Psuedoskepticism vs scientific skepticism

Yes Alex..you are beyond hope in that you are only trying to defend your belief that there's no such things as ghosts like all pseudoskeptics do. It doesn't make you a bad person. It just makes you no different than a religious person who denies evidence based on their own faith. But who knows? Maybe one may haunt you one day and you'll see that you were wrong all along. Australia is full of creepy paranormalities.

 

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No, coming from someone who has demonstrated an utter lack of understanding of both science and skepticism, it's laughable.

 

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LOL! No..I'm comparing the existence of ufos to any other phenomena that has thousands of eyewitnesses, thousands of videos, and thousands of photographs. We don't doubt any event that has such evidence. Yet suddenly for ufos it all becomes doubtful. That's flagrant bias in my book.

 

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Give an example of a phenomena you think has a similar level of evidence but higher level of acceptance than "UFOs".

Also, in order to fairly compare one phenomena to the other, please state exactly what "UFOs" are.

 

I'll give you several. Ball lightning. Earthquake lights. Rogue waves. There are far fewer photos and eyewitness accounts of these, yet science seems to have no problem accepting them as real anomalous phenomena.

A ufo is an extramundane anomaly that exhibits the characteristics of an advanced craft by flying and maneuvering at extraordinary speeds, emits powerful energy levels, and has been witnessed even landing at times, leaving physical traces on vegetation and soil and physiological effects on eyewitnesses.

 

Let's keep this concise and pick one: earthquake lights. What is the scientific consensus on what earthquake lights are?

That isn't strongly worded enough to be rejectable. "Exhibits the characteristics of" just means they might be "advanced craft". You'll have to word it stronger in order for me to unfairly reject it. How about this: UFOs are advanced craft (having beyond known human capabilities). Does that work for you?

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/02/earthquake-lights-rare-phenomenon/4255097/

No..We have to leave it at "maybe" because there are lots of ufo phenomena like the Hessdalen Lights and foo fighters from WWII and the green fireballs over Los Alamos Laboratories back in the 1940's that show traits of being pure plasma energy. The blanket term "UFO" should be a classification that includes many subcategories.

 

LOL! This proposed proof for ufos in itself is laden with unwarranted assumptions about what the ufo phenomenon is: They are aliens. They are friendly aliens. And it avails them to make their presence known to the human race. You have preconceptions about the ufo phenomenon that you want confirmed for you in your own highly specific terms. Reality isn't like that. It is just itself and it is WE who must adjust our views to the manifested nature of its operations.

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You mean like our very own Yowie?? Or perhaps a Bunyip monster?

Perhaps though it is yourself, with your ready nature and gullibility of accepting any and all grainy photos and dicey reports, and emotional experiences from emotional people, that has this religious like affliction you seem to want to label people that require hard extraordinary evidence of what you believe yourself exists.
Just saying.

 

"Min Min is an unusual light phenomenon that has often been reported in outback Australia.

The name "Min Min" derives from the small settlement of Min Min, located between the outback towns of Boulia and Winton, where the light was observed by a stockman in 1918.[3]

Stories about the lights can be found in Aboriginal myths pre-dating European settlement and have since become part of wider Australian folklore.[1] Indigenous Australians hold that the number of sightings has increased alongside the increasing ingression of Europeans into the outback.[1] According to folklore, the lights sometimes follow or approached people and have disappeared, sometimes very rapidly, when fired upon, only to reappear later on.[1][2] The first recorded sighting dates to 1838, in the book Six Months in South Australia."===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Min_light

 

You forgot the gumnut children, and also the Banksia men.

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I don't see any consensus position indicated there. So are you trying to say there is no consensus explanation for what earthquake lights are? If that's the case, then there is nothing to accept or deny, reasonably or unreasonably. Unknown is just unknown. So, what, exactly, is the unreasonable acceptance from the scientific community there?

I get that you think there are multiple phenomena at work, but are you suggesting that none of them are conclusively proven? If that's the case, then there isn't anything for anyone to accept or deny, reasonably or unreasonably. Unknown is just unknown. So, what, exactly, is the unreasonable denial from the scientific community there?

 

I gave you a scientific report in a scientific journal showing what the scientific view of earthquake lightning is. It is a scientifically acknowledged phenomena based on anecdotal reports and a few photos and videos. Much less than exist for ufo phenomena.

The phenomena is well established by now and much more so than accepted less evidenced anomalies such as ball lightning, earthquake lights, and rogue waves. The nonacceptance of the phenomenon is an obvious irrational dismissal of the phenomena to defend a pseudoskeptical belief that such a phenomena doesn't exist. It is the definition of confirmation bias.

"Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning."===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

You gave me a USA Today article. It contains no agreed upon explanation of what earthquake lights are. Are you saying that all that scientists accept is that earthquake lights exist? Well, that's pretty weak! Of course they do!

