Neil Tyson talks about UFOs and the argument from ignorance.

[David Biedny]

As usual, Schuyler, your clarity is right on the money. Thanks.

dB

 

[MrChud]

...."Such a thing has not been proven but ultimately I don't know." I can respect that sort of skeptic.

Well it's good thing most skeptics(honest ones) would have no problem with that statement then huh? Also how is saying "Such a thing has not been proven but ultimately I don't know" any different then saying, "I am skeptical of alien visitation", or "I doubt aliens have visited earth"? They are basically saying the same things imo. Maybe the words skeptic and doubt have gotten a bad rap.

Unky wrote

While I like Tyson as well, people here need to remember that he is a card carrying member of CSI/CSICOP, and that should tell you all you need to know about his religious intentions

I don't understand why you would equate being a member of a skeptic club with being religious, they are polar opposits.

Schuyler wrote

But the fact that this guy has a PhD in astronomy does not make him an authority.

I never suggested that his Ph.D in astronomy made him any kind of authority on ufo's, after all how can anyone be an authority on an unknown? I mearly stated that fact for those who were going to only consider him as some talking head or an entertainer. Also I would be curious to know what you believe the agenda of professional and amateur astronomers are in regard to UFO's. Just curious if you are suggesting some kind of conspiracy among them or maybe I misunderstood your statement.

Thanks, your pal C.H.U.D

 

[PhantomAce]

I like Neal Tyson,read a few of his books and have watched his TV shows. Yes he does have a PHD and is Dir of the Hayden Planetarium among other creds.

I would rate him as a moderate among skeptical scientist's who wade into the UFO debate. I think he's quite open to the possibility even admitted it in this video. He just needs more tangible evidence and who doesn't? Made good solid points, ie U in UFO.

However its is unfortunate he took his answer down the "giggle road" in the latter part of the video obviously to play the crowd. Which I fully understand,he has bills to pay like everyone else.

Thumbs up on Tyson and Kaku and maybe even Seth.

But a definite thumbs down on the 19th century fanatical idiots Phil Plait and Bill Nye these guys are just cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

 

[Schuyler]

I never suggested that his Ph.D in astronomy made him any kind of authority on ufo's, after all how can anyone be an authority on an unknown? I mearly stated that fact for those who were going to only consider him as some talking head or an entertainer. Also I would be curious to know what you believe the agenda of professional and amateur astronomers are in regard to UFO's. Just curious if you are suggesting some kind of conspiracy among them or maybe I misunderstood your statement.

Yes, you did misunderstand and you also cherry picked the quote, not that I've never done that myself. In the very next sentence I said Hynek also had a PhD in astronomy and that McDonald had a PhD in atmospheric physics. Since he uses that fact as his platform for speaking about UFOs and since other people continually point out that he has a PhD, I am claiming this is used as an 'argument from authority.'

My point is that other people with similar educational backgrounds take a somewhat opposite point if view. Is his more authoritative than theirs? I don't think so. Also both Hynek and McDonald (among other PhD's like Vallee) have actually studied the subject. I see no evidence that Tyson is not simply speaking from a philosophical point of view, which to me is the same thing as speaking out of ignorance.

I also pointed out, just to be fair about the whole thing, that Salla also has a PhD, and I think he is a total nutcase. Conclusion? Having a PhD is nice, really, and it shows a certain level of achievement, but it doesn't make you qualified to speak on a subject that is not your field of expertise.

 

[MrChud]

Yes, you did misunderstand and you also cherry picked the quote, not that I've never done that myself. In the very next sentence I said Hynek also had a PhD in astronomy and that McDonald had a PhD in atmospheric physics. Since he uses that fact as his platform for speaking about UFOs and since other people continually point out that he has a PhD, I am claiming this is used as an 'argument from authority.'

My point is that other people with similar educational backgrounds take a somewhat opposite point if view. Is his more authoritative than theirs? I don't think so. Also both Hynek and McDonald (among other PhD's like Vallee) have actually studied the subject. I see no evidence that Tyson is not simply speaking from a philosophical point of view, which to me is the same thing as speaking out of ignorance.

I also pointed out, just to be fair about the whole thing, that Salla also has a PhD, and I think he is a total nutcase. Conclusion? Having a PhD is nice, really, and it shows a certain level of achievement, but it doesn't make you qualified to speak on a subject that is not your field of expertise.

Ahh thanks for clearing that up. Also I didn't mean to cherry pick, I was just trying to condense to save space, but in doing so I left out the part of your post my question to you pertained to. Doh! This is what I based my question on.

