UBERDOINK said:
just listened to the Steve Bassett interview, and was amazed at how delusional he was. He is a true believer in something that is SO completely, WITHOUT definitive answers, that it has just become another version of a belief system.
Putting percentages on the possibilities? What definitive data does he have to do that with? I mean, if we are honest there is NO definite proof of UFO's being flying saucers from other planets.
But hey, crazy guests are fun to listen too.
I wouldn't say he is delusional. I agree mostly that there isn't definitive 'proof' that UFO's are flying saucers from other planets. But then, I haven't seen one, either. I do, however, know people who have seen strange things, both in the military and outside of it, and I believe the stories of cogent people like David Biedny who have seen things that don't fit with the common perceptions.
What Bassett is doing is somewhat like the philosophy of some modern progressive ecochange proponents:
It goes like this: "If some miracle happened, and the world could be brought to peaceful existence, with clean air and water, and cooperating individuals living carefully and thoughtfully together, how would you choose to live?
Why don't you live that way now?"
Bassett is simply saying that there are enough people out there trying to prove one thing or another, and there are plenty of people burying information in the government (no matter what that information says about UFOs), so he has chosen to work AS THOUGH the UFO phenomenon is a real set of events and that the government should treat it openly and forthright so that the stigma of UFO research doesn't stop credible people from investigating it and other areas. He is simply defining a work area that, no matter what the outcome, needs to be addressed professionally. (The UFO field isn't the only one that needs this kind of approach. Food systems, agriculture policy, intelligence policy, patents and medical systems are examples where reform should also be considered from a new perspective of peak resources and corporate/government conspiracies.)
We make odds on things every day without complete data. That's called 'risk management' now, but it's just gambling anyway.
Regardless of whether Bassett is right or wrong, at least he's trying to do something by plowing through all the rubbish and picking a hilltop to stand on and look toward the future, rather than crawling around in the junk looking for an unopened stick of gum.