What phenomena? If we're going to compare phenomena, we have to know exactly what phenomena we are comparing. What, specifically, are people unreasonably denying?

That is just one example. Depending on the specifics of what the (or a) UFO phenomena is, there could be any number of different scenarios that a scientifically minded person would accept. You said in your other thread that we would never accept anything. Clearly, that is false.

 

We already have *aliens* on earth. And they will eventually rule the oceans as we do the Terra Firma.
http://www.upworthy.com/13-of-the-most-frighteningly-smart-things-octopuses-can-do?c=

 

From article:

"Certain types of earthquakes in certain areas can set off blazes of light seconds — sometimes days — before the actual quake. These can manifest as floating balls of light, bluish columns shooting up out of the earth and even reverse lightning, reaching up into the sky from the ground.

A study out Thursday in the journal Seismological Research Letters shows such quakes are tied to a specific type of temblor in areas where certain geological formations occur."

I already told you. Extramundane anomalies that exhibit the characteristics of a craft etc etc....

No amount of evidence would ever convince a pseudoskeptic. You'd just raise the bar on what counts as evidence endlessly to defend your belief that there is no anomalous phenomena of ufos to begin with. It's what you pseudoskeptics do everyday here, trying to logically argue the whole possibility of a ufo phenomena out of existence. Methinks the ladies doth protest too much!

 

Those are reports of the observations, not explanations of what they are. So...you are agreeing with me?

In other words, unknown, right? Because just "exhibiting characteristics" doesn't prove what they are, right? Otherwise, if it proves what they are, then say it!

You need to be unequivocal and clear, MR. If I'm going to deny something you claim, you'll have to claim it explicitly. Here's an example of an unequivocal claim:

The speed of light is constant and the same in all inertial reference frames.

You need to word your claim like that in order for someone to deny it. Otherwise, all we have here is agreement and your thread's thesis fails: the unreasonable denial doesn't exist if nothing gets denied!

Given that that directly contradicts what you just read, that's a clear, slanderous - not to mention stupid - lie.

MR, I'll be blunt: the issue here is that you think everyone else is your mirror image. You think - despite the things that we say - that everyone unreasonably rejects everything because that's exactly the opposite of what you do: unreasonably accepting everything. The fact of the matter, though, is that you what you think you see -- what you started this thread to discuss -- just plain doesn't exist.

Who started this thread!?

 

No..that's an explanation for the phenomena. Read the article again:

"The mechanism that causes the phenomenon occurs only in specific and rare conditions, said Friedemann Freund, a professor of physics at San Jose State University and senior scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Rocks such as basalt and gabbro, created deep in the Earth's mantle, contain tiny defects in their crystals. When such rocks are stressed, those defects momentarily generate electrical charges, said Freund, one of the paper's authors.

"When a powerful seismic wave runs through the ground and hits a layer of such rocks, it compresses the rocks with great pressure and speed, creating conditions under which large amounts of positive and negative electrical charges are generated," he said. These charges can travel together, reaching what's called a plasma state, which can burst out and shoot up into the air.

Another necessary component for earthquake lights to be produced in nature are deep vertical faults in the Earth's crust, some of which can reach down 60 miles and more. Magma that solidifies to become gabbros or basalts has risen along these faults, forming dikes often tens to hundreds of feet thick.

"We speculate that the dikes act as a funnel, focusing the charges until they become an ionized solid-state plasma," said Robert Thériault, lead author on the paper and a geologist with the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources in Canada.

"When the plasma bursts out into the air, it produces light," he said."

LOL! No. Not unknown. I quote again:

"A ufo is an extramundane anomaly that exhibits the characteristics of an advanced craft by flying and maneuvering at extraordinary speeds, emits powerful energy levels, and has been witnessed even landing at times, leaving physical traces on vegetation and soil and physiological effects on eyewitnesses."

How does that even remotely equate to "unknown".

It's the truth. It's what you pseudoskeptics demonstrate here everyday. I provide the evidence, and then go thru 10 pages of explaining how it is evidence. You could not display a more biased attempt of denialism if you actually tried.

Such is the deliberate blindness of the pseudoskeptic, always more sure of his position that there is no phenomena after seeing the evidence for it than before seeing the evidence!

 

You presume too much.
I am addressing Yazata's implcation that no amount of evidence could prove the nature of these UFO phenomena. That is not true.

If the above were to happen, I would accept that as sufficient proof and explanation of the phenom.
If an alien zapped the Whitehouse into cinders, then landed and zapped a bunch of bystanders, I would accept that as sufficient proof too.
If a military general landed on the front lawn in his disc-shaped craft, I would accept that as proof of military origin.

The key elements here, are not what the explanation ends up being (it could be anything), but that the extraordinary phenomena is sufficiently extant to deliver extraordinary evidence.

 

I see you have learned a new word. Unfortunately, 'pseudoskeptic' is an attempt to 'poison the well' - a logical fallacy.

If you want to make a valid case argue the issues, not the issuers.