Originally Posted by Jeff Root

So, what should I answer if I'm asked how often I assassinate
William McKinley?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Originally Posted by JayUtah

How cleaver nf . . . pretty much what I expected

If your anecdotes are intended to be analogues to the UFO sighting phenomenon, then clearly they beg the existence of space aliens and their vehicles. And that question-begging is what I have been pointing out. An analogy that begs the question is no more illustrative than a direct argument that begs the question. Neverfly's conversion of your anecdotes to one in which the question is similarly begged (but clearly absurd) exposes the flaw both in your analogy and the reasoning it represents. You simply assume all the unknowns in your favor.

You warp the situation so that the aboriginal elders are portrayed as dismissing the witness from pure closed-mindedness, which we omniscient readers can easily detect by understanding that the witness saw an airplane -- something that actually did exist, but outside his experience. The elders simply declare it to be impossible because the observations and their implications lie also outside their own experience.

The aborigine witness is the analogue of the UFO witness; the elders are analogues to mainstream scientists. The witness is simply assumed actually to have seen something real and legitimately beyond his experience. No mention is made of ordinary phenomena wrongly interpreted, which is the most common UFO finding. The aborigine is assumed to have made a completely factual report to the elders, without ebellishment or interpretation. Again, this is not what happens in UFO reports.

For their part, the elders simply dismiss the witness out of hand, observation and all. This doesn't follow from UFO skeptics, who typically accept the observation but dismiss the interpretation. It also fails to address legitimate efforts by UFO skeptics to ascertain the strength of the testimony.

Further, the elders here say the implications of the testimony are impossible, which is an assertive claim; whereas mainstream investigators don't say space aliens and their vehicles are impossible, simply that there's no evidence specifically for that possibility in that or any other case.

A better analogy would be an aborigine who comes back to the village telling tales of flying objects and loud noises, only also asserting that it must be some new god they should worship. Naturally the village elders question that interpretation and wonder how the witness knows it to be a new god. After all, they should not abandon on a whim the gods that have cared for them for some time.

The witness then becomes belligerent and accuses the elders of only wanting to consolidate and maintain their power. He accuses them of calling him a liar, and says that since they're the elders they must already know of these new gods and have worshiped them behind everyone else's back. He accuses them of keeping the new gods' favor for themselves at the expense of the village.

And the witness stands on the stump in the center of the village every day, loudly repeating his accusations and telling his story over and over again, hoping that all the other villagers will sit at his feet and pay attention to him instead of to the elders, or to the hunters who are typically the ones who receive the accolades.

Does this sound familiar too?

Really, your analogy merely says, "If we could know for sure that UFOs were really alien spacecraft, then your calling those witnesses 'weirdos' who insist on that interpretation would be pretty improper." Well, we don't know that; so it isn't.

Originally Posted by djellison

Yup - the guy's right. It's nut cases who tend to say they've been probed, abducted etc. Never someone who's lucid, intelligent, and knows how to use a camera properly

Doug

Originally Posted by NGCHunter

Stop me if I'm wrong, but he didn't say "only abduct cranks and wierdos," he said "only appear to." My own family had a "close encounter of the first kind" - a silver disc with windows. I find it personally insulting to hear him say that it makes my family a bunch of "weirdos" or "cranks" for believing they saw an alien spaceship buzz their car. You don't have to believe that whatever they saw was a real spaceship or contained aliens, but it's also unneccessary to generalize all witnesses as "cranks and weirdos." Generally, I try not to pay much attention to Hawking's rants when they do not directly pertain to theoretical physics. He may be a genius, but he's not infallible.

Originally Posted by JayUtah

Does seeing something you think is a hunter's pickup truck mean the same thing as saying you've seen a hunter?

Originally Posted by JayUtah

I see a big difference between people like NGCHunter and his family, and people like Billy Meier whom I'd classify as the visitees I think Hawking is talking about.

If you see something in the air, and it looks like a vehicle to you, and you report that honestly, I don't see anything cranky about that. You can even speculate that it may be a vehicle of unknown and possibly fantastic origin, and that doesn't really make you cranky. Speculation itself doesn't necessarily have to blur the disctinction between observation and interpretation. That is, one can rationally do both as long as one recognizes the difference.

But Billy Meier, on the other hand, can't hide behind ambiguity. He claimed to be visited regularly by entities who made it absolutely clear that they were not of this Earth. That is a tall claim. He leaves us only two choices: that space aliens do indeed exist unmistakably, or that Meier is a liar. It's the ultimate UFO throw-down.

But with a less deterministic sighting we can admit that it may not be something ordinary, or ordinarily perceived, without necessarily having to also draw the conclusion that space aliens exist. The inability to explain it by prosaic means does not lead inexorably to the space-alien conclusion, and not all witnesses attempt to draw that conclusion. That's how I can say that Billy Meier is a crank and NGCHunter's family are not.

UFO sightings do not prove alien life exists. But Meier's experiences, if they had been true, would have proven it. So in Hawking's larger context of how to know whether there is alien life in the galaxy, I draw the distinction between what would work as proof and what wouldn't, assuming for the sake of argument that all the observations were true. "I saw something fantastic in the sky," is not proof of aliens. "Alien beings visited me," is.

Originally Posted by Neverfly

Lastly, ok- some folks can get offended.

So, I'm sorry but- Big Deal!! You're nitpicking what he said just to blanket it over regular folks who may have seen something weird. Is this an attempt to claim victimization at all costs?

No one is going to go bankrupt or jump out of the window just because Hawking said UFO/Alien Visitor enthusiasts tend to be cranks and weirdos.

Originally Posted by zerocold

He is the result of the media and the human vanity...an overate physic babling about aliens, and space, and throwing arrogant jokes

When science beging creating Gods (and "metoos"), it gets stucked, just take a look of the big Bang..

lame...

Originally Posted by JayUtah

Okay, this is silly. Looking at the program guide for this very instant:

History Channel: "Mayan Doomsday Prophecy"
History International: "Ancient Aliens"
Science: "Aliens"

I think I'll just watch "Cash Cab."