I don't think highly-educated astronomers know anything about UFOs any more than I believe actors know anything about politics. It's just that they have a platform, so they use it to further their own agendas, no matter how ill-informed they are.

I have seen many people on the net who hold the belief that most professional astronomers form some kinda secret cabal to hide the truth about ufo's, a far fetched CT as I am sure you would agree. I simply misunderstood your comment and wanted clarification. I am happy that you are not promoting this idea.

I agree that Tyson was probably speaking out of ignorance, but then I think we all are when it comes to this topic. Until we get solid evidence for the source of this phenomena we are all just speculating about our ignorance.

Keep looking up.

 

[Schuyler]

I have seen many people on the net who hold the belief that most professional astronomers form some kinda secret cabal to hide the truth about ufo's, a far fetched CT as I am sure you would agree.

I do. There is no conspiracy. That's silly. I think maybe the media has a part on this. When they attempt to be 'unbiased' they say, "Let's go get an astronomer! They must know!" I'm all for promoting science, by the way. Science needs cheerleaders and if someone is particularly good at showing science in a positive light, I'm all for it.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Vallee lamented long ago, in one of his books, the fact that modern astronomers spend very little of their time actually looking at the night sky.

 

[Unky]

I have seen many people on the net who hold the belief that most professional astronomers form some kinda secret cabal to hide the truth about ufo's, a far fetched CT as I am sure you would agree. I simply misunderstood your comment and wanted clarification. I am happy that you are not promoting this idea..

What? Have you been talking to members of Heaven's Gate? Chud, that is completely ridiculous. I don't know who you talked to on the Internet that believes there to be a conspiracy within the scientific community to conceal information about UFO's/ET's but you should not waste one minute of your time with such people. Have you met anyone in this forum that maintains such a belief? I highly doubt it.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

What? Have you been talking to members of Heaven's Gate? Chud, that is completely ridiculous. I don't know who you talked to on the Internet that believes there to be a conspiracy within the scientific community to conceal information about UFO's/ET's but you should not waste one minute of your time with such people. Have you met anyone in this forum that maintains such a belief? I highly doubt it.

Yep, I haven't seen this around here either. Sure, if you visit some really loopy sites you'll find any crazy belief you can imagine but those people are in the minority.

The only negative thing I have to say about astronomers as a whole is that they don't seem to keep up with what is going on in the physics world. All the time I'm hearing amazing things from physicists but astronomers only want to tell me about things known to physics 20 years ago. I can't count how many times I've heard a PHD astronomer say that getting here from another star system is impossible and then the next day I hear a physicist like Michio Kaku say that it is possible. Often when listening to astronomers and physicists I get the impression that I'm being told about two different universes entirely. The astronomers seem to be of the glass half empty crowd while the physicists appear to be of the glass half full persuasion.

 

[Frozen E.T. Burrito]

Interesting to see this thread, as I've recently posted elsewhere regarding a portion of this subject matter.

I've gotten into amateur Astronomy and as a result starting hanging around some Astronomy forums. I've used their search functions and looked around for any "UFO" reports, and have noticed a striking lack of them, *especially* any witnesses of "impossible" speed and angular turns. These are folks who spend every moment they get the chance "looking up", so I would definitely have thought that if there were anything of this sort going on with any regularity there would surely be at least *one* solid sounding report, but there don't seem to be *any* that I've been able to find, which I will admit does bother my ability to "believe" in the reports of these kinds of things that I've heard from others.

 

[Schuyler]

When you think of UFOS it's natural to think astronomers would be in the hot seat for sightings. After all, they 'look up!' But is that really true? What is the nature of 'looking through a telescope?' I have a telescope. It's not a very good one. I'd love a Meade that actually worked well, but, you know, priorities. I also have a couple pair of binoculars, and a couple of telescopic sights, the ones that go on top of rifles, and a zoom lens for my Canon A-1 camera.

One thing is common in all these devices. They have an extremely narrow focus. I use the binoclulars on the bird feeders in the back yard. My Spousal Unit will yell, "There's a Scarlet Tanager on the suet feeder!" I'll whip out the binocs, and try very hard to zero in on that bird. It's difficult because with my eyes to the lenses it takes awhile to narrow in on that feeder. Every small move takes me several feet in direction.

the same is true with the telescope. A while ago I managed to zero in on the moons of Jupiter with my cousin's Celestron C-5, which is a competent instrument. I was proud to have figured it out and managed to zero in on the planet, much more them moons. But I discovered if I even breathed on the mount, it would need to be reset. The exactness required is precise.

