UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[James R]

Yazata,

I knew my last post would attract you. You always appear defensively when you think "skeptics" are being criticised.

Were you trying to bait me? If so, congratulations are in order, I suppose? You know I'm a skeptic.

I think some of your criticisms of skeptics are flawed, especially the ones based on your Big Lie that holds that skeptics have already made up their minds about claims before they examine them.

I'm still not sure what the word "paranormal" means in your mind or why it is so intolerable that somebody else might believe in whatever it is.

paranormal (n.): (1.) Seemingly outside normal sensory channels. (2) Not in accordance with scientific laws.

Like it or not, I have little choice but to tolerate believers in the paranormal. For starters, there's just so damn many of them! I'm outnumbered.

I have already explained at some length as to why believing in the paranormal, in the absence of any good evidence for it, is an error in thinking. I am rather resigned to the reality that a really huge number of people believe in all kinds of things for all kinds of really bad reasons, though. The paranormal is just one example of that kind of thing, and not even the most important sort of example, although it does tend to produce a whole bunch of negative flow-on effects. What we believe tends to affect how we act. When we believe for bad reasons, we also often go on to act for bad reasons.

Skeptics as I encounter them are people who make it their primary business to attack other people's beliefs.

Do you care about what is true? I think you do. If you do, it follows that, at least in some cases, you might want to argue for the truth in the face of falsehood. In some cases, I would argue it is a moral imperative to do so, even when it involves "attacking other people's beliefs". Don't you agree?

My point is twofold. First, the movement "skeptics" are misusing the word 'skeptic'. And second, I hope to point out their hypocrisy, in how they are all about debunking other people's beliefs, while rarely if ever applying the same critical scrutiny to what they themselves believe.

They (we) aren't misusing the word. As far as applying critical scrutiny "in house" goes, that is something you might not be aware of, looking from the "outside", but it certainly goes on, I assure you.

Personally, I'm open to having discussions which critically scrutinise my own beliefs. It's a fantastic way to expose flaws in my own thinking and to learn new things. It's one reason I'm here on sciforums.

I've probably made a couple of hundred posts in this thread and I challenge anyone interested to find a post where I used the word 'paranormal' or argued for it, whatever it is.

You might not use the word, but you often talk about how there may be things "beyond science" or things that we can't know about through our senses. I'd say you've advocated for it pretty thoroughly, even on the current topic of UFOs.

My own position (stated repeatedly) is more along the lines of opining that this "normal" reality that we all inhabit is less understood than most people imagine. My view is that the unknown is always present, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

That's not actually saying anything that is controversial. No skeptic here has ever claimed that we know everything that there is to know, or that science is complete, or anything like that. We have claimed that there's no good evidence for things "beyond the senses" and similar - i.e. paranormal things.

Well, if much of the reality around us is poorly understood, it isn't unreasonable to think that reality might sometimes surprise us with things that we don't expect.

I agree.

Right. We all, self-styled "skeptics" included, have a set of faith commitments. Scientists do it just like everyone else. They have faith in mathematics, in reason and in objective reality, beliefs that I doubt any of them can satisfactorily justify in non-circular fashion.

Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Nobody needs to have "faith" in mathematics. In mathematics, assertions are either proven or not proven. It's black and white. There are axioms in every formal system, of course, which are necessarily unprovable using that particular system. There's the unexpected messiness uncovered by Godel. But axioms in mathematics are recognised as such. They are working assumptions. We acknowledge, consciously, that they might not be true.

Similarly, "reason" does not require faith. Experience shows that reason works as advertised. There are some assumptions there, too, of course, but although unprovable they, and the deductions drawn using them, are consistent with experience.

Few people other than philosophers ever seriously question that there is an objective reality. The philosophers can't provide any evidence or convincing argument that there isn't one, so like much else it turns out to be a most useful working assumption. As a philosopher, you might argue that there's no evidence that there is an objective reality, but then your friend, the philosopher across the room, will politely inform you that you're wrong about that and, in fact, everything we perceive is evidence of an objective reality. You can go back and forth on that with him if you like.

