The Logical Trickery of the UFO Skeptic

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by atlasastro
....How do you even label something as evidence of X without the very existence of X as a known?

Is there anyone who does not see the absurdity in that type of reasoning?

(Astoundingly, this member makes reference to the Fermi paradox only a few lines above that.)

Exactly.

atlasastro's posts above contain multiple fabrications and some blatant errors that you've already pointed out. And as his main argument rested on them, there's nothing much left to talk about.

Once again, it's painfully obvious that the pseudoskeptical position is firmly rooted to falsities and blatant logical errors. It's very telling that anyone would identify with such drivel.

Originally posted by cripmeister
reply to post by atlasastro

 

Game, set and match

Or you could stand on a podium on an aircraft carrier with a huge "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner waving in the background...

reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets

Oberg, et al. sell books too, right?

I think they would sell a lot more if they switched sides. Do you agree?

reply to post by Brighter


If you had any Idea what you were talking about you would understand that you have a phenomena x, you are introducing the hypothesis of Y to explain x.

You have not shown Y, nor identified x.

Let me repeat that again, You have not identified x yet.

So how does x equal evidence for Y.

Or, How does Y cause x, orther than in your imagination.

Please explain.

reply to post by atlasastro

Or, How does Y cause x, orther than in your imagination.

I would drink your bath water right now.

This is my point. So which branch of science would be best suited to handle this? ?.,,,??...Psychological scientists maybe?

reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets


www.bluebookarchive.org...

Read it.
Newspaper clippings, and articles from Life, were copid at Battelle.
Old interviews were "updated" to a new format to aid in the standardization so the statistical analysis would be consistent.

These were done by others who took what they thought was technically relevant. So now we have a whole raft of data that has been filtered.


Read the god damn reports.

reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets


Answer the question!

How do you label any percentage of the UFO phenomena as evidence for ETH, when you cannot even prove ET exist!

Answer the question.

Originally posted by atlasastro
reply to post by Brighter

 

If you had any Idea what you were talking about you would understand that you have a phenomena x, you are introducing the hypothesis of Y to explain x.

You have not shown Y, nor identified x.

Let me repeat that again, You have not identified x yet.

So how does x equal evidence for Y.

Or, How does Y cause x, orther than in your imagination.

Please explain.

Actually, if you had any idea what you were talking about, and actually comprehended the documents that you just claimed to have read, then 1) you wouldn't have completely fabricated this idea that the study was based on 'newspaper clippings', and 2) you would have grasped the actual implications of this study, its methodologies, and what their 'Unknown' category implied.

The fact that highly capable scientists and researchers had ruled out to the best of their knowledge all possible mundane explanations for many of the cases that they had the strongest amount of data for - cases in which the objects clearly appeared to be under intelligent control - suggests that the best hypothesis is that these craft are not in fact mundane at all. In any case, this study clearly does not provide any evidence whatsoever for the idea that the 'Unknowns' were mundane. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

The point is that this study is part of the evidence. In fact, this was the very point of this study - to either provide evidence for, or against, the idea that these UFOs were simply mundane phenomena - and the results of the study and answer to that question are obvious to anyone willing to read it. But of course the study isn't evidence for you, as your previous posts indicate that not only have you likely not read them, but if you have, you clearly haven't comprehended them.

So yes, it should be apparent to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that the methodologies, results and statistical analysis of this study provides strong evidence for the fact that these 'Unknowns' were not mundane phenomena.

Originally posted by atlasastro
reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets

 

www.bluebookarchive.org...

Read it.
Newspaper clippings, and articles from Life, were copid at Battelle.
Old interviews were "updated" to a new format to aid in the standardization so the statistical analysis would be consistent.

These were done by others who took what they thought was technically relevant. So now we have a whole raft of data that has been filtered.