In photography you see the same thing. If your focus is at infinity, you sometimes get "UFOs" flying by the lens in a blur. They are bugs, of course, and though some people call them 'rods' or 'orbs' or 'beings of light,' they are actually just too close to the lens to be in focus.

As for the scopes, you are zeroing in on the bull's eye. You wouldn't see a UFO if it was ten feet from you because you are so narrowly focused to put lead on target..

I don't think professional astronomers gaze through the eyepiece very much. Their studies are automated. They get the data and make the calculations. Amateurs tend to want to take pictures, so they use cameras and long exposure times to take truly beautiful shots. In neither case do they spend hours with their eyes glued to a lens looking up. If they did, their focus would be very narrow. Given the realities of doing astronomy, I'm not surprised there are no UFO reports. They aren't really looking up much, and when they are they are not looking for UFOs.

 

[Unky]

The only negative thing I have to say about astronomers as a whole is that they don't seem to keep up with what is going on in the physics world. All the time I'm hearing amazing things from physicists but astronomers only want to tell me about things known to physics 20 years ago. I can't count how many times I've heard a PHD astronomer say that getting here from another star system is impossible and then the next day I hear a physicist like Michio Kaku say that it is possible. Often when listening to astronomers and physicists I get the impression that I'm being told about two different universes entirely. The astronomers seem to be of the glass half empty crowd while the physicists appear to be of the glass half full persuasion.

Let me take a shot at answering this. Physicists spend more of their time developing theories rooted in mathematics to explain the universe; whereas, astronomers and engineers are more involved in working with technologies that can actually measure and test cosmolgical theories.

Consider that theoretical physicists try to pave the way for what is possible when they reach some level of peer acceptance with new theories such as pre-big bang physics, M-theory, supergravity, parallel universes, etc. such things are extremely difficult to observe or measure with our restricted empirical tools. Kaku loves to talk about traveling through vast distances of space using Einstein-Rosen bridge physics, and while the theory looks nice on paper, we lack the tools to observe or test it.

Even if theoretical physicists are lucky enough to actually publish theories they agree on, it's still a long way from defining what is universal fact. When technologies are developed that can test leading theories, it's exciting stuff. Example: When Nasa's WMAP satellite was put in orbit it was able to measure and confirm Alan Guth's popular theory of inflation, which also lead to a better understanding of things like dark energy. This resulted in his consideration for a nobel prize in physics. The LHC is considered to be the next major technological development designed to measure and observe particle theories that have been on paper for years.

Technologies continue to play catch-up up to theories about how the universe works. Science normally progresses in that order. This is why astronomy and cosmology tend to lag behind physics.

 

[MrChud]

When you think of UFOS it's natural to think astronomers would be in the hot seat for sightings. After all, they 'look up!' But is that really true? What is the nature of 'looking through a telescope?' I have a telescope. It's not a very good one. I'd love a Meade that actually worked well, but, you know, priorities. I also have a couple pair of binoculars, and a couple of telescopic sights, the ones that go on top of rifles, and a zoom lens for my Canon A-1 camera.

One thing is common in all these devices. They have an extremely narrow focus. I use the binoclulars on the bird feeders in the back yard. My Spousal Unit will yell, "There's a Scarlet Tanager on the suet feeder!" I'll whip out the binocs, and try very hard to zero in on that bird. It's difficult because with my eyes to the lenses it takes awhile to narrow in on that feeder. Every small move takes me several feet in direction.

the same is true with the telescope. A while ago I managed to zero in on the moons of Jupiter with my cousin's Celestron C-5, which is a competent instrument. I was proud to have figured it out and managed to zero in on the planet, much more them moons. But I discovered if I even breathed on the mount, it would need to be reset. The exactness required is precise.

In photography you see the same thing. If your focus is at infinity, you sometimes get "UFOs" flying by the lens in a blur. They are bugs, of course, and though some people call them 'rods' or 'orbs' or 'beings of light,' they are actually just too close to the lens to be in focus.

As for the scopes, you are zeroing in on the bull's eye. You wouldn't see a UFO if it was ten feet from you because you are so narrowly focused to put lead on target..

I don't think professional astronomers gaze through the eyepiece very much. Their studies are automated. They get the data and make the calculations. Amateurs tend to want to take pictures, so they use cameras and long exposure times to take truly beautiful shots. In neither case do they spend hours with their eyes glued to a lens looking up. If they did, their focus would be very narrow. Given the realities of doing astronomy, I'm not surprised there are no UFO reports. They aren't really looking up much, and when they are they are not looking for UFOs.

