New Show Topic: Calling all Skeptics & Part-Time Skeptics

[Burnt State]

The other aspect which I think is the underlying truth that only sounds conspiratorial when talked about is that there's a small group of people trying to figure this crap out pushing against giant well organized governments and possibly private interests. I think many aspects of this field could have been figuired out already had it not been for the fear that people couldn't handle the truth. There's data to back that up. Human nature has a way of staying in "idle" if it's not in the best interest to move it forward. So while we might like to state that science is the "only" way to figure this subject out, it really won't save the day for years to come. The field as a whole, is not motivated to. So Kudos to all the people who've busted their butts in this field to bring sunlight against the odds. Kudos to the people who've spent years detailing all the witness reports, analyzing the data, expanding to better methods and sharing this with all of us. If it were just fantasy prone people at the core of all this I'm sure mental health fields around the world would have cashed in on it by now. I also think it's kind of arrogant of us to reduce all the data down to illusions of the mind.

The field lacks organization, structure, and institutionalized progress that creates legitimacy and builds on the past. For this reason there will always be more commercialization, ufological gurus and recycling of known hoaxes and disproven cases. Consequently, the model is the Invisible College and it appears to work with scientists of all stripes, including those on government payrolls. I think the paradigm of the gov't fighting against the people as set up in the belabored disclosure movement is old school and has little to nothing to offer outside of proof of disinformation. If they had a handle on any of this then Bigelow wouldn't be looking to vacuum up all the cases he can. So while on one hand we have a lengthy history of research there is little to show for it. There has been no good data mining nor has there been anything too conclusive identified about the phenomenon except to say it could be many things.

Two points about it all being in our minds: it would be ridiculous to try to reduce the entire tangled history to merely illusions of the mind. Certainly cases that have multiple data sources beg to differ. When you consider the intersection of the witness, radar and trace evidence you can confirm there is an object there. However, connecting these data points to say something specific is not that easy. Even the Minot cases has reports from witnesses that all contradict each other in terms of colour and shape. Trying to tie supposed burn marks or broken branches to an object is often conjecture at best. Occasionally you have a case like Val Johnson where the ball of light does affect objects with great force. But at the end of the day there's only one place where reality is experienced and that's in our minds. Reality is a sensory experience processed by the mind and relayed back to us in a virtual environment. No wonder UFO reports contradict each other all the time.

To deny the role of cultural context in shaping what witnesses see is to disregard who we are. As the C&P thread has taught us, if you don't have a word for blue in your vocabulary and everything green is just another shade of blue then just how accurate can your report about unknown objects be? I was in a room with four people in a room all looking at the same screen and we saw three different colours of the infamous blue dress. Some saw blue, one saw white and another orange.

Biology is also at work here; different chemistry, different brain structures and different heart rates will all shape perception. When you flip through the Project Core witness survey you see that the single highest correlations between witnesses of paranormal and UFO events was the shared experience of synesthesia. People who attached feelings to numbers or colours points to the artist's mind, to the visionary, and so their experience is a different one. Similarly, women's eyes see more shades of colour than men. So really, our experience of reality is very different from each other all the time. The mind plays a central, if not dominant, role in what we see.

 

[Burnt State]

Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that there was any agreement reached by the end of that thread, but while reading it I agreed with @Michael Allen's articulate reasoning and citing of physical evidence concerning that crucial 5% of ufos and the ETH they support.

I still don't see where that stat comes from or what would possibly inform this - is this about structured crafts being seen entering and exiting the atmosphere? Please explain.

As far as being skeptical about experiencing reality - well it does all happen in the mind as I outlined above and that creates a lot of variety in defining what was seen.

Regarding Sturrock: I read one report tabulating French and US radar and witness confirmations of about 167 cases. Since 1981 France identified only 8 cases so we are talking about older technology here for those cases are. James McDonald produced a very interesting paper on ufo evidence where he completely critiques the radar piece, and a critical consideration has to be that very few of these witness radar events are structured crafts but are balls of light. Maneuverability speaks only to the same capacity an insect or bird has and imho points to the possibility of a non sentient intelligence as opposed to aliens.

