UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

It was once directly asked of Magical Realist where is the ''evidence'' for why he thinks his ufo picture posts are ''time-travellers, interdimensionals and wotnot''
Magical Realist's reply '' The fact that they are technology far in advance of anything we humans have is evidence they are either from the future, or interdimensionals, or extraterrestrials. There is no other explanation.''

My bold above.
The reply was:

So, this alone shows where Magical Realist was and still is coming from. Drama Queen diversions and weasel words are Magical Realist's stock in trade.

 

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Well, it shows where he was toward the end of 2017. It doesn't, itself, show where he is still coming from. You'd need to link to a similar set of fallacious "arguments" and statements that he has recently uttered to show that.
Something like:

Although even here he's moved from "the future, or interdimensionals, or extraterrestrials. There is no other explanation." to another explanation, of "superhuman species" living underwater. Which shows that even he can come up with another explanation, thus he himself proving his earlier statement (from 2017) wrong, even if such other explanation is still... yeah, whatever.

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LOL! Skeptics digging up my posts from 5 years ago to argue with. Wegs if you ever wondered what they do in their spare time, this is definitely a clue.

 

Ummmmm

Have you changed in the 5 years I would be asking

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Position-wise I'm more of an agnostic mind. We just don't know who or what is behind the ufo phenomenon. Speculation-wise? I'm still open to pretty much anything that matches the evidence we have. Time travelers, interdimensionals, ets, advanced nonhuman terrestrials, or any combination thereof. Have I changed in the last 5 years? Perhaps. But not in any drastic or noteworthy sense. If there's nothing controversial about what you think ufos are, then you probably aren't really thinking seriously enough about them.

 

Well, they are 'UFO's' until they are identified, right? At least in the sense of apparent UFO in some cases, something that appears to be a flying object even if it turns out to be a camera artifact or something like that.

If they appear to be flying objects and they are unidentified, then they would seem to me to be 'UFO's' by definition.

If there's any defect in logical inference there, it seems to me to arise from the tendency (by both 'sides') to implicitly equate 'UFO' with 'alien spaceship' in their own thinking. Hence:

1. Blinking light = UFO. Perfectly justifiable if it appears in the sky and isn't identified,

2. Blinking light = alien spaceship. Unjustified leap.

But equally

3. Blinking light = can't possibly turn out to be anything that's unfamiliar to me or the people I identify with. Another unjustified leap.

 

Again, this is a total strawman, no matter how many times you flog it.

No skeptic concludes it "can't possibly be". That would - as you say - be an unjustified leap.

As always, the skeptic stance is simply "until the mundane has been ruled out, the exotic is an unjustified conclusion by Believers."


So, you score zero 'points' in your argument here. And maybe lose some points for promulgating the same mistake repeatedly.

 

There’s a lot to unpack in your replies that I’d like to respond to and will when I have time.

For now, I’ll leave you with that I didn’t realize that MR doesn’t claim space aliens, which was brought up a few days ago in this thread. I’m not sure if that changes anything for you, but it does for me in that his position seems to be in challenging skeptics to considering all the possibilities, rather than taking the position that alien life exists beyond a shadow of a doubt.

 

Aliens, aquatic non-humans, extra-dimensional critters are some of the options on-offer.

The particular flavour of "real pilots but not human pilots" has no effect on the skepticism stance. All of them require the creation from whole cloth of an entire non-human civilization, for which there is zero supporting evidence.

One outlier option is time-travelling humans. Which "merely" requires the creation from whole cloth of time travel ... for which there is zero supporting evidence.


Or, to phrase it another way, there is as much supporting evidence for any of these as there is for garden faeries and leprechauns.


(In fact, here is more evidence for faeries and leprechauns. There has been a lot of accounts of people seeing faeries and leprechauns over the centuries. One must wonder why MR doesn't put that at the top of his list of culprits. After all, most people don't just lie for the heck of it. He should be taking these people at their word.)

 

I believe that one of the moderators started this thread by cutting out some posts from another thread, removing them from their original context. The title that was given to this new thread has always seemed rather trollish to me, an attempt to set up a straw-man that could be triumphantly knocked down by the ever-so-superior "skeptics".

I'm not sure what thesis MR is arguing for. It's up to him (not me) to clarify that. (I most emphatically haven't read every post in this overly long and overly abusive thread.)

