Thoughts about people claiming alien contact

Originally posted by Starwise
reply to post by compressedFusion

 

I have found that this forum on ATS is not a place where I feel comfortable talking about my experiences. The skeptics are ruthless in their character assassination.

There are other places to visit online, where experiencers are not belittled by those who like to cut up with sarcasm and chide remarks.

I am not familiar with your experiences but I do have a sincere interest. I would enjoy hearing abut them, even if you would only talk about it in PM. Feel free to contact me.

Originally posted by g2v12
reply to post by ArdenWolf

 

Fundamentally, I agree with you. My point has always been that others, who may be more or less on the benevolent side, would likely take an interest in our welfare, but wouldn't make official contact unless they could see that our planet had a common referendum for radical change. Why? because without the proper mindset to address the most critical issues that threaten humanity (most of them man made) we wouldn't be considered responsible enough or perhaps better said, worthy to obtain even more power to abuse. As you stated, with more power comes more accountability. That's a two way street. We wouldn't expect them to land on main street USA and offer us something that we place no value on. I think the real question is, is the human mature enough govern itself? I think its pretty obvious that everything that represents order in the global community is rapidly breaking down.

Either step in and point humans in the right direction or let the other guys subvert them for either the heck of it or to piss you off. There's no benefit to the benevolent aliens to grab random people with no pull and send them on a hopeless mission that will cause the individual harm.

The malevolent or jerk aliens are the only ones that gain any real benefit from stealth if we assume all exist. It is possible there are "benevolent" or lawful aliens, and they may be trying to control the other aliens so we can develop on our own.

If this is going on, then it's possible you have multiple alien groups with their own agendas. Which is quite likely. However, knowing full well the other groups, which clearly exist, are going to break the rules not stepping in is irresponsible. They're going to let humanity die because they have too much pride to admit they can't keep the others in check and step into the open.

If random people are getting into contact with aliens telling them this stuff they are one of three things, someone purposely misleading them, someone messing with them, or someone trying to help from the shadows cause their government won't allow them to do anything more.

However, based on the extremes of the messages they give I lean towards the first two, why? Because it's clear that being extreme paladins of good in not necessary to being part of the galactic community because the others exist.

There might be space politics, but if so, anyone claiming pure peace and love is likely lying out their ass.

Each of the quotes are from different people --

Wait the aliens are telling us these things? Or are people telling us the aliens are telling us these things?

Aliens never told ME that. However... "visions of doom" were pretty common during that same time period of my life. When I left southern coastal california, they vanished entirely and completely. One of my theories while there -- which that seemed to give a little credence to -- was that perhaps that region has ongoing subsurface geomagnetic stuff going on that affects the physiology, which may 'symbolize' its response like that.

In my opinion from everything I've seen, aliens are by and large complete and total pricks. Power and technology does not necessitate maturity.

ROFL. The blondes tackled me hard one too many times when I was trying to get away and my lucidity apparently surprised and irritated them, for me to have much feeling for them except that they're obnoxious. But I really try not to take it personally. It wasn't personal. And when we tag wild animals and ranch cows, that isn't personal either. Aside from the bugs/greys, the former whom I really liked (though their body petrified me and I could only communicate if they blocked my 'attention' to it) and the latter whom I rarely saw or remembered and always translated as something else ('mutant greyhounds' being a favorite), all the others I met I think only 'partly' overlap with our physical frequencies, though that's enough to 'be' physical when they choose, at least enough to matter.

It's always, the aliens are here to invade or take control through some complex and sinister means, or to spread some message of peace and love and hope we get the message so we can join them or are so alien we cannot possibly comprehend their motives.

It's a cargo cult, as I quoted Bill Heidrick as saying in my case study.

They're just other people. I don't see them as benevolent or evil. The whole mystical or cosmic garbage gets in the way of everything. We're part of the livestock of earth as a property.

What I don't think is, if they are here to invade

That doesn't even make sense to me. They've been around longer than our current species' recorded history, which I get both from some communication and from some of the recounts of Vedic stuff like Richard Thompson presented. This is their home. It's just out of sight, frequency-wise I suspect, from what we perceive. Still. They aren't alien except 'to us.'

I have found that this forum on ATS is not a place where I feel comfortable talking about my experiences. The skeptics are ruthless in their character assassination.

