How do you figure "aliens" is a reasonable explanation at all, when the existence of aliens has never been determined by anything but stories?
There's no material evidence whatsoever, and believe me, it's not for lack of trying! The search for ET one of the major pursuits of science right now.
In the absence of any corroborating evidence, why would you jump to the conclusion of "aliens" at all? Why is the "aliens" conclusion any more reasonable in your mind than Jesus, the BVM, angels, fairies, unicorns, vampires, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself?
Those individuals can of course believe anything they want, but that doesn't necessarily make it reasonable from a critical perspective.
I disagree. For one thing, you're confused about what Occam's Razor means.
If the USAF is making these judgments on the basis of anecdotal evidence alone, then it seems like they're blatantly ignoring the very distinct possibilities of many forms of human error or confabulation. They can neither prove or disprove that somebody became confused, hallucinated, or just made it up, and that is a far more likely scenario than ET, which is equally impossible to prove or disprove. No material evidence whatsoever has ever been produced that proves the existence of ET, but people can be observed lying and/or becoming confused every day.
There have been enough of these sightings over the last 60 years or so to indicate there's some kind of cultural influence at play. Note there weren't any "flying saucer" reports prior to the late 1940s. If they're really extraterrestrial craft, then why had they gone undetected for so long, until the popular media began promoting the stories so heavily? If you look at the history of UFO reports, you see definite trends emerging over the decades, and the stories become more and more dramatic and outrageous as time goes on. There are also periods where UFO sightings increase dramatically, like in the mid-late 1950s and again in the late 1970s, and these increases correspond directly to UFO stories being promoted in the popular culture. It looks to me like the PSH is the closest the ufologists have come to a reasonable hypothesis on the subject.
What about religious sightings, "BVMs," people talking to God, and the like? Is it reasonable to ignore those kinds of activities? If you're going to give serious consideration to unsubstantiated UFO anecdotes, then you must extend the same consideration to religious claims, ghost sightings, bigfoot sightings, and all other cases where people make claims that run contrary to established science? UFOs have only been around a little over half a century, but those kinds of stories have been told throughout all of human history.
To me, it looks like all these kinds of tall tales—UFOs, religious sightings, ghost sightings, cryptid sightings, etc—all fit the PSH better than any of the specialized hypotheses forwarded by researchers in all those discrete fields.
OK ... let's try this approach ( format ). Let me know how it works for you:
Q. How do you figure "aliens" is a reasonable explanation at all.
A. It's plausible and considerable effort has been made to rule out all natural or manmade explanations including hoaxes, misidentifications, mental or physical illness, hallucinations etc.
Quote: "There's no material evidence whatsoever"
Answer: That is a conclusion that is not reasonable. First of all, evidence and proof are two different concepts ( Rramjet made this point as well ). Evidence can take the form of
information, and there is plenty of information. The value of that information is what is at issue. This thread doesn't claim the information is "
proof", only that it is reasonable to consider that UFOs are something real that have yet to be fully explained and that they don't conform to any known manmade or natural object or phenomenon ( loose USAF definition there ).
Q. Why is the "aliens" conclusion any more reasonable in your mind than Jesus, the BVM, angels, fairies, unicorns, vampires, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself?
A. The examples you use aren't what we're discussing, but for the sake of good faith in participation, given the assumed context of each of your examples, the ETH is plausible. Space flight is a proven fact and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is an near statistical certainty.
Quote: "you're confused about what Occam's Razor means."
Response: You presume incorrectly.
Quote: "There have been enough of these sightings over the last 60 years or so to indicate there's some kind of cultural influence at play."
Response: Agreed. It is part of what makes ufology so interesting.
Quote: "They can neither prove or disprove that somebody became confused, hallucinated, or just made it up, and that is a far more likely scenario than ET, which is equally impossible to prove or disprove."
Response: This thread isn't about "proving" or "disproving". It's about considering the
information and determining what is
reasonable to believe.
Quote: "To me, it looks like all these kinds of tall tales—UFOs, religious sightings, ghost sightings, cryptid sightings, etc—all fit the PSH better than any of the specialized hypotheses forwarded by researchers in all those discrete fields."
Response: The comment "tall-tales", implies lies, fabrications and such. I'm not talking about those, so the PSH, whatever it is doesn't apply anyway. If you would like to discuss hoaxes, in one study spanning about 5 years and taking into account 1,593 of the best cases, 1.66% of the cases were found to be hoaxes. I suspect there are probably a lot more now due to the ease of faking video and putting it up on the Internet.
Quote: Note there weren't any "flying saucer" reports prior to the late 1940s. If they're really extraterrestrial craft, then why had they gone undetected for so long, until the popular media began promoting the stories so heavily?
Response: There were a few reports of strange flying objects during World War Two, at the time called foo fighters which contrary to common reports, were not limited strictly to spheres. However before World War Two, it is true that reports are sparse and relegated to myth. However that is no reason to suspect the phenomenon isn't real. It is entirely possible that they just weren't coming here that often ( or at all ) until the 1940s. Simply because we haven't travelled to another inhabited planet yet and shown them we exist doesn't mean that we don't exist until they say we do.
The point we get to another inhabited planet will always coincide with some cultural period and have an influence on it. It is well documented that the films and and media reports about flying saucers and space aliens were inspired by the sightings, not the other way around. All the way from the Kenneth Arnold sighting to Earth vs The Saucers to Close Encounters.
j.r.
