wegs:
I don’t believe that space aliens are visiting earth, if they exist at all. I’ve made that pretty clear throughout the thread, but you lump me in with “UFO believers.”
What? Where did I lump you in with UFO believers?
Before we go further, do you believe that the only two camps when it comes to UFO’s are “space aliens” or “mundane (weather balloons, birds, etc) occurrences?”
Did you read anything I wrote? It looks like you skipped over most of it.
I don’t believe you think this way but your response to me above is kind of confusing.
What's confusing about it?
You're critical of Mick West. I invited you to choose one of Mick West's "debunking" videos and point out the flaws that you see in his analysis. If you're just going to make generalised complaints about him being a debunker, that's not very helpful, for reasons I pointed out at some length.
When it comes to Mick West, he is known by his “fans” as a debunker. No question.
Okay. So what?
It matters because he only comes from a mindset of debunking, so his analysis will always lean towards debunkery.
He's trying to work out what the reported UFOs are. That's more than what any of the UFO believer crowd is doing.
If a UFO turns out to be mundane, then any claim that the UFO is the woo is debunked, obviously. If, on the other hand, the UFO cannot be positively IDed as something mundane, then it remains an open possibility that it's the woo. Finally, if there was ever actual
evidence for the woo, then we could shut the case on the UFO by proclaiming the world's first confirmed discovery of alien craft, or whatever. That hasn't happened yet, as you know.
If you're worried about debunkers trying to debunk, maybe you should encourage the Believers to get off their lazy arses and gather some evidence to
prove that their UFOs are the woo. Why should the skeptics do all the work? What's wrong with believers?
Here’s an example - he basically stated in his analysis of the tic tac video, that the movements of the tic tac object “weren’t anything out of the ordinary.”
Did he give reasons for making that statement? Were his reasons correct or incorrect? Can you point to any errors in his analysis?
So, why doesn’t the Pentagon agree with him?
We don't know what "the Pentagon" thinks. Besides, the Pentagon is a whole bunch of different people. Who are you talking about, exactly?
And experienced navy pilots who witnessed it?
We know that a couple of pilots thought that what they were seeing was out of the ordinary. Unlike West and yourself, however, they were making judgments in the heat of the moment, while concentrating on flying an aeroplane etc. You and I and Mick West have had lots of time to review the evidence, including things that the pilots did not know at the time.
Now, you might complain that one or two pilots
still think what they saw was the woo, years after the events, having had an opportunity to review similar material that we have been reviewing here. That's fine; they are welcome to their opinions and beliefs, of course.
What I'm wondering is: why do you put so much stock in the pilots' opinions on what they saw? Do you think the pilots are infallible?
We should believe this one guy who is a well-known debunker over the government?
You're wondering who to trust, again. Stop doing that. It's not about deciding who to trust.
The odds that it’s an alien spacecraft are low, but my problem is that he states the movement of the object was nothing out of the ordinary.
Did you listen to the reasons he gives? What do you think about the reasons? What is wrong with his analysis? Not the vibe - the actual details of what he did.
When your motive is to debunk, you close your mind to other possibilities.
What if your motive is to try to work out what the UFO was?
You seem to be suggesting that Mick West is a dishonest fellow who would be willing to conceal or ignore relevant information so that he could falsely claim to have "debunked" a UFO sighting.
If you have identified something that West has ignored or told lies about, please let us know. We can work out whether Mick West really is as biased and terrible as the picture you paint of him.
Why have you made no attempt to actually detail your objections to his analyses, so far? Why can't you point to a single technical flaw in any of his analyses? And, if you can't point out any actual flaws, why do you persist in criticising him on the vague grounds of what you presume his motivations are?
James posted:
“Here's what I imagine might be underneath your distaste for West (and what seems to be your growing distaste for other skeptics): I think that maybe you think "Those men (it's mostly men!) think they know everything, but there are lots of mysteries in the world. They are arrogant and over-confident about their own intellectual powers. Who are they to say that there are no alien spaceships? They are far too quick to dismiss every sighting of an unexplained thing as a mundane object. But it stands to reason that at least some unexplained UFOs are likely to turn out to be something unexpected and amazing. Those guys have no imagination, and they all sound like party poopers who want the world to be dull and boring, like them."
Wow, James. lol I’m surprised you went this route.
Am I wrong, then?
But, again, I don’t personally believe that space aliens if they exist, have the capability to visit earth.
Does that even matter? My previous post didn't talk about your belief or lack of belief in aliens. Did you read any of it?
I’m not into space alien theories, but I don’t think Mick West is boring or unimaginative…and I don’t have an issue because he’s a man. He’s a garden variety debunker who has found a way to gain social media attention (he’s on TikTok, now lol) and money and praise by debunking. And that’s fine, he can do whatever he wants, but I don’t trust everything he has to say about UAP’s.
What did I say about trust in my previous post? Did you read any of it?
I feel like I’m in a really long, drawn out, painful game of chess, but there are no winners.
Why not forget all the personality-based crap and just concentrate on looking at where the evidence leads for the UFO cases? Stop deciding who to trust or whose story makes you feel good, or whatever. Stop second-guessing people's motivations. Stop making unfounded personal accusations.
Well, that’s why I’m asking if he believes there is room for human-made advanced technology in his analysis of these UAP’s. To me, that is the greatest possibility.
Of course there's room for that. In fact, West has posted a number of analyses of reported UFO in which he confirms, beyond reasonable doubt, that the reported UFO were advanced human-made technology (e.g. commercial jet airliners).
I find it odd that no one knows for sure.
About what?
Don't forget that, probably, 90%+ of reported UFOs are easily identifiable as ordinary, "mundane" objects. For the other 10% (say) of UFOs that have not yet been identified, a lot of the time the problem is that the available evidence is just too poor to make it possible to make a positive ID with high confidence. There might be 1% of UFO cases that are interesting enough (in terms of the amount of data potentially, if not actually, available) to make them the subject of ongoing debate.
There's lots of things no one knows for sure. Nobody except me knows for sure what I ate for breakfast this morning. But if you had to guess, I think that ghost wheeties or UFO flakes will probably be pretty low on your list of likely possibilities.
The really funny thing is that even though there's a significant community of people who believe wholeheartedly that the aliens are here on Earth, not a single one of them is motivated enough to try to did up sufficient evidence to put their claim beyond reasonable doubt. Why is that, do you think?
But, if we keep calling extraordinary occurrences “weather balloons,” we may never find out.
Did you read anything in my previous post? You speak as if skeptics just knee-jerk say "It must be a weather balloon" when confronted with any UFO sighting. That's not what happens. Skeptics say UFOs are likely to be weather balloons when there is sufficient evidence to make the weather-balloon explanation a viable and plausible explanation. That is, they make a best-guess judgment
after examining the available data, not before. You might like to compare and contrast this with
modus operandi of a True Believer like Magical Realist, whose first statement in every case tends to be along the lines of stating that the UFO "cannot possibly be" a mundane object. He does that
before he looks at the data, every time. In fact, he rarely looks at the data at all. He isn't interested in trying to work out what the UFO actually was, because he has decided well in advanced what it was (or, at least, what it
wasn't).
NASA’s latest team designed to take these matters more seriously, hopefully will get us closer to the truth.
Skeptics have been taking this stuff seriously
for decades. I don't know why you think NASA is special, or likely to do a better job.
