UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

The truth will set you free, MR. ~ lol

 

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I would argue that skepticism is an approach, not a conclusion. Agnosticism, however, is a conclusion you might reach after such an approach. So you can quite happily be a skeptic agnostic, I'd say.

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There is no mistake other than your apparent continued efforts to keep defending the position you claim you weren't making.
So, to be clear: do you, or do you not, claim - or agree with the claim - that the guy's observations are "perfectly replicable" by the Mars/stars hypothesis?
If you don't, then what the fuck are you still trying to argue the point for, or dispute my rebuttal of it?

All it takes is for the solution offered (Mars/stars, for example) to not fit a single thing the guy wrote for his reported observations to not be "perfectly replicable" by it. So quit with yet another red-herring, James R.
The issue here, that you seem to wilfully be ignoring so as to continue along your irrelevant path, and not own up to your faux-pas in responding to a comment to which you didn't know the context, is not whether he has made mistakes in his observations, or whether the Mars/stars hypothesis is a possible solution, but whether it "perfectly replicates" what he reports. Not what you think he should have reported, but what he actually reports.
Stick to that, please. Instead all we get is you posturing and talking yet more garbage.

I'm not interested in your irrelevancies on this point, thanks. Stick to the issue.

So you honestly can't see the difference between the question you are trying to answer, and the one I am? Well, that explains a lot, I guess.
Trying to get the "best fit", so to speak, for a rather vague report, is somewhat different than trying to get what it actually is. Many things might fit, especially if you're not immune to altering what the person actually reports so as to fit your conclusion. It doesn't really get you to what it actually is, even with a high-degree of confidence, only what it might be. Might be, and is, are two different questions.

Given the vagueness of the report, I'd think it could indeed be Mars/stars, or drones, or possibly even some distant hot air balloons, possibly also many other things we haven't thought of. I think the report is too vague to offer a "best" to any of those.

Because the bar for me to consider it a non-mundane thing is exceptionally high, such that any remote possibility of it being mundane will trump it being non-mundane, in my view.

You're the one losing grip, James R. I have already shown exactly where you effectively changed what he said to suit your conclusion. Your denial at this point is bordering on delusional.

No, I'm not. I'm saying that I have a high degree of confidence that Mars/stars are among the possibilities of what it could be.

No, I'm not agreeing with your conclusion, because your conclusion is a high degree of confidence that it is Mars/stars. I don't have that degree of confidence, nor do I think such high degree is rational based on the vagueness of the report.
Mars/stars is certainly a possible explanation, as is the guy just imagining it all in a drunken stupor, or simply writing in and telling a story. Or drones. Or numerous things we haven't even thought of.

Am I going too fast for you?
What part of it did you not comprehend?
Do you honestly not see the difference, for example, and taking what I said to an extreme, between "I am certain that it might be X", and "I am certain it is X"?
If I toss a coin and say "I am certain that it is 50:50 going to be Tails (i.e. it might be tails)", is that the same, to you, as saying "I am certain it is Tails"?

I do review, thanks. Do you even try to comprehend what people actually write, or are you simply content with responding to whatever nonsense you assume they have written?

For you to stop with the garbage? Why so?

 

I'm waiting to see if it starts footnoting its own posts after reading a few of Tiassa's blogs.

 

Lol! That would be the most talented bot ever.

 

I couldn't agree more, MR.

I've always loved science and believe (sorry Dave) that it's humanity's best source of knowledge about the behavior of the physical world.

But I have to say that I'm increasingly put off by how science is moving away from being a tentative self-critical quest for understanding, towards being enshrined as another Biblical-style source of revealed authority, towards being doctrines that must unquestioningly be believed, on pain of being condemned as being "anti-science" or a "denier". That's one of the places where 'science' crosses the line and turns into 'scientism' in my opinion.

In my view science is a bunch of hypotheses about physical reality, some of which are well established and highly corroborated, while others are little more than speculations. But none of it is theological-style revealed truth. And probably most of it is limited in some way, if not flat-out wrong to a greater or lesser degree. It's a work in progress.

I don't know why some people are so hostile to the idea of other people believing differently than they do. What's wrong with just agreeing to disagree? We are told over and over that we must "celebrate diversity", right? So why does celebration of diversity always stop at diversity of opinion? Isn't freedom of thought supposed to be a good thing?

A lot of science itself isn't. Science and the practice of science assume many things that aren't themselves scientific.

Maybe. I'm personally inclined to think that the UAPs probably have explanations that would be comprehensible to us, assuming that we had sufficient information. Hence our task should be to acquire more information. Hypotheses about possible explanations at this point aren't answers in themselves (as Sarkus has convincingly argued in one case) but might be helpful in guiding us as to what kind of additional information to seek.