I certainly have my own faith commitments in that regard, a whole set of beliefs that I consider highly credible and as close to certain as a human being is likely to get. I expect that my faith commitments are very close to yours, actually. The difference is that I'm willing to look at them with a critical eye.

The difference is that you're unwilling to recognise that I am quite able and willing to look at them with a critical eye. Indeed, I have already spent some time doing just that.

 

[James R]

(continued...)

I take that willingness to be the essence of real skepticism. It's a reflective-awareness that our movement "skeptics" seem to me to lack. So they aren't really skeptics at all in my opinion, they are just another variety of true-believer who happen to firmly believe that they know "woo" when they see it and that it is to be battled wherever it appears.

It doesn't take adherence to a dogma to recognise "woo". We're talking about critical thinking here, remember, Yazata.

Here you are, crowing about your superior thinking powers, which transcend those of mere skeptics such as myself. Yet you want me to believe that you can't see the obvious holes in the thinking (if you can call it that) of somebody like Magical Realist, on the topic of UFOs or ghosts?

There's no need to have faith that believers in woo are shoddy thinkers. You only need to look at the evidence. Listen to them. Talk to them. Observe what they do. Observe what they accept to be true, and the basis on which they accept those things.

This isn't hard. You don't have to be Socrates to spot the errors in thinking when it comes to this stuff.

The similarities to some of the more disagreeable aspects of the Abrahamic religions should be obvious. (At least heretics are now flamed on the internet, not at the stake, a vast improvement.)

No skeptic in the "movement", as far as I am aware, has ever advocated for any form of physical violence against believers in any kind of "woo". In fact, those in the "skeptical movement" tend, far more often than not, to be vocal advocates for freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Nice try at smearing skeptics with the worst excesses of religious bigotry, though, Yazata. Classy.

You still haven't clarified what you mean by "paranormal" or why you include UAPs/UFOs in that category. You need to do that.

Helpfully, Magical Realist has already provided some instructive examples for you. Magical Realist thinks UFOs represent beings from other dimensions, or something like that. That would be an example of a "paranormal" hypothesis to explain UFOs. Ghosts driving magical chariots across the skies. It doesn't get much more paranormal than that!

I was responding to Wegs. She was talking about the new NASA UAP committee. I was just saying that if that committee approaches their task as the suppression of what they already firmly believe is "woo", then the whole exercise to understand the phenomenon is likely to be an intellectual failure. Surely you aren't going to argue with that?

One could say the same if the NASA UAP committee begins with the firm belief that UAPs are alien spacecraft or divine visitations, and that the committee's task is to convince the public of that.

I agree, of course, that it would be an intellectual failure in the cases you mention.

My worry, though, is that you're already getting your excuses ready in case the committee reports back with the very likely "nothing to see here, folks!"

You will explain that away by claiming that they were never open minded in the first place, that the investigation is a sham, etc.

On the other hand, if the committee comes back and says "Hey, guys, we think it might be the woo after all!" I doubt you'll be complaining about the processes and procedures and attitudes then.

We've seen this before, so we know what to expect. Tales of government conspiracies and shady organisations and disinformation black ops. The government has aliens at Area 51, you know, but they ain't tell nobody! It's a white wash.

While the investigation is going on, it's all good, because it attracts more attention for the Cause. New recruits for the Believer Brigade! The problems only come when the investigators finish their work. Then, as usual, the Believers will find excuses to keep right on believing.

I'm quite intentionally posting in his defense. I consider MR a longtime friend. MR would be the first to agree that we don't agree on everything. But he's still a friend and I don't like seeing my friends bullied and used as punching bags. I come to their defense and try to make the bullying a little more difficult.

You think I'm bullying Magical Realist. That's disappointing. It also infantilises him, in my opinion.

He is a willing - eager! - participant in this thread, and more generally on this forum. I have always assumed he is an adult, too. Please correct me if I'm wrong on either count.

Besides, MR and I do fundamentally agree that reality is deeper and more mysterious than most people seem to think. So we resonate together at that point.

