Who is the most important Ufologist?

[Bergen]

James Fox and George Knapp are the ones i like the most. With James Fox being a clear no 1

 

[marduk]

Important in what sense?

Best plausible basic theory yet fell for the oldest trick in the book: Stanton Friedman

Made me think the most, yet strangely gave up when he was just getting cooking: Jaques Vallee

Biggest influence despite out and out making some stuff up: John Keel

Best writer that scared the crap out of me then went off the new age deep end: Whitley Strieber

Best accent: Nick Redfern

Best guy with the ability to sound credible while giving a wildly logically inconsistent argument: (A tie!) Rich Dolan & Joseph Farell

Snappiest Dresser:

Best hair: this guy

 

[Burnt State]

Three quick poll observations:

a. Hynek is slowly trending upwards at a rate that could soon surpass that wise Arch Daemon of Ufology, Vallée.

b. Dolan has surpassed Clark considerably even though Dolan is most often critiqued for the appearance of exceptional research but providing only thin sources for the really big claims. As far as Clark's concerned, Dolan is no where near the same league compared to his own mad research skillz. Talk about a generation gap.

c. McDonald and Keel are currently tied at nine votes apiece. Talk about a bipolar forum. Fascinating tensions there: Science vs. Demons.

 

[Digital Trickster]

I would like to see Mac Tonnies on the list So sad that such a new thinker in these realms was taken so early from us .

I often find myself going back to listen to his interviews because I really enjoyed hearing a new take on the subject.

 

[Burnt State]

I understand the great sentiment for Mac Tonnies as he represents some of the last bit of really interesting cohesive thought in Ufology. He was a frequent guest to The Paracast and was always intriguing, reasonable, imaginative, critical and credible. And he was young when he died. There was not really enough output to put him in the ranks of the others as he was just starting to make some serious dents in the discussion. Certainly, had he lived, he would have probably produced many really excellent thought experiments and even an oasis of mouth watering ideas for a field still in a drought.

All the Mac audio material including Paracast episodes: hidden experience: audio interviews with Mac Tonnies

If you didn't follow his blog while he was alive, well the dead still speak hear:
Posthuman Blues

If you don't know the work of Mac Tonnies then you've been living in a cave or hanging around Zeta Talk for too many years. He is a very engaging, witty thinker, who takes time to formulate his ideas, and is very, very easy to listen to. He is one humble guy, but with some big ideas. He focussed on science fiction, then Mars studies, wonderful paranormal futurist writings and finally, the cryptoterrestrials - a thought experiment about another unknown population living alongside us. Please take time to seek him and his writings out.

“You there. Reading this. You don’t have to you know. But I have succumbed to the narcotic tentacles of blogging and will be posting a daily mishmash of uncategorical mental rubbish to appease my strange and obscure urges to populate the info-sphere with my creative spoor.”

That's from the opening of the Posthuman Blues weblog. This has been collected into a text: Redstar Books - Posthuman Blues

And finally: mactonnies.com

 

[Digital Trickster]

Coudnt agree more Burnt State ^^^

 

[Burnt State]

Hey Gene! I hope you know my credentials are 95.5% real;

Looking at this makes me feel an ire like a chunky green bile rushing up through my larynx at a projectile rate, like my years at university were completely wasted.

The authenticity here is imply outstanding. I didn't know that Michael Horn could print his name. With such impeccable credentials I'm surprised that you are not running your own contactee cult farm by now.

 

[Jimi H.]

Time, space, mathematics, psychology, etc.. None of this stuff actually means anything and is itself determined or defined by how we choose to define it to our context, but is itself possibly a distinct entity beyond our imposition, so is it any wonder when something comes along that doesn't fit into our created reality our filter set up or world view and seems to exist outside our system that tests the limits of our shaky perception that we are puzzled?

When we can send objects into space after performing calculations based on observations from the ground, I say there is both shape and predictability to matter and space. That is the most reasonable conclusion to me. We can observe, predict and then hit a target.

