UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Magical Realist, Oct 10, 2017.

  1. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Do you not know how to quote someone so they get a notification, or is that a troll skill?

    Extraordinary pasts tend to have evidence, and normal people to question wild stories.
    Yes, unidentified flying objects. Not space aliens.
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Where did I not quote you?

    Not necessarily. A person can see a ghost or a ufo or bigfoot or a plane crash and have no evidence of it. But it doesn't mean they didn't see it.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
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  5. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Giving mundane examples does not cover the case of what your idea of 'verifiable' would require re UFO phenomena.
    There is an abundance of evidence for the extraordinary re UFO phenomena. Particular interpretations will be more or less credible given the now huge overall data.
    Backward reasoning. I think there is sufficient corroborative evidence for the extraordinary to make a reasonable speculation as to it's general nature.
    Again - actually define what you would pass as extraordinary aka verifiable evidence re UFO phenomena. And spell out what assumptions are being made.
     
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  7. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Why would there be different criteria for evidence?
    And if there is, why would it be a lesser criteria for more extraordinary claims?
    Yes, unidentified flying objects. Not specific identifications of origin.
    I guess that's your prerogative.
    Of the phenomena itself? I believe people see odd, unidentified things.
    Space alien origins? A chunk of a spacecraft, minimum.
     
  8. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    A little green, alive, entity would do it for me

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  9. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Do you see how everyone else's quotes have the name and a link to the quoted post?
    That happens when you use the "Reply" button on a post. That also notifies them they have been quoted.
    I just noticed this one about 4 hours after replying to someone else. Who knows, maybe you like people missing some of your replies.
    Seeing is not identifying. And no one is doubting they saw something.
     
  10. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Not lesser, just different. By it's nature, UFO phenomena rarely if ever lends itself to touch'n'feel investigation. There are many reports of 'physical evidence' like burn patches and indentations in the ground, but that would never satisfy you and I tend to think it is 'faked' by the beings behind it all. You know my position. We are being teased by beings with vastly greater capabilities but questionable ethics and morals. Cattle mutilation comes to mind. Not ET the movie types at all.
    So you prefer to dwell on the space aliens angle. I guess that's your prerogative.
    Like a few others here at SF, my impression is you love to argue as sport or recreational pastime. Not for me. Nothing much left worth discussing methinks.
     
  11. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    So you do believe in "different criteria for evidence."
    Most people would call that a double standard.
    Convenient that your unsubstantiated beliefs also include an excuse for why they're unsubstantiated.
    So you think we're "being teased by beings with vastly greater capabilities", but I'm the one dwelling on "the space alien angle?"
    Haha! Cute attempt to beg-off by poisoning the well. Funny that you seem to think you can have a legit opinion but anyone who disagrees is just spoiling for a fight. Sounds like another double standard.
     
  12. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    What is funny there was a time I was thinking of saying similar to you when you cried foul because I gave you a difficult time by not playing the arguement game the way you wanted...I used different tactics to win and you called me a troll.

    Anyways get back to the game I love seeing you guys argue...you are both very talented so I will sit back and learn.
    Alex
     
  13. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    No don't bother trying to explain that one.
    Anyway imo yes you are obviously just spoiling for a fight. Which is nicely in keeping with that 'cute' avatar and forum name.
    It's futile to try continued meaningful engagement with someone with an intransigent position and belligerent to boot.
    But don't fret - you are in plenty of like-minded company here.
     
  14. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, doubling down on poisoning the well. That double standard thing must have been too much to bear.
    Relax. Have a banana. Oo, oo!
     
  15. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't care if you are notified or not. It's not my problem if you are too lazy to check the thread for new comments yourself.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
  17. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I've long felt that the nature of the ufos reported in the many ufo reports should be made the subject of a biological-style taxonomy, some tentative work-in-progress classification system.

    Disks and cylindrical cigar-shapes seem to me to be the most popular. The cigars seem to typically be much larger than the disks. Some UFOs are just lights-in-the- night-sky with no shape visible.

    They are seen in various places, the night sky, in the daytime sky, in different weather conditions, with the Sun and Moon in different locations, some are landed on the Earth, some are above (or even in) the sea, some of the more exotic reports even report living occupants of varying anatomies and occasionally communications from the occupants. They are seen in urban and rural places, in different countries, at different times of the year. They seem to be doing different things.

