The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis : Fact and Fallacy

[Thomas R Morrison]

And sorry, it doesn’t get the best and brightest, either.

Not all of them, but definitely the lion's share. The big contractors like Boeing and Lockheed poach the best and the brightest from the top universities all the time - they pay much better than academic research positions and they have all of the best toys. Those that don't make the cut, or who simply have an insurmountable moral revulsion to working within the mass murder industry (like Michio Kaku), teach.

 

[marduk]

Not all of them, but definitely the lion's share. The big contractors like Boeing and Lockheed poach the best and the brightest from the top universities all the time - they pay much better than academic research positions and they have all of the best toys. Those that don't make the cut, or who simply have an insurmountable moral revulsion to working within the mass murder industry (like Michio Kaku), teach.

Got any data for that? I’ve been told the opposite by my alumni.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

Got any data for that? I’ve been told the opposite by my alumni.

Sure, here’s one recent article about it – defense contractors are now reaching all the way back into middle school, and even pre-k classes, to lure the best minds into defense work:
To compete with Silicon Valley for engineers, aerospace firms start recruitment in pre-kindergarten

Also, Michio Kaku described Edward Teller’s efforts to recruit him into the defense industry on one of his old Art Bell interviews – Dr. Kaku stated that his revulsion to military work kept him from accepting Teller’s generous offer. And the controversial Lockheed research scientist Boyd Bushman described his own program to recruit the top university graduates in physics and engineering into defense research, and how most of them were tossed back to go into teaching careers because they couldn't "think outside of the box" (in his interview with American Antigravity, iirc).

But this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; this same dynamic plays out in every field. The top economic minds are recruited by Wall Street, and they make a fortune working for the banking corporations. The top chemists and biochemists get jobs at the big pharmaceutical and chemical corporations, because they’re paid far better than any academic, and get superior benefits as well. Same goes for engineers, mathematicians, programmers, you name it.

It’s simple economics – big corporations get the best minds because they pay much more than the comparatively meager salaries for teachers, and they have all the great toys, plus - the work is far more interesting than going over the same material in overcrowded classrooms for nine months out of the year. I lost touch with roughly half of my old science nerd friends from high school because they disappeared into the black world - General Dynamics, Hughes Research Laboratories, etc. In fact, in the last conversation that I had with my friend who was working at HRL, he told me that he couldn’t discuss what he was working on, but he said that they were already doing everything that I could imagine, and more. This was not a guy prone to confabulation, and he was well aware of the extent of my imagination – so I’ve been pondering that comment ever since.

 

[Randall]

Give me one tangible non-anecdotal piece of evidence it wasn’t a balloon.

Well, maybe the Roswell debris was from some sort of balloon, but the MOGUL explanation doesn't work out because according to the wind charts for the area where the MOGUL balloons were launched, the Roswell crash site isn't in any possible flight path. But here's the problem with requiring a "tangible non-anecdotal piece of evidence".

The wind charts are also basically anecdotal in that I looked them up on the Internet and I don't even recall exactly when I did that or exactly where I got the info from. I don't commit all that to memory. I just want to get to the bottom line and move on. But really, even if I were to be given a piece of an alien craft to hold onto and show you, how could you know the story behind it is true. I'd have to physically retrieve and carry the piece while being filmed all the way from the source to you. But even then how do you know the source footage is real and not staged?

In the end, the only situation sufficient to qualify as proof for that level of evidence is for you to have been a passenger on the craft all the way from planet Xenu to Earth. And even then some skeptics would say they were somehow manipulated into believing that's what happened when it was really an elaborate hoax. There's people who don't believe the Moon landing or that the world is a sphere ( right )? So is moving the goalposts down the field, out the gate, through the parking lot, and into the neighboring state a reasonable level of evidence? I don't think so. I think that at some point deferring to the experiences of others should be sufficient.

I'm not saying there's enough of that for Roswell, but I do think that enough has been accumulated over time in the community at large that it's reasonable for people who have done their homework to believe that alien visitation is true, whether we have tangible non-anecdotal evidence or not. It's also reasonable to say that we could still be wrong about that. But that isn't enough of a reason to abandon the most promising course we have. So personally I have no problem saying I believe alien visitation is a reality until I'm shown sufficient counterpoint as to why I shouldn't.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

These are my personal stats on Roswell;

5% or less it was a flying saucer
95% or greater it was terrestrial

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Everyone doubts everyone these days. Just like 9/11. Even though it was eye witnessed by 1000's and watched on tv by millions there are still the bogus conspiracy reports. BS like "I saw a missile launch from one of the planes and that's what blew up the building" to "these were CIA planes, the real passengers & planes were diverted somewhere else" and all of the other nonsense that goes along with it. I look at it this way; 9/11 was EYEWITNESSED by millions and yet, some people don't believe it. So we can imagine all the ludicrous versions that come about of a story that WAS NOT EYEWITNESSED.....and on top of that something that happened in 1947.....