Although I generally agree, you have to admit that there have been several messages in this thread from skeptics which were not attacking nor rude but reasonable. Plus I've shared all kinds of far out things without anybody outright calling me a moron personally at least (see, I say that, which will probably change it all lol).

reply to post by RedCairo


As for not taking it personal. I have pets, I've seen cruelty to animals, and I've known people that actually HATE puppies. So yeah, in the majority of cases it may not necessarily be personal, but I'd not put it past some "aliens" to want to "punt the puppy" because they happen to have serious issues. While "animal abuse" may be illegal in alien law, like in our own, it would likely still happen and likely most would get away with it. Of course that is assuming they even have such a law. Which they may not. Some described experiences certainly seem to fall under the abuse category and not curiosity or simple experimentation.

Plus there's a lot of really weird stuff out there that makes more sense as an alien experiment or joke than it does as an actual separate entity. That said, no I don't think it all needs to be taken as personal but I have rescue animals that I can look at and see the parallel. I also see obvious signs of animal intelligence all around me while being in arguments with people who refuse to believe any animal on this planet does more than act of instinct.

I just, don't think aliens are above these things. At least not all of them.

Some humans toy with animals. If we're animals some aliens toy with us.

Some humans hand animals from the tree by their tail and pretend they're a pinata while the animal is not only still alive but someone's pet. Is quite possible there are aliens that do the same.

Some humans commit acts of bestiality with lesser animals, in some cases clearly against the animals will. Well I don't think I need provide examples of that.

Some humans troll each other, or play pranks on each other because it's fun. Some aliens quite possibly do the same with each other or us.

So yeah, it seems we mostly agree. I just disagree that it's never personal nor that I shouldn't take it as such.

I'm sure my black friends wouldn't consider it impersonal if I told them not to be upset over slavery since some of the whites of the time didn't even consider them human.

It is personal. The very fact that we can say it is, well, is what makes it so. The fact that they can have meaningful communication with us, makes it so. We're not lab rats with a clear inability to communicate in a meaningful way. We may be lab animals, but we're ones they can communicate with before they give us the brand.

The aliens clearly have issues with ethics. What I want to know, really know, is how pervasive is this problem in their culture. If it's anything like what it is in ours world wide. Well, I, who am in no way religious, pray the better minds of the alien nations wins out in the end because we can be so, so cruel.

Originally posted by Starwise
I have found that this forum on ATS is not a place where I feel comfortable talking about my experiences. The skeptics are ruthless in their character assassination.

Starwise, thank you for sharing your experience.

Originally posted by ArdenWolf
There's no benefit to the benevolent aliens to grab random people with no pull and send them on a hopeless mission that will cause the individual harm.

Ardenwolf,

I think it is difficult to speculate when dealing with a scenario which hypothesizes such an advanced intelligence. You assert that there would be no benefit, but we couldn't really know that. We really only have about 70 years of experience in dealing with the problems associated with population density from modern living.

One benefit to grabbing random people could be a slow and methodical change. Isn't that how concepts spread? Religions like Christianity contain many similar extraordinary claims and yet it survived.

I felt the following two posts of mine were relevant. They are from a thread AlienView created. I have included pieces of my posts as quotes here for your convenience.

post by compressedFusion: Social Change = Technology

I ask that you consider a metaphor for social change. You wouldn't fault a caveman for his inability to build a semiconducting device because he doesn't have the knowledge. You wouldn't fault a time traveler from the future stranded in the stone-age for the same inability to construct a highly integrated semiconducting device because he doesn't have the infrastructure. If our social advancement is like technology then we shouldn't become depressed that we can't immediately construct the equivalent of a semiconducting device (ie. your paradise).

I believe that social change and advancement is, in fact, just another form of technology. It requires both knowledge and infrastructure. It is like a machine that runs smoothly if well oiled. It may seem hopeless, but it is only because you have your eye on a prize that is so far advanced beyond our social infrastructure right now.

post by compressedFusion: Growth must be earned not given

If you have had the experience of raising children then you will undoubtedly understand my next statement. If I were an alien trying to help Earth grow then I would probably believe that I can't just come in and uproot everything. Whatever help I could give would be slow and methodical to give mankind a chance to make mistakes and grow.

The problem is, not all the aliens are doing this, nor are the peaceful encounters the only kind. They are doing a terrible job of policing their own. The good alien hypothesis only works if you ignore all but they alien encounters that don't support it.

Once I got over the resistance to the idea of 'other identities which could interact with us, some at varying degrees [iincluding completely] physically', I realized that removing the paradigm wiped out my entire set of assumptions about the subject.