It seems to me that our minds and imaginations can indeed construct implausible possibilities and that both mind and imagination are also involved in our species' collectively and increasingly developed understanding of the world we live in.

yes, I also agree in the powers of human imagination and it appears to work in an even more dynamic manner during altered states such as dreams or in surreal proximity ufo cases. What does this tell us?

 

[manxman]

Never heard of the guy.


Were you replying to my post robomont ?.

Stevens Hawkin's heh, that knocks my jim oberg debate flat, oberg isnt a patch on Hawkins, That Gene Stienberg fella, he has talked to alot of big-shots in ufology, have you ever heard of him ?.

 

[PCarr]

I think your reaction to the ETH as "pure epistemic hubris" goes a bit overboard. It's just a hypothesis, further qualified as 'the best presently available hypothesis' by COMETA and other researchers. I have a few responses to some other statements in your linked essay, which I'll quote in the following.

My views continue to evolve, even in the year or so since I wrote that. However, I still think we don't know anywhere near enough to form a proper scientific hypothesis to explain any UFOs as ET. I'm not taking the dogmatic stance that UFOs can NOT be ET, I just don't think we even know where to start forming the likelihood ratio.

We have to start with the data we do have, which is the experience of witnesses. Try to understand that on its own terms are there patterns that don't make sense? Explore those. It's protoscience.

 

[PCarr]

My comments won't add in any way to fixing Ufology, but it's a truth in the field. Science tends to show up when money shows up. When money shows up it's suddenly a credible field to conquer.

I don't agree with this. SETI has never had much money, and what money they did get from the US government was taken away in 1993. In Europe, it's even worse. SETI scientists have to constantly beg for donations. And yet, distinguished scientists keep joining the enterprise, being innovative about how to do it with less money. They have earned a grudging modicum of respect from their fellow scientists, and are not ridiculed in the media - even though they have not found what they are looking for. Why is this?

 

[Burnt State]

They could always turn seti towards the moon or mars but then they would have to admit humans are there.

Say what? You mean like our garbage, discarded robots, earth junk etc?

 

[Burnt State]

They have earned a grudging modicum of respect from their fellow scientists, and are not ridiculed in the media - even though they have not found what they are looking for. Why is this?

Well for starters they're not busy looking for evidence of life on other planets by searching on earth. They've actually started with the premise that if you want to find extraterrestrial life your best shot is to point your search in a more outward direction. I remember in those early days of the internet sitting back watching my computer process SETI data - it was relaxing, meditative and felt purposeful all at the same time, like I was participating in something real and not wallowing in the heroin of UFO studies, protoscience that it is.

 

[Constance]

I still don't see where that stat comes from or what would possibly inform this - is this about structured crafts being seen entering and exiting the atmosphere? Please explain.

The '5%' usually refers to those ufo cases for which no prosaic explanation can be found despite extensive investigation.

As far as being skeptical about experiencing reality - well it does all happen in the mind as I outlined above and that creates a lot of variety in defining what was seen.

Does it? Not also in the physical world?

Regarding Sturrock: I read one report tabulating French and US radar and witness confirmations of about 167 cases. Since 1981 France identified only 8 cases so we are talking about older technology here for those cases are. James MacDonald produced a very interesting paper on ufo evidence where he completely critiques the radar piece, and a critical consideration has to be that very few of these witness radar events are structured crafts but are balls of light. Maneuverability speaks only to the same capacity an insect or bird has and imho points to the possibility of a non sentient intelligence as opposed to aliens.

I see that you want to doubt that any radar-visual cases are significant, or that there are enough of them to be significant. How many would be 'enough'? Did McDonald doubt all radar-visual cases or just the radar records from one specific case? Balls of light might be structured crafts or machined objects of some sort, but the radar-witness cases I've read do not involve BOLS. Light itself is of course physical, but the question is always 'what is the source of the light?'. I suppose that the extraordinary maneuvers of large unidentified objects encountered in the air by pilots, observed from the ground by ATCs, and recorded by radar (often simultaneously by both ground radar and airborne radar) might be compared to insects and birds if you want to propose that what is being witnessed are very large and bright exobiological entities. The Stevensville case is a recent radar-visual case that should be more satisfying to you; the radar records fortuitously obtained from that case are available to read online.

yes, I also agree in the powers of human imagination and it appears to work in an even more dynamic manner during altered states such as dreams or in surreal proximity ufo cases. What does this tell us?

