UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

LOL

 

[DaveC426913]

Since this is a forum for science fans, it is dominated by skeptics.

Yes. The people best at analysis and critical thinking.

But since skeptics are only a small and shrinking 17% of the population,

Haha. MR makes up his own facts.

this group doesn't reflect the facts of the general population.

I guess it's you who is psychic now? Funny how that flip-flops.

UAPs are becoming more and more acknowledged these days.

Again, no one doubts this. It does not correlate with your preferred origin.

Mick West chose a really bad time to make a career out of skepticism.

On the contrary, he came just when it's needed.

The people want answers. He is in a good position for providing them. Answers don't come from wishful thinking and magical thinking.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

This thread needs more Firesign Theater quotes.

 

[(Q)]

So what?

It proves there are a lot of people who have little to no critical thinking skills, possess limited powers of observation and can't process data and facts or just reject them altogether.

"About four in ten Americans believe in UFOs or unidentified flying objects. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 43 percent of males and 35 percent of females from the United States believed in aliens or UFOs."

In 2019, 68% of Americans believed that the U.S. government knew more about UFOs than it was sharing.

87% of Americans say UFOs are not a threat to U.S. national security, or are only a minor threat."

Yes, there is a great deal of nonsense Americans say and believe without thinking or considering evidence, that is the problem entirely.

And in fact, an alien species visiting Earth would most likely take all our resources and use us for free labor or food, colonize the planet and then move on to the next civilization.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's long be "cool" to pretend to believe in nonsense. Churches cash in on this, as do lotteries.

 

[(Q)]

Since this is a forum for science fans, it is dominated by skeptics. But since skeptics are only a small and shrinking 17% of the population, this group doesn't reflect the facts of the general population.

You got that erroneous number from where exactly?

UAPs are becoming more and more acknowledged these days. That's what the stats show.

Deterioration of the quality of education, lower IQ scores, social media and a boon in low-skilled jobs facilitating a withering of cognitive abilities, thus we are heading for "Idiocracy" where life will indeed imitate art. The embracement of ignorance and stupidity is mind boggling.

 

[Magical Realist]

no critical thinking skills

Define critical thinking and tell us how it differs from regular thinking.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Define critical thinking and tell us how it differs from regular thinking.

You: regular thinking.

Everybody else: Critical thinking.

 

[DaveC426913]

Define critical thinking and tell us how it differs from regular thinking.

As if we haven't done so a score of times. Maybe we should start a thread on it.

Here is an example:

"... pilots testifying that they saw these things doing 90 degree turns at full speed, performing instantaneous acceleration, stopping in midair on a dime, and defying the known laws of physics ..."

A non-critical thinker might take these reports as representing fact, without considering that the things described are interpretations and are prone to error.

Here is another:

"Would you agree that 1-4 meter metallic spheres that travel up to Mach 2 and make very interesting maneuvers and have no visible means of propulsion are an advanced technology beyond human capabilities?"

A non-critical thinker might think this was all describing same object. A critical thinker will notice that all the nouns in those sentences are pluralized, which means it is entirely plausible that these are pulled from different acocunts that are not related. The criticla thinker, recognizing this possibility, will take the conservative path, and only grant the mininum, until and unless the passage is clarified to rule out the ambiguity. For example. by asking:
"Did a single specific object do all these things during the same account?" "Were they witnessed?" "Or were some of them deduced?"

A critical thinker might draw an analogy for the non-critical thinker to Earth animals that run at 70mph and dive-bomb at 200mph and dive to a mile undersea -point out that none of these things, in and of themselves are extraordinary, but only seems extraordinary if the non-critical thinker doesn't think about how the passage can be manipulated to seem to say something more extraordinary more than it is.

Here is another:

"A high speed balloon in a hurricane wind while everyone swims calmly in the still waters."

The non-critical thinker sees something flash past the screen and not only instantly rules out mndane obejt, bit jumps immediately to UAPs. They take zero time to ask themslbes if there is a way that a this could happen under uncommon yet still mundane circumstances - such a small object passing into front of the camera much lcoser than thr ingnde subject.

The critical thinker asks how fast such an object could cross the field of view while still moving at a reasonable pace. And then the critical tinker goes about testing that.



There's a million examples. I'm not sure if this is the place for a primer in critical thinking. Maybe start that new thread?

 

[Magical Realist]

As if we haven't done so a score of times. Maybe we should start a thread on it.

