mirandansa
New Member
Miscommunication is dragging on. I hope to fix it. Please excuse the meticulosity of this post.
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TYPES OF ENTITIES & HYPOTHESES
On this thread, i'm concerned with objects that may be generically called "unidentified object (UO)". UOs include:
The term "unidentified" may be used in a semantically less rigorous manner for the sake of practicality. For instance, a UAO may not be unidentified in the sense that we more or less know its material origin (time, place, author) but may be unidentified in the sense that we cannot accurately recognise its technological genealogy -- that its apparent technological properties are at odds with the orthodox understanding of mankind's history --, and this particular adjective will bear practical terminological consistency with the other two terms, "UFO" and "USO". For the same reason, i would prefer "UAO" to the more common "out-of-place artifact (OOPART)" ("out-of-place" means that the object's confirmed or reported presence cannot be fully explained through our conventional understanding of the world we live in).
When an object is presumed to be identified, it may be generically called "identified object (IO)". IOs include:
As far as the notion of "aliens" is concerned, UOs may be most meaningfully dealt with via mainly two theoretical frameworks:
These may respectively be called:
The hypothetical responsible entities may be called:
Non-EE include:
EE include:
The following descriptors will aid for the expressivity of EH's application scope:
For instance:
The distinction between ii-UFOs and si-UFOs is crucial in the discussion of EH. Major formal studies (see below) demonstrate that EH is plausible NOT FOR the objects that are identifiable (IFOs) or unidentifiable-with-insufficient-information (ii-UFOs) BUT FOR the objects that are unidentifiable-with-sufficient-information (si-UFO). Several people on this thread may have expressed a mistaken notion that EH is argued for UFOs in general, but the formal application is actually specific: EH is most meaningfully applied to si-UFOs and not to ii-UFOs.
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ACCUSATIONS
I never "filled" the gaps with aliens and claim the cases are solved. I point out that aliens (the EH, more accurately) can fill the gap. And my emphasis is justified not only by our present inability to formally identify the mysterious phenomena but also by the understanding we can establish of the phenomena's properties revealed from the available evidence (see below).
An argument is an "appeal to authority" if the arguer tries to establish a truth of a statement based solely upon the fact that it's supported by authority. I'm not making such an argument. I'm not claiming "alien visitation is real because authority supports EH".
No. The sentence just says what it says: "Group of experts X said extraterrestrials were the most likely explanation." There is no appeal to anything in this linguistic construct alone. An appeal to authority is something like this:
"Group of experts X said extraterrestrials were the most likely explanation, therefore UFOs must be caused by extraterrestrials."
Try to avoid abusing the fallacy card.
Try to object accurately. Show a specific instance of my statement which you wish to criticise, rather than a template of statements
I'm quite aware that UFOs aren't necessarily related to aliens. I said it myself many times. I can recognise different kinds of UFOs; some are obviously of ordinary origins/causes, and some are very enigmatic. I never intended to make any generalisation about all UFOs; EH is concerned with specific kinds of UFOs. You are the one who keep ramming this erroneous "UFO = aliens" association down my throat, misrepresenting me as claiming that UFOs are always alien-related, and then accuse me of being so erroneous.
I presented notable formal studies to tell you, among other things, how the investigators with relevant expertise came to the conclusion that EH was a plausible explanation for certain UFOs (i.e. si-UFOs), not for the unqualified/unquantified "UFO".
I'm not fond of the descriptor "skeptic" to begin with. I recognise the importance of the intellectual principles involved in the practice of skepticism, but not to the point where i feel like calling myself "skeptic" (the same with "atheist").
To the extent that i largely disagree with general "skeptic"s on the subject of UFO, "pseudo-skeptic" might describe my expressed position. But i suspect you are using it in a disparaging sense with the assumption that a "skeptic" is better than a "pseudo-skeptic", and that's disputable.
A "conviction" of what? I have the conviction that EH is a legitimate theoretical framework for certain enigmatic phenomena. I'm increasingly so convinced that i more and more think UFOs/USOs/UAOs deserve more serious attention and study. But i honestly don't think non-EH for those same phenomena can be ignored. What does that say about my "conviction"? I fail to be a good example of either "skeptic" or "alien believer". And i'm happy with that.
I'm not aware of any formally documented evidence of TR-3B available online. And my point wasn't that this exact craft demonstrably exists (apart from what ex-insiders and video footage can tell us).
I pointed you to another forum's thread dedicated to the discussion of TR-3B so that, should you be interested in it, you could speak to folks presumably more knowledgeable than me about this alleged craft. In my earlier post to which you are responding here, i meant to only tangentially mention a possible instance of alien technology of a category other than "UFO sighting" on which you had appeared erroneously fixated.
"beliefs" in what? I never said i believe TR-3B has been developed based on extraterrestrial technology. I meant to only point out that claims such as "I saw a flying object in the sky" and "I worked for the USAF's clandestine project based on extraterrestrial technology" are of different kinds with different significances. You asked for evidence of EH regarding "UFO sightings", but "UFO sightings" aren't the only kind of phenomena to which EH is applicable. I wanted to tell you that so that you could understand that evidence of EH might come from broader fields of inquiry.
I presented materials in which experts discussed the evidence in favour of EH. I clearly didn't claim "that experience and observation is evidence". I presented their studies so that you could at least realise there have been formal efforts into the study of UFOs (as well as the subsequent military-driven suppression of it). I wished to help you disarm your own harmful prejudice toward the legitimate interests by bringing your attention to a saner field of UFO discourse.
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EVIDENCE
Evidence may be said to come in two main forms: circumstantial and direct. Multiple circumstantial evidence corroborates each other to infer the truth of an assertion so that the assertion becomes obvious; it suggests a truth. Direct evidence can singularly infer the truth of an assertion so that the assertion becomes necessary; it proves a truth. (NOTE: Direct evidence is not universally accepted to be a possible epistemological factor.) The use of something as evidence requires that it be presumed to be true through either the fact that it is self-evident or the fact that it is proven by other evidence.
A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
For more science-oriented readers:
STATISTICAL & DOCUMENTATIONAL
General statistics:
Wikipedia: Identification Studies of UFOs
UFO Sightings Statistics Displays
General documents:
nicap.org: Official Documents
top10ufo.com: UFO Documents
hyper.net: UFO documents and books
Notable major statistical studies of UFOs include:
That's a fair point in its own right. But we can't ignore the available results of the legitimate studies. I'll explain just below.
As far as BBSR is concerned, the cases were divided into "knowns", "unknowns", and "insufficient information". In other words, an "unknown" is a case in which the phenomenon was deemed unidentifiable after all the known conventional possibilities had been informedly ruled out. Two important statistical significances:
The first point suggests: the more scientifically rigorous UFOs are observed, the more challenged scientists would be by unknown phenomena. This justifies my claim that ufology should be considered a legitimate field of scientific inquiry.
