However, the conscious agent model is the only one I've seen that allows for the potential of paranormal experiences in a very practical manner. If you've got other models, outside of Hammeroff, that leave open the door for paranormal reality please share.
This is a
deductive fallacy; namely, "beginning with a conclusion." You're indicating here that a paranormal explanation is a forgone conclusion, and thereby filtering out any explanations that don't conform to that conclusion. That's the basis, if not the definition, of a religious ideology.
I think it’s illogical to favor “paranormal” explanations of the ufo phenomenon over scientific explanations.
Look at it this way: 500+ years ago we were faced with several inexplicable phenomena in the sky; meteors, lightning, tornadoes and waterspouts, scattered reports of ball lightning, the occasional lunar and solar eclipses, and perhaps even ufos from time to time. The only explanations available at that time invoked paranormal “conscious agents” such as God, angels, devils, perhaps djinn, etc.
And in every case that we’ve solved through science – astronomy, meteorology, physics and plasma physics - none of them have turned out to be paranormal/supernatural in nature.
“Paranormal” phenomena are simply phenomena that science hasn’t conclusively explained yet.
Think about the untold thousands of mysteries that have confronted humanity, which science has very successfully and indisputably resolved so far: we now have logical, causal, and clear phenomenological explanations for at least 99.99% of our observations.
So it seems irrational to conclude that “this last .01% will be different – this time it’ll turn out that a supernatural conscious agent is at work here” rather than to expect that a perfectly sensible, logical explanation that conforms to our broader scientific understanding of the universe will ultimately prevail.
Imagine this: a clever but primitive human in the distant past, say, ancient Babylon, witnesses a modern Ferrari speeding down a dirt mule trail, stop, and then take off again over the mountains.
Would he/she be completely incapable of making any rational sense of this sighting? Having seen the chariots of that era, our witness might reason that this device is some kind of chariot; it had wheels, and somebody riding inside of it wearing strange clothes. Its propulsion mechanism would be a real mystery, and its ability to generate the enormous energy required to accelerate from a dead stop to a mind-boggling 50mph in just a few seconds – certainly the fastest mule couldn’t accelerate that fast.
Our confounded primitive observer might therefore conclude that this chariot had arrived from a more advanced civilization, and be right.
So the viewpoint that I’ve heard a lot recently - that the technology of a civilization thousands of years ahead of us would be so completely imponderable to our hapless primitive that they’d experience some kind of hallucinatory shock that would make them see something much more familiar – perhaps a chariot drawn by several mules rather than the single-mule-drawn chariots that they know about at that time, doesn’t fly with me.
Sure, our witness might call it a “chariot” because that’s the closest term within his/her experience, but I would expect the description to be fairly accurate: “it was as red as fire, rode on four wheels, moved faster than the fastest mule ever and yet could stop and start on a dime, and it exhaled a smoke-like plume from a shiny metal tube in the rear.”
It’s not even a leap of logic to consider that we’re in the same position as that primitive Babylonian – even Enrico Fermi expected us to observe the arrival of intelligent extraterrestrial life fairly regularly, when he asked the question “where is everybody?” It appears that the only error in his logic was in his dismissal of all of the eyewitness reports and radar and trace evidence cases which were all around him when he raised that question in 1950.
Now to the assertion that the ETH hasn't given us the answers and then should be discarded while we explore other options.
Those options have been on the table for years, Simulated universe , Crypto terrestrials Etc Etc.
And they haven't yielded any better results.
Indeed, but I find the premise itself to be baffling - basically some people are arguing that:
"The correct explanation
x time
= a proven solution. Ergo, since time has elapsed and the ETH remains unproven, then it must be an incorrect explanation."
But it doesn't work like that. The real process goes like this:
The correct explanation
x rigorous scientific investigation = a proven solution.
Progress isn't a spectator sport - it's earned through a lot of dedicated scientific efforts by trained professionals utilizing the appropriate scientific instruments. And we've simply never had a proper public scientific effort into the ufo phenomenon, so it's irrational to expect the puzzle to be solved without that effort.
But I'd bet a bottle of my favorite champagne that once a genuine scientific effort is made, like Chris' ufo observatory project collecting a range of physical data, that we'll find out that the sightings of what appear to be solid technological objects performing acrobatic maneuvers in the sky, will turn out to be solid technological objects performing acrobatic maneuvers in the sky.
