Magical thinking..

This blog is so good that I didn't know which bit to cut and paste here, this is only a part of a great post the writer made. Well worth reading as a great sceptical post on the magical thinking that pervades our society today.

Magical thinking is thinking that makes faulty conclusions based on two laws:
The law of similarity (an effect resembles its cause), - I make a spell that you will get sick, and sure enough you get sick.... I see lights in the sky, that I don't recognise, those lights must be UFO's

and the
Law of contagion (things which were once in physical contact maintain a connection even after physical contact has been broken). ... I can make a spell that will affect you even if I never meet you if I have a bit of your hair.

www.ejectejecteject.com...

Well, turns out that in 1946 one of these antigravity, faster than light, space-metal disks�uh�ran into a hill. (Which makes me wonder what the Zeta Reticulan translation of D�oh! would sound like. I�ll bet it sounds like zzrrzzrrrD�oh!rrzzzrr!)

Yes, in 1946 one of these ultra-advanced beings was arguing with the little podlings in the back seat, took his eye off the Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, and then came the Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom! right outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

They � The Government � recovered a few strips of crumpled aluminum. UFOlogists point to the picture of the Air Force officer holding up a couple of Jiffy-Pop fragments as �hard evidence� � but as for me, I�d like my anti-gravity, faster-than- light intergalactic hyper-dimensional space-metal saucer to produce something more than one-fifth the wreckage you�d expect from a Cessna 150 flown by some teenager experimenting with The Weed.

Apparently, Area 51 has at least one, if not several of these accident-prone vehicles. They are being �reverse-engineered� by the CIA and other Black organizations.

I have on a cheap digital wristwatch. Don�t ask why. Now presumably these masters of gravity, wormholes and anal probes are far, far ahead of us in science and technology � hundreds, or more likely thousands of years more advanced. But let�s take my cheapo, simple, everyday wristwatch back to a watchmaker of only 100 years ago � the finest Swiss watchmaker of 1903. What could he reasonably expect to reverse engineer?

Upon opening the back, he would find � what? No gears, no jeweled movements. No springs or hands. Completely silent, not a hint of ticking. The case � what is that? Not wood, not metal � more of that smooth, curved stuff. And what about that tiny green chip with the strange markings on it? Forget about making one that worked for himself � what the hell is that? What does it do? And the numerals � just a piece of clear plastic � only he has no idea what plastic is, let alone the liquid crystal matrix.

He pushes a button. The thing beeps. Where the hell did that come from! There are no visible bellows or acoustic horns to make such a sound. And the accuracy! And � my god! It lights up in the dark! No gas lines, no wicks, no flame of any kind!

Even the nylon strap and Velcro would be completely beyond him.

If the smartest man on earth of 100 years ago would be baffled and driven to madness by a $15 dollar watch, how are we expected to believe that NASA is reverse engineering a faster than light, anti-gravity Spaceship? The ancient Egyptians would have a far easier time reverse-engineering the Space Shuttle.

Why is it that every certified, approved, authorized and official UFO photo has been revealed by experts � or the perpetrators � to be a hoax? That can�t be good. What does it say for the credulity of these people when you can see video reporting of three UFO�s flying in rigid formation at night: a bright white light in the middle, and a red light on one side and a green one on the other? Startling footage shows a string of lights over Phoenix one evening, and thousands call the police reporting the alien armada. Looking at the video, it�s clear that these are either a string of parachute flares or a sinister invasion battlefleet of slowly descending anti-gravity flying disks populated by super-intelligent alien creatures from another solar system. It�s on! Scramble the interceptors!

But why bother with questions like this? If it feels good to believe that we are being watched over by advanced beings, then none of this will stop you.

More likely, you believe that you are nothing more than an impotent, faceless cog in a vast conspiracy of silence and oppression, a victim of government cover-ups and hidden agendas, of dark metallic disks under canvas in subterranean hangars. If that�s what makes you feel better about your failures and frustrations, then, hey � asking questions like this won�t even slow you down.

But realize this: if your worldview requires all sorts of secret kingdoms, unknowable motives, and unseen forces moving behind the veil of normal human experience, then you have taken yourself from the realm of a free citizen responsible for his own destiny and that of his nation, to a frightened caveman quivering in fear of distant Thunder Gods: immobilized, helpless and in a state of abject surrender. You have thrown away the hard work of millions and millions of your fellow human beings who have worked and studied their entire lives to raise you from those very depths.

An interesting analogy to say the least....

If the smartest man on earth of 100 years ago would be baffled and driven to madness by a $15 dollar watch, how are we expected to believe that NASA is reverse engineering a faster than light, anti-gravity Spaceship? The ancient Egyptians would have a far easier time reverse-engineering the Space Shuttle.

But, I have to add, that maybe this is why it's taken us more than 50 years to do, and we aren't in flying cars yet!!!

We're a pretty clever little monkey....we slowly began figuring it out...that's why the basics came first (i.e. the integrated circuit), then we moved on to others, (night vision, etc.), with the most important one (propulsion and power generation) to go...or is it? Maybe we clever little monkeys actually figured that piece out too?

Actually it gets better, in the same post he talks about the fantasy of nessie then he goes on to rip Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore to bits. This one post of his could keep us arguing for weeks

Divers and automated remote cameras have scoured the Loch. There�s a picture of a fin � only the picture has been enhanced, rotated, and �dodged� � the original shows an unremarkable -- and tiny -- bit of debris on the bottom. No sign of Nessie. What is much more damaging is that there is no sign of much of anything � especially fish. This ten-ton ancient dinosaur presumably does not order out for pizza. What the hell does it eat?

And this is most damning: plesiosaurs were air-breathing. Why is it that the best evidence for the Loch Ness Monster is a distant, grainy video of an �unexplained� wake, shot in the far distance. This creature has to come up for air several times an hour. If we grant that there is a breeding population of aquatic dinosaurs surviving in Loch Ness, they should be sticking their heads out of the water like a giant whack-a-mole game, 24/7. If air-breathing dinosaurs really inhabited these lakes in Europe, and Africa and the US, then the best evidence would be the body hauled ashore by a shotgun-toting British Marine after Nessie ate a busload of tourists in full view of the world press.

Think about it. What if there really is an air-breathing dinosaur in this lake. How many HDTV recordings would there be in a single day. Fifty? A hundred?

Divers did find many sunken logs on the bottom of these peaty, dismal waters. Some of these will, on occasion, float to the surface as the gases from their decay increases their buoyancy. From a distance, they look like a dark, humped shape breaking the water. They eventually sink again.