The second point suggests: IFOs and si-UFOs are fundamentally different phenomena. si-UFOs ("true" UFOs) are unlikely to belong to any of the categories of the known phenomena such as those non-EEs listed in the beginning of this post.
PHYSICAL & REPRESENTATIONAL
Journal of Scientific Exploration: Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports
ufoevidence.org: Physical Trace Cases
ufoevidence.org: Physical Evidence
about.com: Physical Evidence of UFOs
UFO Crashes & Physical Proof
hyper.net: Resources about possible UFO physics / propulsion / technology
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1870-1959
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1960-1969
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1970-1979
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1980-1989
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1990-1999
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2000-2003
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2004
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2005
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2006
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2007
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2008
top10ufo.com: UFO Images
top10ufo.com: Moon Images
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (1)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (2)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (3)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (4)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (5)
top10ufo.com: UFO Videos
You are distorting the points i made about the pyramids. My attention to the EH for the construction of the pyramids (especially the Khufu Pyramid) does not derive from my not knowing how the Egyptians could have built them; it derives from multiple facts such as:
-- The engineering aspects of the construction (e.g. the carving accuracy, the granite drill holes, the overall pace) indicate the involvement of an at-least-modern-level technology that contradicts the orthodox non-intervention self-dependent history of mankind but not an alternative history in which mankind might have been intervened by an unknown advanced civilisation.
-- The site could not have yielded sufficient food for the workers necessary if they had only simple tools (as mainstream Egyptology tells) and they had to make up for the lack of tools' efficiency with the total amount of workforce but not if they had highly advanced tools that would have allowed efficient work. Also the considerable lack of soot inside the pyramids that are pitch-black without lighting suggests they might have had access to an advanced non-burning light source, possibly electrical (possible at least in the sense that pre-modern batteries have been found in the nearby regions such as Iraq to challenge the conventional notion that ancient people couldn't have harnessed electricity).
We thus do know certain things. And these are amenable more to an intervention viewpoint than to a non-intervention viewpoint. While we should retain a non-intervention viewpoint, the evidence justifies (in fact demands) a further consideration from an intervention viewpoint. The question is: Who intervened?
On another note:
Recently, a citizen-science project called "the Planet Hunters" was launched:
The aim is to get help from the public in sorting out the evidence for exoplanets via the internet. After the rough classification by the public, the more rigorous process for determining "which star is orbited by a planet" is carried out. It involves a scrutiny of very subtle pixel-level information, and deals with images as blurry as this:
This sort of images can provide meaningful information for a scientific investigation. These can be the primary basis for scientists to legitimately claim which stars have planets, light-years away. Now, compare those to the following:
As you may recognise from our previous exchanges, these are lights captured mostly by space shuttle cameras, at a kilometer-level distance. You guys have rejected the scientific utility of these images as being too "blurry". But i say these can provide useful information so as to help our scientific understanding of these phenomena, just like those images used for exoplanet detection, whose pixel-level details can be of great significance. If we can scientifically analyse the motion of a planet light-years away from our solar system, surely we should be able to exert as much scientific attention to the motion of these UFOs just above (or even within) the Earth atmosphere, and determine its e.g. gravitational properties. That is, we should be able to figure out, from its visual representations even of minimal clarity, whether or not these UFOs are intelligently controlled.
Such formal studies have already been conducted. The US did it. France did it. Russia did it. Britain did it. Belgium did it. Canada did it. Norway did it. And so on. The experts share a conclusion: Certain UFOs are physically real and intelligently controlled, whose motions typically defy any known technological standard. So, the next question is: Where do these advanced artifacts come from?
I say both non-EH and EH are possibilities. I don't claim EH is proven. Non-EH is still possible (the artifacts could be from a super-advanced secret human organisation). I keep researching. And i take the liberty of posting on what i know or what i don't know, expecting your constructive input. For some unfortunate causes, however, you prefer a rather antagonistic framework for our exchange where one side must firmly believe in something and argue for its absolute truth so that the other side can enjoy a facile and worthless pwning. As much as i understand why you are tempted to make fun of people being positively vocal about EH, i see intellectual merits less in your customary dismissing assumption and reaction than in free-thinking orthodox-free considerations of relatively attested possibilities.
I already clarified that my intention is to discuss the available suggestive evidence for alien visitation and not to argue for its absolute truth. I see how you like to imagine that i'm such a nut who can't think of anything other than aliens in the face of every UFO picture, and that's understandable, given all those socially instilled stereotypes. And i hope my further contribution to this subject will help you see through these cultural stigmas.
On another note, what would qualify as "evidence of aliens", according to you? A tangible alien body captured by an HD camera or put on an exhibition for everybody to touch? In science, physical tangibility or direct visual representation is not required for an entity to be evident. An example is blackholes. We can neither touch it nor see it, but we can know how it's there by observing its interactions with its environment. As for the hypothetical Earth-visiting aliens, too, this kind of epistemological condition should not be overlooked, for we don't really know what aliens might look like in all likelihood. What if they were naturally undetectable by conventional human senses, as the President of the Royal Society speculates? Aforementioned astronomer and former skeptic Allen Hynek identified different kinds intelligence for the enigmatic UFOs: extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and extradimensional intelligence (EDI).
"The visitors" could exist/come in forms little known to humans. Such scientific reserve justifies that we pay as much attention to what might be the effects of EE (ETI/EDI) intervening mankind. If the effects are sufficiently evident, then logic would warrant the intellectual retainment if not confirmation of the causal relation between the "inexplicable" UFOs and EE. However subtle it may be, logic is never less crucial than sensory persuasion is in the matter of truth. Cases like "aliens and the UN officially appearing before the international audience" aren't necessary for one to be serious about the possibility of alien visitation. There are already sufficient logical reasons why many intellectuals can be (and are) serious about it.
"UFOs" aren't evidence of aliens, i agree.
Details matter. EH is suggested not by the mere unidentifiability of some flying objects but by the observed empirical properties of the objects that bear out the smaller likelihood of non-EH and the greater likelihood of EH. Your objection appears to be based on this assumption that no UFO has any property which can be scientifically assessed to be positively suggesting EH. That's demonstrably wrong: certain UFOs do have explicit properties that substantiate the theoretical positivity of EH, such as "gravity-free intelligently responsive motions of a kind no known human technology is capable of imitating". If there is an observed form of technology that cannot be attributed to humans in reference to any formally confirmed instance, then logic is to immediately seize and retain another entity in addition to "human". And that's "non-human". EE.