How do you know what "most people" think about that? And what makes you think reality is "more mysterious" than I, for example, seem to think? Do you actually have the foggiest idea about how mysterious I might consider reality to be? Based on what?

It seems to me that you're making quite a lot of assumptions about other people's thoughts and opinions. Maybe you should ask them what they think? You might be surprised. It might even turn out that some of them are familiar with the ideas of Socrates and Descartes.

Yes I do. They have access to many observation reports that haven't been made public. And they have access to all of the intelligence assessments that have been made about those reports.

You must be aware that the UAP Preliminary Assessment is basically just an unclassified summary that accompanied a much longer classified report made to the Congressional committee that requested it. According to those that have seen it, that classified report contained many detailed studies of individual UAP reports. The reason why it's classified (apart from the government's hugely anal tendency to classify everything) is that some of these reports reveal technical details about the capabilities of radars and other detection media. (Some UAPs seem to have been detected by satellites.)

Yes, I'm aware of all of that.

I agree with you about the reasons for certain things being classified: both the national security reasons and the anal tendencies reasons.

As to expertise, I don't think that the US military has a monopoly on technical expertise or big analysis brains. When it comes to the investigation of UFO reports, in fact, I think it is very likely that there are plenty of civilian experts who have far more relevant experience and expertise than the military delegates who will be giving the military's cases the once-over.

I would hope that the relevant committee is wise enough to draw on the pool of specific expertise that is already out there, rather than trying to keep everything in a pool of in-house people whose specialities lie outside the realm of UFO investigation. Let's face it, the military doesn't pay people to dedicate their careers to investigating the paranormal, whereas there are some civilian organisations that do exactly that. Drawing on the available pool of talent and experience would also boost the credibility of any final report.

I'll probably give the NASA UAP committee's report (and whatever reports the military and intelligence people produce) more credence than the opinions of our self-proclaimed "skeptics", for the reasons given above. But like I wrote earlier, I'm a fallibilist and I don't believe anything with absolute certainty. There's always the possibility of being wrong.

I think you're hedging your bets. If the report supports your existing opinions, you'll proclaim it to be Good; if it doesn't, you'll find excuses to discredit it.

As for me, I don't expect this report, when it comes out, will do anything significant to change the landscape of UFO believers and skeptics. In all likelihood, I expect the report to conclude that there's still no good evidence for little green men, but there are some UFO reports that lack sufficient data to reach a firm conclusion, which will leave us approximately where we started. The UFO believers will cry "conspiracy!" and claim a cover-up, like they did last time. The believers will go on believing. The skeptics will go on pointing out all the reasons the believers don't have good reason for believing. Life will go on.

 

[James R]

No..I'm claiming it is an unknown object that defies anything known and that parallax or gimballing or radar glitches can't account for because it was seen with the naked eye. That's why it is called a UAP.

You haven't provided anything to show that anything "defies anything known", so far.

I don't suppose you're going to produce anything new on this.

This is just hot air from you, isn't it?

 

[James R]

So now that you know the account is genuine, what mundane cause do you believe matches the observed flight maneuvers of the UAP?

You pack a lot into that "know the account is genuine" phrase. Good try, MR!

We know that a guy called Fravor gave an account in which he reported some stuff and ventured some opinions. All that is genuine. What we want to know is the extent to which Fravor's opinions, among others, comport with objective reality. We certainly don't know whether Fravor's opinions are a "genuine" description of something that actually happened in reality.

There is nothing to explain about any "flight manoeuvres" until we have some reliable data that shows the alleged flight manoeuvres actually occurred.

You have no data, of course. So, where to from here?

 

[James R]

And this is why Mick West is gaining in popularity - skepticism requires no effort really, just toss out a few barbs like “maybe the pilots were mistaken,” or “it could have been a really fast weather balloon,” and that’s enough to end the discussion.

It doesn't look like the discussion has ended.

But I'm interested. Look at Mick West's analysis of the Starlink satellite example, above. Can you see "no effort really", there? Or will you acknowledge that West did, in fact, put in some effort towards explaining that case?