'Our X might conceivably be this (a speculation), and to determine that with more certainty, we will need to know A, B and C.'

But as I said above, the Fortean in me makes me think that our current scientific worldview is a work in progress, inherently limited by our limited perspective in space and time, and by our finite cognitive powers. So I don't find it in any way heretical to expect that things might occasionally occur that have no place in our current scientific understanding. That needn't exclude better scientific understanding, which would be our task to acquire.

Yes, I expect that it will always exceed our understanding. The big fundamental metaphysical questions will always be there. So, ultimately, at its core, reality will probably always be a mystery. That's my belief.

But despite reality being fundamentally mysterious at its core, we nevertheless are part of that reality ourselves and are experiencing it all the time. So our experience and our very being will probably always exceed our understanding.

 

Great points, Yazata. Do we consider something real only if it can be proven by using the scientific method (to understand it)?

 

Aliens, ET, etc, are not really a metaphysical issue, though. They're squarely scientific. Hence the scientific approach.
My issue is not so much with the analysis conducted here, but simply with the conclusions drawn from it, such that it tends toward "science says this is a possible answer, therefore this is the answer" sort of thing. Yes, that's perhaps an exaggeration, but it's the conclusions drawn that I have issues with rather than the general approach. I do think some take their confidence beyond what their analysis rationally supports, as exampled in previous posts, but because they think "Science! Rationality!" they overplay their hand and ultimately move into the realm of belief and faith that they would otherwise despise.

The day that there is no experience I have that exceeds my understanding will be a sorry day. Not least because it means the universe will have dumbed itself down to my level!

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Do "we"? I don't know. Maybe you want to answer for yourself, at least?

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First, this is a metaphysical question; second, science is not in the business of "proof" but rather degrees of confidence in theories etc.
With those matters out of the way... if one considers "real" to be that which can be touched, held, observed, interacted with, i.e. physical, then probably most would agree that it falls within the realm of science. Whether we are currently able to "prove" it is just a matter of available evidence to us rather than the principle of whether it absolutely could be.
If one considers such things as logic, numbers, etc, to be real then no, I'd suggest that science can not "prove" them, as any such proof, or even condidence, relies on those things themselves, and as such is just, at such a meta level, begging the question. At best you'd reach an internally consistent conclusion, but not one that necessarily speaks for outside of that internal working.
It's a good question, though, but one for another thread, perhaps?

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Depends on who the "we" is, I guess.

I personally consider reality to be something metaphysically fundamental. It's what is, what exists (and yes, I'm aware of the circularity). Maybe I think that it's an irreducible given.

But what we happen to consider real is a different issue.

I get the feeling that some people do think the way you suggest. If something doesn't fall within the ontology accepted by modern science, or isn't amenable to "proof by using the scientific method", then it can't be included on the list of things that they believe exist.

As for me, I think that reality is what stands beneath our scientific understanding and serves as its basis and its foundation. Reality (as I imagine it) is whatever it is that makes true scientific propositions true and false one's false. To use an old analogy, I try not to confuse the map (the propositions of science in this case) with the territory that the map seeks to depict (physical reality).

 

Isn't that the whole purpose of the term "woo"? To automatically denigrate the the views of others as superstitious foolishness so that you can dismiss all their claims from the outset? If you want me to be better James then make your points without ad homing me as some sort of inferior being. And quit speaking down to me as someone to be instructed. You'll soon find we probably have alot of things in common and can converse, even disagree, in a fruitful way.

 

All true. So, is your answer ''yes'' to my question, then? lol

When it comes to UFO's, I know that many claims are misperceptions, and/or stemming from mundane origins, but for those that still have no known origin, they aren't any less real. Claimants may lack enough evidence to prove exactly what they are (tic tac video, for example) but it doesn't mean that whatever it was that those pilots witnessed, wasn't real. (Of course, ruling out the possibility of hallucinations, misperceptions, etc...)

It would be, however I think there are some threads already, on the topic. But, the fact that we are now on page 406 of this thread tells me that we have inched our way past viewing this topic strictly through the lens of science...otherwise, it wouldn't have continued past page one.

 

That's on you as someone who is historically in complete denial about the fields of perception, cognition, memory and a host of other relevant disciplines.
If you don't want to be instructed, then educate yourself.

 

I am well aware of the fields you mention. I just don't support using that information to invalidate an eyewitness(es) account of a uap. To you it may seem sufficient to debunk the account. But not to me. It's a matter of trusting the eyewitness's firsthand experience over the vague and adhoc possibility of some generic optical illusion or misperception.

 

Ever the optimist

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