("Non-humans" may include what might be "humans"'s distant posterity, who might biologically still be humans but would be called "non-humans" due to a linguistic accident. When we say "a human", the semantics operates in the usual circumstance that "a future human" has no substantial referent, so "human" as a common linguistic token happens to not imply "future human", while it can readily include "past human". It's the same kind of accident that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights employs the term "human" to denote the natural-rights-entitled entity while nowhere in the declaration can be found any biological specification so as to limit the entity to Homo sapiens. If beings of intelligence equal to or surpassing Homo sapiens existed, such beings would very likely qualify as the entitled entity discussed in the declaration. In other words, the philosophical design of the declaration does not exclude possible non-Homo sapiens intelligent beings. But the use of the term "human" comes out as though excluding those non-humans. There is semantic necessity for a hypernym which would include "Homo sapiens" (or what we usually call "humans") and "non-Homo sapiens intelligent beings", which would generically refer to an entity equipped with such advanced evolutionary convergent properties as intelligence, emotions, morality, etc. "Person" is a possible such hypernym. But many humans don't notice such ontological significance in the first place.)
SUGGESTIVE vs CONCLUSIVE
If you learned that a cancer might be developing in your body but with no conclusive proof, would you think nothing is going on? I wouldn't. I would be serious about the implications, and i would seek further examination.
What should i do with these "bad" evidence? Ignore it?
Multiple evidence of different sorts make corroborative evidence. If a trained airline pilot witnesses a flying object exhibiting gravity-free motions at a speed up to more than any known aircraft's capability and if the motions are captured on radars, the combined evidence's inference to the truth of "a craft super-excelling known human technology" becomes stronger than when not combined. An evidence, even if it's minimal in effect when isolated, can bear an exponentially more powerful inference when combined with other evidence.
I wouldn't believe "you can shoot lightning from your fingertips" unless you provide evidence.
As to "magic powers", it would depend on how "magic" is defined. It isn't so much readily meaningful a word. An iPad may be said to be driven by magic powers, depending on the observer's perspective. If "magic" meant "unknown", then "magic powers" could well refer to a real natural force.
What is this all about? Why are you talking about an investigator's belief in an anecdote? If you were to interview witnesses of UFOs, you wouldn't need to believe in their stories. You would just have to write down what they have to say. Collect information regarding the UFOs as much as possible.
BBSR graded UFO reports from "poor", "doubtful", "good", to "excellent", so that the cases were weighted according to e.g. the credibility of the witness. If they were to investigate "finger-lightning" and if the witness were other than a physicist or a biologist or James Randi, the report would be deemed less than "excellent".
As far as i know: In the Air Forces, a lieutenant is typically an aviator, including a test pilot. Obviously, test pilots exist to test a new craft. And i was talking about testimonies for a new craft.
Right, i realise that. What you don't appear to realise is that i don't actually attach so much credence to witnesses as to claim they satisfactorily substantiate the reality of alien visitation. In my postulation, witnesses are by default little more than a cause for us to pay attention to that which they claim to have experienced. Having said that, the cause can be of varying strength. A military-related phenomenon is suggested more strongly by a military-related individual than by a non-military-related individual. I understand how you find "anecdote" a convenient category to downplay cases of "X saw Y", but it's your problem if you keep not taking notice of the scalar factors of the testimonies. The fact that the testifiers are ex-insiders may not necessarily prove the truth of their testimonies, but it should increase our attention to the matter than if there weren't such fact. (And it's often the case that their testimonies are accompanied by relevant declassified documents, which should further our consideration.)
One conflict of interests in our conversation is that you are focused on "whether there is any proof of alien visitation for us to believe it's definitely real" while my focus is on "whether there is any evidence of alien visitation for us to think it has to be further investigated earnestly". I think my interest is more justified than yours so as to be prioritised, because:
In order to determine whether alien visitation is true or false, we need first to collect more evidence. As far as the available disparate evidences commonly suggest, the most realistic concentration of the most definitive direct evidences is to be found at clandestine US military facilities. The secrecy may be penetrated from outside or from inside. That is, the suspected evidences may be procured through a public effort or an insider effort, or both. It's an apparent certainty that the latter would have been an extreme challenge. Consider the US military's current treatment of Bradley Manning for his "crime" of revealing military truths. What would be like for another insider to plan a complete disclosure of a military secrecy as explosive as anti-gravity and zero-point energy technologies developed from the reverse-engineering of alien artifacts? There better be good aid from the outside. Just like Wikileaks has been in aid of Manning's effort. The public must work along with the insiders. And if such public effort is ever to increase, it would be with a growth of people's awareness that the subject is of an import. Now, if people paid proper attention to any suggestive evidence of alien visitation, they would find enough to begin suspecting that a further investigation may be worthwile; if they focused instead only on direct evidence of alien visitation, they would find so few that they would eventually turn their back on it, leaving the disclosure effort a less facilitated process.
Another justification for the emphasis on the need for the public's broader acceptance of the subject, is that the supposed super-technology has unprecedentedly enormous implications for our various planetary problems such as global warming and fossil fuels expiration as well as for persisting medical hurdles such as cancer.
Firstly, you are disingenuously reducing the nature of the experiences to "saw", ignoring various corroborative physical evidence such as radar records, radiation analyses, isotope analyses, etc. You are also undermining the role of the declassified documents brought forward by those insiders. Those written materials should be taken not less seriously than those currently being disclosed by Wikileaks.
Secondly, if you are going to object to the merits of those physical traces, what physical evidence are you asking for to accept even the theoretical legitimacy of EH? The physical body of an EE? That would be a definitive proof. Alien visitation would no longer be a possibility but a fact. But why would you be asking only to know alien visitation from a definitive proof? Can you not also think about alien visitation? Science is a dynamic process of thinking, not a static state of knowing.
We don't have an exoplanet as a physical object in our hand, but we can safely conclude that such entities exist based on mathematical analyses of visually indistinct but informationally rich body of mostly indirect images showing radial velocity, transit timing variation, circumstellar disks, etc. -- the only "physical evidence" regarding exoplanets that are currently available to us are wave signals captured by telescopes; nonetheless we can establish not a few scientific understandings as to what those wave signals may be representing. You might say "EH is an extraordinary claim, so I need more than eye-witnesses, radar records, radiation analyses, etc. to accept it's a possible scenario." Extraordinariness can be more objective or more subjective factors. If you saw a dog in Borders standing in front of a CD shelf listening to Muse and singing along, that would more objectively qualify as an extraordinary phenomenon, because "for all known dogs, none can sing a human song" is an established fact according to the fullest extent of our collective knowledge. However, the extraordinariness which many skeptics tend to attribute to the idea of alien visitation is more subjective a factor, because, to the fullest extent of our collective knowledge, we don't know any "aliens" for which we can make a quantifying statement as to what is ordinary or extraordinary about the relation between them and us in the first place. We don't know that "for all aliens, none of them have visited Earth" is an ordinary circumstance. There is no objective reference to which the extraordinariness of the EH can be identified based off other than our collective ignorance of the truth value of EE.