We don't know the extent to which human imagination works in what you call "surreal proximity ufo cases." We know from phenomenological investigations of perception that imagination plays a role [Merleau-Ponty wrote "is present"] in all human perception, but the question is how big a role it plays and also what kinds of roles it plays in various conditions and situations of conscious beings (drug-induced altered states, dream states, anomalous experiences, artistic creation, and so forth). The role of imagination in perception is a significant question in consciousness studies, coexisting with many other questions concerning perception, phenomenal consciousness, and mind. An exploration of data concerning this question in ufo and paranormal research could certainly make a contribution.

 

[Constance]

not wallowing in the heroin of UFO studies

You know, Burnt, your rhetorical flourishes say more about your attitude than about the subject.

 

[Burnt State]

You know, Burnt, your rhetorical flourishes say more about your attitude than about the subject.

I would call it more of a confession, a kind hidden revelation (or betrayal of truth) of what Duensing referred to as the current state of Nihilism in Ufology. Ufology is also its own addiction, especially when you are trying to search for personal explanations of personal experiences. But as far as my attitude goes I like to think of it as kind and generous, and as far as UFO's go I remain open minded and critical. I think the possibilities for what's behind their reality are multiple & increasingly complex. Nothing can yet be ruled out. Everything is permitted.

 

[PCarr]

Are you Leonard Susskind?

No, Leonard Susskind writes lucidly.

 

[Wade]

here's the thing though Constance, this is not meant as a brush off by any means but does it really matter ? You said in another thread a couple of weeks ago that this field is toxic, an oft-heard claim. Well if there was any particular idea or concept that ferments this toxicity it is this area.

I know people enjoy debating this subject so i'm not intending to dump on anyone but to me a debate is fruitful whenever there is a talking point that divides us and MORE importantly it's one that should be hashed out because it would behoove one side or the other to find common cause because there are real issues at stake that needed to be dealt with before they get out of hand rather than ignore and let ferment and become toxic. Things like race relations. I just don't see any point to favoring one side or the other on this issue. i firmly believe an outside force exists.. Or as my friend Pooh would say "They just are" To me their origins aren't terribly important. "They" COULD be from another galaxy, they COULD be us from the future, they COULD be time traveling nazis that broke away with the help of occult magick back in 1944 as the allies were breathing down their necks,they COULD be interdimensional travellers...something i used to lean to but not so much nowadays..they COULD be ultarterrestrials or whatever the name we have given those who may have lived on this planet for as long as we have and longer, it COULD be us unklnowingly releasing our collective ID on this world ( like Forbidden Planet or Star Trek's "Shore Leave" ) whichever you favor it's probably safe to say we are at someone's mercy. Perhaps we are not master's of our own destiny but are beholden to the whims of our own unconsciousness or the will of another force. To me that is the area of interest ( not that i have a lot of insight on it) more than the make up of this force.

 

[Heidi Lemmer]

here's the thing though Constance, this is not meant as a brush off by any means but does it really matter ? You said in another thread a couple of weeks ago that this field is toxic, an oft-heard claim. Well if there was any particular idea or concept that ferments this toxicity it is this area.

I know people enjoy debating this subject so i'm not intending to dump on anyone but to me a debate is fruitful whenever there is a talking point that divides us and MORE importantly it's one that should be hashed out because it would behoove one side or the other to find common cause because there are real issues at stake that needed to be dealt with before they get out of hand rather than ignore and let ferment and become toxic. Things like race relations. I just don't see any point to favoring one side or the other on this issue. i firmly believe an outside force exists.. Or as my friend Pooh would say "They just are" To me their origins aren't terribly important. "They" COULD be from another galaxy, they COULD be us from the future, they COULD be time traveling nazis that broke away with the help of occult magick back in 1944 as the allies were breathing down their necks,they COULD be interdimensional travellers...something i used to lean to but not so much nowadays..they COULD be ultarterrestrials or whatever the name we have given those who may have lived on this planet for as long as we have and longer, it COULD be us unklnowingly releasing our collective ID on this world ( like Forbidden Planet or Star Trek's "Shore Leave" ) whichever you favor it's probably safe to say we are at someone's mercy. Perhaps we are not master's of our own destiny but are beholden to the whims of our own unconsciousness or the will of another force. To me that is the area of interest ( not that i have a lot of insight on it) more than the make up of this force.

