Belief in alien visits to Earth is spiralling out of control – here’s why that’s so dangerous

[billvon]

Einstein and QM pioneers did just that.

Except they didn't "supercede" any basic physical laws - just added some caveats.

The "over-unity" community is not made up of physicists trying to work on basic science - it's a collection of cranks who believe in massive conspiracies meant to keep them from their dream of free power. You see this with magnet motors, overbalance wheels, the carburetor that runs on water (but that the oil companies have been suppressing) etc.

Today anyone with a Facebook account can create misinformation - and thousands do. Thus a gullible rube can surround himself with misinformation from literally thousands of sources and claim that their woo is well supported. Free energy is just one of the many such conspiracies out there. It's more a symptom of how easy it is to create misinformation (and much some people want to believe it) than anything to do with changing physics.

This is especially sad because there ARE ways to get what is effectively free energy nowadays - but the conspiracy theorists will never see them. Indeed, once a technology is proven (say, solar-PV or betavoltaics) the free-energy community immediately loses interest in them, and returns to insisting that the government is hiding a secret arc reactor in Area 51 that they got from an alien ship (or something similar.)

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

Actually I said superseded or modified.

 

[exchemist]

Actually you said they may even lie and implied it again here.

How much reproduction is enough and by whom.

Zero point means this and other things in the over-unity community.

No doubt, but then “the over-unity community” is by definition full of cranks that don’t know what they are talking about.

See also @billvon’s excellent explaination of the group psychology, enabled by social media, that allows them to generate a self-validating bubble detached from reality. The “over-unity community” has yet to produce a single device that works, however much they delusionally compare themselves to Einstein. And they never will, because the laws of thermodynamics are not going to be broken.

 

[James R]

No, objective is what's observed, experienced,and collated.

You're still getting this wrong, even after more than one person has tried to put you straight on the difference between objective and subjective.

 

[James R]

Physical laws (thermodynamics, etc.) are not absolute. They can and will be superseded or modified.

Physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.

If you've got evidence that the laws of thermodynamics don't work any more, then the scientific community wants to hear all about it. It'd better be very strong evidence, though, because everything else we know about so far says they work just fine.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

You're still getting this wrong, even after more than one person has tried t viewpoints based on personal feelings, opinions, or beliefs. o put you straight on the difference between objective and subjective.

My observations and experiences are objective facts, not just viewpoints based on personal feelings, opinions, or beliefs.

 

[TheVat]

My observations and experiences are objective facts, not just viewpoints based on personal feelings, opinions, or beliefs.

Please seek professional help. Seriously.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

Please seek professional help. Seriously.

Seriously, don't need help. You think someone with opposite ideas from you needs help. We don't.

 

[Pinball1970]

Seriously, don't need help. You think someone with opposite ideas from you needs help. We don't.

This is not science, it just what words mean.
I like Kate Bush, I like sound of her voice.
A few heathens on SF do not like her voice, this is a subjective view. I think they should love her voice, they tell me to sod off.
This is fine, it depends on how a person feels about something.

"Wow" the superb song of Lion Heart (I think) is in Am. We can all check this and agree on it, it is demonstrably verifiable.
Am is an objective fact.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What’s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we’d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.

That's a false statement. When you say "evidence," you mean physical, scientific evidence — but that isn't the only kind. There is a substantial body of eyewitness testimony pointing to an advanced, non-human intelligence. If even a single report is accurate, the conventional explanations fail. That testimony may not satisfy strict scientific criteria, but claiming that billions of people hold these beliefs for no reason at all, is false and dishonest.

The distance argument is pedestrian. The very reason we call the Fermi paradox a paradox is that we might reasonably expect to observe ancient civilizations even if they cannot exceed light speed — they've simply had enough time to spread throughout the galaxy. Beyond that, there are potential explanations for an advanced non-human presence that don't require interstellar travel at all. Maybe "they" have been here all along.

I often think of religions and phenomena like cargo cults. Given a choice between a supernatural god and a highly advanced non-human intelligence, at least the latter is grounded in the physical world. You'd think that would be considered an improvement over religion. And unlike religion, there are thousands of alleged encounters occurring now, in some cases involving people we know personally — not just accounts from thousand-year-old texts. Then there are the people who claim direct experience. It is a religion to dismiss it all as fantasy. Could the thousands of years of the world's religions be explained if there is such a presence? Doesn't that question stir even the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity in any of you?

Do you attack religion and religious people like you do people who argue for what may be their personal experiences?