In what way? What motivates what to do what?
I actually mentioned the suspicion surrounding the funding of the Condon Committee. The General Accounting Office (GAO) considered an investigation. The suspected was not those researchers who concluded in favour of the EH but their very heads: Condon, Low, and other Air Force personnel. They were granted more than 500,000 $ (1960s), which was meant to aid for the UFO study, and it was later exposed that Condon, contradicting the project's purpose, continuously hindered the actual investigation of UFOs (even covering up the pro-EH conclusions reached by the expert investigators) in favour of a debunking campaign.
I call them experts just like i can commonsensically so describe a degreed professor at a university or a government institution demonstrating their working expertise. The French COMETA's Alain Orszag, for instance, was a Ph.D. physicist and armament engineer, and Christian Marchal was a chief engineer at the National Office of Aeronautical Research. The US Project Sign's Alfred Loedding was the pioneering Bellanca Aircraft Company's engineer specialised in low-aspect design aircraft and a patent holder of a flying wing design (also importantly, he greatly contributed to the aforementioned Estimate of the Situation, which argued for the EH as the most likely explanation for certain UFOs but which was ultimately rejected by the Air Force superiors).
Is a Canadian Defense Minister not high enough? Paul Hellyer is convinced of the reality of interventional but helpful forces from EE:
On May 3, 2010, in an interview with The Canadian Press' Peter Rakobowchuk, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens:
Again, i'm not claiming that "what he says must be true because he is a former high-ranking official". I want you to understand that EH is more than a total crackpot business.
P.S.
I feel a little bit pressed to talk about another developing piece of thought.
Let me begin with another quote from Hellyer. In November 2005 at the University of Toronto, Hellyer accused George W. Bush of plotting an "intergalactic war":
Confused? Here's the interesting thing. This week, amid this rising tension between South Korea and North Korea (with unexpectedly massive nuclear power, according to the Los Alamos personnel), the US military's missile shield test of a 20-year-long 100-billion-dolloar project failed, for the second time:
(On the same day, a UFO appeared in a designated no-fly zone of Israel, above a nuclear power plant that suspectedly harbours weapon facilities. The Israeli Air Force responded by shooting at it. They are yet to confirm whether it was a balloon or a warplane or something else.)
Back in October, Wyoming's 50 nukes went offline. In November, an apparent military missile was launched off the California coast, and the Pentagon didn't explain why.
During the Cold War, an ICBM test at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1964 was intercepted by a UFO. The incident was video-recorded, but the tape was allegedly confiscated by CIA. In 1967, amid the rising tension between the US and the communist regimes, UFOs appeared above the Malmstrom Air Force nuclear missile launch control facility, and all the 10 ICBMs got deactivated due to a guidance-and-control system package failure, meaning that some kind of a signal was sent to the computer which then shut down the missiles independent of the directors' command. Captain Robert Salas recounts that it might have prevented a nuclear war.
On April 26, 1986, the fourth power-generating unit of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was supposed to be repaired. But the administrators decided to perform several risky experiments regarding steam delivery and turbine vibration. The performance was not well-organised. The personnel miscommunicated with each other. Eventually a large thermal blast took place, and overheated steam destroyed the fourth power-generating unit (whose reactor had 180 tons of enriched uranium). Reports say hundreds of people saw a 6-8 m object hovering about 300 m above the unit, for six hours. Mikhail Varitsky of the rescue team recounts: "Then, we saw two rays of crimson light stretching towards the fourth unit." The rays lasted for about three minutes, after which the radiation level is reported to have decreased almost four times.
A myth? I couldn't confirm the veracity of this Chernobyl UFO case. But the following is serious business.
Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program and the Military Industrial Complex (2003):
EH aside, i think the weaponisation of space is really dangerous on many levels.
Now, if alien visitation were real, and if their possibly-millions-years-worth super-technology so outclassed the human military's, how would aliens respond to all these mass-destructive establishments on and above Earth? Is it possible that some UFOs are alien craft and they are monitoring so that the militaries don't mess up this planet? Is it possible that aliens have been intercepting nuclear devices around this planet so as to warn us something?
Robert Hastings, whose father was a USAF Senior Master Sergeant with the knowledge of nuclear-related UFO incidents such as the one at Malmstrom AFB, have been researching in this field:
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TYPES OF ENTITIES & HYPOTHESES
On this thread, i'm concerned with objects that may be generically called "unidentified object (UO)". UOs include:
- unidentified flying object (UFO)
- unidentified submerged object (USO)
- unidentified archaeological object (UAO)
The term "unidentified" may be used in a semantically less rigorous manner for the sake of practicality. For instance, a UAO may not be unidentified in the sense that we more or less know its material origin (time, place, author) but may be unidentified in the sense that we cannot accurately recognise its technological genealogy -- that its apparent technological properties are at odds with the orthodox understanding of mankind's history --, and this particular adjective will bear practical terminological consistency with the other two terms, "UFO" and "USO". For the same reason, i would prefer "UAO" to the more common "out-of-place artifact (OOPART)" ("out-of-place" means that the object's confirmed or reported presence cannot be fully explained through our conventional understanding of the world we live in).
When an object is presumed to be identified, it may be generically called "identified object (IO)". IOs include:
- identified flying object (IFO)
- identified submerged object (ISO)
- identified archaeological object (IAO)
As far as the notion of "aliens" is concerned, UOs may be most meaningfully dealt with via mainly two theoretical frameworks:
- that in which responsible entities are assumed to be other than extraterrestrial or extradimensional intelligence
- that in which responsible entities are assumed to be extraterrestrial or extradimensional intelligence
These may respectively be called:
- non-extraterrestrial or -extradimensional hypothesis (non-EH)
- extraterrestrial or extradimensional hypothesis (EH)
The hypothetical responsible entities may be called:
- non-extraterrestrial or -extradimensional entity (non-EE)
- extraterrestrial or extradimensional entity (EE)
Non-EE include:
- celestrial bodies: bright stars, planets, meteors, moon...
- spacecraft: re-entering human-made spacecraft, human-made satellites...
- aircraft: advertising planes, other aircraft...
- animals: birds...
- light phenomena: mirage, moon dog, ground lights, searchlights, reflections...
- other artifacts: balloons, kites, Chinese lanterns, flares, missiles...
- other natural phenomena: clouds, dust, windblown debris...
EE include:
- beings from another spatial region within the spacetime of what we may call "this universe"
- beings from another temporal region within the spacetime of what we may call "this universe"
- beings from another spatial region within the spacetime of what we may call "another universe"
- beings from another temporal region within the spacetime of what we may call "another universe"
- beings from an unknown dimension
The following descriptors will aid for the expressivity of EH's application scope:
- insufficient-information (ii-)
- sufficient-information (si-)
For instance:
- "ii-UFO" means that the object is deemed unidentified in the condition that the examined information is insufficient for one to determine whether the responsible entity is a known or an unknown, from the conventional viewpoint -- the object is tentatively unidentified.