Having got that far, watch West's explanation of the "gimbal" video, for instance. It was posted earlier in the thread, but I can find the link again for you if you need it. What is your assessment of "effort" that went into that video? West explains what he did, in the video, as is typical for him.

Leaving West aside, again, what puzzles me is why you're putting the onus on skeptics to disprove the crazy claims of the tin foil brigade, rather than putting the onus on the believers to provide convincing evidence. Why the double standard? It seems to me that it is belief in little green men that requires "no effort really". All you have to do is believe and not ask (or answer) too many inconvenient questions.

Take our friend Magical Realist, for example. Yet again, he has claimed that the tic tac performed flight manoeuvres that defy the laws of physics (or, at least, the performance characteristics of any known human aircraft or animal). But he can't and won't provide any evidence that any such manoeuvres actually ever happened, other than some opinions by "eyewitnesses" that assume or conclude they must have happened, based on sporadic visual sightings made under conditions where perceptual errors have been shown to be common.

It’s easy to doubt, but not easy to go beyond your doubts, and see if there’s something more to these claims.

Right!

Digging up real evidence and analysing it properly is often hard work.

Don't you find it strange that the UFO Believers, who seemingly have the most to gain if their beliefs turn out to be true, are unwilling to put in the effort necessary to prove their claims to the satisfaction of anyone who isn't already a dedicated believer?

Why are UFO believers so lazy? It's almost as if they don't care whether it's real.

That’s what bugs me about Mick West - he thinks he’s the arbiter of truth when all he is doing is casting doubt, like a defense attorney who doesn’t need to prove anything to win a case.

That's an interesting comparison.

There's a good reason the prosecutors in a criminal case have to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. We don't want to convict innocent people of crimes they didn't commit. To make the analogy, this would be like concluding that a UFO is an alien spaceship, when actually it is just a mistaken sighting of the planet Venus.

This also means that we risk the occasional guilty criminal walking away from court as a free person. By analogy, it could be that the aliens are actually real, but our sensible, high standards of proof mean that we (the skeptics) don't believe in them, regardless.

In the best case scenario, though, we hope that the criminal who got away with it the first time will later be convicted for a subsequent offence. There might even be a new trial if significant new evidence comes to light. The same applies to the UFOs. If there's ever some really convincing evidence, I assure you that the skeptics will, for the most part, become alien believers over night.

Why aren't the UFO believers looking for the smoking gun?

 

[James R]

Yazata:

But in Mick's defense, he does make an effort to concoct his own alternative mundane (in my sense of boring, humdrum, nothing extraordinary) explanations. I don't find them particularly convincing, but he tries at least.

I'll be pleased to hear your thoughts on the Starlink example I provided about. Do you find West's analysis there convincing, or not? Is this the exception to your general rule?

Why don't I find Mick's hypotheses convincing? Well, he often focuses on just one aspect of a complex sighting, such as trying to deconstruct a video while largely ignoring radar and visual confirmation that, if accurate, would make his account totally implausible. He typically treats witnesses as if they are complete idiots, people making the most elementary perceptual errors. Fravor was perhaps the most senior pilot on his carrier, an instructor pilot and a graduate of the Top Gun fighter school. He's a guy whose life depends on being able to accurately track the movements of enemy aircraft trying to get into position to kill him, while making violent maneuvers of his own. He isn't immune from making perceptual errors, but I'd take his word about what he saw over Mick's armchair speculations. (Mick has no comparable aviation experience that I'm aware of.)

Do you have an example of a case where there was radar and visual "confirmation" (of what?) which Mick West ignored in his analysis? I am most interested to see some evidence that supports your accusations.

Maybe you and wegs can work together to come up with a suitable example showing West's wilful ignoring of some relevant evidence.

As for Fravor, his expertise at spotting and tracking enemy aircraft would not necessarily help him to assess and correctly identify something seen under unusual circumstances. For instance, I'm not sure how familiar he would be with identifying, by eye alone, objects or animals flying low over water, far beneath his own aircraft.