As for me, my thesis only addresses what little is known about the new 'UAP' sightings such as what have been called the 'tic-tac' encounters off both coasts. My thesis (at this point it's a preliminary conclusion like a mathematical lemma) is that something extraordinary appears to have been happening in multiple instances, and at this point nobody knows what it was.

I've been attacked repeatedly for saying that. Sometimes quite insultingly. (I don't forget, nor do I forgive.) I think that my agnostic stance is a justifiable position to take and it appears very similar to the position that the US government currently takes. Exception was taken to my use of the word 'extraordinary', but I think that it's perfectly justifiable in the sense of "extra-ordinary" which seems to me to be pretty much indisputable. As MR points out repeatedly, these radar operators and pilots thought that their sightings weren't ordinary, and I take that as justification for my use of the word.

I emphatically agree.

Actually, the idea of alien life on other planets raises interesting questions in the philosophy of biology. How should we define the word 'life'? Must it always be the same biochemistry that we observe here on Earth? I'm personally inclined to define 'life' functionally, and I think that astrobiology is coming around to that way of thinking. Life would then be some system capable of self replication and subject to natural selection. We might want to add additional functions like the ability to make more of itself by exploiting chemicals in the surrounding environment and some kind of energy metabolism. My speculation (not knowledge) is that there might be multiple ways to achieve these functions and some of them might be instantiated out there in the vastness of the universe.

Then we could ask how common these kind of evolving self-replicators are in the universe? How many of them are heterotrophs (animals) and not autotrophs (plants)? How many are complex (analogous to multicellular Earth organisms) and not just microorganisms? How many of the complex ones are intelligent? How many of the intelligent ones have space-faring civilizations?

I'm more inclined to use the word 'plausible' than 'logical'. 'Logical' suggests that assuming it leads to some sort of logical contradiction.

 

Our current definition of life is functional and not tied to a particular chemistry:
Nutrition, respiration, excretion, growth, movement, sensitivity, reproduction

I think, of all of them, respiration is particularly CHON*-centric. *carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen
I can see life not requiring the intake of gasses specifically.
But I'd say respiration falls under nutrition anyway.

I assume movement is essential, but not 100% sure.

 

Count down from 2017 to today.

Sept 2019 UFO and beings:

Oct 2021. Magical Realist redefining, for his own purposes, what ufo means, with his emphasis on the ''Are'' craft.

June 2022 (Today) Magical Realist thinks there is a '' who or what behind the ufo phenomenon.''
'' The evidence we have''
Still thinks there's evidence for ''time travelers, interdimensionals, ect..''

No change.

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That's a good one to ponder.
Say, if a certain life form requires no movement, then perhaps the movement is in the environment so to speak? It seems to suggest the life form is just a chemical reaction, the environment taking away its by-products (waste) or it would be buried/surrounded in its own 'waste' and die??

 

Like, say, plants.

 

How do they grow without moving and producing new cells for the next generation? I know they don't need to think about it, but they need to move to do that inside their structure. I think??

 

I think that would be covered under 'growth'. To make it onto the list, presumably it refers to movement above and beyond that needed for growth.

 

My position would be

We actually do not have any evidence

Anybody out there want to redefine "Well we have blah blah blah and blah blah blah" while the blahs are still among the Unexplained?

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I didn't want to start with post #6176 because in all honesty, I haven't really read through this entire thread in a proper way to determine MR's motivation behind his ideas on this topic. It's probably fair to say that we all hold onto certain biases, and maybe that's just human nature.

As mentioned above, I haven't seen a linear conversation within this thread (not saying there are none to be found, though) on these approaches to assessing claims of paranormal activity, or UFO sightings. Sure, there are bits and pieces, posts here and there that give me an idea of how other members here assess the videos MR has posted, but unfortunately (and this isn't anyone's fault), things get lost in translation when ad homs and name calling slip into every other page. The thread has become bogged down with personal attacks and such that really strip away the value of otherwise meaningful dialogue. Again, it's not anyone's fault, it happens when disagreements get heated.

