Lianachan,

Thanks for your reply and clarification. Sounds like there's much that we agree upon.

I think that the probability arguement is a particularly useful one. People who assert that the high probability that there is other intelligent life elsewhere in the universe makes it highly probable that some UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors often miss the fact that the same variables that make extraterrestrial intelligence highly probable, also make it improbable that they've made their way to our little planet. What that should do is reinforce the need for real, bonafide evidence before anyone concludes that any UFO might be an extraterrestrial visitor.

Regards,
Algorithms

__________________
Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Absolutely - that's a point I repeatedly make on other boards. Are there aliens in the universe? Almost certainly. Do they visit us? Almost certainly not. You can't prove or disprove either, of course, and that's one of the main reasons why this is a topic that keen UFOs are aliens advocates can run all day with.

This is uncalled for. In all the times I've been on this board, I've never seen a direct quote changed and then presented as an actual quote. That's lower than low, Scourge. You don't want an intelligent discussion, you want a name calling game. And when it doesn't go your way, you "cook the data". Congratualtions. You've just proven how trustworthy your "anecdotal evidence" is.

Regarding your sighting, and about sightings with only anecdotal evidence to go by. Repeat after me:

There... Is.... Nothing.... To.... Study.
There... Is.... No.... Data.

Even if the scienctific community were banging down your door to look this over, there's nothing for them to look over. I'm sorry, really sorry that there isn't. But that's just the way it is.

John

Um, why? Unless the "sightings" are well documented, and I mean video footage (not shakycam), close up pictures (not blurry low res, or photoshopped), RADAR/IR (and if they're enemy test planes, would the airforce tell the public?), etc, you wouldn't have a case for the scientists to look at. If all they get is shakycam, blurry lowres and eyewitness accounts saying "it moved like nothing I've seen before, really fast".... what exactly can they do? Nothing.


If a scientist looked at "it" and said it was complete bunk, would you accept it? Would the public? No, I think they rather have their imaginary flying saucers.


But what exact work is there to do? See above, without data to look at, what can the scientists say?
I have yet to see a single piece of convincing UFO footage that isn't a) clearly faked b) very low res/far away. Have you?


Depends, you see, scientists have more important things to do than investigate shakycam footage of lights in the sky, or blurry pictures. Especially when the UFOs don't seem to be doing any harm. No laser beams, no gravity cannons... cattle mutilation? oh come on... abductions? get real, the people are always returned, and never more insane afterwards than they were before.

What if the scientists would investigate the incidents? would you be happy then? In most cases they would have to say not enough evidence/data, remains unidentified.

You have to take into consideration the amount of UFO hoaxes. We'd be spending big bucks on investigating them...


"We" ? How about YOU look into it? Hire a staff of scientists you think could do the job, pay them fat salaries, then have them look through the UFO data, and see what they find. What's that, don't have the cash?

How about you take some student's loans, and get a degree of yourself. Start investigating, researching, see what you find. Why should anyone else spend their time on something that proves to be a hoax, or can't be explained cause of the lack of data.

I love it how after studying space science at a university level for a few years all that people ask is "what do you think about this UFO claim", or tell me I'm a government disinformation agent. Or that all scientists (me included because I've actually studied at a higher level than high school) are in a worldwide conspiracy to hide the truth about UFO/Planet X/Reptilians....

Oh, I understand where you're coming from alright. I actually work for the government, and my work is covered by the official secrets act, so I get that kind of thing a lot.

Yeah, and it doesn't really help that I spent almost a year watching RADAR screens in the air force either..... GRIN

I once knew a pilot who "Flew for over 25 years without sighting anything remotely approximating a UFO!"

However, he added: "At least not until one of my last few flights when we were 'buzzed' by a small silver disc which demonstarted preposterous manouevarability. Even though I was very close to retirement I dared not make an official report for fear of my sanity being questioned."

Of course, such anecdotes remain merely that -- anecdotal! So let's just forget that anything like this could ever happen...