 

[Randall]

Everyone doubts everyone these days. Just like 9/11. Even though it was eye witnessed by 1000's and watched on tv by millions there are still the bogus conspiracy reports. BS like "I saw a missile launch from one of the planes and that's what blew up the building" to "these were CIA planes, the real passengers & planes were diverted somewhere else" and all of the other nonsense that goes along with it. I look at it this way; 9/11 was EYEWITNESSED by millions and yet, some people don't believe it. So we can imagine all the ludicrous versions that come about of a story that WAS NOT EYEWITNESSED.....and on top of that something that happened in 1947.....

Exactly. So using 9/11 as an example, we have first reports that terrorist hijackers flew planes into the WTC. Personally I think that's exactly what happened. Then all the conspiracy stories started. With Roswell we have the press release that the USAAF retrieved a flying disk, then the story started to change, and when we go back to when the Roswell debris was first examined, people said some of the materials were really exotic. So maybe in both cases the initial reports are the ones that are the most accurate. So maybe that 5% chance of it being something alien could be more like somewhere between 5% and 65% . But even on the high end the chance of it being of human manufacture is still really high. Personally I don't believe it one way or the other. I just believe something out of the ordinary happened. Exactly what I don't know. Maybe it was all just some sort of Psy Ops campaign; an elaborate military hoax.

 

[marduk]

Sure, here’s one recent article about it – defense contractors are now reaching all the way back into middle school, and even pre-k classes, to lure the best minds into defense work:
To compete with Silicon Valley for engineers, aerospace firms start recruitment in pre-kindergarten

That article kind of makes my point for me - what I've been told is that for more than a decade now new graduates are disinterested in entering the public sector or the military-industrial complex in any way. There's giant money to be made in startups and big tech companies, and they're not 'evil.' Additionally, many universities simply don't want to be connected with them at all.

In short, they're considered cheap, work you too much, and not cool.

Also, Michio Kaku described Edward Teller’s efforts to recruit him into the defense industry on one of his old Art Bell interviews – Dr. Kaku stated that his revulsion to military work kept him from accepting Teller’s generous offer. And the controversial Lockheed research scientist Boyd Bushman described his own program to recruit the top university graduates in physics and engineering into defense research, and how most of them were tossed back to go into teaching careers because they couldn't "think outside of the box" (in his interview with American Antigravity, iirc).

Shortly after graduating and working in my first 'real' job I spent quite a bit of time in Houston. While there I worked alongside an older contractor that really seemed to know networking security and OS vulnerabilities. We got to hanging out after work, playing around with technology, fiddling around in the data centre, that kind of thing. He showed me more than a few tricks - like how to remotely crash NT systems even through a firewall, remotely install things on windows boxes, etc.

Then, late one night he told me he was going to play it straight with me and asked if I wanted a gig with the US intelligence apparatus - I think he said 'a three letter name you'd know but I won't say to you now.' I told him I was Canadian, and he told me it didn't matter, that they could make that problem go away. And now that I think about it, he told me they had already cleared me and knew all about me. He didn't say he worked for this agency, just that he would connect us together.

I don't know if it was true that they already checked me out or he just was saying it was or if in fact he actually represented anyone - it never got any further. I told him that I was totally disinterested in working for anything like that and in fact I didn't want to continue working in the US at all. He shrugged and said OK, we both went home, and he never showed up at work again.

I'm telling you this story because I think very much he was some kind of 'handler' or 'broker' and I was being recruited for likely some minor position as a hacker or something - but the sheer fact that they'd have to tempt me at all tells you that people aren't exactly breaking down their door to work for them.

And I was far from the smartest guy in my class, and that's in a backwater Canadian school. My grades were OK but not fantastic for sure. I was in a hurry to graduate, taking more than a full course load, and working full time to support myself and my then girlfriend at the time. They must have been scraping the barrel for sure after me.

But this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; this same dynamic plays out in every field. The top economic minds are recruited by Wall Street, and they make a fortune working for the banking corporations. The top chemists and biochemists get jobs at the big pharmaceutical and chemical corporations, because they’re paid far better than any academic, and get superior benefits as well. Same goes for engineers, mathematicians, programmers, you name it.