- "si-UFO" means that the object is deemed unidentified in the condition that the examined information is sufficient for one to determine whether the responsible entity is a known or an unknown, from the conventional viewpoint -- the object is definitely unidentified (i.e. "true UFOs").
The distinction between ii-UFOs and si-UFOs is crucial in the discussion of EH. Major formal studies (see below) demonstrate that EH is plausible NOT FOR the objects that are identifiable (IFOs) or unidentifiable-with-insufficient-information (ii-UFOs) BUT FOR the objects that are unidentifiable-with-sufficient-information (si-UFO). Several people on this thread may have expressed a mistaken notion that EH is argued for UFOs in general, but the formal application is actually specific: EH is most meaningfully applied to si-UFOs and not to ii-UFOs.
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ACCUSATIONS
Duvelthehobbit666 said:
I never "filled" the gaps with aliens and claim the cases are solved. I point out that aliens (the EH, more accurately) can fill the gap. And my emphasis is justified not only by our present inability to formally identify the mysterious phenomena but also by the understanding we can establish of the phenomena's properties revealed from the available evidence (see below).
ArthurWilborn said:
An argument is an "appeal to authority" if the arguer tries to establish a truth of a statement based solely upon the fact that it's supported by authority. I'm not making such an argument. I'm not claiming "alien visitation is real because authority supports EH".
ArthurWilborn said:
No. The sentence just says what it says: "Group of experts X said extraterrestrials were the most likely explanation." There is no appeal to anything in this linguistic construct alone. An appeal to authority is something like this:
"Group of experts X said extraterrestrials were the most likely explanation, therefore UFOs must be caused by extraterrestrials."
Try to avoid abusing the fallacy card.
ArthurWilborn said:
Try to object accurately. Show a specific instance of my statement which you wish to criticise, rather than a template of statements
borrofburi said:
I'm quite aware that UFOs aren't necessarily related to aliens. I said it myself many times. I can recognise different kinds of UFOs; some are obviously of ordinary origins/causes, and some are very enigmatic. I never intended to make any generalisation about all UFOs; EH is concerned with specific kinds of UFOs. You are the one who keep ramming this erroneous "UFO = aliens" association down my throat, misrepresenting me as claiming that UFOs are always alien-related, and then accuse me of being so erroneous.
I presented notable formal studies to tell you, among other things, how the investigators with relevant expertise came to the conclusion that EH was a plausible explanation for certain UFOs (i.e. si-UFOs), not for the unqualified/unquantified "UFO".
BrainBlow said:
I'm not fond of the descriptor "skeptic" to begin with. I recognise the importance of the intellectual principles involved in the practice of skepticism, but not to the point where i feel like calling myself "skeptic" (the same with "atheist").
To the extent that i largely disagree with general "skeptic"s on the subject of UFO, "pseudo-skeptic" might describe my expressed position. But i suspect you are using it in a disparaging sense with the assumption that a "skeptic" is better than a "pseudo-skeptic", and that's disputable.
A "conviction" of what? I have the conviction that EH is a legitimate theoretical framework for certain enigmatic phenomena. I'm increasingly so convinced that i more and more think UFOs/USOs/UAOs deserve more serious attention and study. But i honestly don't think non-EH for those same phenomena can be ignored. What does that say about my "conviction"? I fail to be a good example of either "skeptic" or "alien believer". And i'm happy with that.
Duvelthehobbit666 said:
I'm not aware of any formally documented evidence of TR-3B available online. And my point wasn't that this exact craft demonstrably exists (apart from what ex-insiders and video footage can tell us).
I pointed you to another forum's thread dedicated to the discussion of TR-3B so that, should you be interested in it, you could speak to folks presumably more knowledgeable than me about this alleged craft. In my earlier post to which you are responding here, i meant to only tangentially mention a possible instance of alien technology of a category other than "UFO sighting" on which you had appeared erroneously fixated.
"beliefs" in what? I never said i believe TR-3B has been developed based on extraterrestrial technology. I meant to only point out that claims such as "I saw a flying object in the sky" and "I worked for the USAF's clandestine project based on extraterrestrial technology" are of different kinds with different significances. You asked for evidence of EH regarding "UFO sightings", but "UFO sightings" aren't the only kind of phenomena to which EH is applicable. I wanted to tell you that so that you could understand that evidence of EH might come from broader fields of inquiry.
australopithecus said:
I presented materials in which experts discussed the evidence in favour of EH. I clearly didn't claim "that experience and observation is evidence". I presented their studies so that you could at least realise there have been formal efforts into the study of UFOs (as well as the subsequent military-driven suppression of it). I wished to help you disarm your own harmful prejudice toward the legitimate interests by bringing your attention to a saner field of UFO discourse.
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EVIDENCE
Evidence may be said to come in two main forms: circumstantial and direct. Multiple circumstantial evidence corroborates each other to infer the truth of an assertion so that the assertion becomes obvious; it suggests a truth. Direct evidence can singularly infer the truth of an assertion so that the assertion becomes necessary; it proves a truth. (NOTE: Direct evidence is not universally accepted to be a possible epistemological factor.) The use of something as evidence requires that it be presumed to be true through either the fact that it is self-evident or the fact that it is proven by other evidence.
A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
For more science-oriented readers:
Deardorff said:
STATISTICAL & DOCUMENTATIONAL
General statistics:
Wikipedia: Identification Studies of UFOs
UFO Sightings Statistics Displays
General documents:
nicap.org: Official Documents
top10ufo.com: UFO Documents
hyper.net: UFO documents and books
Notable major statistical studies of UFOs include:
- 1954 Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 (BBSR)
- a two-year computer-aided statistical analysis of 3,200 cases conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute ordered by the USAF
- 22% of the cases remained unexplained in conventional terms (excluding cases with insufficient information)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book#Project_Blue_Book_Special_Report_No._14
http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MAXW-PBB1-1229
- 1968 Condon Report
- a USAF-sponsored study of 117 cases by university personnel
- 100% of the cases were deemed explainable in conventional terms either presently or prospectively
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee#The_Condon_Report
http://files.ncas.org/condon/
- 1971 Review of Condon Report
- conducted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- 30% of the cases remained unexplained in conventional terms
Report on a Survey of the Membership of the American Astronomical Society Concerning the UFO Phenomenon - Summary
UFO Reports from AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Members
AIAA Committee Looks at UFO Problem
UFO - An Appraisal of the Problem (A Statement by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA)
- 1979 UFO Handbook
- Allan Hendry's 15-month personal investigation of 1,307 cases
- 1.5% of the cases remained unexplained in conventional terms
- 1950-80s NICAP
- More than 5,000 cases studied by the civilian UFO organisation NICAP
- 16% of the cases remained unexplained in conventional terms
nicap.org: The Sighting Chronologies
nicap.org: Sightings - By Category
nicap.org: Global Sighting Information Database
nicap.org: Bibliographic Databases
nicap.org: Multiple Anomaly Detection & Automated Recording Project
- 1977-2004 GEPAN/SEPRA
- the French Government's official investigation of about 6,000 cases conducted by the French space agency CNES
- 13% of the cases remained unexplained in conventional terms (excluding cases with insufficient information)
ufoevidence.org: GEPAN/SEPRA Articles, Documents, & Resources
ArthurWilborn said:
That's a fair point in its own right. But we can't ignore the available results of the legitimate studies. I'll explain just below.