What does it mean that it doesn't mean anything? And how do you know? I don't know much about primary causes and meanings, but I do not discount the human experience of matter. Wrt. the human experience, I don't care too much if matter is interpreted in gray tones at night, or in full color in the day, what matters to me is that the matter is there.

We scramble to impose order.. This is why the ETH is so seductive as it is an easy catch all imaginative blank slate existing outside our known kingdom, like bandying the word "quantum"or using magic in the Harry Potter plot sense..

The ETH is the most straight-forward explanation if certain events were truly non-human in origin, because it's a possible scenario with our current knowledge of reality and the universe. The only missing part being that we have yet to observe life on another planet! That is a hurdle, of course, but there's life here on Earth, so why not elsewhere?

Imo Harry Potter belongs to the fantastical, spirits and magical creatures and so forth. Black eyed children, magic Bigfoot and what have you. Why is that relevant to the ETH?

What I'm saying is that the ETH is the only explanation that we can give without resorting to some kind of magical thinking. I'm not saying that the ETH is correct, but simply that I would seperate it from magical thinking.

Do you imagine a chaotic universe in constant flux where entities pop in and out of dimensions and realities? If so, what's your comment on the apparent predictability of matter, which allows travel and technology and other things that would only work in a predictable universe?

Look at this;

Yeti crab. This didn't exist until 2005. Did it exist before that? Of course it did.

I'd use this as a fine illustration of why a tree falling in the forest indeed makes a sound even if noone hears it.

The problem is we have no examples of anything that is not biology with shape and form, so you really can't find a suitable real-life example to fit a more paranormal/Harry Potter-like explanation for UFOs and such, - except as metaphor. And metaphor is a product of the imagination and language, not of matter.

Again, I'm not saying I know anything much about it all, but I put Vallee on the Harry Potter-side, unlike someone like for instance James D. Macdonald.

 

[nameless]

TROLL

 

[Jimi H.]

Right..

 

[nameless]

Can some one explain to me this fad of using the term "magical thinking", I think it has been removed from its original context to be some kind of catchall dismissive term??

 

[Burnt State]

Can some one explain to me this fad of using the term "magical thinking", I think it has been removed from its original context to be some kind of catchall dismissive term??

Yes, i don't understand this dismissive connotation of the phrase, but it appears to be a Ufological interpretation where, "the act of thinking magically is used whenever adherents to the UFOlogical interpretive manifestos stray too from the razor of Occam, which reminds us of the word Occult, and causes one to create an explanation of unique phenomenon as belonging to things like other dimensions, ultra terrestrials, crypto terrestrials etc.." So why think magical when you can think ETH, or something like that, i think?

There was an attempt to reclaim The Art of Magical Thinking in this thread below which suggested that we could use our imaginations, alternative thinking processes, lateral wet dreaming etc. to think more outside of the strapped in UFO paradigm box and find alternative approaches the conundrums of old and new testament ufology.

The Art of Magical Thinking | The Paracast Community Forums

There was also this thread on Consciousness and Magic, but I leave all the consciousness thread explanations to @smcder ; because, i think he's the only one that can hold their contents together in one of his larger gestalts that he carries around the digital landscape like some kind of inuksuk for him to use to chart out his own research path. he could probably explain magical thinking in a more involved way than i could.

Consciousness and Magic | The Paracast Community Forums

 

[nameless]

It's funny how people choose to use certain words as theological weapons but I guess that's the nature of reality being a construct of language for some. I guess that was part of the point I was trying to make with the yeti crab which seems to be confused ironically. The yeti crab is itself just a thing that's been around and exists. It's not called a yeti crab nor is it a crab (it doesn't have a name for itself as it has no need to and cannot) these are just made up abstract names or a series of lines on a page that form characters that we all agree as to the meaning of and we have applied to it for it to work for us in "reality". a bit like some other abstract constructions of our imagination like maths or psychology or science all ideas that evolve and built upon to help us construct reality. nor has it just come into existance only since we have just "found it" . It existed before us but it didn't exist for us , get it? If we can't see the wood through the trees with this then the arrogance of human existance is blinding beyond belief.



