If "magic" is simply shorthand for saying "I don't know what that is," I can understand. However, if we're saying "I don't know what that is, therefore it must be something metaphysical, supernatural, or ET," then I do not understand this leap of logic. How can "I don't know" lead to such specific conclusions?

Observing and recounting are human activities, so UFOs (whether real or imaginary) are certainly relevant to human behavior, perhaps even in a profound way. There have certainly been some good stories, some of them written by Mr. Clarke. Otherwise, I don't see where they fit into science or my life or anywhere else in the real world. If only we could do more than write them off as "magic."

I can't make a scientific case for any of these. I would be in way, way over my head. But some conclusions can be drawn from indirect observation. We observe the effects but not the cause. The cause is still very real.

I never called RAF any names. I was speaking of people in general not specifics.
I still stand that there are many ignorant people that scoff at UFOs. Being ignorant is not a bad thing; we are ignorant about one thing or another.

4 years ago I was a scoffer and I was very ignorant. There I called myself a name now I will have to put myself on the ignore list

I really did not have any interest in UFOs until I met a few people that worked behind the scenes back in the 50s. I did me own reading and found there was much more to them than I had thought. It took me a awhile to accept that they all might not be a bunch of bunk.

No one particular story made me change my thinking. It was the total amount of information plus knowing a few trusted people (that I consider credible). Also I found some explanations to be fabricated on purpose.
ie. Temp inversions were used as explanations for radar returns directly overhead. The people that made these explanations are smart enough to know that can't be true yet they used it anyway. Ok maybe they were incompetent but it looks to be more of something that the average public or media person would buy vs someone with a physics background.

There are just too many of these out in left field explanations used over the years. It does not mean what was seen was alien but it does tell me that someone is trying to tone down a sighting. It could be they were too embarrassed to admit that they could not identify it, and rather than admit that they make up a explanation that will pass 95% of the population.

I apologize to the non ignorant, people here that have read all the available information and still say there is just nothing to it. Its a hard step to take and one can always fall back on "When it lands in my backyard I will believe"

I'm usually like that but the more research I did I found it increasingly difficult to ignore the picture that was being painted. I found it disturbing and still do. Once you start to think it may be possible then you begin to wonder what they want who they are etc.

I would like to some government support on this. The Condon panel was terribly flawed, as its final analysis did not match its own data. It’s over 1000 pages so not too many bothered to read it.

Goblin,
I have read quite a bit on the subject. While intriguing, there is still no "smoking gun". Obviously, it is difficult to investigate old cases. What I have said on this board, is that I would find it reasonable to have properly equipped surveilance aircraft on the lookout for such phenomena, say in alleged hotspots like Mexico. I agree with your position.

Dr. David Grinspoon, planetary scientist and principal investigator for NASA astrobiology, author of the "hole in my philosophy" link I gave.
His questions dealing with how we can or can't apply the scientific method to intelligent beings who do not want to be studied are, in my mind, most pertinent.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Nor can we apply that method to other mythological beings.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

What "specific conclusions?"

All I'm saying is that you can't expect to recognize any advanced tech and the many "magical" sightings of UFOs throughout History seem to fit rather
well.

I agree.

__________________
"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Can you demonstrate conclusively that we would not be able to "recognize it", or is the "catch phrase" of a sci/fi writer enough for you??

aside...I actually respect Mr. Clarke very much, except when he starts talking about the vegetation he thinks he see's in Mars images.

How about an analogy like the magical "fire sticks" white men possessed while they warred against the red men?
Do you think the natives recognized them as technological items or did they perceive them as "magic?"

I'm sure there are plentiful similar examples but I'm also sure that none would be convincing enough for you.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Problem with your "analogy"...the red men didn't possess any technology, so they wouldn't "know it" if it bit them in the butt.

Your "premise" also contains a fallacy. Just because advanced tech. "might" appear to be magical DOES NOT MEAN
that things that appear magical are automatically advanced tech. You can't assume it "works both ways' without some form of evidence.

That's the 2nd time in the last few of your posts that you have "implied" that I am somehow closed-minded simply because I don't agree with what you have to say. I suggest that you STOP IT unless you can demonstrate that to be true.

Understand?

Are you saying that the many implements used for hunting, gathering, sewing, decorating etc weren't technology?

I think blanket stock statements like "wouldn't know it if it bit them in the butt" is meaningless, considering the tech they DID have.

But of course.
And then we find ourselves bickering over what evidence is.

After all, I accept the testimony of texts and witnesses throughout history as well as modern witnesses with radar-visual cases and the word of trained observers; aviators, police, military, scientists etc.

You do not.

No, RAF, I haven't "implied" anything.
Reviewing 3 years of such exchanges as this between us will certainly show how nothing I say will be convincing enough for you.

I realize that nothing short of the craft landing on your head will be convincing to you.

So in the end, I'm a "woowoo" in your opinion, and you are, IMO, a pseudoskeptic.

That's OK, as long as we can have a few laughs along the way, right?



Certainly.

Do you?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Let's modify the statement a bit then.
They didn't have any technology that used other than direct or stored musclepower.
Therefore they had no reference for the effects of firearms, hence their power was larger than anything conceivable except magic.

__________________
An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

A.DIM you seemed to have started a very popular thread. Almost 19,000 views in a short period of time. We all may not agree on things but it seems we all have some interest in this topic. This is a topic that is a bit awkward to bring up in conversation with most people even though many have interest in it. The Internet makes this a bit easier.

It is clear that the military does have an opinion on this topic that is different from what the official public statements may say. Some people I know that were at Hamilton Air force base (they worked with/for project blue book) were told that the public could not handle it. They saw many cases that never made it to blue book. To them UFOs were real and were not ours, they logged them but it was not up to them on which ones were filtered. Even so blue book still has some very interesting cases.