Well if it could be anything, why bother coming here to explore it. Lets just talk about chupacabra's and call it a day. In fact, that's what I think I'll do, it's either fairy dust or chupa's.

 

[Burnt State]

The '5%' usually refers to those ufo cases for which no prosaic explanation can be found despite extensive investigation.

ok, still not getting it - as in, we don't what they are so it must be aliens? That 5% estimate must be based on some critical considerations, no? What are they?

Does it? Not also in the physical world?

sure, something's happening in the physical world, or not in the case of full blown hallucinations, but exactly what it is vs. the experience of what we are seeing are certainly two different things & will vary from person to person based on points stated above.

I see that you want to doubt that any radar-visual cases are significant, or that there are enough of them to be significant. How many would be 'enough'? Did McDonald doubt all radar-visual cases or just the radar records from one specific case? Balls of light might be structured crafts or machined objects of some sort, but the radar-witness cases I've read do not involve BOLS. Light itself is of course physical, but the question is always 'what is the source of the light?'. I suppose that the extraordinary maneuvers of large unidentified objects encountered in the air by pilots, observed from the ground by ATCs, and recorded by radar (often simultaneously by both ground radar and airborne radar) might be compared to insects and birds if you want to propose that what is being witnessed are very large and bright exobiological entities. The Stevensville case is a recent radar-visual case that should be more satisfying to you; the radar records fortuitously obtained from that case are available to read online.

yes, sky critters are starting to increasingly make more and more sense to me. they track us, respond, buzz by close but don't crash into us, are indifferent and then zoom off never to be seen again - sounds like an insect to me.

I know there are core cases that have the holy trinity of radar, confirmed visuals and even secondary radar or witness and appear to be under control. So I'm not trying to doubt evetything, just pointing out the value of doubting and being doubtful. I find that tension between belief and skepticism to be what produces the best resolutions, even new ideas. I'll post the McDonald articles here:
Meteorological Factors in Unidentified Radar Returns - UFO Evidence
Why Aren's UFOs Ever Tracked by Radar? - UFO Evidence
Stephenville could also be our own - we have been building lighter than air platforms for a while now and should be prepared for these as sightings accompanied on occasion by other aircraft.

We don't know the extent to which human imagination works in what you call "surreal proximity ufo cases." We know from phenomenological investigations of perception that imagination plays a role [Merleau-Ponty wrote "is present"] in all human perception, but the question is how big a role it plays and also what kinds of roles it plays in various conditions and situations of conscious beings (drug-induced altered states, dream states, anomalous experiences, artistic creation, and so forth). The role of imagination in perception is a significant question in consciousness studies, coexisting with many other questions concerning perception, phenomenal consciousness, and mind. An exploration of data concerning this question in ufo and paranormal research could certainly make a contribution.

I agree completely here and see this as common ground. Even more important is to go back to understanding who our witness is and how they should be categorized according to their own personal context pre, during and post experience. We've spent how many years collecting data about unknowns yet invested relatively little into understanding the other half of the equation - makes no sense to me why that would be so ignored.

Regarding to what extent: we learn more about how the senses and the brain works all the time. We experience reality as virtual reality with most if it being a pre-recorded image so that leaves a lot of room for other things to happen when the UFO stimulus shows up.

 

[Wade]

Well if it could be anything, why bother coming here to explore it. Lets just talk about chupacabra's and call it a day. In fact, that's what I think I'll do, it's either fairy dust or chupa's.

Well like i said if one wants to talk about origins that's fine but i think what their prescence could nean for us is the thing that should be discussed wherever they come from. In other words what impact does fairy dust or a chupra have on us individually or collectively ?