 

[DaveC426913]

That's a false statement. When you say "evidence," you mean physical, scientific evidence — but that isn't the only kind.

True. Eyewitness reports are evidence. They're just low quality evidence.
C C is talking about extant evidence.

There is a substantial body of eyewitness testimony pointing to an advanced, non-human intelligence.

No. Testimonies are interpretations of experiences.

Eyewitnesses experience things they can't explain. That may point away from all the explanations we can think of, but that is not the same thing as pointing toward anything advanced or non-human. Unexplained means unexplained. It does not mean "therefore it's gotta be...."

If even a single report is accurate, the conventional explanations fail.

Accurate here is synonymous with "objectively true".
No report can be determined as "accurate" until and unless the incident itself is actually explained.
And there are, so far, zero incidents that have been explained as originating from any advanced non-human intelligence.

 

[TheVat]

There is a substantial body of eyewitness testimony pointing to an advanced, non-human intelligence. If even a single report is accurate, the conventional explanations fail. That testimony may not satisfy strict scientific criteria,

It doesn't and it won't. Scientific criteria are strict for very good reasons. And it's especially fortunate that they are strict where humans have an intense and emotional desire to believe, and where we know the human propensity for telling tale tales, misperception of mundane objects, outright pranking, and cognitive errors.

Given a choice between a supernatural god and a highly advanced non-human intelligence, at least the latter is grounded in the physical world. You'd think that would be considered an improvement over religion. And unlike religion, there are thousands of alleged encounters occurring now, in some cases involving people we know personally — not just accounts from thousand-year-old texts

The fact that something improves on religion is a rather low bar, and in no way validates it. Also, thousands of alleged encounters actually sounds quite a lot like religion. Every day, all over the world, people claim to have religious experiences of angels, gods, demons, ghosts, et al. And yet you are not suggesting those are credible. Nor would you probably suggest sightings of the ET equivalents of earlier centuries, like fairies or trolls or banshees, are credible.

 

[Sarkus]

Do you attack religion and religious people like you do people who argue for what may be their personal experiences?

There's a distinction, though, isn't there? People claiming that ET has landed, for example, are making a scientific claim. By that I mean one that can be investigated, examined, scrutinised by science. Religion, on the whole, is unscientific. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I just mean that it outside of the purview of science; science can say nothing for or against it.

As and when a religion ventures into scientific territory, it is often "attacked" (and by that I mean "argued against"). There are of course some militant atheists who go on the offensive against religion but, on the whole, if it is unscientific - and most of religious ideas and claims are - then there is little point in "attacking" those ideas and claims, as they're more a matter of your metaphysical preference

 

[C C]

[...] Do you attack religion and religious people like you do people who argue for what may be their personal experiences?

The irony here is that Tony Milligan's focus actually revolves around protecting or impeding corruption of indigenous mythos by these "Aryan" space-alien narratives. That itself might or might not stem from new forms of white intellectual-driven paternalism masked in Euro-guilt politics falling out of the last century's evolving Neo-Marxist theories. But background origins and obscured motives for various humanitarian interests hardly matter in the short term if such cultural degradation is indeed a legitimate threat to the spiritual traditions of autochthonic communities.

• EXCERPTS: The modern alien visitation narrative has not, after all, emerged out of indigenous communities. Quite the opposite. It emerged in part as a way for conspiracy-minded thinkers in a Europe torn apart by racism to “explain” how complex urban civilisations in places like South America could have existed prior to European settlement.
  
  [...] If all of this stayed in its own box, as entertaining fiction, then matters would be fine. But it doesn’t, and they aren’t. Visitation narratives tend to overwrite indigenous storytelling about sky and ground.
  
  [...] This may be why these tales in particular are heavily targeted by alien visitation enthusiasts, some of whom even claim to be “Pleiadeans”. No surprises, Pleiadeans do not look like the Lakota or Ojibwe, but are strikingly blond, blue-eyed and Nordic.
  
  It is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that has real and damaging consequences.

 

[C C]

]...] The distance argument is pedestrian. The very reason we call the Fermi paradox a paradox is that we might reasonably expect to observe ancient civilizations even if they cannot exceed light speed — they've simply had enough time to spread throughout the galaxy. Beyond that, there are potential explanations for an advanced non-human presence that don't require interstellar travel at all. Maybe "they" have been here all along.