It is interesting that, like Magical Realist, you think you need to decide who to trust to get to the bottom of this. You need to take somebody's word for it. That's probably why you're having so much trouble.

It's strange. You admit that Fravor could have made "perceptual errors", but you're still willing to "take his word" for whatever he says he though the tic tac was. Why is that? Because you don't like Mick West and you're drawn to Fravor's sunnier disposition?

Sure, Fravor has "aviation experience" that West might lack. But West has UFO analysis experience that Fravor probably lacks. So, if you're all about taking somebody's word for it, it seems to me you have a conundrum that you really ought to give a little more thought to.

I would suggest that the better approach is to stop just "taking people's word" for stuff, and start looking for corroborating evidence, particularly when it comes to establishing extraordinary claims.

I think that it's increasingly clear that something extraordinary (outside the bounds of ordinary experience) is physically there in some of these cases, and that whatever it is displays behavior that's hard to explain away with facile mundane (nothing extraordinary) speculations.

What made it increasingly clear to you? Did you gather more and more evidence? Or did you just take more and more people's word for it?

That's the value of Fravor's report in my opinion. Trying to ridicule those who see and detect these things into silence for fear of career damage is just stupidity in my opinion.

Has somebody done that with Fravor? Who?

The phenomenon needs to be investigated with an open mind, assuming that is even possible in this day and age when the whole issue has become highly divisive and ideological between opposing groups of true-believers.

You ought to be able to do better than raise that kind of false equivalency straw man, Yazata. Shame on you.

I don't want to totally dismiss the possibility of space aliens.

Nobody wants to do that, your Big Lie notwithstanding.

The mere fact that some people will try to insult me to death if I take the possibility of aliens seriously (however remote it might be) doesn't deter me.

Another straw man. Nobody has criticised you for taking the possibility of aliens seriously. All the skeptics here have done exactly the same thing.

 

[James R]

Why are aliens so improbable?

It's really hard to estimate the a priori probability of aliens.

They might indeed be improbable, or they might not. It depends on what assumptions you put into the probability calculation.

Please google "Drake equation" and read the relevant wikipedia article. It will give you an introduction to what is involved in making the estimate. Note that the probability that aliens are visiting Earth is (obviously) less probable than the probability that aliens exist in the first place.

For the purposes of the current discussion, a priori estimates of probability aren't really relevant, though. If you believe the aliens are here, you must have reasons for believing that, right? So you don't need a probability calculation. You just need to tell us all why you believe aliens are here. Some evidence would be really useful, too, though Yazata would probably be happy to just take your word for it over Mick West's.

If you've got evidence, please feel free to offer it up any time.

 

[James R]

Someone from 100,000 years in the future would imo see our physics books as Grimm's fairytales.

No. They will see them as a reasonable approximation to a more advanced theory, in some appropriate limit.

We know we haven't got physics "wrong". We just don't know it all yet.

 

[James R]

I have never understood how skeptics can claim to be scientific and have no sense of awe and wonder at the mysterious nature of the universe.

It is no surprise that you're unfamiliar with skeptical writings about the mysterious nature of the universe. You ought to read more widely. You might learn something.

Also, perhaps best not to comment on things you know nothing about. Just a little advice. Asking questions is good.

Reality if nothing else is practically defined as what goes beyond our grasp. It is inherently transcendent and surpasses even the most ingenious of us to totally understand it and define it.

How religious of you.

So it seems to follow that it will occasionally manifest enigmatic phenomena that we are baffled by. UAP's seem to be one of these obstinate little mysteries that skeptics hope will just go away by being mocked as "woo" and so ignored.

Never fear, MR. Your woo is not being ignored.

 

[James R]

Read an article earlier about a CIA agent confessing on his ''death bed'' that aliens are real, and that Area 51 is keeping them secret.

Question everything!

Who wrote the article? Was the CIA agent identified, or anonymous? Who heard the confession? Who recorded it? The key question is: how do we know this actually happened? Can we check the facts?

