UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Probably best of you don't.

But getting back to your post #2832, a large fraction of the population believing that UFOs exist is a completely different animal from believing virtually every decades-old anecdote and every bright light in the sky is compelling evidence for UFOs.

The public deserves some credit for critical thinking; they didn't fall off the last turnip truck.

 

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Your frantic attempts to find the slightest inconsistency in my posts is tedious, pedantic, and anal. Get a real life.

 

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I'm here to discuss. This thread is about space aliens. You raised a point in-thread about whether it is abnormal to believe in such things. I am responding to that. The analogy you made is flawed.

If you don't want to discuss the normalcy of what you do or don't believe in, don't raise it as a point for discussion. This is not a blog.


Heck, I won't even call you out for the hypocritical ad hom about 'my life'. And I'll ignore the "peerrrrsooonalllll atttaaaackkkkk".
I'm such a giver.

Now, back on-topic.

 

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And that's an argument. Stop ducking and weaving and accept that you are a fringer.

 

You misspelled

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See my avatar. I know when/how/why to use salty language.

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Aye aye sir

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Don't call me "sir", my parents were married.





To each other.

 

Captain? Acceptable?

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We believe strangers all the time. A group of people is talking about some product, and somebody says, "those are on sale today at..." I'll be inclined to believe it. A university professor says something in a classroom and his/her students are inclined to believe it. A textbook says something and students are inclined to do the same. (Pretty much everything that anyone on Sciforums believes they know about science was learned that way.) And on and on... Civilization is only possible if we believe other people more often than not. (And by a significant margin too. That suggests an interesting Bayesian/game-theoretical problem in formal epistemology. How large must that margin be in order for social groups of various kinds to function?)

In science one typically trusts (however fallibilistically) the reported results of experiments. People talk about 'confirmation' and 'replication' until they are blue in the face, but that's just multiplying trust in experience, whether one's own or another person's.

But believing others isn't a license for credulity. Nothing that other people say must be (or even should be) accepted as necessarily true. Neither are the conclusions drawn from one's own experience necessarily true. There's always going to be the possibility of error (or in some cases intentional deception). The possibility of error is going to depend on the circumstances and the topic. More hypothetical and speculative subjects will have higher probabilities of error. And the possibility of intentional deception will rise if those speaking are personally invested in what is being said. (Financially, politically, emotionally...) That probably applies to one's self as well.

That would probably depend on how we define 'God'. If 'God' means the character from the Bible, then one could say that ghosts are far more empirical. One experiences hauntings in ways that one doesn't typically experience that sort of God. If 'God' means whatever is ultimately responsible for reality itself, then reality itself might arguably be convincing evidence of whatever reality's unknown explanation is.

But yes. In my opinion as an agnostic, I agree that MR is rather inconsistent in his firm desire to believe in ghosts combined with an equally emotional hostility towards belief in God. I think that it has more to do with his rejection of the fundamentalism of his youth than with philosophy.

Well, literally they don't. A lie is intentional deception, and being inanimate objects, photographs don't have intentions, they just are.

Certainly a cunningly crafted photograph might be used by a photographer in hopes of persuading others of an untruth.

Human perception isn't a simple one-step thing. At one extreme, there's simply physiological reaction to stimuli (sound, light, mechanical pressure...). That's simply causal and doesn't seem to introduce much scope for error (and none for intentional deception). But there are also the conclusions drawn from that kind of physiological stimulation. There's huge scope for error there.

That's where MR's many ghost and ufo pictures fail to persuade me of the conclusions that he may or may not want to draw from them. There's a photograph with some sort of spectral image on it (hard to argue with that), and there's the conclusion that disembodied souls exist and continue to physically manifest in peculiar vaporous form (I'm hugely doubtful about that). I think that there's a huge leap between the former and the latter that cries out for better justification.

Having said that, I think that our (misnamed) skeptics are making a similar error when they interpret all evidence of ufos or hauntings as produced by mundane causes. They don't really know that either, and are just introducing it as an assumption. That assumption might perhaps be justified by an argument similar to Hume's argument regarding miracles, but that would require additional intelligent argument. Little one-line expressions of sarcasm and contempt don't suffice.

 

I was "captain" of a PBR.

 

LOL

When someone posts a picture or video under the title ''In defence of space aliens'' what is that person saying?
And, if you want to be taken serious, you should drop the following ''conversation'' killer mentality:

Perhaps, you could help your friend start a thread with a more suitable title.

 

It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's Captain Acceptable and his sidekick, Adequate-Boy.

 

As MR eloquently pointed out, my short-hand list is out-of-context, making your criticisms hasty.

In-context, with the conditions that I have not listed here, these are absolutely preposterous.

Example (paraphrased):
- photo shows the foggy breath of an off-camera rescue worker
- "that's the victim's soul rising from the car"
- "don't be silly, that's just a cloud of mist"
- "photographs don't lie"

Of course you and I know, it is the interpretation of the photo that's a lie; but "photos don't lie" is a ridiculous argument.

Recall, what spawned my list is MR's victim plea: "...trying to portray me here as some stupid and gullible fool who needs to be educated on how to think properly."
Yeah, he's doing a fine job of that himself.

 

Patrol Boat Rower?

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Not "interpret"; "allow for".

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Example: MR posts a video of banging door. No weird disembodied apparitions, no nothing.
For all the available evidence in the video, an air current, or a hoax might as well be the explanation.
It's the same across all MR's posts. A shiny light in the sky does not mean UFO.

What we've have been asking for, all this time, is evidence that does not trivially have a mundane explanation.

 

Yeah, that always strikes me as a fallacious argument from incredulity: that because I personally find ghosts or ufos too unbelievable, the evidence for them must be either fake or mundane-caused. That's also a sort confirmation bias against the proposition that these things exist. That no real evidence for ghosts and ufos can exist because I don't believe in those things. It'd be like a juror member denying from the start all evidence that the criminal is guilty because they just believe he is innocent. Ironically, so called "skeptics" become some of the most staunch and desperate defenders of their own dogmatic beliefs and assumptions. A desperation exposed with every flimsy explanation they present, like "air current from piping gaps" and "night backpackers" and the planet Venus.

 

Not "must be"; "can be".
Therefore, not compelling. Discerning minds are not compelled to conclude UFOs.

It can exist. No one would be more delighted than a skeptic to find compelling evidence*. You just don't have any.

*Why do you think we frequent discussions about UFOs? We are absolutely interested in finding compelling phenomena.

 

Depends on how well the engineman did his job.

 

You have it backwards. It's because the "evidence" is not compelling that we don't believe in ghosts or saucer people.

I personally think it is almost certain that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I just don't think they have ever come here because:

1. There's no compelling evidence that they are or ever were here.
2. We can't figure out how they would get here.