If there is one kind of not-the-people-we-know-ians, there could be dozens, hundreds, thousands, and they could be all kinds of different species, and they could overlap from not at all to completely with the frequency range and beat patterns we consider physical reality. In other words, I think there is equal probability there is "tons of things" as that there is "nothing."

At that point, all stereotype bets are off: one cannot fairly attribute "to aliens" anything, any more than we can make huge categorizations about some huge place with a major diversity, such as the African or the Russian continents.

And any 'assumptions' about 'well we'd have physical proof of them by now if there were (more than 100, more than 10, even 1)' can't take into account the myriad factors we don't know jack about, e.g. that earth may be a property owned by a certain species and the borders may be closed, or mostly closed, or closed except for licensed exceptions or something. We just don't know. Any speculation is being done in a vacuum, outside one's own experience.

On my spiritual blog, the big quote I have at the top is:

THE ONLY TENETS OF TRUTH I HOLD
ARE BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Because sometimes, some of my experience may overlap with someone else's; or some given system; and sometimes it might not at all. But I don't go by other peoples' paradigms. I can only go by my own experience. And there is plenty to doubt in that, but I'm the only one who can record, and often later see, how I interfere with things, how assumptions and fears distort things, and so on. I certainly can't do that with other people's brains.

I think it's the same with the 'alien' subject (although I consider this more a 'spectrum of reality' and that our people simply classify those identities which most 'overlap' with our reality-experience to be 'aliens').

I can only base things on my own experience.

I think people who are not having experiences probably can only base things on some intellectual idea, which mostly comes down to which person's story they like best, since all of this is ridiculously lacking for hard validation to anyone who isn't experiencing it themselves.

Originally posted by ArdenWolf
The problem is, not all the aliens are doing this, nor are the peaceful encounters the only kind. They are doing a terrible job of policing their own. The good alien hypothesis only works if you ignore all but they alien encounters that don't support it.

My intent was twofold. I believe that

1.) It is difficult to speculate about motives when essentially anything goes (due to technology). This is doubly difficult with jokesters polluting the signal. It is probably best not to draw too many conclusions - good or bad.

2.) Our problems are most likely our own problems to work through whether aliens visit Earth or not.

The question about the existence of aliens is irrelevant for somebody like myself. It is because I have no experience and therefore it does not impact my life. I do have compassion for those who are plagued by their experiences and I am willing to suspend my disbelief because it is important to lend a sympathetic ear. In the end, aliens or not, we still have to do our best to get along.

I wish you the best.

reply to post by compressedFusion

I believe that social change and advancement is, in fact, just another form of technology. It requires both knowledge and infrastructure. It is like a machine that runs smoothly if well oiled. It may seem hopeless, but it is only because you have your eye on a prize that is so far advanced beyond our social infrastructure right now.

Interesting. There's no doubt that social conscience (synonymous with social change) is a product of intelligence and self awareness. Infrastructure (plural) is the manifestation of organized thought on a social scale. I wonder if these are forms of the quantum technology, which begins as a thought (quantum material) and is created or manifest through the 3D structure with which we are most familiar. What if our thoughts are strung to the event horizon where scenarios and events are created in which the nature of matter, information, mathematical materiality exists. And those things then come through us and happen in in our lives.

Norman Vincent Peal taught that thoughts had a life of their own. Thoughts and principles of thought, like dreams, faith and belief or a passion in something.

Many years ago I knew a kid (John) with leg braces in the back woods of Arkansas. He suffered the effects of palsy and was confined to a wheel chair most of the time, he developed a passion for drawing. John used anything laying around the house to draw. His family complained that he was using up their paper, pens and pencils, so his mother would scold him.

Somehow this boy met my father (Ed), who was a very positive person and believed always in the power of thought. When he realized that John loved to draw, he bought John a set of colored pencils and a pad of large art paper. Years later we moved to another state, but Ed and John kept in touch. By the time John was in his mid twenties, he had become a graphic artist and was contracted to work on a cartoon scene for Disney.

Thinking about Susskind's theorem of how the information of objects in the 3D universe exists at the event horizon just caused me to wonder about the actual scenarios of the objects.

reply to post by Bluesma


Bluesma, thank you for sharing your experience! Did your family finally come to terms with it or does it still cause friction?

reply to post by g2v12

by g2v12
What if our thoughts are strung to the event horizon where scenarios and events are created in which the nature of matter, information, mathematical materiality exists. And those things then come through us and happen in in our lives.

