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Originally Posted by hewhocaves
Quote:
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Originally Posted by scourge
And if what I’ve seen personally has some terribly mundane explanation, the silence is deafening. I saw two bright lights in broad daylight, with five other people I knew well, execute rapid, linear, acute-angle maneuvers with no apparent change in velocity. I promise you—if you’d been there, you’d remotely consider the possibility of some outrageously advanced top secret military project (though why they’d fly them over a heavily populated area, and risk crashing them by flying them with such acrobatic precision, would stick in your craw), or something truly novel, possibly even extraterrestrial. There aren’t many other options on the table, and I think it would be foolish to not consider them all very earnestly.
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See Scourge, this is the very real problem. You're asking us to try and ID something that is nearly impossible to ID. If you were totally convinced that it was Russian Migs scouting out your hometown for a parachute drop we couldn't help you any more than if you had said it was space aliens. I agree that what you saw was at least mildly enigmatic, but I can't get excited about it. Why? There's nowhere near enough evidence in your experience to begin to make an educated guess. Most of us on this board know the hazards of trying to figure out what's in the sky and how difficult it is to ID stuff when it's difficult to see or just a collection of lights. (Personally, I now always carry binoculars in my car so I can attempt to satisfy my curiosity.) I'm not saying you should stop trying to figure out what it was, but even if, as you say, it would be really stupid for an experimental military craft to be conducting test flights over a populated area, that possibilty is still much, much more likely than it being space aliens.
Have you conclusively eliminted the possiblity of the military? Have you concusively eliminated the possibility of some sort of private stunt pilots? Of someone deliberately hoaxing you? Someone trying to hoax the whole area? I mean, these are very unlkely circumstances, I agree, but each and every one of these is MUCH more likely than it being an alien craft. |
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about and scourge pointed it out as well: You are automataically applying a
low a priori probablity to the ETH.
I see this as the crux of the matter.
Why?
Because even in the "scientific method" one must make assumptions to test a theory, and it is in these assumptions that personal bias can shows itself.
The "scientific method" is supposedly "objective" but within the method itself allows for subjectivity to creep in.
Hence the
low a priori probability "skeptics" like yourself apply to the ETH.
Here, we have a seemingly mainstream journal publishing a paper that says, according to modern astrophysics, that we should be immersed in a galactic Civ, AND YET, "skeptics"
still think the prosaic explanations are "MUCH" more likely.
I see this as the reason that "Science" has alienated (pun intended) the masses. People worldwide have experiences such as scourge's and yet "science" tells him he's a "crackpot" misidentifying some mundane event.
***SNIP***
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Yes, we do ask for extrordinary evidence. After all, it's an extrortdinary claim.
John
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I disagree. As I pointed out earlier, humans have been writing about "those from heaven to earth came" for millennia, replete in our Religious and Mythic texts. They've also documented countless "sightings" through the ages into our very own day. In the blink of an eye, evolutionarily, humans became a space faring species. Presently, we have scientists saying that modern astrophysics demands ET is all around us.
So what exactly is so "extraordinary" about such a claim?