ArthurWilborn said:
As far as BBSR is concerned, the cases were divided into "knowns", "unknowns", and "insufficient information". In other words, an "unknown" is a case in which the phenomenon was deemed unidentifiable after all the known conventional possibilities had been informedly ruled out. Two important statistical significances:
- The higher the quality of the case, the more likely it was to be classified "unknown".
- In all six sighting characteristics (brightness, color, shape, duration of appearance, speed, number), the unknowns were different from the knowns at a highly statistically significant level. In five of the six measures, the odds of knowns differing from unknowns by chance was 1% or less. When all six characteristics were considered together, the probability of a match between knowns and unknowns was less than 1 in a billion.
The first point suggests: the more scientifically rigorous UFOs are observed, the more challenged scientists would be by unknown phenomena. This justifies my claim that ufology should be considered a legitimate field of scientific inquiry.
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australopithecus said:
Right, more academics should study UFOs. Unfortunately, they so far have tended to avoid the subject. I opine that's because they consider the subject ridiculous or fear being ridiculed for taking this stigmatised field seriously. If any, they are made familiar more with the NAS-endorsed Condon Report without learning any of the pro-EH conclusions reached by those experts who actually investigated the cases but censored out by Condon, the head of the project.
The second point suggests: IFOs and si-UFOs are fundamentally different phenomena. si-UFOs ("true" UFOs) are unlikely to belong to any of the categories of the known phenomena such as those non-EEs listed in the beginning of this post.
PHYSICAL & REPRESENTATIONAL
Journal of Scientific Exploration: Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports
ufoevidence.org: Physical Trace Cases
ufoevidence.org: Physical Evidence
about.com: Physical Evidence of UFOs
UFO Crashes & Physical Proof
hyper.net: Resources about possible UFO physics / propulsion / technology
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1870-1959
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1960-1969
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1970-1979
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1980-1989
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 1990-1999
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2000-2003
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2004
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2005
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2006
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2007
ufocasebook.com: UFO Pictures 2008
top10ufo.com: UFO Images
top10ufo.com: Moon Images
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (1)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (2)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (3)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (4)
ufocasebook.com: UFO Videos (5)
top10ufo.com: UFO Videos
borrofburi said:
You are distorting the points i made about the pyramids. My attention to the EH for the construction of the pyramids (especially the Khufu Pyramid) does not derive from my not knowing how the Egyptians could have built them; it derives from multiple facts such as:
-- The engineering aspects of the construction (e.g. the carving accuracy, the granite drill holes, the overall pace) indicate the involvement of an at-least-modern-level technology that contradicts the orthodox non-intervention self-dependent history of mankind but not an alternative history in which mankind might have been intervened by an unknown advanced civilisation.
-- The site could not have yielded sufficient food for the workers necessary if they had only simple tools (as mainstream Egyptology tells) and they had to make up for the lack of tools' efficiency with the total amount of workforce but not if they had highly advanced tools that would have allowed efficient work. Also the considerable lack of soot inside the pyramids that are pitch-black without lighting suggests they might have had access to an advanced non-burning light source, possibly electrical (possible at least in the sense that pre-modern batteries have been found in the nearby regions such as Iraq to challenge the conventional notion that ancient people couldn't have harnessed electricity).
We thus do know certain things. And these are amenable more to an intervention viewpoint than to a non-intervention viewpoint. While we should retain a non-intervention viewpoint, the evidence justifies (in fact demands) a further consideration from an intervention viewpoint. The question is: Who intervened?
On another note:
Recently, a citizen-science project called "the Planet Hunters" was launched:
The aim is to get help from the public in sorting out the evidence for exoplanets via the internet. After the rough classification by the public, the more rigorous process for determining "which star is orbited by a planet" is carried out. It involves a scrutiny of very subtle pixel-level information, and deals with images as blurry as this:
This sort of images can provide meaningful information for a scientific investigation. These can be the primary basis for scientists to legitimately claim which stars have planets, light-years away. Now, compare those to the following:
As you may recognise from our previous exchanges, these are lights captured mostly by space shuttle cameras, at a kilometer-level distance. You guys have rejected the scientific utility of these images as being too "blurry". But i say these can provide useful information so as to help our scientific understanding of these phenomena, just like those images used for exoplanet detection, whose pixel-level details can be of great significance. If we can scientifically analyse the motion of a planet light-years away from our solar system, surely we should be able to exert as much scientific attention to the motion of these UFOs just above (or even within) the Earth atmosphere, and determine its e.g. gravitational properties. That is, we should be able to figure out, from its visual representations even of minimal clarity, whether or not these UFOs are intelligently controlled.
Such formal studies have already been conducted. The US did it. France did it. Russia did it. Britain did it. Belgium did it. Canada did it. Norway did it. And so on. The experts share a conclusion: Certain UFOs are physically real and intelligently controlled, whose motions typically defy any known technological standard. So, the next question is: Where do these advanced artifacts come from?
I say both non-EH and EH are possibilities. I don't claim EH is proven. Non-EH is still possible (the artifacts could be from a super-advanced secret human organisation). I keep researching. And i take the liberty of posting on what i know or what i don't know, expecting your constructive input. For some unfortunate causes, however, you prefer a rather antagonistic framework for our exchange where one side must firmly believe in something and argue for its absolute truth so that the other side can enjoy a facile and worthless pwning. As much as i understand why you are tempted to make fun of people being positively vocal about EH, i see intellectual merits less in your customary dismissing assumption and reaction than in free-thinking orthodox-free considerations of relatively attested possibilities.
I already clarified that my intention is to discuss the available suggestive evidence for alien visitation and not to argue for its absolute truth. I see how you like to imagine that i'm such a nut who can't think of anything other than aliens in the face of every UFO picture, and that's understandable, given all those socially instilled stereotypes. And i hope my further contribution to this subject will help you see through these cultural stigmas.