I had a strong Deja'vu experience when I read the above words. I'm certain I've read this exact thought somewhere before, but I can't recall, for the life of me, and it seems like a dream.

If your statement were true then there would still be competing thoughts jostling about vying for a place in some type of meta structure. This wouldn't be too much different than sub atomic particles asserting their fields through force carriers. The end result of the pattern would be a complex macroscopic tapestry containing beautiful patterns with things like van der waals forces derived from secondary and tertiary effects of charge interactions.

There are some higher level patterns which at least make the idea plausible. For instance, discoveries are often made simultaneously by different people in disparate circumstances. Sometimes the circumstances are very similar such as Newton and Leibniz discovering calculus.

Within the context of this thread's topic, I think your suggestion could account for why people react to the abduction claims with such fear and vitriol. Perhaps it is programmed in on a deeper level than we understand.

If you continue down your road of thinking I think you will run into a challenging and fun problem. Here are 3 examples of the same problem.

1.) Schroedinger's Cat

It has plagued the physics community for so many years with along with the Coppenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. At the core of it we are wrestling with the order we see on the macroscopic level. The life or death of the cat is tied to the fate of a single pair of entangled particles. Could such a cat exist and not violate our own mathematical representation of these laws? We have no real answer to this question because the system is too complex.

The cat's fate appears to be non-deterministic, but the argument is non-deterministic as well.

2.) In my mind, it is very similar to John Searle's chinese room argument against artificial intelligence. Could such a book really exist or does the very assumption of the books existence presuppose his conclusions? You will get a modicum of consensus among philosophers but there doesn't appear to be any mathematical proof we can apply due to the complexity of the system.


3.) Math (mapping to natural language)

You can say the same thing about math. We often perceive it as something pure and objective. If you can prove it mathematically then it is a certainty. However, at some point you have to take the symbol manipulation done in math and create a mapping back to natural language. Our inability to make advances in natural language processing is an indicator that things may not be so certain. The system can often be easily turned in on itself to reveal the holes with funny thought experiments such as "Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy he can not lift?". This creates a logical abyss. A somewhat unrelated example is the halting problem by Turing. He turned his Turing machine in on itself and generated a proof for non-computability of the problem. Or was he really just mimicking the structure of mapping integers as a diagonal across the real numbers?

So my question is as it pertains to the three examples:

1.) What is a thought?

Thank you for sharing the story about John. I think your Dad had a wonderful outlook on life and it shows in you as well.

Originally posted by compressedFusion
reply to post by g2v12

 

by g2v12
What if our thoughts are strung to the event horizon where scenarios and events are created in which the nature of matter, information, mathematical materiality exists. And those things then come through us and happen in in our lives.

I had a strong Deja'vu experience when I read the above words. I'm certain I've read this exact thought somewhere before, but I can't recall, for the life of me, and it seems like a dream.

Have you ever thought about the event horizon surrounding the universe? Consciousness could spawn there in a premortal state and enter the universe at the moment the female egg is conceived. And if so, that conscious connection with the EH, never broken, would allow the mind to function in dual states - within the body of flesh and the vitreous of consciousness in the EH.

Originally posted by compressedFusion
reply to post by Bluesma

 

Bluesma, thank you for sharing your experience! Did your family finally come to terms with it or does it still cause friction?

Actually, there is no more problems. My husband was disturbed for a while, my youngest was traumatized, had trouble sleeping, and would cry in talking about them. He developed Alopecia Areata, in which he loses large patches of his hair, and all the doctors we've seen say it is psychosomatic- stemming from psychological problems. The common belief here is that it arises when the individual does not feel safe or protected.

He was two when this stuff was happening, and eighteen, he still has a problem with the alopecia. He may lose all his hair including body hair and eyebrows someday, but for the moment, it is just the back of his head.

Besides that, we deal fine. I hear the "Hum" ever since these experiences, and some days it is louder than others, and have certain "sensitivities" that I find useful in everyday life (like vibrations I can feel when I run my hands over things- I use this in the way a person might use a pendalum. To find lost objects, to pick the perfect fruit at the store).

But my life is completely normal and happy, with no more strangeness. We did move to a high mountaintop, in a survivalist type of situation, influenced by visions and messages picked up at the time of those experiences... but they are not continuing today. That is why I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out anymore. It doesn't matter.

