Anybody think there are Aliens (UFO)?

jakesteele

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jakesteele
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Does anybody on this site think/believe/know if there have been ETs that have visited Earth? If not, do you think that all of the reports/photos, etc. have plausible explanations, even the ones that can't be explained due to a lack of data?

To be fair, I will go on record as saying that I think there is a more probable than not possibility that there were or are.
 
Hi,

jakesteele said:
If not, do you think that all of the reports/photos, etc. have plausible explanations?
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Yes.

jakesteele said:
Even the ones that can't be explained due to a lack of data?
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The "ones" which are so unclear as to go in the "lack of data" category can't exactly be used as evidence for ET's can they.

jakesteele said:
To be fair, I will go on record as saying that I think there is a more probable than not possibility that there were or are.
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Anything to back that up or is it just a hunch?
 
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A UFO is, by definition, unidentified. You can't then turn around and say that just because you don't know what it is, you know that it's an alien spacecraft!

You might want to ask yourself this. If They are actually visiting, why are fuzzy blobs on indistinct photographs all the evidence we have?
 
Google seems to believe in UFOs, in their crappy crop circles logo of today.
 
StevenCalder said:
Hi,



Yes.



The "ones" which are so unclear as to go in the "lack of data" category can't exactly be used as evidence for ET's can they.


Anything to back that up or is it just a hunch?
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Unclear ones can't be used as evidence for anything other than an "unidentified". But nonetheless, do you think the 'unidentified' ones have plausible explanations that there simply isn't enough data to confirm it as such?

As far as hunch or not, I think it is a 50/50 proposition on my part based on a lot of skilled, trained and experienced people such as military/commercial pilots/radar people, etc. I also take into account that you must deal with the entire body of sightings from the dawn of mankind up to the present and by extension, all reports in the future short of an actual landing in public. You cannot know with absolute certainty that they are all plausible explanations; you can only opine.
 
jakesteele said:
As far as hunch or not, I think it is a 50/50 proposition on my part based on a lot of skilled, trained and experienced people such as military/commercial pilots/radar people, etc. I also take into account that you must deal with the entire body of sightings from the dawn of mankind up to the present and by extension, all reports in the future short of an actual landing in public. You cannot know with absolute certainty that they are all plausible explanations; you can only opine.
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While technically true, this is not a reason to believe that aliens have visited this planet. Again - you cannot logically use "we don't know" as a reason for knowing! It's absurd!

And as for "the entire body of sightings from the dawn of mankind up to the present day", I invite you to actually examine them. The earliest consist of imagery that we don't necessarily know how to interpret without intimate knowledge of the cultures that produced them. The next most recent are actually descriptions of angels, devils, demons and witches that have been reinterpreted in modern times to refer to aliens. The most recent are so obviously influenced by modern pop culture as to be clearly nothing more than a a sociological phenomenon.

All in all, the evidence "from the dawn of mankind" is extremely poor in ever conceivable way.

Think about this. If you were able to build a spacecraft and travel to other worlds, would you:

a) land in their biggest city and say "take me to your leader"?
b) land out in the country beside some guy who no-one's going to believe and strut up and down wearing silly antennae on your head making "beep beep" noises?

The body of evidence that supports alien visitation is greatly exaggerated. A majority, if not a totality, of "sightings" have a rational explanation - even if we do not currently know what that explanation is - that does not involve aliens visiting our little planet.
 
jakesteele said:
Unclear ones can't be used as evidence for anything other than an "unidentified". But nonetheless, do you think the 'unidentified' ones have plausible explanations that there simply isn't enough data to confirm it as such?
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If there isn't enough data then neither of us can make any kind of intelectually honest assement.

We can say which is the most likely however.

The wild unsupported event or one of the many mundane events that occur ever day, just more blurry.

jakesteele said:
As far as hunch or not, I think it is a 50/50 proposition on my part based on a lot of skilled, trained and experienced people such as military/commercial pilots/radar people, etc. I also take into account that you must deal with the entire body of sightings from the dawn of mankind up to the present and by extension, all reports in the future short of an actual landing in public. You cannot know with absolute certainty that they are all plausible explanations; you can only opine.
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No one is claiming they do, its just mundane events are far more likely than wild completely unsupported ones. That and all the data I've ever seen in my entire life was god awful.

Feel free to supply the evidence, im open to being convinced.
 
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The usual fallacy of "you can't explain it , so it must be alien". Me I prefer the "you can't explain it so you CANNOT say it was alien, and since there is no proof whatsoever of alien landing existence, UNIDENTIFIEDFO comes from the only explanation we know of. As soon as you find a real live alien on earth, we can put "Alien" on the list of probable explanation. Until then alien are right there with pink flying VISIBLE unicorn".
 
