't cut it for me personally.

As im sure youve noticed already, our debate isnt about crop circles per se.
Its about absolute claims of fact and standards of evidence.

I have the luxury of being of an "i dont know" frame of reference, so i dont need to prove anything. im not making any claims.

You are trying to invoke Borels law, which is flawed when you dig down

Borel's Law - RationalWiki

It was created for specific physical examples, not as a universal law. It certainly does not mean that any probability below 10−50 is automatically zero, which is contradictory.

many of the things we observe around us have a probability of occurring of nearly zero. They love that "nearly zero" thing. They seem to believe that if the odds are low enough, then what we see couldn't have happened randomly. However, since we do observe the "whatever improbable thing", then it must have made it despite the odds.
Again, they always mention the "nearly zero" thing. Actually, they mean zero. They pretend to give the observation the however low probability that it might have, but they truly believe that it had zero probability.

There is a difference between an event that "will never occur" and one that "has a zero probability of occurring."

In short: "improbability" does not imply "impossibility".

You can show me case after case after case of man made CCC's, but statistically unless you can show every single one is man made, we cannot as an absolute fact make the leap from improbability to impossibility

You are comfortable making that leap and thats fine, as you say

I do not have evidence to support a claim about every crop circle in the world.

And if in spite of that you want to form the conclusion they are....... thats fine

But it just doesnt cut it for me personally, in the absence of evidence to the contray (evidence you admit you dont have), reasonable doubt remains for me.

 

[mike]

Most readers of ufo research in this forum will probably know who Bob Pratt is and recognize the quality of his work in that field. Here is his website on crop circles, fyi:

Crop circles and their message (2)

Excellent link thank you

 

[mike]

The greatest evidence against non-human crop circles being the confessions of the crop-circle makers themselves.

And i can and have posted quotes from those very same players in this game, that make a case that the mystery remains, indeed the preponderance of evidence that many of the CCC's (but not evidence that ALL) are made by humans, does imo support the spartacus gambit hypothesis as well.

How do we resolve the confessions testimony of these same people in regards to paranormal activity associated with CCC's ?

We can of course say, they are making it up, telling lies........

But this is in and of itself problematic, if the person giving this testimony is telling lies, then they become an unreliable witness

The courts take this view

Unreliable Witness: it's better not to rely on a witness at all, than to rely on a flase witness

That is if we can show the witness is unreliable, we must discard all their testimony.

 

[mike]

" I'll have a different opinion. I'm not required nor would any reasonable person expect me to have another opinion if every single last one of the things has comb lines, foot lines, etc., etc., etc.

But again Matthews video makes the point

On any crop circle......well..... almost any crop circle....im sure theres going to be some exceptions to the case.......

It cant be both can it ?

It cant be every single last one, and almost any , there are some exceptions.........

The two statements are contradictory

Borels law again, almost every single last one IS NOT the same as every single one.

 

[Constance]

Are you referring to the Steve Alexander footage or some other story? I know the farmer was approached in that case and said he saw a ball of light float past him... it didnt freak him enough to stop his tractor for long and watch it for an extended period in this footage tho!

As I recall, when Steve had an opportunity to interview the farmer what the farmer said is that he did remember that event (five months earlier), remembered the tractor motor cutting out just as the BOL/orb approached him, and that it was the size of a beach ball and flashed lights. Probably better to quote Steve's statement. I'll got find it and copy it here.

 

[Constance]

From Steve Alexander's description of the event and follow up:

The ball of light came into view and dropped into the crop. At the time I thought it might be a bird or a balloon, or something else mundane. But it became clear after a while that it was something more bizarre! The light moved through the crop flashing and glinting (like sunlight reflecting off of tin foil) The light at times was very intense! Eventually the light took off and flew towards a tractor driver in the distance. As the ball of light flew over the tractor, the tractor stopped. Eventually the ball of light went off into the distance.

The tractor driver was interviewed about five months after the incident, and he said he remembered that day, and the ball of light which he saw fly over him. He said that it was as big as a beach ball and was glinting and flashing! He said that he does remember that the engine stopped as the light went over the tractor. At the time of the incident he did hot know that I was filming from my vantage point on Milk Hill.

When he informed his boss at the farm, and his friends of what he saw , he was not taken seriously and was laughed at. When the film of the event was put out to the public, it confirmed that he had indeed seen something that was very strange indeed.

The Milk Hill UFO Footage

 

[Jimi H.]

..
I get it freaks some people out, thats perfectly normal

Actually, what I find disturbing/disturbed isn't AI, but the fact that post-humanists don't seperate the human and the computer, network, or tool, the extreme objectification of it. That concerns me, as a humanist. If humans are equalled to objects, I fear that it opens the door to a fundamentally inhumane treatment of humans.