UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Name a couple for which we have no evidence.

 

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Suppose the son and his father in that ''blue lobster'' story above, didn't take their story to the news. Or the news didn't find out about it. Whichever the case. If that father and son had pics of the lobster, shared them on FB, etc...would that be considered ''evidence?'' If only the father and son physically observed the lobster in person and they only have photos and their word backing up their claim, would those pics be considered hearsay? If the story trickles down to us here on SF, would we think it was some type of strange hoax masterminded by the father and son to garner attention?

Like the tic tac video - the pilots could have kept the footage to themselves, but no one would have believed them. Suddenly, we take the case more seriously because the Pentagon conducted a thorough investigation, which is the right process but I'm just asking the question ...when does something ''count'' as evidence?

 

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The chain of replies leads back to your post #7005, "How could you possibly know something like [Aliens on Earth isn't just "rare", it hasn't happened yet.]?" If you were referring to something else, you should have been specific.

 

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What's the difference between millions of possible alien events and millions of possible leprechaun events?

 

People actually see and take photos and videos of ufos. Leprechauns not so much.

 

They take really, really, really BAD photos and videos of UFOs.

 

The formation of the Marianas Trench. The evolution/extinction of species for which we have no fossils.
The abiogenesis of life on earth.

 

The way I use the word, 'extraordinary' is to mean 'extra ordinary'. In other words, 'outside the range of ordinary experience'. And I've been inclined to think of that in terms of 'improbable'. But I'm coming around to think that maybe a better way to conceive of 'extraordinary' is as something like 'unfamiliar'.

The thing is, there's both a subjective and an objective aspect to it.

'Unfamiliar' better captures the subjective aspect. There are many things that are unfamiliar to me personally. (MR's blue lobster, which I originally thought was fake.) There are almost certainly things unfamiliar even to science (at its current level of development). There are almost certainly things that are unfamiliar to any human being alive today. If I encounter one of these unfamiliar-to-me things (a blue lobster perhaps) I will exclaim "How extraordinary!" (Even though blue crayfish are apparently fairly common along the coast of Florida. I don't live in Florida and have never heard of them, until now.)

If a specialist, be it a scientist or a jet pilot, encounters something unfamiliar in their more specialized experience, they will probably make the same exclamation: "How extraordinary!" The 'tic-tacs' were obviously extraordinary in that sense, since they fell outside the experience of the pilots and radar operators involved.

And there's an objective idea seemingly also inherent in 'extraordinary'. This is the idea that something 'extraordinary' must be unlikely in some more objective ontological sense. This would make whatever it is unlikely not only in an individual's (or a whole community's) experience (which will inevitably be limited to what they have already encountered) but unlikely in principle somehow.

And I'm starting to think that there might possibly be a logical error occurring when we equate the subjective and objective there. We can't just leap from 'unfamiliar in my personal experience' to 'unlikely in principle' (unlikely for any possible being, unlikely simply in how the universe itself operates) without some justification that might be very difficult to provide (since our understanding of the universe is so limited).

Maybe. Space aliens would certainly be unfamiliar to human beings. That needn't make them improbable in any more objective ontological sense. If aliens exist, then their own existence would be familiar to them, in their own experience.

Yes, to human beings. Very much so in the 'unfamiliar to us' sense. Maybe not so extraordinary to the aliens.

Yes.

I'll just say that from the philosophical viewpoint, questions of "semantics" can't just be dismissed with a shrug as people so often do: "That's just semantics." (I'm aware you didn't say that, so I'm just making this point because it needs to be said.) What semantics addresses is critically important. It addresses how the various items of our conceptual scheme are understood (typically in linguistic form whether in natural or formal language) and how that conceptual scheme models onto the realities that it purports to describe and express (if it does). Semantics is of vital importance to science, given that science purports to express truths about and to give us better understanding of reality.

 

We do have evidence as to the formation of the Mariana trench (by which I am assuming you mean evidence of the mechanism of formation, rather than the form itself - for which the Mariana trench is not only evidence for but proof of itself). If you need the details, Google it.

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The evolution/extinction, yes, you are correct in that one, at least with regard some species, but not all. For example, we may have sufficient evidence from the fossil record that fossil A evolved, eventually, into fossil F. While we may not have fossils for B thru E, we have evidence that such creatures possibly/probably existed.
For abiogenesis on earth, we have evidence that it happened (at least unless you're someone that takes the religious view over the scientific) but not the mechanism.

 

It's a version of argument from personal incredulity, albeit implicit rather than explicit.

Two things here. The first is that "space aliens" is not in and of itself a claim, but rather "visitation of earth by space aliens", which is a rather different proposition than just the existence of space aliens.
The second thing is that in all of this we are discussing not reality itself but our belief as to what reality is. Thus ultimately it's all about the subjective: what do we know, or think we know, and what do we find convincing in the arguments of others.

Ah, semantics... if only I knew what that meant!

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We have evidence for all these things. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about them.

The credibility of eyewitness accounts pales in comparison to the entire body of knowledge of the natural sciences.

 

We've been talking about ufos for 7031 posts. Does that mean there is evidence for them too?

 

We're also talking about Leprechauns...

 

The difference is that a Google search will answer your question about lobsters but not alien spaceships.

This wasn't the only blue lobster ever found so there were others, this one was actually produced up close and personal and it would be more of an analogy if this was the only blue lobster ever seen and it wasn't produced and there was no picture or the picture was blurred beyond recognition.

 

If we're talking about probability of blue lobsters, I have seen them with mine own eyes. In a tank in the Aquarium in Myrtle Beach.

It's a rare mutation, but it's not extraordinary.

 

I think that's the definition of extraordinary isn't it? Rare?

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Well sure. But there's zebra-in-New-York extraordinary and then there's zebra-on-the-Moon extraordinary.

A zebra in New York may be rare, but doesn't exactly require an extraordinary explanation (beyond "This is a zoo, sir.")

Mutations, generally, are common. A specific mutation may not be widely spread. Debatable whether that qualifies as extraordinary.

 

I'd call an alien spaceship something other than extraordinary.

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Ummmmm

I would contend the actual existence of the Marianas Trench is evidence it formed

Name a species for which no evolution/extinction of species for which we have no evidence

The abundance of the numerous lifeforms in existence = the evidence of the abiogenesis of life on earth

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