Read the god damn reports.

edit on 24/2/13 by atlasastro because: (no reason given)

Newspaper accoui.ts of sightings furnished by the clipping
service are being received at approximately a constant rate; however,
the Life article is now responsible for only about half of the clippings,
Originally,'''''''' the clippings \aere copied at Battelle-^ and then transmitted
to the Sponsor. In the future, the clippings will be sent directly to
the Sponsor by Battelle.
~~ T52-5673
UNCLASSIFIED
SECURITY INFORMATION

www.bluebookarchive.org...

Originally posted by atlasastro
reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets

 

www.bluebookarchive.org...

Read it.
Newspaper clippings, and articles from Life, were copid at Battelle.
Old interviews were "updated" to a new format to aid in the standardization so the statistical analysis would be consistent.

These were done by others who took what they thought was technically relevant. So now we have a whole raft of data that has been filtered.


Read the god damn reports.

edit on 24/2/13 by atlasastro because: (no reason given)

Actually, I'd going to recommend that you read past the first page.

The initial leads for which cases to further investigate with greater scrutiny were sometimes gathered via public media intelligence. How'd you expect them to gather leads? Mental telepathy?

You're attempting to paint this fallacious picture of the entire study being based off of newspaper clippings, which is absolute rubbish, although such a misrepresentation certainly helps your case.

So I'm now looking over this archive. They also used questionnaires to gather their data which I found interesting.

My first impression with this is that there is a lot of data to sort through. Honestly this is a mountain of data and the effort involved was considerable considering they didn't have modern computers. This data could have been crunched in a fraction of the time today. The statistical methods they used were interesting. The math may be good but it really does come down to the quality of the data and where the data came from. Garbage in, garbage out.

Overall it really doesn't look like it says much but I guess you can interpret the data any way you want.

I am fascinated by this so I will try to keep an open mind while I debunk it. *

this would be considered a joke for those that need to be told

Originally posted by atlasastro
reply to post by Brighter

 

If you had any Idea what you were talking about you would understand that you have a phenomena x, you are introducing the hypothesis of Y to explain x.

You have not shown Y, nor identified x.

Let me repeat that again, You have not identified x yet.

So how does x equal evidence for Y.

Or, How does Y cause x, orther than in your imagination.

Please explain.

The very study that you've been siting concluded that, to the best of our knowledge, a high percentage of UFO cases - and especially cases for which we have the most and most reliable data - are unexplainable in terms of naturalistic, mundane phenomena. At this point, it is reasonable to begin to entertain the idea that these UFOs are in fact structured craft, as that is, after all, precisely what the witnesses involved in those cases had initially reported seeing. Notice I'm not saying that those craft are ET. That takes a separate, additional inference that requires additional evidence. But what I am saying is that the results of the study only support the idea that, in many cases, the 'craft' that people reported seeing are in fact manufactured craft of some sort. By no stretch of the imagination does the study suggest otherwise. Are they ET? Maybe, maybe not. But one could well make a case that some of them are, or are at least non-human.

Let's not conveniently ignore the fact that, all around the world, as people are reporting the same shaped craft that this study ruled out naturalistic explanations for, that people are also reporting non-human like beings, sometimes even around these craft. In fact, not just individuals, but sometimes entire groups of people report seeing these craft along with non-human beings (see for example the Ruwa, Zimbabwe UFO encounter). Both of these kinds of encounters act as a kind of self-reinforcing argument - if people are seeing incredible craft, then wouldn't the occupants sometimes be seen near them? And if they were seen around them, wouldn't that strengthen the argument that some of these craft are of non-human origin? And, in fact, there are cases where this has happened.

This is all to say that I don't find it unreasonable to take seriously the idea that some of these craft are non-human in origin. On the other hand, it hasn't been demonstrated with a high degree of certainty. But I would argue that it is irrational to claim that there is no evidence for it, as there clearly is.

reply to post by Brighter


If you don't mind having an honest discussion, it would seem like the modern day equivalent of using YouTube videos to conduct research on this. While the media has changed, I don't think people have changed all that much. There just seems like there would be too many problems to overcome to get a good idea of the phenomenon with the methods they used. I do think it was a good effort.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by atlasastro
....How do you even label something as evidence of X without the very existence of X as a known?