Here is an example:

"... pilots testifying that they saw these things doing 90 degree turns at full speed, performing instantaneous acceleration, stopping in midair on a dime, and defying the known laws of physics ..."

A non-critical thinker might take these reports as representing fact, without considering that the things described are interpretations and are prone to error.

There's a million examples. I'm not sure if this is the palce for a primer in critical thinking.

So not believing people when they say they saw something? That sounds like mental illness to me..

 

[DaveC426913]

So not believing people when they say they saw something? That sounds like mental illness to me..

That is an excellent example of non-critical thinking. Not bothering to think of alternate possibilities, and jumping to mental illness.

We know for a fact that people - even expert jet pilots - misidentify things.
We have no confirmed evidence of non-human intelligences, let alone ones that fly craft.

To jump over the former fact and go right to the latter fanstasy is the acme of non-critical thinking.

Good job. Well done. I could not have planned your response better if I were a ventriloquist and you were my puppet.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So not believing people when they say they saw something? That sounds like mental illness to me..

If what they CLAIM to have seen is wildly unlikely it's A: bullshit, B: delusion, C: Plain attention seeking.

Like you.

 

[Magical Realist]

We know for a fact that people - even expert jet pilots - misidentify things.

They aren't misidentifying anything because they aren't identifying it. They are merely describing how the objects behaved in flight. It's what they saw and what pilots repeatedly report with these things. And that's pretty reliable evidence.

We have no confirmed evidence of non-human intellifgrnce, let alone ones that fly craft.

Actually we do. Repeated eyewitness accounts of uaps doing things no manmade craft can do is confirmed evidence. Ofcourse you know all this as I have posted it many times here. So I'm not posting it all again.

 

[(Q)]

Define critical thinking and tell us how it differs from regular thinking.

Thinking is just the activity of using ones mind to consider, ideas, opinions, etc.

Critical thinking is another thing, you're free to indulge yourself, in fact, I beg of you to carefully look this site over...

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

 

[(Q)]

They aren't misidentifying anything because they aren't identifying it. They are merely describing how the objects behaved in flight. It's what they saw and what pilots repeatedly report with these things. And that's pretty reliable evidence.

No, it's not reliable, far from it.

Actually we do. Repeated eyewitness accounts of uaps doing things no manmade craft can do is confirmed evidence. Ofcourse you know all this as I have posted it many times here.

And every time you posted it, you were wrong. That is not 'confirmed evidence'. And this would adequately demonstrate you have no idea what is considered evidence to the existence of something.

 

[Magical Realist]

Critical thinking is another thing, you're free to indulge yourself, in fact, I beg of you to carefully look this site over...

IOW you have no idea what it is. It's basically just a club to hit people who disagree with you over the head with.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They aren't misidentifying anything because they aren't identifying it. They are merely describing how the objects behaved in flight. It's what they saw and what pilots repeatedly report with these things. And that's pretty reliable evidence.



Actually we do. Repeated eyewitness accounts of uaps doing things no manmade craft can do is confirmed evidence. Ofcourse you know all this as I have posted it many times here. So I'm not posting it all again.

They were misidentifying, aka misinterpreting, what they saw. The undisciplined human mind fills in gaps in an effort to understand what it sees.

 

[DaveC426913]

They aren't misidentifying anything because they aren't identifying it. They are merely describing how the objects behaved in flight. It's what they saw and what pilots repeatedly report with these things. And that's pretty reliable evidence.

What I'm talking about is misidentifying speeds and maneuvers, etc.

Thinking that this, here and then that, there, is super espeed, rather than two objects.
Thinking that a sudden acceleration of a bogey is must be a real-world effect, rather than a camera artifact.

Repeated eyewitness accounts of uaps doing things no manmade craft can do is confirmed evidence.

No it isn't.

This is more hand-waving. Refer to a specific account, and we can examine why even multiple witnesses aren't sufficent to confirm anything extraordinary.

For example, remember the dirigble account outside the stadium? Many witnesses thinking they saw something cool, but nothing they saw was confirmable as extraordinary.

 

[DaveC426913]

IOW you have no idea what it is. It's basically just a club to hit people who disagree with you over the head with.

See my examples. They are very clear. You will see that critical thinking is a vital tool to root out through from myth.

 

[Magical Realist]

What I'm talking about is misidentifying speeds and maneuvers, etc.

Repeated identical accounts of these things doing extraordinary things isn't misidentifying anything. It's simply reporting what was observed by the pilots over and over again. That's confirmation that what they saw is real.