Well, again, Tony Milligan -- as a philosopher -- has his own humanities thought orientation and is simply recruiting available arguments that assist that agenda. But you've got to admit that most UAP aficionados feel that their "objects" have FTL capacities, and that's the main POV he's economically addressing.

The autonomous, self-replicating spacecraft and machines that John von Neumann originally proposed could endure lengthy (slow) migrations across interstellar space and incrementally populate the galaxy from one "star island" to the next over eons. That's excluding the wormhole, hyperspace portal, or whatever sci-fi trope at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey that they are seemingly depicted as utilizing (it's not just for Bowman's psychedelic trip to evolutionary enhancement). A gimmick that seems even more unlikely than an exotic matter or exotic energy dependent warp drive descended from "Alcubierre engineering".

But SETI receives nothing, so the concept of this technological "space wildlife" wandering and populating the galaxy with its own reproductive ecosystems is shooting blanks. Not even something equivalent to artilect whale calls (electromagnetic spectrum style) popping up.

I often think of religions and phenomena like cargo cults. Given a choice between a supernatural god and a highly advanced non-human intelligence, at least the latter is grounded in the physical world. You'd think that would be considered an improvement over religion. And unlike religion, there are thousands of alleged encounters occurring now, in some cases involving people we know personally — not just accounts from thousand-year-old texts. Then there are the people who claim direct experience. It is a religion to dismiss it all as fantasy. Could the thousands of years of the world's religions be explained if there is such a presence? Doesn't that question stir even the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity in any of you?

Unbridled speculation about "ancient astronauts" is unnecessary when early shamanic proto-meditative states, magic mushrooms, and other hallucinogenic herbs were available to provide the backbone for the concept of a mystical "internet" to tap into for the material laying a foundation for future religions, myths, and prophecies of later ancient civilizations.
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[w1z4rd]

My mom is one of the people who have fallen for the scammers on this, and no amount of logical discussion will convince her otherwise. She is totally sold on the aliens idea because of some stupid lying scammer youtube channel called Skinwalker Ranch.

Basically its a scam show that has a lot of "scientists" come on it and say the ranch has many alien encounters. The show is so obviously a scam, and its a little sad my mom cant tell real science and scientists from the crackpots they call onto the show to give their scam some legitimacy. I have to keep reminding me that the Apartheid government taught her sewing, not science at school, so she is a product of her times.

Ive given up trying to tell her that they scamming her, it causes too much friction between us. She thinks I am a complete idiot for not believing her "scientists".

 

[C C]

My mom is one of the people who have fallen for the scammers on this, and no amount of logical discussion will convince her otherwise. She is totally sold on the aliens idea because of some stupid lying scammer youtube channel called Skinwalker Ranch. [...]

They once interpreted a flying insect caught on camera as a mysterious object. I'll grant that it must take some imaginative resourcefulness to portray scores of mundane events on the property as anomalous and astounding circumstances over the course of one episode after another. Doubtless having assorted instruments that sensitively respond to every random and subtle variation in the environment helps bolster the infectious drama and insistence of there being some "presence" afoot.
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[TheVat]

She is totally sold on the aliens idea because of some stupid lying scammer youtube channel called Skinwalker Ranch.

Yes, SW is a total clown show, mostly about squeezing money out of a patch of land by its wealthy owner. I watched an episode of the (Netflix?) show's silliness when Magical Realist was in his final year here and was frequently talking it up. As was typical at that time, he didn't take well to our various eviscerations. One of my favorite bits of nonsense was where they shone a laser into the night sky and, noting that the beam "disappeared" at some altitude, concluded that it had struck an invisible spaceship hovering there.

 

[DaveC426913]

One of my favorite bits of nonsense was where they shone a laser into the night sky and, noting that the beam "disappeared" at some altitude, concluded that it had struck an invisible spaceship hovering there.

This is one of the ones my brother mentioned when hyping the show.

The first thing I had to point out was that laser beams don't disappear - because they're already invisible. The only thing that makes lasers appear in the first place is smoke or fog or something suspended in the beam. So, when that smoke or fog or something ends ... so does the beam.

There are only two possibilities: either they are totally incompetent at science - or they are making a TV show to entertain viewers who are totally incompetent at science.

 

[C C]

Travis Taylor and the rest of the Skinwalker Ranch personnel are akin to bad faith magicians. Whereas honest illusionists will admit that they are merely making conventional affairs appear to be sorcery, magicians like Uri Geller will allow or encourage viewers to accept the results as paranormal. The SR team deliberately stop their evaluative process at the point where normality would prevail or be favored.
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