    I wonder if there is any kind of underlying pattern to it. Are particular features of the reports associated with one another? Are particular kinds of reports more likely to be reported in particular weather conditions? At a particular time of the month? Are particular shapes more popular in particular countries? Are particular shapes associated with particular behaviors? (The cylinders don't dart around or are typically land.) Computers should make this kind of analysis possible, provided that enough information is available and entered as variables. They can identify all kinds of correlations between different features of data sets, most of them ultimately spurious. But it's a start.

    Do particular kinds of reports appear more frequently after news or entertainment media stories that might constitute psychological suggestion? Has there been any change in the nature of the reports over time? There certainly has been in a certain kind of UFO story, the contactee-account.

    1950's c0ntactees like George Adamski reported hunky exceedingly good-looking caucasian occupants (the 'Nordic aliens') who sometimes expressed concern about nuclear weapons and wanted to test the Earth before induction into some UN-like United Federation of Planets. (Which obviously reflects the concerns of Earth-culture at the time.) Then cattle mutilation stories appeared and lots of stories of alien abductions and probings. The occupants became the Greys and later the Reptoids as well. (Perhaps influenced in the latter instance by Zecheriah Sitchin.) The whole character of the myth changed as the UFO occupants became less angelic and more demonic, now imagined to have infiltrated world governments in some giant conspiracy in which many powerful Earthlings are knowingly complicit. (Which obviously reflects growing post-60's social alienation.)

    You can see why I think that there's a big element of popular mythology in all this and why I sometimes think of it as a proto-religion in the making. (Thousands of Americans believe in it more passionately than they believe in Christianity.) There's a huge scholarly literature on the Greek gods, without any implication that the scholars believe that those gods really existed. Perhaps there needs to be a similar literature on various features of UFO mythology. (Religious studies isn't just about ancient people 2,000 years ago, it's still happening before our eyes as we speak. It's foolish for the religion scholars and philosophers of religion to ignore it.)

    But that being said, I do suspect that some small subset of reports are reports of hitherto unknown objective physical phenomena. That 2004 San Diego report with the Navy jets, the UFO's appearing on a cruiser's radar, their being visually observed by multiple pilots in jets sent to intercept them and their being recorded in both video and FLIR infrared, certainly suggests to me that something was physically there.

    (I have my own speculation about what it might have been, but it's only speculation.)
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Mod Note — Provocation

    Stop trolling. Furthermore, you're not really in a position to be complaining about poisoning the well. You were asked about standards of verifiable evidence; the present circumstance bringing complaints to my report queue derives from your refusal to directly address this question. And nobody needs agree with anyone else's arguments in order to see this part.

    It's not that I don't understand why people are afraid to offer affirmative arguments; look at the disrespectful way people like you treat them when they do. Our neighbor's suggestion↑ that you "love to argue as sport or recreational pastime" makes the point, though diplomatic nicety renders the statement too kind by some significant degree. There really is a difference between argument for sport, as Darwin adored, and quarreling for a vicious fix. And maybe irrational contrarianism coinciding with pop-culture antisocial sociality feels smart or useful, but you need to understand that watching someone challenge Magical Realist and fail so miserably reminds how many around here simply accept they're watching one or another quirky troll fight that comes around in a community that would see allegedly rational people seeking a whipping boy instead of ignoring what they pretend to be smarter than. It's true that someone recently asked me if this is the way Sciforums is going, now, and all I could think was, "Huh? ¿Now? What do you mean, now?"

    It's been this way for a while, and the greater signal is that people kind of want it this way. I can remember a few years ago when the staff took some time to consider just how much ridiculous fantasy we would put up with in the Fringe subfora, but the larger problem over time has been a range of allegedly smart people who need their own vicious fix; if they think such outlooks so feeble, why, then, seek out those people in order to antagonize and fight with them? That is to say, if one thinks another retarded or delusional, why go out of one's way to antagonize the other? And therein we find how many people's human priority, and toward that end, vapid quarreling for a cheap fix is its own antisocial waste of humanity.