On another note, what would qualify as "evidence of aliens", according to you? A tangible alien body captured by an HD camera or put on an exhibition for everybody to touch? In science, physical tangibility or direct visual representation is not required for an entity to be evident. An example is blackholes. We can neither touch it nor see it, but we can know how it's there by observing its interactions with its environment. As for the hypothetical Earth-visiting aliens, too, this kind of epistemological condition should not be overlooked, for we don't really know what aliens might look like in all likelihood. What if they were naturally undetectable by conventional human senses, as the President of the Royal Society speculates? Aforementioned astronomer and former skeptic Allen Hynek identified different kinds intelligence for the enigmatic UFOs: extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and extradimensional intelligence (EDI).
Hynek said:
"The visitors" could exist/come in forms little known to humans. Such scientific reserve justifies that we pay as much attention to what might be the effects of EE (ETI/EDI) intervening mankind. If the effects are sufficiently evident, then logic would warrant the intellectual retainment if not confirmation of the causal relation between the "inexplicable" UFOs and EE. However subtle it may be, logic is never less crucial than sensory persuasion is in the matter of truth. Cases like "aliens and the UN officially appearing before the international audience" aren't necessary for one to be serious about the possibility of alien visitation. There are already sufficient logical reasons why many intellectuals can be (and are) serious about it.
australopithecus said:
"UFOs" aren't evidence of aliens, i agree.
Details matter. EH is suggested not by the mere unidentifiability of some flying objects but by the observed empirical properties of the objects that bear out the smaller likelihood of non-EH and the greater likelihood of EH. Your objection appears to be based on this assumption that no UFO has any property which can be scientifically assessed to be positively suggesting EH. That's demonstrably wrong: certain UFOs do have explicit properties that substantiate the theoretical positivity of EH, such as "gravity-free intelligently responsive motions of a kind no known human technology is capable of imitating". If there is an observed form of technology that cannot be attributed to humans in reference to any formally confirmed instance, then logic is to immediately seize and retain another entity in addition to "human". And that's "non-human". EE.
("Non-humans" may include what might be "humans"'s distant posterity, who might biologically still be humans but would be called "non-humans" due to a linguistic accident. When we say "a human", the semantics operates in the usual circumstance that "a future human" has no substantial referent, so "human" as a common linguistic token happens to not imply "future human", while it can readily include "past human". It's the same kind of accident that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights employs the term "human" to denote the natural-rights-entitled entity while nowhere in the declaration can be found any biological specification so as to limit the entity to Homo sapiens. If beings of intelligence equal to or surpassing Homo sapiens existed, such beings would very likely qualify as the entitled entity discussed in the declaration. In other words, the philosophical design of the declaration does not exclude possible non-Homo sapiens intelligent beings. But the use of the term "human" comes out as though excluding those non-humans. There is semantic necessity for a hypernym which would include "Homo sapiens" (or what we usually call "humans") and "non-Homo sapiens intelligent beings", which would generically refer to an entity equipped with such advanced evolutionary convergent properties as intelligence, emotions, morality, etc. "Person" is a possible such hypernym. But many humans don't notice such ontological significance in the first place.)
SUGGESTIVE vs CONCLUSIVE
ArthurWilborn said:
If you learned that a cancer might be developing in your body but with no conclusive proof, would you think nothing is going on? I wouldn't. I would be serious about the implications, and i would seek further examination.
ArthurWilborn said:
What should i do with these "bad" evidence? Ignore it?
ArthurWilborn said:
Multiple evidence of different sorts make corroborative evidence. If a trained airline pilot witnesses a flying object exhibiting gravity-free motions at a speed up to more than any known aircraft's capability and if the motions are captured on radars, the combined evidence's inference to the truth of "a craft super-excelling known human technology" becomes stronger than when not combined. An evidence, even if it's minimal in effect when isolated, can bear an exponentially more powerful inference when combined with other evidence.
ArthurWilborn said:
I wouldn't believe "you can shoot lightning from your fingertips" unless you provide evidence.
As to "magic powers", it would depend on how "magic" is defined. It isn't so much readily meaningful a word. An iPad may be said to be driven by magic powers, depending on the observer's perspective. If "magic" meant "unknown", then "magic powers" could well refer to a real natural force.
What is this all about? Why are you talking about an investigator's belief in an anecdote? If you were to interview witnesses of UFOs, you wouldn't need to believe in their stories. You would just have to write down what they have to say. Collect information regarding the UFOs as much as possible.
BBSR graded UFO reports from "poor", "doubtful", "good", to "excellent", so that the cases were weighted according to e.g. the credibility of the witness. If they were to investigate "finger-lightning" and if the witness were other than a physicist or a biologist or James Randi, the report would be deemed less than "excellent".
SpaceCDT said:
As far as i know: In the Air Forces, a lieutenant is typically an aviator, including a test pilot. Obviously, test pilots exist to test a new craft. And i was talking about testimonies for a new craft.
ArthurWilborn said:
Right, i realise that. What you don't appear to realise is that i don't actually attach so much credence to witnesses as to claim they satisfactorily substantiate the reality of alien visitation. In my postulation, witnesses are by default little more than a cause for us to pay attention to that which they claim to have experienced. Having said that, the cause can be of varying strength. A military-related phenomenon is suggested more strongly by a military-related individual than by a non-military-related individual. I understand how you find "anecdote" a convenient category to downplay cases of "X saw Y", but it's your problem if you keep not taking notice of the scalar factors of the testimonies. The fact that the testifiers are ex-insiders may not necessarily prove the truth of their testimonies, but it should increase our attention to the matter than if there weren't such fact. (And it's often the case that their testimonies are accompanied by relevant declassified documents, which should further our consideration.)
One conflict of interests in our conversation is that you are focused on "whether there is any proof of alien visitation for us to believe it's definitely real" while my focus is on "whether there is any evidence of alien visitation for us to think it has to be further investigated earnestly". I think my interest is more justified than yours so as to be prioritised, because:
In order to determine whether alien visitation is true or false, we need first to collect more evidence. As far as the available disparate evidences commonly suggest, the most realistic concentration of the most definitive direct evidences is to be found at clandestine US military facilities. The secrecy may be penetrated from outside or from inside. That is, the suspected evidences may be procured through a public effort or an insider effort, or both. It's an apparent certainty that the latter would have been an extreme challenge. Consider the US military's current treatment of Bradley Manning for his "crime" of revealing military truths. What would be like for another insider to plan a complete disclosure of a military secrecy as explosive as anti-gravity and zero-point energy technologies developed from the reverse-engineering of alien artifacts? There better be good aid from the outside. Just like Wikileaks has been in aid of Manning's effort. The public must work along with the insiders. And if such public effort is ever to increase, it would be with a growth of people's awareness that the subject is of an import. Now, if people paid proper attention to any suggestive evidence of alien visitation, they would find enough to begin suspecting that a further investigation may be worthwile; if they focused instead only on direct evidence of alien visitation, they would find so few that they would eventually turn their back on it, leaving the disclosure effort a less facilitated process.