This sounds like an urban myth to me.

One of the reader comments: ''The government is keeping this a secret because humanity would plummet into total chaos.'' Something like that. (I couldn't copy and paste the link for some reason.)

Why would society plummet into total chaos if there was proof of extraterrestrial life?

Good question! Do you think it would?

 

[DaveC426913]

Yesterday I saw a UFO. It was during the day, buzzing a commercial jet flying overhead. I took note of the time of day, the sky viz, viewing direction, estimated altitude and shape of the object, which was pretty visible. It looked a whole bunch like a flying car (i.e. a car without wheels - like the submersible Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me).

I was looking forward to posting my findings and all the details here, so you can imagine how disappointed I was to wake up and discover I'd dreamt the whole thing - including the part about writing up the account and posting it here.

 

[wegs]

Yesterday I saw a UFO. It was during the day, buzzing a commercial jet flying overhead. I took note of the time of day, the sky viz, viewing direction, estimated altitude and shape of the object, which was pretty visible. It looked a whole bunch like a flying car (i.e. a car without wheels - like the submersible Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me).

I was looking forward to posting my findings and all the details here, so you can imagine how disappointed I was to wake up and discover I'd dreamt the whole thing - including the part about writing up the account and posting it here.

lol! I was going to say, why didn’t you take a pic and post it here??

 

[Yazata]

I appreciate your friendship Yazata and have for the over 20 years I have known you virtually.

Thanks, MR. You and CC are kind of my online virtual family and I appreciate both of you very much.

And we do both share a common view of reality harboring mysteries and secrets we have yet to encounter.

All we have to do is ask 'why' about anything, ask 'why' again when we get an answer... and we will find that we are at the frontiers of human knowledge after only a few iterations. Pretty much all of our beliefs just kind float in the air like that.

I guess that I'm expressing my personal skepticism about foundationalism.

https://iep.utm.edu/foundationalism-in-epistemology/

I have never understood how skeptics can claim to be scientific and have no sense of awe and wonder at the mysterious nature of the universe.

I expect that some of them do. Carl Sagan is famous for chanting his reverent "billions and billions" (as beautiful astronomical photos appeared on the screen and the music swelled) which expressed his own awe at the scale of the universe. But no matter how large the universe is, I doubt if Carl the astrophysicist ever felt much doubt about his principles of astrophysics. Which would suggest that he probably thought that while he didn't know precisely what is happening on all those 'billions and billions' of exoplanets, he did expect that he knew the rules of the game that constrain all events that can possibly happen anywhere and anywhen.

To me it just follows from the inherent limitation of our hominid brain trying to grasp its ultimate situation.

Yes. I agree and so did Albert Einstein in his later years. It was Einstein that noted that out of all the animal species on Earth, only human beings can comprehend the laws of physics. So is it not hubris to assume that human beings are the apex of all possible cognition anywhere in the universe and that there can't be aspects of reality that are as far beyond our intellectual powers as Maxwell's equations are beyond the understanding of a cockroach? (I have that from a professor who knew Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. My guess is that might have been Einstein's response to struggling with the ontology of quantum mechanics which he might have suspected the human mind is unsuited to understand.)

Reality if nothing else is practically defined as what goes beyond our grasp. It is inherently transcendent and surpasses even the most ingenious of us to totally understand it and define it.

I'm inclined to agree with that, though obviously I can't prove it. (How would one go about proving it?)

So it seems to follow that it will occasionally manifest enigmatic phenomena that we are baffled by. UAP's seem to be one of these obstinate little mysteries that skeptics hope will just go away by being mocked as "woo" and so ignored.

They might be, or maybe not. Perhaps they do all have more "mundane" (familiar, uninteresting, humdrum) explanations. But it does seem to be inexcusable hubris to assume that reality can't behave in unexpected ways or that the mission of rational people must be to defeat any suggestion that it can.

 

[Magical Realist]

MR said "Reality if nothing else is practically defined as what goes beyond our grasp. It is inherently transcendent and surpasses even the most ingenious of us to totally understand it and define it."

