UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[Sideroxylon]

[...]

"Raël" just happens to have a ballsier and more compelling story than yours. You claim to have witnessed an alien space ship doing maneuvers from several kilometers away, but he claims to actually be an alien from another planet. You went out and bought vanity plates for your car, but he actually had his name legally changed to his "alien" pseudonym. You're the sole proprietor of your own cheezy little online bookstore that masquerades as an international UFO club, but he's the head of an actual religion with membership in the tens of thousands, and recognized in many countries around the world. He has more pussy than he can shake his dick at, and well-founded plans to construct a UFO-themed amusement park in Las Vegas, and you're here wasting your time trying to defend your wimpy little story on a skeptics forum.

I guess my point is: as long as you're making stuff up, you might as well "go big" with it, and damn the nonbelievers. Either way, you're not being skeptical, scientific, rational or reasonable, and the only people you're going to convince are those who want to believe anyway. So why not just go for broke?

I feel like I have wasted my life.

 

[23_Tauri]

Seen "one" what? What did you see, exactly, that indicates it was something alien to Earth? A glowing light that silently danced around in regular patterns? How do you get from that experience to "OMG aliens!!!"?

You have no information on which to conclude it was an alien craft. No alien craft has ever been identified, caught or examined. All you have to go on is your own imagination, and the body of popular American folklore of the mid-late 20th Century.

Like I said, too much Star Trek, not enough Bewitched. He was watching the wrong channel, John.

"Raël" just happens to have a ballsier and more compelling story than yours. You claim to have witnessed an alien space ship doing maneuvers from several kilometers away, but he claims to actually be an alien from another planet. You went out and bought vanity plates for your car, but he actually had his name legally changed to his "alien" pseudonym. You're the sole proprietor of your own cheezy little online bookstore that masquerades as an international UFO club, but he's the head of an actual religion with membership in the tens of thousands, and recognized in many countries around the world. He has more pussy than he can shake his dick at, and well-founded plans to construct a UFO-themed amusement park in Las Vegas, and you're here wasting your time trying to defend your wimpy little story on a skeptics forum.

Cool! Does David Miscavige know about this young upstart in the alien worshipping cult market?

fol, you've really got to up your game here, lad.

 

[23_Tauri]

I feel like I have wasted my life.

Me too.

Perhaps we need to get together and start some sort of post-modern, witch-worshipping cult?

 

[Sideroxylon]

Me too.

Perhaps we need to get together and start some sort of post-modern, witch-worshipping cult?

Sure but as Mr Albert says, it has to have an outrageous background story. Witches possesed by ancient Egyptian gods who were in fact space-faring visitors?

 

[23_Tauri]

Sure but as Mr Albert says, it has to have an outrageous background story. Witches possesed by ancient Egyptian gods who were in fact space-faring visitors?

If you like.

The only detail that I shall absolutely insist upon is that in the middle of the temple we have a statue of a giant white rabbit. A really big one, 30 feet high, at least.

 

[Akhenaten]

You didn't see what I did or what other people have, so it's fair for you to remain undecided and skeptical.

Fair? Objective trumps fair.

Soz.

However maintaining that firsthand experience isn't a good reason to draw conclusions is faulty.

If the firsthand experience is unique, extraordinary or unrepeatable then treating any conclusions based on it as suspect is the only reasonable thing to do.

We all draw accurate conclusions regularly based on firsthand experience.

We all draw totally bogus conclusions regularly based on firsthand experience too. These are the misses that you ignore in your rush to "OMG . . . aliens!"

In the vast majority of instances, it is our best reason to draw conclusions.

No. The best reason to draw conclusions is that they match objective reality.

Of course, that's not to say that firsthand experience isn't useful in deciding purely subjective matters such as the flavour of your favourite ice cream, and you'll never find yourself in a serious disagreement just because you foolishly believe it to be strawberry, but when it comes to things like asserting that the sky is so abuzz with flying saucers that they even show up in the backwoods of Canadiastan then you're going to need some of that big ol' evidence.

Or would you prefer to draw them on what other people say?

Something of a combination seems to work the best. If your conclusions are consistently matching up with what might best be called 'common knowledge' then you're doing OK. If you find yourself to be the only one in the room swearing that the sky is green and a pot plant just asked you the time then you might need to reassess.