Another justification for the emphasis on the need for the public's broader acceptance of the subject, is that the supposed super-technology has unprecedentedly enormous implications for our various planetary problems such as global warming and fossil fuels expiration as well as for persisting medical hurdles such as cancer.
ArthurWilborn said:
Firstly, you are disingenuously reducing the nature of the experiences to "saw", ignoring various corroborative physical evidence such as radar records, radiation analyses, isotope analyses, etc. You are also undermining the role of the declassified documents brought forward by those insiders. Those written materials should be taken not less seriously than those currently being disclosed by Wikileaks.
Secondly, if you are going to object to the merits of those physical traces, what physical evidence are you asking for to accept even the theoretical legitimacy of EH? The physical body of an EE? That would be a definitive proof. Alien visitation would no longer be a possibility but a fact. But why would you be asking only to know alien visitation from a definitive proof? Can you not also think about alien visitation? Science is a dynamic process of thinking, not a static state of knowing.
We don't have an exoplanet as a physical object in our hand, but we can safely conclude that such entities exist based on mathematical analyses of visually indistinct but informationally rich body of mostly indirect images showing radial velocity, transit timing variation, circumstellar disks, etc. -- the only "physical evidence" regarding exoplanets that are currently available to us are wave signals captured by telescopes; nonetheless we can establish not a few scientific understandings as to what those wave signals may be representing. You might say "EH is an extraordinary claim, so I need more than eye-witnesses, radar records, radiation analyses, etc. to accept it's a possible scenario." Extraordinariness can be more objective or more subjective factors. If you saw a dog in Borders standing in front of a CD shelf listening to Muse and singing along, that would more objectively qualify as an extraordinary phenomenon, because "for all known dogs, none can sing a human song" is an established fact according to the fullest extent of our collective knowledge. However, the extraordinariness which many skeptics tend to attribute to the idea of alien visitation is more subjective a factor, because, to the fullest extent of our collective knowledge, we don't know any "aliens" for which we can make a quantifying statement as to what is ordinary or extraordinary about the relation between them and us in the first place. We don't know that "for all aliens, none of them have visited Earth" is an ordinary circumstance. There is no objective reference to which the extraordinariness of the EH can be identified based off other than our collective ignorance of the truth value of EE.
ArthurWilborn said:
In what way? What motivates what to do what?
I actually mentioned the suspicion surrounding the funding of the Condon Committee. The General Accounting Office (GAO) considered an investigation. The suspected was not those researchers who concluded in favour of the EH but their very heads: Condon, Low, and other Air Force personnel. They were granted more than 500,000 $ (1960s), which was meant to aid for the UFO study, and it was later exposed that Condon, contradicting the project's purpose, continuously hindered the actual investigation of UFOs (even covering up the pro-EH conclusions reached by the expert investigators) in favour of a debunking campaign.
ArthurWilborn said:
I call them experts just like i can commonsensically so describe a degreed professor at a university or a government institution demonstrating their working expertise. The French COMETA's Alain Orszag, for instance, was a Ph.D. physicist and armament engineer, and Christian Marchal was a chief engineer at the National Office of Aeronautical Research. The US Project Sign's Alfred Loedding was the pioneering Bellanca Aircraft Company's engineer specialised in low-aspect design aircraft and a patent holder of a flying wing design (also importantly, he greatly contributed to the aforementioned Estimate of the Situation, which argued for the EH as the most likely explanation for certain UFOs but which was ultimately rejected by the Air Force superiors).
SpaceCDT said:
Is a Canadian Defense Minister not high enough? Paul Hellyer is convinced of the reality of interventional but helpful forces from EE:
On May 3, 2010, in an interview with The Canadian Press' Peter Rakobowchuk, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens:
Hellyer said:
Again, i'm not claiming that "what he says must be true because he is a former high-ranking official". I want you to understand that EH is more than a total crackpot business.
P.S.
I feel a little bit pressed to talk about another developing piece of thought.
Let me begin with another quote from Hellyer. In November 2005 at the University of Toronto, Hellyer accused George W. Bush of plotting an "intergalactic war":
Hellyer said:
Confused? Here's the interesting thing. This week, amid this rising tension between South Korea and North Korea (with unexpectedly massive nuclear power, according to the Los Alamos personnel), the US military's missile shield test of a 20-year-long 100-billion-dolloar project failed, for the second time:
(On the same day, a UFO appeared in a designated no-fly zone of Israel, above a nuclear power plant that suspectedly harbours weapon facilities. The Israeli Air Force responded by shooting at it. They are yet to confirm whether it was a balloon or a warplane or something else.)
Back in October, Wyoming's 50 nukes went offline. In November, an apparent military missile was launched off the California coast, and the Pentagon didn't explain why.
During the Cold War, an ICBM test at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1964 was intercepted by a UFO. The incident was video-recorded, but the tape was allegedly confiscated by CIA. In 1967, amid the rising tension between the US and the communist regimes, UFOs appeared above the Malmstrom Air Force nuclear missile launch control facility, and all the 10 ICBMs got deactivated due to a guidance-and-control system package failure, meaning that some kind of a signal was sent to the computer which then shut down the missiles independent of the directors' command. Captain Robert Salas recounts that it might have prevented a nuclear war.
On April 26, 1986, the fourth power-generating unit of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was supposed to be repaired. But the administrators decided to perform several risky experiments regarding steam delivery and turbine vibration. The performance was not well-organised. The personnel miscommunicated with each other. Eventually a large thermal blast took place, and overheated steam destroyed the fourth power-generating unit (whose reactor had 180 tons of enriched uranium). Reports say hundreds of people saw a 6-8 m object hovering about 300 m above the unit, for six hours. Mikhail Varitsky of the rescue team recounts: "Then, we saw two rays of crimson light stretching towards the fourth unit." The rays lasted for about three minutes, after which the radiation level is reported to have decreased almost four times.
A myth? I couldn't confirm the veracity of this Chernobyl UFO case. But the following is serious business.
Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program and the Military Industrial Complex (2003):
EH aside, i think the weaponisation of space is really dangerous on many levels.
Now, if alien visitation were real, and if their possibly-millions-years-worth super-technology so outclassed the human military's, how would aliens respond to all these mass-destructive establishments on and above Earth? Is it possible that some UFOs are alien craft and they are monitoring so that the militaries don't mess up this planet? Is it possible that aliens have been intercepting nuclear devices around this planet so as to warn us something?
Robert Hastings, whose father was a USAF Senior Master Sergeant with the knowledge of nuclear-related UFO incidents such as the one at Malmstrom AFB, have been researching in this field:
