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Old 17-February-2009, 03:41 PM
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JayUtah JayUtah is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 10,314
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1. Age
43 tomorrow

2. Gender
male

3. Do you believe that people who see U.F.O.’s are actually seeing something in the sky, or are they just imagining things?

This is not a good question: it proposes a false either-or alternative.

I believe that some sightings are hoaxes. That means either the witness is intentionally lying or that someone has deliberately created a scenario in which an unsuspecting witness sees something meant to be interpreted as extraordinary.

I believe that a large majority of sightings are sightings of genuine phenomena (i.e., that the witness is neither lying nor hallucinating). However I believe that witnesses mix observation with interpretation, as human nature invariably does. And I believe that some reports may be embellished consciously or unconsciously to make them seem more remarkable.

The human brain interprets images and puts them together to form a coherent and consistent scenario or story, even if that story does not exactly correspond to what really happened. There are many ways in which human perception can be innocently wrong.

4. Do you believe that life exists in the universe somewhere other than Earth?
Yes

5. Have you ever seen an U.F.O.?

I have seen many things in the sky that I could not identify. I have also seen things that were initially remarkable but were later explained.

6. Do you believe UFO’s are extraterrestrial in origin ... or terrestrial...

Terrestrial in the sense that they are things that pertain to this Earth. While you mention human-made objects, I would also include natural phenomena under "terrestrial" causes.

7. Do you believe the government is hiding information about UFO’s

It depends on what you mean by UFO, since the term is often misused to indicate suspected alien spaceships and not merely unidentified sightings. I believe agencies and offices of the government have custody of records of sightings and possible investigations that are not disclosed for various reasons such as confidentiality or classification.

However I do not believe the government is hiding some monumental "smoking gun" evidence that would drastically change our current understanding of unexplained sightings. I do not believe in the claims of systematic and universal suppression of "The Truth" about UFOs.

8. Do you believe there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe with the capabilities of traveling to earth?

Given the vastness of the universe I would have to say yes; but I hasten to add that I think the odds of it are very remote. Our current understanding of physics suggests that any beings capable of traveling to Earth within their lifetimes would already be close enough to have been detected (or to detect us) by other means.

9. Do you believe in your lifetime that scientists will find life somewhere else in the universe?

Unlikely. Any life we discovered in the next few decades would likely be simple life forms found in our solar system. We simply don't have the means to examine much else of the universe.
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