 

[Sideroxylon]

If you like.

The only detail that I shall absolutely insist upon is that in the middle of the temple we have a statue of a giant white rabbit. A really big one, 30 feet high, at least.

I was just speaking aloud there. The Egyptian gods thing might be cutting someone else's grass anyway. I'm liking the giant rabbit idea a lot.

 

[TjW]

If you like.

The only detail that I shall absolutely insist upon is that in the middle of the temple we have a statue of a giant white rabbit. A really big one, 30 feet high, at least.

Before you do that, I think you should Go Ask Alice.

 

[Akhenaten]

If you like.

The only detail that I shall absolutely insist upon is that in the middle of the temple we have a statue of a giant white rabbit. A really big one, 30 feet high, at least.

 

[Drs_Res]

[qimg]http://www.yvonneclaireadams.com/HostedStuff/BunnyHaiTemple.jpg[/qimg]​

That's just hare raising Akhenaten.

 

[Akhenaten]

Very few people realise that 'Harus' is the correct spelling for one of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egypt or that the 'b' in b'hai stands for 'bunny'.

 

[Aepervius]

Me too.

Perhaps we need to get together and start some sort of post-modern, witch-worshipping cult?

Only if we use modern witch image , and not the old cultural one .

 

[Tomtomkent]

So perhaps UFOs are not alien at all.

The Giant Rabbits escaped Portland Down and got ahold of a lazer pointer?

 

[23_Tauri]

Giant stone animal worship. It'll be like Bohemian Grove, only more fluffy.

 

[John Albert]

It's a colossal, cosmic bunnyrabbit chowing down on an intergalactic artichoke!

 

[Toke]

Very few people realise that 'Harus' is the correct spelling for one of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egypt or that the 'b' in b'hai stands for 'bunny'.

We could have some smaller alcoves inside for harebastet and bunnynubis.
I would not want any accusations of spacebunnyism being monotheists or somehow intolerant of other faiths.

 

[ufology]

I've seen plenty of things which, had I believed that my unaided perceptions alone were sufficient to reach a conclusion, would have led me to believe something that wasn't true. That it's possible for someone to saw himself in half and put himself back together again, for example.


Fortunately we usually have a plentiful supply of objective evidence to check our perceptions, and hence those conclusions, against. Where we don't is when we tend most often to be wrong, which we frequently are.

Unaided perceptions aren't entirely the same as firsthand experiences. An experience is the sum total of your perceptual, cognitive, emotional and intuitive functions. For example even though you witnessed a magic act, you know it was an intentional illusion, so you didn't draw the conclusion that someone was actually sawn in two. Also, although we have a lot of objective evidence for many things, the vast majority of the time a scientific verification of those things isn't necessary for us to make valid decisions. We perform thousands of actions in fluid succession daily based on our firsthand experience without verifying everything first. Simply because something unfamiliar comes into the picture doesn't mean we automatically screw up every time, especially if we are trained not to screw up and are expecting it to happen, as in the case of Air Force pilots who are scrambled after unidentified radar targets. Or in the case of my own sighting because I watched the object land I knew it had to come up again, so I waited and watched for it in order to get a better look and it appeared as anticipated, more than once.

The other issue is that of "unaided perception". Unaided perception gives us direct sensory exposure to the objective reality while a machine filters the stimulus through a mechanism that is capable of error. For example some people who claimed to have seen UFOs on their video cameras were actually watching an effect produced by the lens iris at high magnification. Telescopes or binoculars are relatively safe but still subject to prismatic flaws and lens flares. So assuming the witness has normal healthy sensory function, aided perception although often useful, also introduces another possibility for error into the observation.

Lastly, our firsthand experiences are not always scientifically verifiable, but that doesn't mean they aren't real. As emotional creatures we also sense things in ways that aren't easily measurable. Sure we can hook ourselves up to a brain and body scanner, but the readouts don't relay our emotions or our intuition, they merely reflect them in measurements of physiological states that happen to coincide with them. So we can't objectively prove they are real, yet our emotional state is a very real and meaningful part of our daily experience and overall mental health.

