WTF Are We Talking About?

[schticknz]

Just to change the subject slightly, may I say that I've not read any of the people on that list ... well not knowingly, anyway

If you haven't read such people though, does it really preclude you from discovering how things really are for yourself ... anyway??

I think I will read Jacques Vallee at some point (just have to track down the books first thats all), as I think that as his work specifically looks at the UFO phenomena, that would be the best place to start.

However, I think reading great philosophers may possibly be a pointless task knowing the high strangeness factor of a good portion of the phenomena.

Oh, and to get back to the thread subject, I think redefining terminology would be the best place to start i.e. replacing UFO with "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or some such and to stick to that ... until we know better.

"UFO" is too restricting ... for instance, how do we even know that some of these 'ufos' are indeed 'objects' ... and not projections of some sort (as the banned one purported before he was unceremoniously shuffled off this mortal forum ).

What is needed is some sort of central organising body ... maybe even just a website of some sort for a start where terminology can be argued out in a reasonable fashion, and a framework for future discussion to be established (just thinking off the top of my head here).

[damn ... I said 'reasonable' ... and with human beings in the mix ... bloody nora ... maybe I'm getting old ]

{p.s. you earthlings may now continue shouting at each other ... now}

 

[mike]

"Mike": I have already made an emphatic declaration regarding my respect for this space, fully apologized for any misinterpretation of my remarks and stated my respect for the work done on the show. I don't want to repeat myself, I might get trouble once again.

Its not me you need to convince its the hosts, its their party youve crashed

they did you the courtesy of trying to resolve the matter in "private" but you insist in posting on boards where you have been "asked" not to.


thats rude

the correct response was to respond in private with your apoligies and explainations, not "show off" in the public forums.

and the emails dont matter now. as a third party viewer i can clearly see that the hosts have made their feelings clear. Your response then should have been to Email THEM privately

 

[mike]

This is really a bizarre online experience and I think, deeply unfair.

no whats Unfair, is that the hosts will prob have to ban your entire provider range, which means that because youve acted like a prat other people in your area may not be able see the forum.

no one should have to burn down the house to catch a mouse

 

[mike]

Resolve the matter in private? I really don't understand at all.

and thats why you are the only one whos persona non gratis at present

if you cant understand as simple a concept as that, then you are not "equiped" for the discussions that take place here. im afraid its all going to be a bit "highbrow" for you


Dont go away mad..............

 

[tommyball]

I love how these threads get hijacked. An interesting parallel to ufology as a whole, but I won't digress...

Anyway... good thread, Deckard.

I think they (ET, ETH...) are loaded terms.

I think that Paracast listeners for the most part accept UFO to mean unidentified. It's the larger public perception of these semantics that has concerned me. Presently, UFO and ET conjure images of Roswell saucers and gray aliens.

I'm a fan of the UAP term to clarify the unknown nature that may or may not be a physical object (good point, Schticknz). As far as a new term for ET? I'm not sure. To me, with respect to this topic, it means "not of this earth as we presently understand it." I think that mankind knows far far less about the universe than we think and that this phenomena will be far stranger when revealed than we can imagine. That said, an extraterrestrial phenomena could also, by my definition, involve matter, physics and other characteristics which we cannot comprehend.

On the other hand, Steve Bassett has made the point that the ETH is something that people can swallow readily when he's pushing for disclosure and I have to agree with him on that. Here, on this forum, those of us who know a fair amount about the topic can debate its possibilities, but out there in the mainstream media it's a fight to get any serious attention and interjecting the wide range of phenomena that is involved or possible can turn a lot of people off.

-todd

 

[mike]

having just read some of the other posts by this person, i can see why he/she was given a time out.
and frankly the suggestion youve been misconstrued , fits one equation very neatly.

heres how it works mate.

if you have an opinion contrary to one in a thread, you provide links to the same data examples that have led you to that opinion.
you provide the same examples the same data samples that youve been exposed to , and then let others make their minds up based on the data, you lead a horse to water, you dont MAKE him drink which is how your posts come across.

many times ive second thought my own posts in deference to the hosts areas of "known" sensitivity, but i do that everywhere.
thats just politness, i often tread the line (in my mind) but were i ever taken to task by the hosts, i would sort it out privately, not go out of my way to further piss them off like you have

sometimes you lead the horse to water via a long and circuitis route, the "scenic" route. and if your lucky it may drink.

trying to stuff its head in the trough manually never works, which is how youve gone about things here

i say again if you want to debate a point, you need to provide examples of the data on which you so strongly base your opinion.
provide links to any type of data set you like, and then let people decide for themselves what that data means, if you get a consensus of opinion after providing said data samples, then you get a big gold star.

but at all times remember your in someone elses house, i dont swear myself, but that doesnt give me license to disrespect my brother in law in his house (he swears like a satanic sailor with syphillis)

judging from your other recent posts, the hosts did you a favour when they asked you to just read the forums for a week, under the circumstances thats very sensible. hopefully you would have learned a little about the place and the people

ill end with a common caveat, that being this is just my take on things

 

[Koji K.]