Guess the poor guy was upset that he had no good stories to tell, and made it up. Co-pilot? Navigator? Passangers? No, didn't think so....
How about you use Occam's Razor on the guy. Will you admit it's more probable that he made it up/hallucinated, than the fact that a alien craft, from another world, travelled light years, and for some reason didn't have cloaking technology, or just wanted to show themselves for no special reason?

Of course, you're can make up a complex explanation... doesn't make it any more probable.

Well, imagine sitting in a plane, and suddenly falling through your seat and the plane's fuselage, and falling to your death. They check the plane later, nothing wrong with it, at all. What happened? Answer: every single atom in your body, the seat, and the plane's fuselage under your seat aligned perfectly, and made you drop right through. It could actually happen. But what're the chances? Has it ever happened before? Still, it *could* happen. Doesn't mean it has, or will ever happen.

Just because it *could* happen doesn't mean we should investigate every single UFO sighting/claim, that'd just eat up funds and time.

I still haven't seen a single piece of convincing UFO evidence. Any of you feel like pointing me to some? Remember, no shakycam, no low res, and oh yeah I need a point of reference in the video to know how fast the UFO is travelling. Anyone?

Dittto. Of course UFO advocates often claim their evidence is "circumstantial" and that circumstantial evidence is allowable in a court of law and, thus, should be accepted here. The only problem with this is that no UFO evidence has ever met the test of actually being circumstantial evidence. Most advocates have no idea what circumstantial evidence actually is but claim they have it because it sounds good to say.

__________________
Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

I can't rule this possibility out, or the other one. I remain skeptical about both.

Please don't patronise me with Occams Razor references. I know a little bit about this philosophical tool, honest I do...

Man, the sharks are really circling now.

Look. Roughly –Half- the people who share the surface of the Earth with you, think it’s likely that we’re being visited by extraterrestrials, right now.

Half.

Now, the only profession on the surface of the planet that is qualified or equipped to investigate the issue, is science. But science would rather relegate Half the world to the crackpot/liar/huckster file, than investigate. And where do our leaders look, to help them form opinions and policies on this kind of thing?—to science. So as long as the scientific community maintains the conclusion that there’s nothing to look at, even though they’ve never really looked, then any unexplained event in the sky slips completely under the radar. Sure, a witness can call MUFON or any of half a dozen completely useless reporting centers that at most can record your call, whoopee. But is there any chance of getting any kind of evidence that would make any difference—of course not, because ordinary people can only get photos, footage, and a story—and all of that is disqualified, pre hoc, ad hoc.

So what’s the alternative? It has to start right here, with you, with the science community. All you need to do over the next few years, is to be completely honest, actually. When one of your own profession says that the ETH is not altogether illogical or unfounded--that’s true, admit it. Fermi’s paradox wouldn’t have happened at all, if the ET hypothesis didn’t have scientific merit. You may not personally –believe- that it’s probable, but it’s neither irrational nor even bad science—it’s a possibility. Then one day the Advisor to the President’s Special Subcommittee on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena calls you up and asks ‘Could some of these sightings really be extraterrestrial craft?’ at least say ‘I don’t know.’ That’s honest, because you don’t know. Right? Admitting what we don’t know is the spark of every honest inquiry.

Then a few years later, when the emotional climate around the issue has shifted, and we can all say ‘y’know, we don’t know. People say they’re seeing things up there…tell you what, let’s see if we can puzzle this one out with some good science and some government funding. Dr. X calls Presidential Advisor Y, yadda yadda, a provision on a bill goes through, and suddenly we have a fully equipped and teamed new National Institute for the Investigation of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Give ‘em some pull with the Air Force so they can check radar records, and if warranted, send a jet out to take footage/sensor readings/whatever. Move fast, collect facts, adapt to new data, and devise new tests, get busy for a few years and beat this horse to death. We don’t know what we’re going to learn until we do it, so let’s just do it and find out instead of arguing about it.