I don't feel these forums are the ideal place to share a abductee experience, not that I have one but even my recent UFO sightings are criticised and I feel sometimes users on this site don't have open minds, and seem to browse these forums simply to debunk peoples stories and theories.

Anyone who claims publicly that they have experienced alien encounters get labelled as crazy, or a hoaxer. Which I agree, some of them if not a majority most likely are, people will do a lot for attention but some accounts I feel can not be ignored.

A Harvard study conducted on abductees found that a lot of them showed genuine signs of, and quoted "someone reliving a childhood sexual assault for example, or any other traumatic event" which to me should not go unnoticed. The public, media and so on have a great way of neglecting other worldly claims, be it aliens, ghosts etc. I personally believe this could be a government cover up? To restrict public disorder and hysteria.

It's a great mystery that's for sure. In a strange way i'd like to have a other worldly encounter, just so I know in my head that we do have alien visitors to this planet, even if wider society decides to neglect the claims.

reply to post by compressedFusion


I at first approached alien abduction and meetings in general as vaguely possible but most likely jokes or even more likely mental trickery... but as I read more and more and a couple accounts at least sounded very truthful, or at least the people were excellent liars or had wonderfully detailed imaginations.

And then a family member, whose a salt-of-the-earth-Midwestern-stolid-stock-type saw the Streiber book's cover in the bookstore (remember those?) and lost her scat. She had a serious breakdown and a flood of memories that included vivid dreams where she was riding in a train, like freight cars with passenger benches, with black eyed soldiers and then the vision shifted into spaceship with dazed people on benches and the soldiers, of course, were really grey aliens.

This person had never read a "ufo" book or even read sci-fi... real grounded... after this episode they backed off because they were scared and didn't want it to be true and determined to forget about it. Except she hasn't changed her story or her newish memories in 20 years.

Then another family member, a real self sustaining rock type, was driving in rural Illinois late one night and was chased by an egg shaped aerial vehicle driven by a grey guy with "spaghetti arms."

He won't drive at night more than a decade later... so there's that...

I've never seen a driver of odd vehicles, but I've seen the vehicles... probably.

For those that know, or are pretty sure, that this stuff goes on, the questions just get bigger and more convoluted. Like, really... what's going on and can it be explained in terms that don't sound too completely warped?

Human language appears to exist to connect humans regarding "shared experience."

You only need to have an experience you've never had before, which you've never heard words sufficient to describe, to realize that communication breaks down a great deal at that point.

I think part of how anyone sharing an 'encounter' experience is responded to depends on how well they appear to describe it using the words and models that we have. But this often requires either under-describing or mis-describing something, or at best doing not so bad but knowing that those perceiving the communication will not possibly be able to interpret it correctly -- unless they have had the experience themselves and recognize the awkward translation attempt; how could they, from words and cultural or semantic models which are not even entirely correct to begin with?

What I see in others, offline and online, in any topic, is that most people are not particularly good at communicating without varying amounts of distortion or incompleteness. When someone is talking about computers or social events, politics or hobbies, this seldom leads to question of the existence of an event, or thing, or idea, or the sanity of the reporter. It is usually interpreted as being either a communications issue or perhaps a perspective difference. But this same thing will reflect against either the perception of 'truth' or 'sanity' when applied to an event, thing or idea in the 'encounter' topic.

I am not suggesting that truth or sanity cannot be valid issues in this topic -- and in others too; I am simply suggesting that culturally, we tend to take the same elements of communication and experience with others and assign them different assumed or implied meanings based on the topical matter. So that is a sort of distortion field on the incoming side of the communication, totally apart from the difficulties on the outgoing side, which are considerable in this topic.

This makes it nearly impossible to expect any truly clear communication process to occur: for the semantic paradigms and terminology to make even describing it possible; for the interpretive model to be accurate regarding the topic or communicator.

Unless it is a "shared experience" between the people communicating (and of course by shared, I mean all of the components and ways of arranging those components. Someone could tell me of their vacation to Tibet without many issues despite my not having been there, though they would likely fail to convey to me a myriad of experience aesthetic and subtle our language is not well equipped for and some may do better with. The percentage of experience which falls into the "portion of the experience our language is not well equipped for" is simply vastly higher in the case of 'contact' experiences).