Responding to the OP, I believe they are very loaded terms... not least with the terminology of "the times." We call them ET's because that's what seems logical to us today, with our forays into space and our realization as to just how big the universe is. The word "alien" often means "space alien," which is a shame because otherwise I think "aliens" would be the perfect term for the phenomenon's entities. They are alien and that's about all we can say for certain. Keel called them "ultraterrestrials," but I don't know if that term is particularly good. It's very likely we *are* being visited by space aliens in some way or other, but I don't think they are the main cause of the phenomenon. I prefer the term "UAP" with "associated effects" myself- it's barebones but I think with our current state of knowledge it's a mistake to look for a "unifying" term, I also like it because it gets the job done, and highlights the minimum necessary to warn policymakers about the fact that these things are very real and in our skyways- but 20-30 years from now I have no doubt it will be loaded terminology too.

 

[Rick Deckard]

Gosh.

I go away to have a bit of a sleep and when I come back, I find all hell as broken loose.

It's shame we banned whats-his-or-her-name - once you're banned, you don't have access to forums at all, not even to read them...

The reason I brought up the original subject was because the Leslie Kean show reminded me of how language can turn people off a subject.

There is a phenomena that I have often observed when talking to friends about 'exotic' subjects that they have had no past exposure to. They will give me their full attention at the start of a discussion about a topic that is new to them and in the beginning, they will give out the signals that they are listening to me and comprehending what I am saying. But, the second I use a loaded term such as 'UFO' or 'ET', something in their demeanour changes - from that point on it becomes clear (to me anyway) that they are listening to my words but all they are really hearing is 'blah, blah, blah'. It's as if certain keywords have switched off something in the their brains and triggered some sort of resistance to 'fringe' ideas.

A related social phenomena are films and TV shows. Is art imitating life or is life imitating art? IMO, shows like "The X-Files" have hindered progress in this field. A lot of the major 'fringe' ideas have now been covered in popular shows, so when people encounter reports of actual events that have some overlap with the 'fictional' TV shows, they will dismiss them.

This could be seen as a deliberate act by the powers-that-be to derail serious discussion of these topics by the masses or just an unfortunate side-effect of 'fringe' topics entering the mainstream, but I think that the more we continue to use these terms, the less likely it is that 'ordinary' people will engage with the subject.

The terms "UFO", "ET", "ETI", "Alien" and others are irrevocably stigmatised and I suspect that the only way forward is to disassociate the topic from films such as "E.T.", "Close Encounters", "Independence Day" and "Men In Black" etc, by changing the terminology.

 

[The Pair of Cats]

....I have already made an emphatic declaration regarding my respect for this space, fully apologized for any misinterpretation of my remarks and stated my respect for the work done on the show.

Then how about providing some proof to back up your hypothesis instead of trying to ram your opinion down our throats like some kind of O'Reilly of the Paranormal world.

I don't want to repeat myself, I might get trouble once again.

Then don't repeat yourself. Come up with some proof or piss off!!

 

[Graphimancer]

Maybe they should be called "Meta-Cryptids."

Terrestrial automatically ties them to a planetary body, be it earth or another planet.

Anonymous had interesting idea, but combine that with towering arrogance and it's not so pretty. My mind has shifted from the diminsional, pan-high-strangeness camp to the wholistic camp since I've been here.

By "Wholistic," I mean I think were are looking at an unrelated potpouri of sources--some extra-terrestrials, some diminsional hoppers, some crypto-terrestrials. This universe is so damn strange that it often defies our attempts to categorize it and put it in convenient boxes.

I'm not even sure that most ufos have beings inside them: Many may be drones, or the actual ufo "ship" may be the alien. At what point does the distinction between biological life forms and artificial intellegence cease to matter? For that matter, the humanoid beings that come out of these ships sometimes may be nothing but a temporary excretion from an AI ufo, used for hands on things, then reabsorbed later after use.

(No, I'm not suggesting this is what I think. Neat idea, though.)

 

[The Pair of Cats]

By "Wholistic," I mean I think were are looking at an unrelated potpouri of sources--some extra-terrestrials, some diminsional hoppers, some crypto-terrestrials. This universe is so damn strange that it often defies our attempts to categorize it and put it in convenient boxes.

I agree. I think any label that you give the phenomena becomes essentially, limiting.