If we’d had this going for us sooner, we’d have known about ball lighting in short order (which is, even today, fairly cutting-edge -plasma physics- for cryin’ out loud). Instead, the scientific community sat back and proclaimed ‘ahhh, yer a woo-woo, seeing funny lights in the sky. What do you know anyway? You’re mistaken, or you’re lying. Floating orbs of light—hah!’

If things had gone down differently, and scientists had been like ‘Wow, really? Did you get pictures? Tell me everything in detail and I’ll go correlate your observations with the database, and we’ll see if we can figure this out,’ then you guys would have come off like heroes, champions of the people. And you’d have made an amazing scientific advance—who knew plasma could form a self-contained sphere of charge in nothing more complex than normal atmospheric conditions?

It’s all so clear in hindsight—but who knew then? All we had were some stories, a few crappy photos, and some burn marks around Granny’s kitchen drain. All of which –could have been faked-, but weren’t. Oops. So now what are you gonna do? Repeat the same mistake? Continue to alienate Half the world by calling them fools and liars? Or are you gonna be heroes this time out, and take the people at their word, and work –with- them, instead of against them.

We probably won’t find what we expect to find out there, but I bet my shoes we’ll find something extremely interesting, and maybe even something of profound scientific value.

I also think we should pass stiff laws against frauds/hoaxsters/wiseguys. It discredits the majority of the witnesses who are good souls. And once we have a modern new Institute to check out these claims, it’d be easy to reveal the liars and see how much they like a fat fine and a few months in the slammer.


This is how cynics are destroying the nobility of the scientific quest for understanding--if they can’t explain it, you’re a liar, or incompetent. It’s disgusting.

Science is not a tool to rationalize a personal, contemptible level of cynicism. You’re wielding it like a hammer, Johnno. Like any tool, science is abusive in the wrong hands. It’s supposed to be a tool to –increase understanding-, not to destroy it.

Wait—you’re not a scientist; you’re just riding the flame-wagon with the nay-sayers to sound like one. You can’t gauge the speed of an object with merely ‘a point of reference.’ You also need to know the orientation of the object to the point of reference, which is often simply –impossible- without knowing how large the object your looking at, really is.

I haven’t seen a –single, stand-alone- piece of evidence that is completely convincing, but the sum of good photos, stories, and footage, makes for a very compelling case that –something- is moving around the sky, with similar, unexplained, flight characteristics.

Consider this—how many ‘convincing’ shots of experimental military craft have you seen? We –know- those exist…but we’d be hard-pressed to –prove it- if we didn’t already know they existed, right? If the shots aren’t taken by the military, they’re of no better caliber than the ‘ufo’ shots you mention. The quality of the evidence does Not indicate that the objects don’t exist, it indicates how difficult it is to photograph/film fast vehicles in the atmosphere.

Give me a list of people who have a scientific-resolution videocamera with flawless auto-focusing technology and a tripod in their pockets, and I’ll get you that flawless footage you asked for.

And exactly how much of this evidence has even been looked at by qualified people? .01%? .0001%? The work hasn't been done yet, but you guys go on and on about how there's been all this scientific investigation and nothing has been convincing—ahem, newsflash—it hasn't happened yet folks.

...and to that I say, so what! Argument from majority concensus is meaningless to me unless that majority can provide testable evidence...so far there is no evidence that validates the "visiting ET" hypothesis.

I would be very cautious in "characterizing" any poster on this board without first knowing exactly what those posters' qualifications might be.

Perhaps the question to ponder is why it is that "qualified people" aren't really interested in this subject. Perhaps, they're confident that there's not much to look at in the first place - precisely because they're qualified to know the difference between something that's worth investigating and something that's not.

__________________
Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Right. Nice dodge. You first post a story/quote from a pilot, point to it being an anecdote, sarcastically say we should just forget about it being able to happen, and now you're claiming you're skeptical of his claims? Nice discussion technique.