Is there anyone who does not see the absurdity in that type of reasoning?

(Astoundingly, this member makes reference to the Fermi paradox only a few lines above that.)

I always thought the Fermi Paradox was more or less a thought experiment and not really offered as evidence of anything.
Can you tell me how these two things are related? Because I really don't know how they are. I admit that I am slow and don't grasp this stuff easily. Thanks.

UFO researchers note that the Fermi Paradox arose within the context of a wave of UFO reports, yet Fermi, Teller, York and Konopinski apparently dismissed the possibility that flying saucers might be extraterrestrial – despite contemporary US Air Force investigations that judged a small portion of UFO reports as inexplicable by contemporary technology.

Originally posted by atlasastro
www.bluebookarchive.org...

Read it.
Newspaper clippings, and articles from Life, were copid at Battelle.
Old interviews were "updated" to a new format to aid in the standardization so the statistical analysis would be consistent.

These were done by others who took what they thought was technically relevant. So now we have a whole raft of data that has been filtered.

Read the god damn reports.

Uhm... actually, you need to read more carefully.

Once again you've mischaracterized what was said and what was done. Show me where the Report itself or even what you cited says that newspaper clippings, alone, constituted any significant portion of those ~3,000 sighting reports. You can't. And unfortunately, if you read only a few pages from your link, we find that constructing and testing a standardized UFO Report form, or "Observer's Data Sheet", was one of their primary initial goals. And what I'm reading (see below at ***) suggests that this clipping service was used for purposes other than to simply obtain new sighting reports. Apparently they were used for corroboration and elimination of cases, and to provide "calibration" data about the new reporting channels they'd set up.

I'm sorry to see that this all upsets you so much. Yours is a tough position to be in, however, given that the results of the statistical analysis completely refute one of your primary arguments. (That "Unknowns" are just "Knowns" which lack enough data to be assigned to any other classification.) So I see why you'd have to argue that most of the data was poor. But that doesn't make it poor.... Implying that SR14 was the result of a bunch of guys cutting out and classifying newspaper articles is the act of a desperate person. And anyone who reads the Report (and I hope it's everyone!) will see how silly that idea is. See the "Origin and Nature of Data" section.

What I see from the Report as a whole is that scientists with broad and various backgrounds, but later specifically trained in identifying mundane phenomena, gathered all of the data they could with respect to each sighting, with the Blue Book files being by far the primary source. ("Three principal sources of reports were noted in the preliminary review of the data. The bulk of the data arrived at ATIC through regular military channels... A second type of data consisted of letters reporting sightings sent by civilian observers directly to ATIC.... A third type of data was that contained in questionnaire forms completed by the observer himself.")

Also relevant as background, "It is emphasized that all phases of evaluation, even including the tedious preparation of the original data for statistical treatment, were entrusted only to selected, specially qualified scientists and engineers.... A group decision was necessary on all reports finally recorded as UNKNOWN, regardless of what the preliminary identification had been."

*** And from the Project Stork documents you cite:

"Data will be compiled on the lag between sightings and the receipts of reports and supplementary information. This knowledge will aid in evaluating reports and in determining the effectiveness of collection procedures...."

"The clipping service has been initiated and approximately 350 clippings have been received. The Life article is responsible for 90 per cent of the clippings [but later, of course, a smaller %], with the remainder being a few new sightings reported concurrently from several sources."

Now I can't say that, of those ~3,000 reports, not one consisted only of newspaper clippings. But I can say with confidence, as could anyone who reads the Report, that news clippings alone did not comprise any significant portion of the sighting reports.

Keep pretending that things such as SR14 don't exist. They do. And it seems that the best you can offer are mischaracterizations of the methods and findings within, or your own broad assumptions and conclusions, which, to an alarming degree, can be (and have been) shown to be simply in error.

Some of your 'highlights':
-- "I think that one could argue that those numerous cases could be explained if given greater time, resources and as much data and knowledge as possible." (Special Report 14 refutes this directly and unambiguously.)

-- "I actually looked at what they used as 'evidence'. Evidence that was made up of NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS OF UFO REPORTS." (Refuted by the Report itself, and even the link YOU provided.)

--"The ETH is not viable as an explanation simply because you cannot show that ET's actually exist" ... or, in general form: "How do you even label something as evidence of X without the very existence of X as a known?" (I'll address the huge logical flaws in that elsewhere.)

This is all very disappointing.

Originally posted by ZetaRediculian
I always thought the Fermi Paradox was more or less a thought experiment and not really offered as evidence of anything. Can you tell me how these two things are related? Because I really don't know how they are. I admit that I am slow and don't grasp this stuff easily. Thanks.

The Fermi Paradox says that Earth should have already been visited or colonized by ET, right? That's the calculation Fermi did.

It's called a "paradox" because of the disjoint between the expectation ('they should be here by now') and the reality (or at least consensus reality, 'they are not').

That paradox, resting upon the premise that they should be here by now, was inserted into the conversation by someone who thinks that the ETH cannot even be a viable working hypothesis for UFOs until ET is proven.

?????

(And if anyone has the urge to tell me I just created a "straw man" or misrepresented that person's views, I'd ask him or her to please go back and read carefully before doing so.)

reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets

--"The ETH is not viable as an explanation simply because you cannot show that ET's actually exist" ... or, in general form: "How do you even label something as evidence of X without the very existence of X as a known?" (I'll address the huge logical flaws in that elsewhere.)

Lets say you have a deck of 51 cards representing the really good cases. It's 51 because we discarded the one that represented the JAL case. All the cards are face down in nice rows of 10 except for 1 that's by itself.

Now lets say we don't know ANYTHING about these cards so each card represents an UNKNOWN and we can't flip them over to see what they represent. So we don''t know a thing about this 'set'. Heck we don't even know if they are playing cards except they look like playing cards from the back. They could be old maid cards, or UNO cards we don't know.

So we can argue all you want but what are the odds of one of those being an ace? Even better, what are the odds of one of them having a big red X on it?

Now lets say we used to have a lot more cards on the table but we were able to flip them over and see what was on them and we discovered that one after another was some mundane card. Now the amount of cards we flipped over far outweighed what's left.

So here we have our knowns and our unknowns and we are trying to determine if X exists.

I'm no statistician, but I do play cards and I'm not to shabby. So I think I would have a hard time getting anyone in Atlantic city to put a dime down on the odds of one of them having a big red X on it.

But it sounds like you are ready to put everything you got on it and then some. I would caution against that.

Now without being rude, condescending and arrogant, do you think this captures what your up against? I am sure you don't. So can you explain why?

OkThen. let's add that the cards are different shapes and colors and size so you categorize the knowns and compare them to the unknowns.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by ZetaRediculian
I always thought the Fermi Paradox was more or less a thought experiment and not really offered as evidence of anything. Can you tell me how these two things are related? Because I really don't know how they are. I admit that I am slow and don't grasp this stuff easily. Thanks.

The Fermi Paradox says that Earth should have already been visited or colonized by ET, right? That's the calculation Fermi did.

It's called a "paradox" because of the disjoint between the expectation ('they should be here by now') and the reality (or at least consensus reality, 'they are not').

That paradox, resting upon the premise that they should be here by now, was inserted into the conversation by someone who thinks that the ETH cannot even be a viable working hypothesis for UFOs until ET is proven.

?????

(And if anyone has the urge to tell me I just created a "straw man" or misrepresented that person's views, I'd ask him or her to please go back and read carefully before doing so.)

No straw man here but you didn't answer the question. I know what the Fermi paradox is. i don't know how you related the two different different things- finding x and the paradox.

And why would Fermi not believe in the ETH right at the height of the UFO phenomenon?

So you are complaining that someone used the Fermi paradox that seems to contradict what he believes but what he believes is the same as what Fermi believed?