James R said: "How religious of you."

Not so religious as mystical. Mystical in the sense of being in awe and wonder at the incredible reality I am surrounded by and at my conscious grasp of its presence and meticulous orderliness. I am not driven by a faith in some invisible divinity. I am rather inspired by the self-evident fact of an immediately accessible yet infinitely transcendent Being and of being aware of this fact in the depths of my very soul.

 

[C C]

Thanks, MR. You and CC are kind of my online virtual family and I appreciate both of you very much.

Ditto, you and MR. Especially in terms of the years, and still surviving even after the leap from that original firewalled community subservient to a web device with only 2MB to 16MB of memory.

_

 

[Magical Realist]

James R said: We know that a guy called Fravor gave an account in which he reported some stuff and ventured some opinions. All that is genuine. What we want to know is the extent to which Fravor's opinions, among others, comport with objective reality. We certainly don't know whether Fravor's opinions are a "genuine" description of something that actually happened in reality.

So that is just your opinion isn't it? An opinion biased by an agenda to debunk all uap sightings as mundane objects. So we have the direct firsthand account of an experienced pilot of the uap based on empirical observation and confirmed by another pilot and radar, and we have your opinion, based on nothing but armchair speculation and confirmation bias. Which is more reliable? Hmmm...

 

[DaveC426913]

So that is just your opinion isn't it? An opinion biased by an agenda to debunk all uap sightings as mundane objects.

1.
This is an ad hom. You are attacking the arguer, not the argument. That is not a valid rebuttal. (It is also merely your opinion** that the arguer has a biased agenda to debunk all uap sightings as mundane objects.)

What is notable about such an ad hom is the implication that - since you think your best foot forward is to attack the arguer - you implicitly acknowledge that you can find no fault with his argument. That's tantamount to a concession and James R's argument stands unrebutted.



2. **Your opinion is wrong.

James R says "We certainly don't know whether Fravor's opinions are a "genuine" description of something that actually happened in reality."

That is not an opinion of James R's, that is a statement of objective logic. When someone claims they experienced something, we do not know if it actually happened, Generally we choose to believe it when people tell us things, but that's not good enough in such instances.

eg. What would you do if your friend Bob claimed he spoke to God? Would you concede that, because he said it, it must correspond to reality?

Or would you acknowledge that it may not have been a genuine description of reality? That you can't know it was. Logically, objectively, you must.

 

[wegs]

(continued...)


The complaint that skeptics think they are the smartest people in the room comes up surprisingly often. Two things to consider here: (1) What if they are the smartest people in the room? Somebody has to be, in any room, after all. (2) What if accusing people of thinking they are smart is just sour grapes from people whose fervent beliefs happen to have been debunked?

Again, for the sake of argument, let us suppose that West is an arrogant know-it-all who always assumes he is the smartest person in the room. That might make him an unlikable person, but would it make him wrong about UFOs?

"We don't know" isn't actually an explanation, though, is it?

An explanation is "This video shows some Starlink satellites, and here's why..." or "This video shows an alien spaceship, and here's why ..."

Explaining something means you give reasons why the thing is the way it is. Importantly, explanations almost always reference evidence.

"We don't know" is just a placeholder for ignorance. It is not a problem to say "we don't know" when we don't know, but, at the same time, wanting to know the answer is not a personality flaw.

Please give an example of where he has pushed his speculations as an explanation.

It is my impression that he is careful to stick to what he can show using the available evidence - unlike the True Believers in aliens etc.

It's strange. It's almost as if you're saying that having a bias towards wanting to get to the truth through rational thinking and critical analysis is a bad thing.

On the other hand, you've spent some time stating your opinion that West doesn't really want to get to the truth at all. Rather, you'd say, he is just out to "debunk" UFOs at any cost, presumably because he enjoys the notoriety he gains from doing that. In other words, you're essentially accusing him of having bad intentions and of being less than honest.

So, can you show that West has been dishonest? Got an example in mind that we can work through?

A strange comment, from where I'm standing.