I'm skeptical of your skepticism.


So why don't you use it instead of making silly claims, which you then have to dodge from supporting?

And a few hundred years most than half of the people on earth *knew* that the planet was flat. What exactly is your point?

Not really. I'm sure the Air Force would be far more succesful in investigating UFOs, compared to "science". Or maybe your definition of hires pictures/video and RADAR is science?


LOL, radar records? You keep records over there? Either you have completely different systems over there, or you have no clue how AF RADAR surveillance works. I'm betting on the latter (having done AF RADAR surveillance service myself).

Footage, right, but sensor readings? what exactly are you thinking about there?

And mental illnesses, and stupidity. Defenitely stupidity. Nice pics of an airplane, we sent out two F-18 Jets to do "sensor readings" and spent hours looking through "radar recordings", you're going to jail punk.

Funny, even the guy who's friend it was says he's skeptical about the claims. Yep, disgusting.

But come on, what data did he have? Pictures? Video footage? Other eyewitness accounts? He himself chose not to report it. How can you verify any part of his story? I'd love to hear your explanation on why it's disgusting to say that he was making it up, when he himself chose not to report it, and has no other evidence.

You can't scientifically investigate his claim, can you? So why is it so disgusting?

*gasp* I'm not a scientist? But this is a scientific community! So hang on... why aren't you asking a real scientist, instead of some guys on a internet forum?

As for point of reference, say the UFO is flying between a mountain and yourself, the mountain is your point of reference, you know how far off it is. There's smoke rising from the mountain, and the UFO passes through it, and you see the smoke twirling around it. Point of reference? noooo, not at all. You need to know how big the object is.

We could go into camera angles and other objects, but I don't really see the point. You failed to show me any convincing UFO footage. I rest my case.


Okay, good photos? good footage? then show us some. I'm sure someone would've compiled all those good photos and pieces of footage into a neat collection of "ultimate evidence of alien visitors" or some such. But wait, there's a catch. It costs $29.99. That's right, final proof of alien visitors, and you have to pay for it. Wait, what did you say about scammers?

Why do you think the government is reluctant to investigate and make it public? Military test aircraft.


I could dig up tons, except they're taken by the military, and released once the planes were no longer prototypes/cancelled.

Wait, you can prove that they exist because you know that they exist, but can't prove they exist if you don't know they exist? doesn't make sense. Either you can prove that they exist, or you can't, knowing that they exist does not help any proof. You can't just say "we know they exist, so you must accept this proof" when in fact you're handing them a picture of a DC-9.

Either you get good pictures/footage, which is hard because they fly from remote locations at night, or you set up a RADAR station and track them, in which case you'd get a air to surface missile down your throat because you're tracking them.

These things are *supposed* to be secret, that's why we don't know a lot about them. UFOs are supposed to be public, they don't mind if you videotape them, or take pictures, my question is, why don't they ever land in populated areas? why do they say hi to the one guy out in the woods? how hard is it finding a large city?


Right, because the military have sooper dooper teleobjective lenses on their cameras, with motion trackers, yes?

I guess you're not much into photography either.



The quality of the evidence indicates why people believe they have just seen a flying saucer, because they can't make out what it in fact is. Have you even seen UFO videos? They're all taken with shakycam, it's not like the object zips by in half a second, how would they ever get the camera up and aimed in that direction?

Poor quality of photographs can not be explained with how fast the object is moving. If it's really really fast you need to get extremely lucky being able to take a picture of it. And then it would depend on what kind of camera you use. Again, show me a UFO picture that you find convincing, that you think is really a flying object that can not be explained, and that is not faked.


Hang on, earlier in your post you claimed the amount of good quality pictures and footage made it a compelling case. Yep, that's what you claimed. And now you're claimed you need "scientific-resolution" with "flawless auto-focusing" and tripods............... you're falling over yourself for explanations, aren't you?