I believe that scientists want to follow the evidence, but we are all biased, to varying degrees. We all carry within us some bias, and that's not a flaw, unless it inhibits us to be as open minded as we could be, if we weren't otherwise biased regarding a particular topic. Our world views stem from a variety of experiences, emotions, biases, and preconceived notions. Scientists are no different, and while I think for the most part, they're doing their best to only focus on alleged evidence that seems worthy of assessment, it's fair to say that they may, at times, expect ''evidence'' to overcome their own personal bias, which isn't entirely fair. The bar shouldn't be so low that we believe any and all claims of UFO sightings as space aliens, but we shouldn't raise the bar so high that it shuts down productive dialogue. For the record, I'm a skeptic when it comes to claims of UFO's pertaining to space aliens, but I'm not offended if MR believes that some of these videos are proof of advanced technology (without saying who created it), just because I don't agree with him.

I don't understand time travel, to be honest. So, I'm with you on that, and my mind won't open to that possibility at all. I'm more open minded when it comes to ghosts and exterrestrials possibly existing, albeit I don't think there has been sufficient data so far presented in this thread to sway me enough over to the ''believer'' side. Because of my bias on time travel, any ''evidence'' presented will seem like white noise to me, and I'll most likely discount it. Is it my fault that I'm not willing to hear someone out when it comes to time travelers, though? Maybe. But, I don't believe myself to be an outlier.

Okay. I'm happy to see that, for what it's worth. I don't know if other skeptics are as open minded. But, just curious - why do you expect to not find good evidence for aliens? Is it because all of the evidence thus far has seemed absurd? I'm just wondering.

Given that this is a science forum, I suppose that no one, including MR, should be surprised that some of his claims are met with harsh critique. In a way, that's never a bad thing, because harsh critiques get us to think about what we're positing, and helps us to get better in our critical thinking.

Just recently however, MR has stated in this thread that he doesn't claim space aliens, which was surprising to me, because I thought for sure that's what this thread is about. It could be that he just disagrees with what you consider satisfactory evidence, as to why you don't believe that there could be something to what he's saying.

Okay, good to know! I don't believe ''them,'' and like you, I find much of the evidence already offered to be suspect. Not suspect in that every person who presents video footage of supposed alien aircrafts are ''crackpots,'' but that there's just not enough information to go on. Some are crackpots to be fair and just out to make a buck.

That's a pretty tall order, though. lol It doesn't (for me) have to be an either or proposition.

The reason I don't believe that the 'tic tac' image in the video is that of a bird, is that those pilots are experienced and I'm fairly certain they've seen many birds, and other objects enough to speculate that what they saw wasn't mundane. We should be able to agree on that point, and I'm a skeptic as well. But, I'm not going to assume that experienced naval pilots don't know what they're talking about in this specific instance, just because I'm a skeptic.

Okay, good points. But, the ''burden of proof'' may vary from skeptic to skeptic. Maybe most ''believers'' accept any claim (that's not MR, by the way) and maybe most skeptics refute every claim. There needs to be a meeting of the minds somewhere in the middle, no? What would that look like to you?

(continued below)

 

Continued from James' replies:

Again, the burden of proof is a pretty tall order...but, you could be right in that if non-skeptics expect skeptics to believe in something extraordinary, then perhaps extraordinary evidence would need to be presented. (an opinion stated throughout this thread by others)

I'll refer to what I've stated above, in that MR has denied making the claim that space aliens emphatically exist. It seems to me, that what he believes in is some of the video footage and eye witness claims that could make a case for the existence of aliens, or at the very least technologies that we don't presently have at our disposal. (that we know of)

In all of the videos MR has posted, the tic tac video seems like it would be the most worthy of serious assessment, because of who reported those videos. Experienced naval pilots that have likely seen many ''flying objects'' over the years, and seemed genuinely astonished by what they saw, relating to that 'tic tac' video. Mere astonishment isn't enough of course to conclude, ''yes, it's aliens'' but it should pique our curiosity to investigate with more sincerity. The problem with alleged ''UFO/UAP" sightings is that they're one and done, and we have to rely on the integrity of the claimants delivering the video footage, photos, etc., leaving us with only more questions.

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As an aside, we may not be able to solve the problem if aliens exist right now, but I'd settle for being able to post more than 1000 characters per post. Ugh, that's just soul crushing when you forget that SF ''rule'', and try to post a lengthy response, only to see that red warning message ...my heart sank, fearing I had lost the entire post. lol

I'll unpack more of your replies later, James. You do take the time to post thoughtful responses, and I think you deserve that in return.