It’s simple economics – big corporations get the best minds because they pay much more than the comparatively meager salaries for teachers, and they have all the great toys, plus - the work is far more interesting than going over the same material in overcrowded classrooms for nine months out of the year. I lost touch with roughly half of my old science nerd friends from high school because they disappeared into the black world - General Dynamics, Hughes Research Laboratories, etc. In fact, in the last conversation that I had with my friend who was working at HRL, he told me that he couldn’t discuss what he was working on, but he said that they were already doing everything that I could imagine, and more. This was not a guy prone to confabulation, and he was well aware of the extent of my imagination – so I’ve been pondering that comment ever since.

I've actually heard rumours that people go in and never come out - for a very stupid reason: they can't put what they've done for the past number of years on a resume, get a reference, or do anything but stay put!

 

[marduk]

Well, maybe the Roswell debris was from some sort of balloon, but the MOGUL explanation doesn't work out because according to the wind charts for the area where the MOGUL balloons were launched, the Roswell crash site isn't in any possible flight path. But here's the problem with requiring a "tangible non-anecdotal piece of evidence".

The wind charts are also basically anecdotal in that I looked them up on the Internet and I don't even recall exactly when I did that or exactly where I got the info from. I don't commit all that to memory. I just want to get to the bottom line and move on. But really, even if I were to be given a piece of an alien craft to hold onto and show you, how could you know the story behind it is true. I'd have to physically retrieve and carry the piece while being filmed all the way from the source to you. But even then how do you know the source footage is real and not staged?

In the end, the only situation sufficient to qualify as proof for that level of evidence is for you to have been a passenger on the craft all the way from planet Xenu to Earth. And even then some skeptics would say they were somehow manipulated into believing that's what happened when it was really an elaborate hoax. There's people who don't believe the Moon landing or that the world is a sphere ( right )? So is moving the goalposts down the field, out the gate, through the parking lot, and into the neighboring state a reasonable level of evidence? I don't think so. I think that at some point deferring to the experiences of others should be sufficient.

I'm not saying there's enough of that for Roswell, but I do think that enough has been accumulated over time in the community at large that it's reasonable for people who have done their homework to believe that alien visitation is true, whether we have tangible non-anecdotal evidence or not. It's also reasonable to say that we could still be wrong about that. But that isn't enough of a reason to abandon the most promising course we have. So personally I have no problem saying I believe alien visitation is a reality until I'm shown sufficient counterpoint as to why I shouldn't.

Lol, I asked that question for a very specific reason - it's because nothing about Roswell can or will ever inform, clarify, prove, or provide anything. And it's for that reason - nobody can ever provide anything definitive that says it wasn't a balloon 100%.

Sure, you can throw stones at that all you like and maybe reduce the probability down to 90%, or even 70 or 80%. But that's where the debate is going to end, right?

So it's really just a merry go round we keep pushing on that actually goes nowhere except folks like Strieber and Friedman are sitting in the middle of it going "whee" and having fun going round and round.

I think it's time to stop pushing on it.

 

[Randall]

Lol, I asked that question for a very specific reason - it's because nothing about Roswell can or will ever inform, clarify, prove, or provide anything. And it's for that reason - nobody can ever provide anything definitive that says it wasn't a balloon 100% ... So it's really just a merry go round we keep pushing on that actually goes nowhere ... I think it's time to stop pushing on it.

Yes. But the same goes for virtually all the cases we have access to. Therefore instead of laying all our bets on any particular case, a shift in perspective to a holistic model is the logical alternative, and when we do that, we get to take in a lot more variables and build a wider picture from a lot of small pieces, some of which fit and some of which don't. And just like a real puzzle, after a while you can intuit the missing pieces. This is the sort of progress I think ufology has made over time that I seem to have a hard time relaying to those who say we've gone nowhere.

 

[marduk]

Yes. But the same goes for virtually all the cases we have access to. Therefore instead of laying all our bets on any particular case, a shift in perspective to a holistic model is the logical alternative, and when we do that, we get to take in a lot more variables and build a wider picture from a lot of small pieces, some of which fit and some of which don't. And just like a real puzzle, after a while you can intuit the missing pieces. This is the sort of progress I think ufology has made over time that I seem to have a hard time relaying to those who say we've gone nowhere.

What if we threw everything out, started fresh, and only used objective verifiable data?

Like a reboot to the whole field?

 

[Randall]

What if we threw everything out, started fresh, and only used objective verifiable data? Like a reboot to the whole field?

