UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

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

  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Like I said, you're free to freely post whatever you like on your blog, on facebook, on some other forum ... whatever suits you.

    I only have a say on what you can post here on sciforums.

    Does that help with your confusion?
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    You don't take a hint very well..I'm going to keep posting here despite your fervent desire that I should just go away. Are we clear now?
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2019
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    What makes you think I want you to go away, Magical Realist? You're an endless source of entertainment, and you make an interesting case study as an example of somebody who is hopelessly lost to the woo.
     
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  7. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    “When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”
    ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Ah yes, the common cry of the pseudoscientist. Rational thought is evil because it kills imagination. Imagination is more important that knowledge. Feeling trumps thought. Add other platitudes and excuses.
     
  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    And that something would be common sense

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  10. sweetpea Valued Senior Member

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    Actually I don't think your MR.
    ''personal'' that's all right then. If you take it as a ''complement'' to being thought of as being MR, then you don't mind when MR spits out his ''personal'' crap to others.
    Example: On another thread MR called me a liar before even checking out my post, and never apologized when JamesR confirmed my post.
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532513
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532516
    Now that we are back to being best buds, I won't say anything.

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  11. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, analytical thought tends to kill the idea that every "experience" is fact. I don't see how that helps your argument.
     
  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Everything's a well-known stereotype for you, isn't it? It's like you've never encountered anything new in your whole life. Why is that? Is something only real for you if you can pigeonhole it?
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2019
  13. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    O DEAR (clutchin my pearls)... sounds like you have an issue wit MR.!!!

    Poor baby... LOL

    We ant quite thar yet... an sinse you brout up the issue agan... which ponts out that Dave was wrong about "SS" my queston to you still stands:::

    "Whats "SS".???"
     
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  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    What? No he doesn't.
     
  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Pot <> kettle.
     
  16. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Please don't stop posting! I share your posts far and wide.
     
  17. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Good! Spread the word!
     
  18. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Changes light energy to chemical energy

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  20. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    You spelled "turd" wrong.
     
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  21. river

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    No " word " is correct , no turd detected .
     
  22. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    That's a rather cynical view you have there. No, not everything is a stereotype.

    I'm a person who is interested in the world. Right now, I'm a middle-aged man who has encountered a lot of different ideas and points of view in my life. I still encounter lots of new things, but I'm old enough that I also see a lot of the same stuff repeated.

    I became interested in aliens and ghosts and all the woo you believe in when I was a kid. There was no internet back then. I checked books out of the library. I read a lot of stuff. I watched In Search Of and lots of TV documentaries that treated woo ideas with the same credulity and lack of any real skeptic analysis that we see in the kinds of youtube videos you like to post today. I loved that stuff.

    Then I grew up.

    See, I didn't just read the woo stuff. Before I was 10 years old I was also heavily into science fiction. I read lots of sci fi (I still love a good sci fi story). Among the books I read were ones by authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Those guys weren't just fantasists - they knew stuff about science as well. For example, Asimov was a prolific writer, and as well as writing science fiction, he also wrote a lot of books that explained science to the non-expert (not that he dumbed it down - a lot of that stuff is still a good read for adults trained in science). So, I learned something about how science is done, and how to think like a scientist.

    Along with the credulous woo documentaries and stuff, I also watched docos that talked about real science. I loved Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series, for example. In my teens, I picked up Sagan's must-read book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favour and buy a copy now - if you're not too afraid of the "enemy of the woo", that is. That book, and others, introduced me to the Skeptical movement.

    Knowing some science, I already had my doubts about lots of fringe ideas, but learning about critical thinking and the importance of evidence made me see even more clearly the enormous holes in the major pseudoscientific enthusiasms (UFOs, ghosts, ancient astronauts, pyramid power, psychics etc.) I also had an interest in magic as a hobby, so I learned how easy it can be to fool people with simple tricks.

    The woo peddlers of today aren't pushing anything new. All the same major themes were around 20 years ago. A few ideas have been so thoroughly debunked that the pseudoscientists have quietly dropped them and you don't hear much about them any more, but unfalsifiable ideas such as ghosts and alien visitation remain perennially popular among the credulous.

    I first used the World Wide Web in 1995. In the 24 years since then, I have seen what the woo community has to offer. It's easier these days to evangelise the nonsense than it used to be, but other than that there's very little difference between what's available now compared to what was available 20 years ago (if you wanted to go looking). The woo proponents of today are as uninterested in investigating the foundations of their own beliefs as they ever were. It's all about digging up the next pretty shell, then moving on to the next thing before the lustre has a chance to fade in the cold light of day. There's also the same us-vs-them mentality, hence the conspiracy theories, the distrust-as-a-matter-of-course of carefully selected "authorities" (e.g. scientists, government organisations).

    So, perhaps you can understand, Magical Realist, my unimpressed attitude towards the crud you mindlessly cut and paste. I now have several years of experience of your antics. There's been no growth in your thinking over the years you have come to sciforums, despite relevant information being served up to you in bite-sized chunks.

    If it seems to you that I act like I've never encountered anything new in my life, consider this: maybe it is because you never present anything remarkable, or noteably different from the other pseudoscientific nonsense I've come across in the past 30 years. You're stuck in your bubble. I see your bubble for exactly what it is. I understand why you're in it, to some extent. I'm still a little confused as to why you want to restrict your own horizons in the way that you do, so there's a moderate amount of residual interest for me in that aspect of my interactions with you. I notice that, a lot of the time, you're angry at the idea that you might be wrong. You tend to go through a cycle of escalation, then a flash of anger as obvious flaws in your notions are pointed out to you and begin to mount up, followed by disengagement until you can bring yourself to forget the discussion and focus on some new bauble, then rinse and repeat.

    Certainly I strive to ensure that my worldview is internally consistent. I question and test my own ideas. If something new is incompatible, then something has to give. Either the new information is flawed in some way, or my old ideas are flawed in some way. So, I always ask "If this thing is true, what else must be true, and what must be false?" Some people are capable of believing contradictory things at the same time. I try to avoid that.

    Really, though, the test for whether something is real is simple enough. One has only to ask the question: is there convincing, objective evidence that the thing is real?

    Being as old as I am, I have lots of pigeonholes to put things in. It is rare for me to come across something that doesn't fit into one or another, but it does happen sometimes.

    When it comes to the woo that you like to peddle, though, the vast majority of that stuff is easily pigeonholed. You even know how to do that yourself. The difference between you and me is that for you a lot of the pigeonholes are tagged "real" (or, in your case, "compelling"), whereas the same pigeonholes for me are tagged "bunk" or "run-of-the-mill time-waster".
     
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah..thanks for confirming that for me.

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    Last edited: Mar 16, 2019

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