Take a look at the case of the Starlink satellites, in my post up above. Did West solve anything there, in your opinion? Is there something wrong with his analysis there? Does his bias affect the legitimacy of his results there?

In my opinion, West actually is an expert when it comes to analysing UFO reports. Perhaps you could explain what you, personally, require to consider somebody an expert analyser of UFO reports. Because West seems like the real deal to me. As far as I am aware, he has university-level qualifications in a science or engineering disclipline. Perhaps more importantly, he has a long track record of investigating and "solving" UFO cases.

It sounds like you believe that skeptics often cherry-pick cases. I have a suggestion, then: find yourself a UFO cases which you believe skeptics have ignored or downplayed and bring it here. We can all discuss it - even the skeptics like me, who would otherwise want to ignore it due to our bias and dishonesty.

If your accusation is true, don't you find it surprising that the UFO Believer brigade hasn't convincingly exposed all the dishonest skeptics for the frauds they so obviously are, before now? Why is that, do you think?

Are you accusing West of using "alternative facts" to get the answers he wants?

The facts are the facts. In the Starlink satellite example I have provided, do you think West has faked things? Has he faked the satellite tracks to match up with the video? Or has he doctored the video to match the satellite tracks? Or is there some other kind of fraud?

See, the problem with making that kind of allegation is that the facts can be checked. In principle, you could even do it yourself, since West has helpfully explained how he arrived at his conclusions. The original poster of the original UFO youtube video is also available for an interview, in principle.

West has not, to my knowledge, claimed that he has "solved" the tic tac case. That's not the same as saying it has "stumped him", of course.

I don't claim to have solved the tic tac case, either, but I wouldn't say I'm "stumped" by it, either. There are a range of "mundane" possible explanations that certainly can't be ruled out for that one, and (as usual) no good evidence that any aliens were involved. So, while this one remains "un-debunked" or "unknown", we can say certainly that nothing compelling points towards aliens, so far.

I’m on my phone and not going to respond to every quote but in a nutshell, my view on West is that he is exactly like the conspiracy theorist or the radical UFO believer who says “it’s aliens,” just on the complete other end of the spectrum. I believe he has some insightful, thoughtful opinions and he seems passionate about debunking UFO sightings. There’s nothing wrong with that and experienced pilots aren’t immune to making mistakes. But, West will only ever debunk and that’s not exactly someone looking for the truth.

I’m a skeptic, James, but I’m in the middle of the spectrum, so that means that I don’t conclude that aliens exist or even advanced technology of this world exists, based on say the tic tac video. But, saying “the odds of it being a weather balloon is pretty small,” is still too woo-ish I guess for West.

That would be the truth, though.

I can appreciate debunkers though, as long as they can admit when something unusual is a mystery. Truthfully, we should all be skeptics and not debunkers because skeptics hold out judgement until they have sufficient proof of whatever the claim may be. And that’s not West.

 

[DaveC426913]

Truthfully, we should all be skeptics and not debunkers because skeptics hold out judgement until they have sufficient proof of whatever the claim may be.

I think such labels are dangerous. The difference between a skeptic and a debunker is in the eye of the beholder. It would be better to examine the actual arguments and decide on a case-by-case basis, if they objectively hold water.

And that’s not West.

The point is, there is no need to "trust" or "distrust" anyone. It doesn't matter whether its West of someone else - just review the arguments and decide for yourself if they hold water.

 

[wegs]

I think such labels are dangerous. The difference between a skeptic and a debunker is in the eye of the beholder. It would be better to examine the actual arguments and decide on a case-by-case basis, if they objectively hold water.


The point is, there is no need to "trust" or "distrust" anyone. It doesn't matter whether its West of someone else - just review the arguments and decide for yourself if they hold water.

That's right. Agree. But, if we're honest, we tend to gravitate towards people who think like us. West has a fan club of sorts.

I think that West doesn't look at all of the information given to him. He tends to look at the information that will confirm his bias as a debunker. If he were a garden variety skeptic, he'd have an easier time saying ''we don't know, it's honestly a mystery for now.''