While that is all mostly true, there are many people who do whole sky astronomy. Meteor astronomy would be one example, also amatuer star parties have dozens to hundreds of people attending who are all "looking up" at different parts of the sky, yet I have never heard of a really good ufo sighting at one of these events.

 

[Frozen E.T. Burrito]

As for the scopes, you are zeroing in on the bull's eye. You wouldn't see a UFO if it was ten feet from you because you are so narrowly focused to put lead on target..

From what I can tell, most of these folks are not *constantly* stuck to the eyepiece though, and still spend a good bit of time just looking at the layout of the sky and enjoying the constellations... definitely much more so than "the general public", so the averages should still be potentially *much* higher for sightings... at least, one would think, than the random person who seemingly just happens to look up at just the right moment to spot such things as so often apparently happens as is.

 

[The Pair of Cats]

I'm sure that people who have happened to see a "UFO" in the daylight or at night weren't permanently peering upwards to the sky when they had their sighting.
Who knows maybe a very small percentage were. The point is that just because astronomers don't happen to see "UFO's" doesn't make the phenomena less real.

 

[PhantomAce]

A "UFO" sighting must be an extremely rare event. So its not surprising astronomers haven't seen anything. One could go outside every clear evening for a lifetime and look up for hours and never see anything anomalous. And another person could just take a quick glance up and see something extraordinary. So that astronomers never see anything is a fairly weak argument.

 

[Sean Elifritz]

Let me take a shot at answering this. Physicists spend more of their time developing theories rooted in mathematics to explain the universe; whereas, astronomers and engineers are more involved in working with technologies that can actually measure and test cosmolgical theories.

Consider that theoretical physicists try to pave the way for what is possible when they reach some level of peer acceptance with new theories such as pre-big bang physics, M-theory, supergravity, parallel universes, etc. such things are extremely difficult to observe or measure with our restricted empirical tools. Kaku loves to talk about traveling through vast distances of space using Einstein-Rosen bridge physics, and while the theory looks nice on paper, we lack the tools to observe or test it.

Even if theoretical physicists are lucky enough to actually publish theories they agree on, it's still a long way from defining what is universal fact. When technologies are developed that can test leading theories, it's exciting stuff. Example: When Nasa's WMAP satellite was put in orbit it was able to measure and confirm Alan Guth's popular theory of inflation, which also lead to a better understanding of things like dark energy. This resulted in his consideration for a nobel prize in physics. The LHC is considered to be the next major technological development designed to measure and observe particle theories that have been on paper for years.

Technologies continue to play catch-up up to theories about how the universe works. Science normally progresses in that order. This is why astronomy and cosmology tend to lag behind physics.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. But astronomers should at least acknowledge what is happening in other areas of science. Instead all I hear from them is this is impossible and that's impossible. When you've got the best minds in physics theorizing that something might very well be possible that should be enough to cause astronomers to leave the door open at the very least.

 

[Schuyler]

While that is all mostly true, there are many people who do whole sky astronomy. Meteor astronomy would be one example, also amatuer star parties have dozens to hundreds of people attending who are all "looking up" at different parts of the sky, yet I have never heard of a really good ufo sighting at one of these events.

As a percentage of astronomers, how many? You mean a UFO didn't happen to do a fly by at a star party? Statistically speaking, what are the chances? How dare these UFO guys ignore a star party with lots of people looking up!

Astronomers are a very small percentage of the population. By and large they do not spend their time 'looking up,' and when they are, they are focused on stars and planets. The average UFO is seen by the naked eye by people looking casually into the nearby sky, not someone with their eye buried in a telescope lens, which makes them LESS likely to see a UFO. Seeing a UFO is not an astronomical event.

It's a specious argument. It looks good on the surface and appeals to 'common sense,' but if you examine it, it falls apart immediately.

 

[Drew UK]

Another point, regarding Astronomy which could be influencing there bias.

Is the severe loneliness in the vastness of outer space. Everything moves in monotonous clockwork regularity, there is no vamp - no comets being deflected by unusual trajectories, no planets having there orbits changed out of position, no altered projection of stars, no vast synthetic/irregular and unusual features on the background of the cosmos - if there is reservoirs of technology and life existing out there - there is no message in a bottle, no drifting timber, none whatsoever.

Just the natural mechanics of physical phenomenon

(October again, depression time!!)

 

[uforadio]

Neil Tyson on UFOs again:
Cosmic Queries: UFOs | StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson