Why is the skeptics OPINION given any weight?

Originally posted by neoholographic
No you're not. You know exactly what I'm saying. It's obvious you have/

Bias does not mean someone is wrong. The truth is truth, regardless of the bias of the person speaking it.

Concentrating on someone's bias, as opposed to facts and evidence, is a red-herring tactic designed to dismiss arguments without giving them any actual thought.

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
What you have to remember is that all scientists are skeptics. A scientist will not believe something without putting it to rigorous testing.A scientist may hope something is right but they will go through the motions of proving it by discounting all possibilities of it being wrong before calling it a fact.

edit on 24-8-2012 by PhoenixOD because: (no reason given)

"Scientists" will never figure it out...because they don't understand feelings. Relying on LOGIC too much...people need EMOTIONAL PROOF too....but many (most?) scientists don't even realize this. Afraid to look at their own emotions / feelings....

reply to post by dontneedaname

I had a "feeling" my first girlfriend would love me forever.
Boy was I wrong.

reply to post by neoholographic


After reading through this thread, I would have to say that you're watching too much TV.

That said, I also have to say that not all skeptics behave in the way that you are painting them.

As a skeptic myself, I ALWAYS listen to what a eyewitness has to say. I do not automatically discount what they say, simply because they are an eyewitness. Instead, I use what they have given me to see if there is any possibility of what they witness being something that can be identified.

An eyewitness tells me that they think they have seen a UFO in the sky. That it looked like a bright light and that it appeared to be moving.

I'm not going to do 2 things at this point. Number 1 is, I'm not going to walk away and assume that what they saw was a UFO simply because they said it was. Number 2 is, I'm not going to walk away assuming that the person is lying to me, or that anything they saw must be something mundane and ignore them.

Instead, I'm going to ask questions: What was the date and time? What direction were you facing? Did what yo use move? If so, in what direction? How fast? etc.

I'm then going to take that information that they gave me, and bounce it off of known things: what was in the sky at that time, on that date, in that direction? If I find that there was a known object in that sky at that time, I can go back and show them what I found. Does it prove that what they saw was something mundane (IE the ISS traversing the sky let us say) ? Possibly, or at least the chances are much better that it is something identifiable, rather than something that is unknown.

However, sometimes I find that there was nothing astronomical there. Now we can try looking at other mundane things such as aircraft, etc.

Am I doing that because I want to desperately debunk this witness? No. I'm doing it, so that if in fact it can't be identified at all, I can tell the person that it seems that yes, in fact, they witnessed a true UFO. I and other skeptics can find nothing that would make it identified at all, that it looks like they truly saw a UFO.

It's not being closed minded. It's called being very thorough.

Now, why do people say that eyewitness account are not accurate? Quite simply because most of the time, they are not. Take 5 people that witness the same event. Interview those 5 people separately. You'll have 5 different stories from them most of the time.
This is because a human being is a horrible data recording machine. Our senses can be tricked quite easily, especially when it comes to things we are not used to seeing.

Does that invalidate what they have to say? No, it doesn't. However it can make it harder to investigate what they may or may not have seen.

I've yet to see anyone in this thread agree with the "skeptics" you saw on your show. I do know some people that have wild imaginations, but even so, if they ran up to me with a story about something, I'm still going to listen to them.

You've been told that there is a difference between a true skeptic, and someone who calls themselves one, but in reality they just blow off any sighting or what someone has to say.
You've also been shown that it's not the truth of someone's testimony that we worry about. It's the accuracy. Do you know how many times defense lawyers use that very fact that humans are lousy data recorders to get a jury to free someone? They don't always go after someone's character. They don't need to because it's been proven that humans are lousy at recording data with their 5 senses.

So do UFOs exist? Oh yes. This skeptic right here will tell you that they exist, and people do see them.

So that means that UFOs are aliens, right?

No.

It simply means that they are unidentified. Proof of one is not mutual proof of the other.

Could they be aliens? Well sure. They could also be time travelers, dimensional travelers, some very strange natural phenomenon, or even pink unicorns.

Beyond proving that UFOs exist, is nothing more than pure speculation. That's not what a skeptic does. Anyone can speculate as to what UFOs are. But that's ALL that is: speculation. No one at this time can prove that they are aliens visiting our planet.

Any skeptic can say "no way that they are aliens" and a Ufologist could say "They must be aliens". But neither can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they ARE or ARE NOT aliens. All either one can prove is if it is unidentified or not.

Insisting that UFOs = Aliens is just as bad as your TV skeptics saying "over active imagination".

Originally posted by Paranormalist
Cut through the ridicule and search for factual information in most of the skeptical commentary and one is usually left with nothing. This is not surprising. After all, how can one rationally object to a call for scientific examination of evidence? Be skeptical of the "skeptics."

My experience hereabouts suggests that it is often the 'believers' who object to a scientific examination of evidence -- say, of astronaut Gordon Cooper's undeniably impressive UFO claims. His stories are often expected to be accepted as absolutely reliable without ever being examined. Other stories about astronauts are supposed to be believed without even checking that they actually happened and weren't -- as all too often -- fabricated by eager writers.

That said, there is no shortage of know-it-all knee-jerk 'deniers' getting media attention, too.

Without skeptics, the world would still be flat, the earth would still be the center of the solar system, and a common cold would still be the result of some witchcraft or dark magic. Any questions? (trick question there)

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by dontneedaname

 

I had a "feeling" my first girlfriend would love me forever.
Boy was I wrong.

need to resolve BOTH. Assuming you want to be healthy (And you have a varied diet, maybe not you, but let's just suppose the average person) -- If you were 100% logical...you wouldn't be eating meat, junk food, etc....and be a vegan, vegetarian, etc....but you ENJOY junk food, etc....so the feeling side of the brain overrides the logical side (The downfall of many diets)..."thus LOGIC is defeated." Even though the logic is sound.


by the way -- LOVE is BLIND...but maybe you never heard of that...

Logic can be twisted to mean anything....look at all the "junk science" passed off in our society...which is often propaganda to sell stuff....LOGIC is also SELECTIVE in what evidence it wants to consider.....

Speaking of logic being twisted...consider all the health claims of various food councils / promotion boards....then watch a video like FORKS OVER KNIVES...

Scientists are (often) blind....anyone is blind, when only understanding ONE side of their brain....
actually...anyone who puts on a label - skeptic, UFO believer, smart guy, etc...is blind. All labels are self-limiting.

Can science measure feelings? Quantitatively. Makeup of a feeling?

Originally posted by Orkojoker

Originally posted by Quaesitor

For those who make no assumptions about the origin of UFOs, what the word means is "the observer was unable to identify an object he or she saw in the sky." Therefore saying "UFOs exist" means nothing, since we know there are objects in the sky (birds, planes, weather phenomena, etc) and not every person who has observed the object or phenomena has the knowledge or capacity to identify it.

There is another definition of UFO that I feel is more useful in moving the conversation forward. In addition to the object being unidentifiable by the witness, a "true" UFO remains unidentified after close scrutiny of the details of the report by competent investigators and after thorough consideration of all known conventional explanations.

Most reports can be reasonably attributed to misidentification by the witness(es) of known objects or phenomena. For some cases, a reasonable explanation has remained elusive despite detailed, articulate reports from stable, responsible people. Far from being "fuzzy lights in the sky", a number of these cases involve observations of structured objects of large angular size (meaning they take up a large part of the observers visual field) which appear to be very near the ground - and sometimes very near the witness and which behave in very unconventional ways.

There are many reports out there like this. I think a lot of people are unaware of that fact.

Yes, I agree that there is a residue of reports that resist all attempts to explain them in prosaic terms.

The central philosophical question is 'so what?'

Even phenomena accepted as entirely based on prosaic causes, when encountering the human perceptual and mnemonic processes, artificially create a residue of 'unsolvable' cases.

Proving UFO reports are DIFFERENT remains the unanswered challenge.

It's not the possibility that there COULD be a wide variety of imagined and unimagined extraordinary stimuli behind some of them. That cannot be disproved.

The issue is -- MUST there be such stimuli? Is it more likely that there is not?

The question remains open, and so must our minds.

Originally posted by schuyler

For example, after the Jimmy Carter UFO sighting came to light several folks took the information he provided and correlated it with latitude, longitude, weather, and time of day. They found that Venus just happened to be sitting right about where Carter says he saw something.

Hey Schuyler, you may be right about the Carter sighting but let's not forget the 'Venus' or 'stars and planets' debunk has also been lazily abused to officialy 'explain away' some rather compelling UFO cases.

There's more info here about some incredibly dubious 'debunkery' in cases such as the Portage County incident, the Edwards Air Force base incident, the Minot Air Force base incident, the Red Bluff incident etc.. and I think it's fair to say that many official 'sceptical' explanations show complete contempt for the objective, scientific method or any kind of intellectual honesty.

Originally posted by schuyler

So when you hear a skeptic,, the one thing you should ask is, "Are they contributing something useful to the issue? Are they suggesting alternative explanations, or are they simply making fun of the issue. If the latter, I agree they are worthless, but if the former, they may be just trying to help.

In complete agreement with you on that one.

reply to post by JimOberg

Of course, there are many people who pride themselves on being skeptics, who are not skeptical about the things they believe in. We, all of us, are inclined to read a disconfirming research more critically than confirming research.

There’s actually been research on this.

Originally posted by Trexter Ziam
Without skeptics, the world would still be flat, the earth would still be the center of the solar syatem, and a common cold would still be the result of some witchcraft or dark magic. Any questions? (trick question there)

edit on 24/8/2012 by Trexter Ziam because: (no reason given)

Don't get me started on the pervasive but deceptive "Columbus versus the flat-earthers" fairy tale.

History shows that Isabella's advisors were correct about the shape and scale of the Earth, and it was Columbus who was wrong -- and then, incredibly lucky. But also a damned fine navigator.

Struggle to escape the web of comfortable myths that we all are ensnared in. ATS forums can help.

Originally posted by karl 12

Originally posted by schuyler

For example, after the Jimmy Carter UFO sighting came to light several folks took the information he provided and correlated it with latitude, longitude, weather, and time of day. They found that Venus just happened to be sitting right about where Carter says he saw something.

Hey Schuyler, you may be right about the Carter sighting but let's not forget the 'Venus' or 'stars and planets' debunk has also been lazily abused to officialy 'explain away' some rather compelling UFO cases. .

But it's a gift that keeps on giving -- such as the Barnaul Airport 'UFO' in 2001:
ufologie.patrickgross.org...

reply to post by JimOberg


This wasn't about Columbus at all. It's about skeptics - skeptics are the ones who question EVERYTHING. Without questions, we'd have nothing to write, research, consider, and learn about. It was about a skeptic being a "questioner". Any questions?

I just wanted to post a quote by J. Allen Hynek from his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry that seems cogent to parts of this discussion.

Yet the strangeness of UFO reports does fall into fairly definite patterns. The "strangeness-spread" of UFO reports is quite limited. We do not, for instance, receive reports of dinosaurs seen flying upside down, Unidentified Sailing Objects, or strange objects that burrow into the ground.

A critic of the UFO scene once remarked, "...unexplained sightings do not constitute evidence in favor of flying saucers any more than they constitute evidence in favor of flying pink elephants." What he failed to realize was that the strangeness spectrum of UFO reports is so narrow that not only have flying pink elephants never been reported but a definite pattern of strange "craft" has. If UFOs indeed are figments of the imagination, it is strange that the imagination of those who report UFOs from over the world should be so restricted.

Precisely because the spectrum of reports of strange sightings is narrow can they be studied. If each strange report was unique and their totality ran the gamut of all conceivable strange accounts, scientific investigation of such a chaotic panoply would be impossible. Scientific study presupposes data patterns and a measure of repeatability, and by and large, UFO reports lend themselves to classification within their domains of strangeness.

Great book. If I could only recommend one book on this subject it would be this one, and you can get a copy for less than two bucks plus shipping on Amazon. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by karl 12

Originally posted by schuyler

For example, after the Jimmy Carter UFO sighting came to light several folks took the information he provided and correlated it with latitude, longitude, weather, and time of day. They found that Venus just happened to be sitting right about where Carter says he saw something.

Hey Schuyler, you may be right about the Carter sighting but let's not forget the 'Venus' or 'stars and planets' debunk has also been lazily abused to officialy 'explain away' some rather compelling UFO cases. .

But it's a gift that keeps on giving -- such as the Barnaul Airport 'UFO' in 2001:
ufologie.patrickgross.org...

Yes. Distant, small apparent diameter, low strangeness cases like that one often turn out to be Venus. That thing can really crank out some nice colors given the right conditions.

reply to post by neoholographic


not sure, i see a lot of them claim that people who see u.f.o's are making assumptions or making it up and then proceed to debunk the persons case by making assumptions and making things up as though they are the expert of other peoples experiences.

90% of the time i see no difference between the two sides. I think the only reason skeptics are given any weight is because they are saying exactly what the majority of people want/need to hear.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Your post really makes skeptics look bad.

You said:

Could they be aliens? Well sure. They could also be time travelers, dimensional travelers, some very strange natural phenomenon, or even pink unicorns.

Classic nonsense. How many people have said they see pink unicorns? This is what you call intellectual dishonesty. You say this to try and belittle those who have come to a conclusion different than yours. This is the problem with most skeptics. There so insecure in their belief, they can't even accept others "think" differently than they do.

I put "think" in quotations because this brings us to the next silly remark. You said:

So do UFOs exist? Oh yes. This skeptic right here will tell you that they exist, and people do see them.

So that means that UFOs are aliens, right?

No.

Insisting that UFOs = Aliens is just as bad as your TV skeptics saying "over active imagination".

This is just silly. You have to convince yourself that anyone that has come to the conclusion that some U.F.O.'s are extraterrestrial, have to reach this conclusion in a vacuum. It just shows how insecure some skeptics are in their own belief.

People don't come to this conclusion in a vacuum. There's tons of evidence out there. From the latest scientific discovers to articles published in peer reviewed Journals on the subject. There trace evidence, close encounters, abduction cases, accounts from pilots, police officers and more, pictures and video.

So people actually look over all these things before they reached the reasonable conclusion that some U.F.O.'s are controlled by extraterrestrials. They don't just wake up and say Duh, U.F.O.'s = Aliens. You make skeptics look bad because that's just a dishonest statement.

I could respect someone that says, you have looked at the evidence and reached that conclusion. I looked over the same evidence and I have reached a different conclusion.

Sadly, most people claiming to be skeptics are so insecure that they can't accept that a person looked at and studied the EVIDENCE and came to a different conclusion. They have to act like a person just woke up one morning and equated U.F.O.'s to Aliens.

I disagree with people on a lot of things but I respect the fact that they looked at the evidence just as thoroughly as I have and they just came to a different conclusion.

For instance, I think the Multiverse theory is correct. If you believe some scientist, I will never be able to see one of these other universes. There's more evidence to support the extraterrestrial hypothesis than there is for the Multiverse. Yet I can come to the conclusion that the Multiverse exists.

This brings us to something else that doesn't make sense. You said:

But neither can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they ARE or ARE NOT aliens.

Who said anything about a shadow of a doubt? Again, this is just silly. You can't prove that you exist beyond a shadow of a doubt. Are you a hologram, a simulation, a feedback loop of a universe replaying itself? Most skeptics have this ridiculous standard when it comes to things like Ufology or Psi.

The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. I can weigh the evidence and come to the conclusion that some of the U.F.O. sightings are from extraterrestrials. This has nothing to do with a shadow of a doubt. There's not a shadow of a doubt that the LHC has found the Higgs Boson but people have come to the reasonable conclusion that the Higgs exist.

reply to post by neoholographic


Simply because of a lack of facts I guess.

It's easy to trick the mind, or lie for attention, and with these both being proven and well known methods of deception, it's kinda foolish to then invent something like aliens to fill the gap of the unknown.

We need facts. There's a billion iphones on the planet and yet no one has anything better than a light in the sky.... Don't you find that strange? Lights eh? Oooooh quick, call Scooby Doo!

I can't wait to meet aliens and find out about life on other planets, but until I see evidence that matter can travel faster than the speed of light, or that life can live long enough to travel between stars, I'm gonna call BS every damn time there's not a millennium falcon standing above the guy begging me to believe in his usually contradicting, evidence lacking tale!

reply to post by neoholographic

There so insecure in their belief, they can't even accept others "think" differently than they do.

No truer word has been spoken.

This is the reason you started this thread, is it not?

Originally posted by neoholographic
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

You haven't even attempted to eliminate the impossible though, and you clearly aren't Sherlock Holmes.

All you've done is seen something that can't be explained, put your fingers in your ears and said "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA ALIENS" and refused to even discuss other possibilities, let alone start to eliminate them.

Which makes the rest of us think you're either gullible, or a bit of a mental ♥