Sometimes, I have seen something written which is a lousy way of describing something, but the experience is so startlingly unique that my brain totally understands that these are the only words in my language one could reasonably use to describe it, even though that makes it completely wrong. If I talk to that person, we often get a better joint description of it worked out, not necessarily because any words really fit or because the interpretive models of onlookers get better, but because as part of communicating about a shared experience, the back & forth often leads to a variety of different ways of trying to say something; and this in turn, can lead an interpreting brain to create a less literal, more "synthesized average" of the different attempts. That's an area of communication most people don't consider but is an important element of how humans communicate: the brain's attempt to 'blend' multiple ways of saying something for a new result -- rather like creating a new color by combining a few that don't exist natively on the palette.

In a social model what this means is that as individuals, very few if any 'contactees' -- even those which may actually have plenty of 'truth' and 'sanity' in play (surely subjective terms even in many other fields never mind this one) -- are able to directly provide a communication about their experience which, when attempting to translate it literally and semantically, could convey it particularly well. But the combination of many different attempts to describe a similar experience (such as by different people) may be able to create in those onlooking a synthesis result that is far closer to whatever really went on.

Unfortunately, this means that "critically evaluating" an individual experience (which must be done literally) is usually unlikely to get anywhere near a decent communication event overall. On the other hand, "taking it with a large grain of salt and a relaxed interest" and synthesizing the presentation of many different people regarding a similar experience, is far more likely to result in an interpretive perception a lot closer to the original thing / event attempting to be conveyed.

So we're stuck with this bizarre situation where one almost wants to say, "You probably can't get near the thing based on any one story, but you may get much nearer it based on the composite of many stories." Since any 'critical evaluation' of anything requires one story, linear, logical, and clearly translatable within our language and its semantic and cultural models, that makes truly 'critical' evaluation of it nearly unworkable altogether.

Which is hardly fair to the persons who would like to evaluate it.

But that the situation exists is simply the way it is.

It's not particularly 'fair' to the persons who would like to convey it, either.

I think I should add to the above, but separately as it's a separate issue, that there is a very fundamental, topic-wide problem that is at least semi-solvable from a troubleshooting perspective, but which culturally we don't seem to be making much effort for. And that is this:

In order for the above 'synthesis interpretation' to have any possible application, the communications synthesized need to be about, generally anyway, the same kind of experience.

To say that the range of experience is wide in this genre is an understatement.

The semantics and models for conveying, let alone interpreting, an experience depend greatly on how well that experience actually fits into the language and models obviously, and this is a "spectrum" in the UFOlogy field, from 'easily and completely' to 'there isn't even a place to start' and everywhere in between.

Describing the 'nuts&bolts' experience of seeing a craft while out with a few friends camping is completely different than describing many 'abduction' experiences.

And describing abduction experiences appears to depend first on the 'people' one was 'encountering' and then secondarily on the 'focus experience' encountered with them and perhaps thirdly on the 'style of communication' within the experience.

The first reasonable thing to do in any such "comprehension mess" is to drag ALL information into a big ugly pile, and then go through it and make some broad categories, and subcategories. As a bare minimum of initial examples, and this is only off the top of my head so likely not ideal of course:

* Ground to Aerial sightings. One or more people 'visually' perceived something at a distance of, let's say, around 250 feet or more above them.

* Aerial to Aerial sightings. One or more people 'visually' perceived something while IN the air WITH them, such as pilots.

* Technology Interactive sightings. One or more people perceived something while in the air and interacted with them (e.g. not just a pilot 'sighting' but a fighter pilot actually chasing them).

* Close Aerial sightings. One or more people 'visually' perceived something at a distance of, let's say, around 250 feet or LESS above them.

* Technology-assisted sightings. When someone from ground or air has 'objective technology' to support whatever is being perceived, e.g. radar.

(You can already see that some of the above may overlap in some instances.)

* Let's put 'visual' technologies like film/cameras in its own category, please...

* Subjectively-enhanced Aerial sightings, intentional. One or more people go out with flashlights and try to call the aliens (...) and then report visual 'sightings' during this experience.

* Subjectively-enhanced Aerial sightings, 'telepathic.' One or more people describe a spontaneous experience where they simply perceived something Aerially but "knew" (or feel they were "being told" mentally) "they were here for me" or something like that.

OK we now have eight categories and we are not even to any elements of 'abduction' yet (and for good reason, since those may or may not have any relationship to what NORAD sees on radar for example).