We could have made an educated guess or imagined its existance like some kind of fantastical made up manuscript of " imaginings"a bit like how we use imagined agreed on stepping stones of rational thought to come to an educated guess as to what a planet may need to look like for "life as we know it" to exist upon. I stress the term guess but it's more imagination with an intrinsic belief structure. So yeah if we imagined some kind of universe where aliens existed some fucker would look at the drawings as being bullshit heresy and so we would have to encode shit to stop people from getting the wrong end of the stick and sticking us in gaol.
I believe there is a thread on science and the paranormal that delves into this quagmire.

 

[nameless]

Why are people so scared of quantum entanglement? Or scared of entertaining hypothesis plural instead of the singular and all this dogmatism and blind hypocritical materialist objectivity in regards to what could be subjective. I fear a lot of this is due to a a subconscious monotheistic possibly Christian upbringing having an undue fettering of the imagination. When you scratch at the surface of even the most rigid scientific rationalists there's always some overarching self righteous one world god subroutine in play.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Can some one explain to me this fad of using the term "magical thinking", I think it has been removed from its original context to be some kind of catchall dismissive term??

I know nothing of the origin of such an official title, but the admonishment of as much is utterly idiotic. Einstein himself took the time to clearly underline the value of real magical thinking when he stated,


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

How well Einstein understood the Akashic Record.

 

[nameless]

Akashic what now?

 

[nameless]

Why are people so scared of quantum entanglement? Or scared of entertaining hypothesis plural instead of the singular and all this dogma and blind hypocritical materialism . I fear a lot of this is due to a a subconscious monotheistic Christian upbringing having an undue fettering on the imagination. When you scratch at the surface of even the most rigid scientific rationalists there's always some overarching self righteous one world god subroutine in play.

For the matter, I am scientific rationalist. Pun intended .

 

[Jeff Davis]

Akashic what now?

It's so fascinating, that last post of yours that I was just reading when all of a sudden it all clicked. My back went out. Just like that.










ok, ok...very bad joke. Actually, the bottom line is about pulling out all the stops. The stops are like boundaries or superstitious taboos that we aren't supposed to mix n match. Bullshit! I say mix it up!!!! Thar's truth in them thar hills if you know how to get outta your own way and get it.

 

[nameless]

Oh I agree Jeff. Aliens are not the only game in town . I think most of us would agree let's see what fits.

Looking at this makes me feel an ire like a chunky green bile rushing up through my larynx at a projectile rate, like my years at university were completely wasted.

The authenticity here is imply outstanding. I didn't know that Michael Horn could print his name. With such impeccable credentials I'm surprised that you are not running your own contactee cult farm by now.

I am bound by some bullshit Meier franchise ruling which prevents me setting up my own cult but then again he can only throw one punch at a time and I'll see it coming so I am working on it. I've got it all worked out . It involves chocolate . The ladies love chocolate.

 

[Jimi H.]

Can some one explain to me this fad of using the term "magical thinking", I think it has been removed from its original context to be some kind of catchall dismissive term??

Lol, wasn't it you who were dismissing the ETH with Harry Potter-connotations (literally magical thinking)? So, if there is any trolling going on, on that behalf, didn't you start it? Or is Harry Potter not magic to you?

Mind you, in its purest nuts-and-bolts form, the ETH involves science(-fiction), not fantasy/magic, that was all I was getting at.

So, I don't understand your reaction, or your badmouthing me in the third person. You thoroughly lost me there, on several accounts.

For the record, I'm not dismissing anything, I expect the universe to hold many secrets, even fundamental ones, that we are not aware of now. I call such undiscovered truths or realities. I do not call them magic, because I'd consider that the wrong language for it. Neither do I consider quantum physics magic, though quantum mysticism becomes like magic at some point.

Like I said, I don't get your (indirect) replies, at all.

Sheesh..