For a single UFO to be due to alien activity we need two races to evolve intelligence.
At least one of them must develop interstellar transport ability.
They must be physically close enough that one can reach the other.
Supposing human progress is typical, this must occur not just close enough in space for physical contact to be possible, but during a time window of around 2 million years - which is effectively "simultaneously" on the timescale of the universe.

I reckon the probability of this is extremely low.

If we relax the criteria for contact and ask "Is it probable ETs have visited Earth AT ANY TIME in the past 4 billion years, then clearly the probability is higher, but still seems incredibly small. That said, Clarke's "Sentinel" model has always seemed the most likely form of ET contact to me, while still very improbable indeed.

So - no, I think the probability of any UFO being an alien spacecraft is zero to any reasonable measurement.

If there were civilisations within reach, we would have detected their electromagnetic emissions by now.

This doesn't mean I doubt the existence of ET life. I take it as certain. Intelligent life I take to be far less probable, but still possible. I just find the probability of intelligent ETs happening to be close enough to visit any time in the last 100,000 years as so small as to be ignored.


ETA- The "simultaneity" problem can be removed if we postulate an incredibly long lived, possibly mechanical, space traveller- a self-repairing pace travelling entity. Technologically this would be in effect , a god to our eyes. Anyone wishing to start an appropriate religion, you have my permission.
 
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arthwollipot said:
A UFO is, by definition, unidentified. You can't then turn around and say that just because you don't know what it is, you know that it's an alien spacecraft!
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I didn't mean to imply that. But, also, just because you don't know what it is, you know is isn't a UFO.

You might want to ask yourself this. If They are actually visiting, why are fuzzy blobs on indistinct photographs all the evidence we have?
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Interesting factoid. I wasn't aware that they were all blobs.
 
We must have "proof". Here in Denver we have just allowed a new ballot initiative that states we already have alien life on Earth.
"The leadership role of the commissioners can help transform the current state of UFO-E.T. awareness among the body politic and hence can contribute, in an historic fashion, to the general acceptance of -- and careful, comprehensive inquiry into -- various aspects of UFO-E.T. reality"
 
1. Do I believe Alien UFOs are real? I believe that it is possible that intelligent life has evolved on planets orbiting far-distant suns. After all, we have indisputable evidence that intelligent life has evolved once already (no satire, please), so it's clearly possible, we just have no data on how likely or frequent life is. Not sure I buy the Drake Equation.

2. Are aliens visiting Earth? Well, I'm not going to rule out interstellar travel, although I understand that the most likely method of travelling unimaginably large distances is not warping space or opening wormholes, but accelerating as close to the speed of light as you can and enjoying the ride, no matter how long it may take to travel between solar system (and it could take a very long time). So, it's not absolutely impossible that Aliens might build high interstellar arks, place themselves in suspended animation and drift thousands of years through the dreaming void until they reach Earth, anally probe a few rednecks and deliver a message of world peace and new age awakening channelled through spiritualist mediums.

Who knows why they'd do that? Their motives are needn't make sense to us. They are, after all, ALIEN.

3. Am I convinced by current 'evidence'. Nope. Not at all. I read a few books in the 90s by a researcher named Timothy Good. Thorough as his body of evidence is, it just isn't all that convincing.

Mr Good rather is rather credulously convinced by Alfred Burtoo, for instance.

Have a look at this startlingly detailed line drawing of the craft Burtoo allegedly saw:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case707.htm

There's a whole industry around UFOs, and it's guff. Just because Aliens COULD be real, doesn't mean they ARE real.
 
jakesteele said:
Unclear ones can't be used as evidence for anything other than an "unidentified". But nonetheless, do you think the 'unidentified' ones have plausible explanations that there simply isn't enough data to confirm it as such?

As far as hunch or not, I think it is a 50/50 proposition on my part based on a lot of skilled, trained and experienced people such as military/commercial pilots/radar people, etc. I also take into account that you must deal with the entire body of sightings from the dawn of mankind up to the present and by extension, all reports in the future short of an actual landing in public. You cannot know with absolute certainty that they are all plausible explanations; you can only opine.
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It's interesting to note that of all of the identified ones, none have been alien spaceships.
 
Jake

Carl Sagan was perhaps one of the most dedicaqted investigators to the UFO cases. I suggest you take a read at "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" (You don't have to buy it if you don't want. Just take a peek from it at the bookstore). Look for the chapter where he talks about the claims of UFO cases.
 
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