Now all that being said, I've experienced sensory illusions several times and experienced what seemed like valid intuitive responses to seemingly spooky situations that upon further investigation turned out to have perfectly logical explanations. So it is certainly important to consider as many alternative rational mundane explanations as possible that fit the situation. Where I find the skeptics going overboard is when they start changing the elements of the story to fit their mundane explanations, or go further to accuse witnesses of doing the reverse, which although can and probably does happen, isn't justified without some further rationale gained by investigation and study. In other words, it's possible to remain skeptical of a report without automatically assuming the witness was fabricating the story.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Unaided perceptions aren't entirely the same as firsthand experiences. An experience is the sum total of your perceptual, cognitive, emotional and intuitive functions. For example even though you witnessed a magic act, you know it was an intentional illusion, so you didn't draw the conclusion that someone was actually sawn in two. Also, although we have a lot of objective evidence for many things, the vast majority of the time a scientific verification of those things isn't necessary for us to make valid decisions. We perform thousands of actions in fluid succession daily based on our firsthand experience without verifying everything first. Simply because something unfamiliar comes into the picture doesn't mean we automatically screw up every time, especially if we are trained not to screw up and are expecting it to happen, as in the case of Air Force pilots who are scrambled after unidentified radar targets. Or in the case of my own sighting because I watched the object land I knew it had to come up again, so I waited and watched for it in order to get a better look, which I did, and it appreared as anticipated, more than once.

So you're saying that all of the thousands of high quality and credible witnesses who saw UFOs ( witches ) were actually experiencing them though more than just sight. That makes sense and makes the case that UFOs are witches more compelling. After all, we have the known fact of them being proven in courts of law.

The other isse is that of "unaided perception". Unaided perception gives us direct sensory exposure to the objective reality while a machine filters the stimulus through a mechanism that is capable of error. For example some people who claimed to have seen UFOs on their video cameras were actually watching an effect produced by the lens iris at high magnification. Telescopes or binoculars are relatively safe but still subject to prismatic flaws and lens flares. So assuming the witness has normal healthy sensory function, aided perception although often useful, also introduces another possibility for error into the observation.

So you're saying here that witnesses from the 1600s would not have had those additional filters than their direct and unaided senses. Senses very attuned to the world around them and not dulled by artificial lighting, radio, television or other artificial stimulus. Yes, that makes them more reliable for witnessing the natural world around them, including witches. Very unlike now where people are already primed to believe in Alien Space Ships because they see fictional stories about them on TV and at the movies.

Lastly, our firsthand experiences are not always scientifically verifiable, but that doesn't mean they aren't real. As emotional creatures we also sense things in ways that aren't easily measureable. Sure we can hook ourselves up to a brain and body scanner, but the readouts don't relay our emotions or our intuition, they merely reflect them in measurements of physiological states that happen to coincide with them. So we can't objectively prove they are real, yet our emotional state is a very real and meaningful part of our daily experience and overall mental health.

You are verifying here that the UFO ( witch ) experiencers felt the witches and just knew they were real. Courts ( triers of fact ) would have to have taken that into consideration to conclude that someone was a UFO ( witch ).

Now all that being said, I've experienced sensory illusions several times and experienced what seemed like a valid intuitive responses to a seemingly spooky situation that upon further investigation turned out to have a perfectly logical explanation. So it is certainly important to consider as many alternative rational mundane explanations as possible that fit the situation. Where I find the skeptics going overboard is when they start changing the elements of the story to fit their mundane explanations, or go further to accuse witnessses of doing the reverse, which although can and probably does happen, isn't justified without some further rationale gained by investigation and study. In other words, it's possible to remain skeptical of a reports without automatically assuming the witness was fabricating the story.

No, we should not assume that UFO ( witch ) witnesses are fabricating stories. Those would never have passed the test in courts ( triers of fact) where witches were found guilty of witchcraft.

You've made the case for UFOs ( witches ) better than anyone else could. Thanks!

 

[Sideroxylon]

Your erudite treatise on perception could have been illustrated by your experiences of levitating in bed or being cut off by a ghost Cadillac, both of which seemed real to you but have cognitive based explanations that you have neglected to explore.

 

[EHocking]

...Scientific reports are basically anecdotes from scientists, usually backed by some corroboration and machine generated data. ...

What the hell is "machine generated data"?