Now if it was US that's one thing, that is something we could theoretically work with, otherwise we are at the whims of someone or something with better tech and toys than we do.

 

[PCarr]

ok, still not getting it - as in, we don't what they are so it must be aliens? That 5% estimate must be based on some critical considerations, no? What are they?

It's the old "God of the Gaps," except that it's now Aliens of the Gaps. Just as most smart theologians have given up on GotG, those of us who are seriously looking for ETI have also given up on this, if for no other reason that its' fallacious. Note, this does NOT mean that it is dumb to ask whether the Earth has been visited, or pointless to investigate UFO sightings and other strange experiences, but we have to get away from the negative definition, and the fallacy that if we can't explain it, it's aliens. The focus for a protoscience has to be to gather solid data and don't burden it with hopeless theorizing.

I think a good analogy is the centuries it took us to understand electromagnetism. There were lots of wildly wrong theories, and it wasn't until Maxwell in the 1860s that we had a coherent, unified classical field theory, and even that had people scratching their heads, because the theory didn't require an ether, which they were all sure had to exist. It took another couple of generations to shed the ether and move toward a modern quantum theory. Still, for all those generations, some good science was done, and by the time of the enlightenment in the 18th century, a big push was on to put together both the experimental science and the mathematical tools needed to develop electromagnetism.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Doesn't this boil down to baseline assumptions based solely on one's choice of scientific stances? I have been digging into what is the hard concept of the holographic universe. The bottom line is that apart from the defusing and assembling of information, what don't know squat. MANY seriously critical scientists believe that the HU is absolutely where we are at with respect to hard science and what the numbers prove out. There has to be some point wherein we admit that we simply do not have a clue. Nothing is certain. No Gods, No Aliens, No Us. There is however experience. If our existence is a part of a working 3 dimensional, experiential, time based illusion, how can we know ANYTHING apart from experiences which are falsified prior to waking up tomorrow?

How can we know that the sum of all reality is not the back side of gravity driven light as it projects through a single cell of God's gourd? The answer is that we can't.

 

[PCarr]

Doesn't this boil down to baseline assumptions based solely on one's choice of scientific stances? I have been digging into what is the hard concept of the holographic universe. The bottom line is that apart from the defusing and assembling of information, what don't know squat. MANY seriously critical scientists believe that the HU is absolutely where we are at with respect to hard science and what the numbers prove out. There has to be some point wherein we admit that we simply do not have a clue. Nothing is certain. No Gods, No Aliens, No Us. There is however experience. If our existence is a part of a working 3 dimensional, experiential, time based illusion, how can we know ANYTHING apart from experiences which are falsified prior to waking up tomorrow?

How can we know that the sum of all reality is not the back side of gravity driven light as it projects through a single cell of God's gourd? The answer is that we can't.

I think that's going to far. The Holographic universe is a pretty abstract concept, and no one knows exactly how it works, but it's not saying that physics isn't real or that space is an illusion. Not at all. Leonard Susskind has an excellent video explaining the argument:

 

[Jeff Davis]

Hi Paul,
Not according to the same man in this clip, taken from the Nova special "The Fabric of The Cosmos", and that's just the issue here.

Check out what MR. Susskind states at 4:20

There is very little certainty. We think within these theoretical schools that at a certain point time and space defuse in quantum fluctuation much like pixels with respect to zooming into a printed picture. Quite possibly the entirety of what we perceive as a 3 dimensional reality is informational in nature. An illusion projected from a flat surface elsewhere.

 

[PCarr]

Hi Paul,

There is very little certainty. We think within these theoretical schools that at a certain point time and space defuse in quantum fluctuation much like pixels with respect to zooming into a printed picture. Quite possibly the entirety of what we perceive as a 3 dimensional reality is informational in nature. An illusion projected from a flat surface elsewhere.

I think you are taking an interesting theoretical argument that has yet to be worked out in detail and somehow deciding that that mean "there is very little certainty." There are two huge problems with that:

1. It's a non-sequitur.
   
2. certainty is not what science offers.

The other problem is that if physics at the extremely microscopic level is really taking place in two dimensions instead of 3 (again, not established fact), that doesn't mean that space and time are illusions. Far from it.