 

[Tony2013]

By "Wholistic," I mean I think were are looking at an unrelated potpouri of sources--some extra-terrestrials, some diminsional hoppers, some crypto-terrestrials. This universe is so damn strange that it often defies our attempts to categorize it and put it in convenient boxes.

I agree. I think any label that you give the phenomena becomes essentially, limiting.

Is it worth bringing up that anyone who claims to know exactly what's going on is, at best, a disinformation agent or a huckster?

Need I mention Dr. Steph... I mean, He-who-must-not-be-named?

 

[Siani]

Oops - I must have got my wires crossed somewhere. I always thought He-who-must-not-be-named referred to Billy Meier's American representative. :redface:

 

[Graphimancer]

I think anyone who claims to absolutely know what's going on is a huckster or self-deluded.

Having a pet theory is one thing, but being a zealot is another.

 

[CapnG]

Oops - I must have got my wires crossed somewhere. I always thought He-who-must-not-be-named referred to Billy Meier's American representative. :redface:

It does. Greer is simply referred to as "Greer", so low has his standing sunk that he doesn't even qualify for an epithet.

Bravo to Gene and Dave for handily bitchslapping that interloper, btw. This is a forum for comparatively debating ideas, not screaming out the absolute "truth" of only one idea and brow-beating, bellittling or simply talking over all others. A paranormal O'Reilly indeed!

Back to the core topic, I still think the term "alien" needs to somehow be liberated from it's ridiculously antiquated "little green man" stereotype and return to it's dictionary definition of an entity whose origin is unknown.

The problem is we few (we happy few!) are the ONLY ones who give a shit about this sort of thing. "Regular" persons with an interest in this field simply aren't able to break these mental molds. You can find 'em on Youtube with ease. They think aliens are greys, that greys are from Zeta Riticuli and that two-to-four of them crashed at Roswell in 1947. Period. You can't get them to grasp a concept like crypto-terrestrial, no matter how sexy the name is.

So I guess my counter question to the one outlined at topic start about coming up with other/better/different terms is "Why bother?"

 

[Siani]

Bravo to Gene and Dave for handily bitchslapping that interloper, btw. This is a forum for comparatively debating ideas, not screaming out the absolute "truth" of only one idea and brow-beating, bellittling or simply talking over all others.

Bravo indeed. There's a world of difference between debate and dogmatism.

So I guess my counter question to the one outlined at topic start about coming up with other/better/different terms is "Why bother?"

A very valid point. Whatever terms we use, the subject will draw derision from the ill-informed, and/or those too afraid to think outside the box for a single moment.

 

[mike]

For me the more diverse and complex the individual labels are the better..
Thats not to say generic terms are not useful, indeed they are in the right context.
but for me the ability to comprehend and label all the myriad possibilities individually is the key, it is quite litterally the evolution of ideas from simple to more complex structures.

to give an example a 1000 years ago the term "light year" wasnt in use (as near as i can tell) but today

"A light year is a measure of distance. One light year is the distance covered by a light wave in one year. Which is quite a long distance, as it turns out. Light travels at 300,000 km per second. There are about a hundred thousand seconds every day, and about 300 days in a year. So a light year is about 9 thousand billion kilometres -- Also known as 10^16 metres.

What's the point of having a special word for 9 thousand billion kilometres? "

because its a better description than "heaps far away, heaps,heaps far away"

until proven otherwise the possibility exists that all these descriptions may have merit in their specific context

complex systems require complex jargon
the universe is a complex place

 

[Poi]

At least Anonymous directed me back to the Allen Greenfield podcast archive here. I also think it's one of the best the Paracast gurus have to offer. Had listened to it once before, but it's worth a revisit, folks.

 

[Graphimancer]

So I guess my counter question to the one outlined at topic start about coming up with other/better/different terms is "Why bother?"

I've wondered this off an on over the years. You can live a long, productive, full life and never give much thought to this subject.

I guess once you are an experiencer of some sort, that changes your perspective. Yet, could you not put it behind you and move on? Get back to the job of living? I guess it depends on the individual.

I spent years studying magic(k). In the end, there are few things that real magic(k) can do that technology can't do better. In the end, even psychic abilities are a lesser side-effect of spiritual growth, and not necessarily the main point in themselves.

 

[Poi]

Scott wrote:

In the end, even psychic abilities are a lesser side-effect of spiritual growth, and not necessarily the main point in themselves.

I think that's a truth. At least I've found it to be so. If anything, it can be a hindrance to growth, an enticing, bewitching hindrance, focusing on the awesome and many times frightening aspect of a side effect, experiencing phenomena designed to enlighten or to impede. Choice, in the end, plays a role. Frankly, I'm still hooked.