I don't think that's a good idea. It makes more sense to me to continue distilling down whatever we've already got while improving methods and building on the progress that has already been made. Fair-minded consideration of anyone with an ounce of ambition to make a positive difference with a new idea should also be welcomed, but not at the expense of the rest. I mean just think about it. How exactly would we start fresh? It seems to me we'd have to begin collecting sighting reports, develop a screening process, and then a model for distilling the data down, and in the end if we were allowed to use historical reports we'd be no further ahead than we are now, and if we weren't allowed to use historical reports we be dismally behind, and ignoring some of the most significant evidence there is.

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

Now academics are not free from bias in their work as any other discipline. Opinion | How biased is science, really? , Social sciences suffer from severe publication bias , Meta-assessment of bias in science On , https://phys.org/news/2017-03-scientific-bias-problems.html, Also references information for those who are currently writing books. Roswell which in my own books was not the only event in that timeline in history regarding crashes experimental or unknown. Also agree on the recruitment of university graduates like in all field of work companies look for workers. Today, scientist are looking at simple object that fall from space and current debate about what could be "ET" technical capabilities. A New Scientific Model That Defines Alien Intelligence

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

What if we threw everything out, started fresh, and only used objective verifiable data?

Like a reboot to the whole field?

The problem the so called field does not exist its rather fragmented with believers groups, academic /companies/science and media influences.

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

That article kind of makes my point for me - what I've been told is that for more than a decade now new graduates are disinterested in entering the public sector or the military-industrial complex in any way. There's giant money to be made in startups and big tech companies, and they're not 'evil.' Additionally, many universities simply don't want to be connected with them at all.

I think you must’ve read that article backwards: the defense industry is competing with Silicon Valley – the other extremely well-paying and popular employer in America, not academia. Los Alamos, DARPA, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics – these places attract the brightest scientific minds on the planet because they’re highly accomplished and reputable organizations, they pay well, and their work is at the forefront of human achievement – defense tech is at least 30 years ahead of the private sector. I remember a chat with a microchip engineer who worked at a company in the 70s that had been subcontracted to make a microprocessor for a classified military contract that didn’t reach the consumer market until about 2005 - he said it was extremely costly and almost impossible to pull off back then, but in the end they'd managed to meet the rigorous specs. And universities work closely with the defense industry all the time because it’s cutting-edge science with big budgets, and academia is always short on money. Maybe defense work is stigmatized in Canada, but those jobs are coveted in the States, and for lots of good reasons. And until Google and Apple came along – basically the entire computer tech revolution, defense was the clear option for our most innovative and capable minds. Those that can't do (or won't do), teach.

In short, they're considered cheap, work you too much, and not cool.

No, that’s backwards:

“Of course, there are also the monetary aspects: Industry usually pays much better than academia and offers more competitive benefits packages. And, in general, industry jobs have a favorable work-life balance: Without the added commitments of teaching, advising students, and applying for grants that come with an academic job, industry scientists can stay focused on their research. ‘The administrative overhead in academia is probably higher than in most industry environments,’ Ebeling says. Industry scientists also generally work within normal business hours, often on a flexible work schedule. “
http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2009/05/academia-or-industry-finding-right-fit

Shortly after graduating and working in my first 'real' job I spent quite a bit of time in Houston. While there I worked alongside an older contractor that really seemed to know networking security and OS vulnerabilities. We got to hanging out after work, playing around with technology, fiddling around in the data centre, that kind of thing. He showed me more than a few tricks - like how to remotely crash NT systems even through a firewall, remotely install things on windows boxes, etc.

Then, late one night he told me he was going to play it straight with me and asked if I wanted a gig with the US intelligence apparatus - I think he said 'a three letter name you'd know but I won't say to you now.' I told him I was Canadian, and he told me it didn't matter, that they could make that problem go away. And now that I think about it, he told me they had already cleared me and knew all about me. He didn't say he worked for this agency, just that he would connect us together.

I don't know if it was true that they already checked me out or he just was saying it was or if in fact he actually represented anyone - it never got any further. I told him that I was totally disinterested in working for anything like that and in fact I didn't want to continue working in the US at all. He shrugged and said OK, we both went home, and he never showed up at work again.

I'm telling you this story because I think very much he was some kind of 'handler' or 'broker' and I was being recruited for likely some minor position as a hacker or something - but the sheer fact that they'd have to tempt me at all tells you that people aren't exactly breaking down their door to work for them.

And I was far from the smartest guy in my class, and that's in a backwater Canadian school. My grades were OK but not fantastic for sure. I was in a hurry to graduate, taking more than a full course load, and working full time to support myself and my then girlfriend at the time. They must have been scraping the barrel for sure after me.