UFO researchers note that the Fermi Paradox arose within the context of a wave of UFO reports, yet Fermi, Teller, York and Konopinski apparently dismissed the possibility that flying saucers might be extraterrestrial – despite contemporary US Air Force investigations that judged a small portion of UFO reports as inexplicable by contemporary technology.

Originally posted by atlasastro
Answer the question!

How do you label any percentage of the UFO phenomena as evidence for ETH, when you cannot even prove ET exist!

Answer the question.

Well, it would have been considered a circular question even in 1948, and is more so now that we're aware of much, much more. But it looks like several others are just as hung up on the precise identity of whatever may be behind some UFOs, so perhaps the problems should be laid out there, bare.

I'll ignore the purely logical flaws which exist in that kind of circular thinking regardless of the topic, and instead focus on the ET issue. If a person doesn't already see the huge hole in there, even in the general case, then I probably can't help.)

Our current science predicts the existence of advanced extraterrestrials, and is even now proposing that we search our own solar system for them or their artifacts. We don't need absolute "proof" of extraterrestrial existence before saying that there's some evidence tending to support the idea that they're here. That reality can be accommodated, scientifically. It's even expected, many are now saying. (Fermi said this!) And THAT is the difference between the ETH and the other "strange" hypotheses; it's no longer so strange....

Your analogy about needing to know that backwards time travel exists before we can say there's evidence for it is closer to correct, IMO. Even our cutting edge science, so far as I know, does not predict that time travel into the past is a tenable hypothesis. ET, however, fits perfectly well into what we know. Better than any other of the "strange" hypotheses. So by default, by Occam's Razor, it becomes our working hypothesis....

But of course we just can't be sure what's behind it all. I don't think anyone here has argued otherwise.

If you're concerned about that particular (ET) hypothesis, then we can speak in more general terms, as in "are there any 'Earth shattering' explanations behind some UFOs?".

Isn't what we're all intrigued by the idea that some other intelligence is involved? From what I've seen, most people don't much care whether it's the ETH, IDH, time travel or whatever; they want to know if there's other intelligence out there.

However, if science is to work the way it always has, then the ETH must be our leading tentative hypothesis. It requires the least revision of knowledge. And though reality doesn't care how much revising we must undertake, we do, and Occam does, and this is why I've said, and why it's completely proper to say that there is "some evidence" to support the ETH.

What there's actually "some evidence" for, strictly speaking, is some sort of unknown intelligence, and we can't truly be more specific about the "where?" and the "how?". We can't be sure if 'whatever' has traveled in space, time, or both. But we pick the most conservative explanation that still fits: 'beings' and their craft have been seen here, they're not from Earth as we know it, and that's all we cansay, so... they're "extra-terrestrial". Occam's Razor at work. Anything beyond it, like the 'supernatural' (maybe even time travelers, maybe even inter-dimensionals?) is just not needed. Any of those could still very well be an answer, but if we keep in mind that the technology of an advanced civilization would appear to us to be magic, then the ETH can reasonably accommodate even the strangest evidence out there. (AFAIK)

We should be talking about whether there appears to be some other intelligence behind UFOs. Getting hung up on the precise identity seems odd to me... a distraction from the central issue... something akin to "was the plaintiff's head struck 100 times, or 101 times?" It's a heck of a 'revelation' even if expecting and braced for it.

Originally posted by ZetaRediculian
Lets say you have a deck of 51 cards representing the really good cases. It's 51 because we discarded the one that represented the JAL case. All the cards are face down in nice rows of 10 except for 1 that's by itself.

Now lets say we don't know ANYTHING about these cards so each card represents an UNKNOWN and we can't flip them over to see what they represent. So we don''t know a thing about this 'set'. Heck we don't even know if they are playing cards except they look like playing cards from the back. They could be old maid cards, or UNO cards we don't know....[snipped the rest]

I think that's a bad metaphor. False analogy. Whatever the appropriate term or phrase, the situations are not at all parallel.

I did just add some thoughts into another reply, and I think it probably addresses the very issue you seem so concerned about.