    And for the record, I still loathe the whole quote-reply scheme, having held out for a long time because it was extraneous to the way I write posts, an oft-confusing waste of time to be jumping all over a web page in order to quote it. Given the evidence, either you know the answer to the question for having read posts in which MR does use the function, or you don't because you're not really paying attention to what you're replying to, which in turn wouldn't surprise anyone. So, to the one, Vociferous, you're both wrong, because you both disdain the obligations you would demand of others. To the other, MR has half a point about checking the thread regardless of alerts, but that would pertain in a different context, which is why it's only half. That is to say, you're not going to get alerts for every little thing affecting the context of any given discussion, and part of what makes your conduct read so antisocially is the apparent disrespect you show those contexts. And there really is no point in a zinger about whether you like showing disrespect; there is a difference between recognizing the fact of human frailty and relying on it as sole excuse or justification for behavior.

    Rational people ought to know enough to leave the Fringe subfora alone; that someone is posting bullshit about ufos or ghosts or angels or other paranormal beliefs is hardly a crisis. Let me know when we're down to Nazis and the sort of people who take literally old antisemitic tropes about vampires invade. Sport-hunting trips into these threads are acts of will, and these side spectacles seem to be the purpose.

    Nonetheless, they end up in my report queue, and while, sure, I see the problem this or that complaint might assert, I'm usually looking at a symptom of some larger malady.

    So here I am, and there are diagnoses both particular and general in this commentary. People generally must choose to not get along, and most of what lands in the queue has to do with what comes after they make that decision.

    If the point is to fail to communicate anything useful, you're not helping.
     
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  19. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Hmm?

    Maybe I'm breaking some rule of inciting an argument or something, but Tiassa is in part to blame for making said argument, that I was hardly paying attention to in the first place, potentially interesting. (And, Tiassa, might have muffled continuation of the exchange with his post?)

    So, take it from the top guys and make it more of a logically interesting civilized discourse.

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  20. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    • At least pretend to pay attention to the post you're pretending to respond to.
    So people can't wonder why others don't seem to know how forums work?
    And where have I poisoned the well?
    Try reading the thread. I already told him exactly what I would accept as evidence ( http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in-defence-of-space-aliens.160045/page-56#post-3506034 AND http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in-defence-of-space-aliens.160045/page-57#post-3506085 ). The exact same as for everything else. He just didn't want to accept that answer. And he made it clear that his standards of evidence are special for UFOs ( http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in-defence-of-space-aliens.160045/page-56#post-3506051 AND http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in-defence-of-space-aliens.160045/page-57#post-3506131 ). If you accept that double-standard, you're hardly an ambassador for science.
    I get that you don't like me for some reason. I guess that sways moderation quite a bit around here.
    Sorry to upset the ideological purity. Might want to post that on the sign-up page.
    Again, it doesn't seem like you've read the thread. I never said Magical Realist didn't quote altogether ( http://www.sciforums.com/threads/in-defence-of-space-aliens.160045/page-57#post-3506073 ). Maybe you never noticed that some quotes link back to the quoted post and notify the poster of a reply. Maybe you have the same problem parsing English as Magical Realist did in his reply. I don't know. You tell me.
    Again, it's convenient to make such accusations without citing any specific instances. If you had bothered to read the thread, both accusation would have proven faulty (as shown above).
    Oh, so this subforum is supposed to be a place where such claims can go completely unchallenged. Again, a notice might help.
    Sounds like the people filling your report queue are your problem, considering I've shown them frivolous. And warning me isn't the best way to recruit my help in coddling the fringe true-believers. But more to the point, why am I being tasked with trying to help control the reactions of much longer forum members?

    Aside from you not liking me.
     
  21. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Just for the record - I never filed any complaint. OK? As for your interpretation above, why should I waste time contending with someone that attacks as a matter of first principle?
     
  22. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    So Tiassa is making up reports? I don't understand. Maybe the only report came from Magical Realist and Tiassa is just venting his spleen.
    Attacks? Do you think opinions that simply don't agree with you are attacks?
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2018
  23. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    No. Intentionally distorting someone else's stated opinion is however a form of attack, and signals the likely futility of further engagement.
     

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