You read that situation wrong. Apparently he was trying to do you a huge favor, and you turned your nose up at it because – like many people including myself – the prospect of working for an organization like the NSA was morally repugnant to you. But if you hadn’t felt that way about it, you would’ve made a lot of money and had a secure future working on the most sophisticated technology projects in the world. Usually they look for the top minds to fill positions inside the defense and intelligence agencies, but you happened upon a “back door” through a connected friend. If you read up on the story of Edward Snowden you might get an appreciation for the kind of ingenious minds that get hired by the Deep State, the kinds of innovations they dream up (which are usually terribly abused by the PTB), and the kind of sweet, comfy, lucrative lives they enjoy. It pays to sell out, big-time.

I've actually heard rumours that people go in and never come out - for a very stupid reason: they can't put what they've done for the past number of years on a resume, get a reference, or do anything but stay put!

That’s perhaps a little bit overstated – even classified research jobs have titles and salary histories, and people on the inside shift between big defense companies all the time. The only thing they can’t do effectively is go back into academia, because defense research is classified- so research scientists in the industry have no papers to show off their achievements. But people in defense aren’t clamoring to go back into academia anyway; it’s a big pay-cut and a lot of political BS to deal with.

If you want to keep debating this let’s start a new thread; we’ve veered way off topic here.

 

[mike]

The thing is any alternative explanations actually bolster the ETsH.

Crypto terrestrials....... well then if this planet can spawn multiple species of sentient technological life so can the other billion candidates in our galaxy alone.
Inter dimensional's.... same thing. (unless the argument is they are only local)
The only way the ETsH doesn't work is if we accept the premise that this single planet in a galaxy of billions of planets, in a universe of trillions of galaxy's is the single sole place sentient technological beings ever evolved in the time span of billions of years. Homo stupidis is only 300,000 years old, truly technological for the last what ? 200 years if that.

Crap on a graham cracker folks, the only way the ETsH is wrong, is if this one little corner of the universe is the only place this is happening.

Only the self centered self absorbed mindset of the infant (species) could embrace such a view.

 

[Trajanus]

Give me one tangible non-anecdotal piece of evidence it wasn’t a balloon.

How about Dr Crary's diary, which indicates flight #4 was cancelled and as KDR noted, all the rest are accounted for. You should read Randle's latest book on Roswell, including its comprehensive refutation of the MOGUL thesis.

 

[Trajanus]

My argument is simple. Either the crap they confiscated was their own crap, or some other human crap, or something ‘alien.’

Had it been their own or anything else human, a base intel officer would've recognized it. Or, there would be material or documentation to prove it was just earthly.

If it was the latter, they likely didn’t know what to do with it, and still don’t.

Of course they knew what to do with it--cover it up, and try to understand it.

Odds are > 90% in my estimation that it was one of the former explanations. Either way it doesn’t matter because we’ll never know.

We'd definitely have known, for decades, if the government had a real case for something earthly.

But it’s a giant piece of cognitive dissonance to think they’re fantastic at covering things up yet give very stupid cover stories at the same time. That just makes no sense to me.

Given the ET reality of the event, all cover stories are bound to be a bit stupid. But with regard to body reports, they had to think of something.

I would argue it’s spent trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of human lives getting good at throwing chunks of metal at human beings, and somehow still bumbled Vietnam, GWII, securing Iraq, etc.

The US military is designed to win conventional wars and has been effective at that. I opposed the 2003 invasion because I very much doubted the political objective--a united democratic Iraq--was feasible. Embarking on lost causes was a political decision and not the fault of the military. If you want to blame somebody, blame our elected officials or the people who voted them in.

And I still argue that it failed keeping the nuclear weapons tech secret, failed at keeping MK-Ultra secret,

In fact the military succeeded at keeping ULTRA under wraps during the whole war and for 30 years afterwards. It was deliberately disclosed in 1975.

 

[Trajanus]

Well, maybe the Roswell debris was from some sort of balloon, but the MOGUL explanation doesn't work out because according to the wind charts for the area where the MOGUL balloons were launched, the Roswell crash site isn't in any possible flight path.

Right and that's just one problem. As for "some sort of balloon," as I wrote, all the best informed skeptics, on KDR's blog, argued for MOGUL specifically. Nobody favored any other kind of balloon or anything else prosaic, because all such claims had already been refuted.

So personally I have no problem saying I believe alien visitation is a reality until I'm shown sufficient counterpoint as to why I shouldn't.

Agreed.

 

[Trajanus]

So we can imagine all the ludicrous versions that come about of a story that WAS NOT EYEWITNESSED.....and on top of that something that happened in 1947.....

Sure like crash dummies. And MOGUL.