None of them would/or have been interviewed on the topic. I know many people in the military have come forward just not the ones I know. They were not the people calling the shots as to where in the information would end up. They did not have any information to any downed or crashed UFO. They did have plenty on chases though, one right out of Rod Serlings Twilight Zone. Some weird stuff for sure. Yea yea I know its all just words and no proof of anything. Anyone can make up a story; I just have to go on my judge of character that they are not full of crap.

If real I find the technology to be very interesting. New physics? or yet to be discovered physics at work. In theory Einstein’s speed limit can be circumvented in at least three ways, each one has some huge hurdles to overcome. Manipulating space itself to me seems the most tangible vs multiple universe theories. Power sources needed seem unobtainable.

But maybe somewhere else Einstein would be considered a slow learner, someone stumbled across a way around restrictions we impose on space travel.

From what I know I do not buy that the reason for non-funding UFO research is due to it being of no scientific value. I believe it’s a bit more complicated than that.

From a military point of view, it makes perfect sense to treat UFOs or, rather UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) as potentially significant, whether they are under intelligent control or not. They might represent a military threat, or at the very least they might represent a danger to air safety.

It also makes sense to keep much of the information collected out of the public domain, as the detailed reports contain a lot of data about the sensitivity and accuracy of detection systems, which are necessarily secret.

But none of this implies that UAPs are really artefacts under intelligent control; in fact the available evidence so far suggests that the Extraterrestrial hypothesis is unnecessary. Most of the famous cases happened a long time ago, when radar systems were very basic compared to today’s systems; if UAP were in fact solid craft they would be detected more often by modern systems, but that is not the case.
Every case that has so far been reported is likely to be the result of one of the following -
misidentification of known natural phenomena, unknown natural phenomena, misidentified manmade objects, including objects not known to the public, hallucination of various kinds, faulty recall of events and post-rationalisation (I believe this is very important in many early cases, where electronic records were not available) and deliberate hoaxes. In a number of cases it is not possible to identify which of these causes it the true one after the event; this is not a reason to immediately jump to the conclusion that there are extraterrestrials in our skies.
There have been unexplained cases galore for sixty years, give or take a year- but no contact. I can state with a certain amount of confidence that this situation will continue for another sixty years, whether the extraterrestrial hypothesis is true or not.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I know what evidence "is".

And there's a reason for that. If the question is, "Are there now, or have there ever been extraterrestrial aliens visiting the Earth?", then the quality of the evidence you present in the above paragraph is simply not enough to reach the conclusion that they are actually visiting. I know you don't "like" that, but that's the way it is.

"Nothing I say will convince you" is a LOT different than "what I say has not convinced you". I don't know why you think it "reasonable" that the evidence not be convincing...it simply does not help your argument to characterize me as unconvincible, particularly when that is not true.

Actually, my opinion is that you are mistaken...but you certainly can "call" yourself anything you want.

Once again...mistaken. Haven't you been "cautioned" by a mod. (I don't remember which one) that applying that "handle" to posters you disagree with was a "no no"??

Or did they simply ask, "Hey, how did you make that?"

In any case, I just have an issue with calling real world observations magic. It's a vague term which suggests a thing is supernatural. It suggests to me that we might as well not ask any more questions about the thing because we will never understand it. In my experience, when a person calls something "magic"--even in jest--they really mean "don't ask me any more about it."

Anyway, I'm probably going off on a semantic tangent, but I would like to know what the term magic means to you. Also, can you give examples of observations of things that you would call magic?

I agree the ET hypothesis is unnecessary, but it was what the military people I know concluded at the time. They said they did show up on radar much more than was ever reported. They did not call a public press conference for sightings. I don't know if their conclusions were correct. They were not going from radar alone, they had many up close visuals.
A paratrooper (He specialized in recovery of crashed aircraft) lost 2 buddies chasing one. The strange thing was both jets and UFO were on radar over the desert then they blipped off, everything went dead no radio nothing. They searched the desert for I think for weeks and found no signs of wreckage. The jets never returned to base. He said they had no idea what happened to them. Two radar operators confirmed his story. I have never read about any cases like that. Were they making it up? If you knew them you would not think so, but its not proof of ET just an unsolved mystery.
I think after seeing enough of weird things like that they probably just concluded that the objects were not ours and are probably ET.
Some people somehow think that these reports are from someone seeing a tiny light in the sky or some radar anomaly. The cases they talked about all had visual and radar, something more than mistaking the planet Venus for a UFO. Saying its from old faulty radar is like someone seeing a car at 20 feet and someone that was not there telling them it was not a car it must have been ball lighting shaped like a car from temperature inversions. Some explanations fit the picture but many others that sound stupid are from ill informed people that are making a statement that does not fit the sighting or case in question. That’s not to say that radar did not malfunction back then. But when you see it with more than one set of eyes and its on radar its a bit more compelling.

I don’t mind skeptics as I am myself but not to the point of being ridiculous. If someone said that they saw a bright light in the west and could not identify it. I would ask did it move? Ans, no it flickered, I would ask other questions like time and location. Then if I found that Venus was there around that time I could say that they probably were seeing a planet. I have read cases were people saw a triangle craft and then read what some skeptics reply was. They often will say something stupid like a planet. I’m thinking how can this skeptic astronomer even pull something like that out of his bag? At least read the report before you insert foot in mouth.

If you want to believe at least read some cases don’t blindly believe and if you want to be a die hard skeptic at least try to come up with a plausible explanation which requires you have some knowledge of the sighting.