But in order for anyone with even half a wit to try and "interpret" all this stuff, you've got to at least have people communicating about the same general experience. Then those onlooking can at least have the "benefit of synthesis" of multiple accounts. Attempting to make sense of anything when people are talking about completely different things is impossible, and not even sensible.

This basic of 'categorizing information before attempting to correlate it' IS a basic, we would use it in business for example (I've been in 'troubleshooter' roles much of the last 30 years in business). We would not take the anomalies and subjective reports of 500 people in a company and try to make sense of them without first categorizing them. You wouldn't try to compare issues of sales against shipping or accounting or assembly line: those are all very different areas with their own issues, and they may impact each other (linearly, usually) but the issues aren't usually identical. You wouldn't try to compare issues of personnel management with issues of materials undersupply or line workflow. (I'm being general here; of course there are overlaps.)

First, you have to categorize it. Often there are sub and sub-sub categories. Then you can evaluate it, either by department (warehouse) or issue (supervisory techniques) or sub-issue (established standards for training) or whatever else.

If this kind of thinking is needed even for making sense of business, how much more is it needed for making sense of what may be the most controversial, sometimes ephemeral, definitely communications- and paradigm- challenging topic in our culture?

Now granted, in the UFOlogy field, one of the most mind-crunching elements is the 'overlaps' between things; e.g. Travis Walton's got a multi-person close-aerial sighting, but then he's also got a medical/physical 'encounter,' with two different 'types' of people, and several other genres we could make relating more specifically to contact and aftereffects. Some people have experiences which very clearly began as dreams, evolved to something we don't even have words for, ended up seeming completely physical to them, and result in what they call implants but which so far we can only physically call 'anomalies within biological tissue.' So it is true that one experience may span multiple areas.

But, just like one particular issue may sometimes impact multiple areas or departments in a company, the only reasonable thing is to
a) consider each portion within the context where it happens, so we are at the least comparing fruit with fruit (if not actually apples with apples), and then
b) have other categories for 'concomitants' (when one kind of experience tends to come before/after/alongside another kind of experience) and overlaps and so on, which may yield insight from that perspective as well.

So as an example of concomitants, people 'interacting' with bugs-blondes-fragiles as I called them, or mantis-nordics-greys as others call them, together is a form of data of its own; the people talking about greys and anal probes aren't talking about singing light-beings, and obviously even the most relaxed well-salted-and-accepting-of-archetypes interpretation of these things is going to need to categorize those experiences into two different sub-genres. And experiences followed by small painful 'anomalies within biological tissue' may have more in common with each other than they have in common with experiences which did not include that element. So the areas of things related to each other, and experiences had near each other (as part of the same memory set/encounter), and overlaps, are also an important focus.

This kind of "Informational organization" is not rocket science. The internet with 'metadata' and 'tags' for example does it constantly and almost everywhere.

And yet for some reason I don't see this in the UFOlogy field, and I grant I am not super familiar with it except the occasional diversion of an online forum, but it seems to me if such a categorization system were in place, it would at the least be a great deal easier to put experiences in a certain context and then be able to intelligently compare them to what are "similar experiences" and not "comparing apples to... justice" or something completely non-sequitur level unrelated.

I want you to look into an individual named Dr. Steven Greer. He is, essentially, the leading expert in UFO researches and extraterrestrial contact. You can youtube him, google, etc. Also, I would encourage everyone to look up the disclosureproject.org and siriusdisclosure.com. This is very profound information, and everyone has the right to know.

NOOOOOOOOOO.. Not Stephen Greer. Do a search in this forum. He's not well liked here. Even by the believers.

You can use that one too, RedCairo

NoRulesAllowed
None (NONE!) of those so called "best cases" has any undeniable evidence backing it up and we have no proof in form of photos or videos, we have 3rd-hand witness account and this is ALL what that cases are based on. What does this tell you about the phenomenon? Do you believe in the "red cougar cuckaroo aligator bird" from Borneo..even if there is no proof whatsoever that it really exists?

Untrue. For starters, photos and videos of past UFO incidents, no matter how good, always have debunkers throwing them out. And your claim of "only 3rd hand witnesses" is completely false. Every solid case in the history of UFOs was reported by those directly involved as witnesses.

* Betty/Barney Hill

I read the last book about this case which was co-written by Stanton Friedman, supposedly a book which would back up this classic case, better than the Fuller book. For me this new book had the exact opposite effect. It made clear to me that Betty and Barney were extremely poor witnesses who couldn't even remember who of the both walked the dog when asked during regression.

Betty was extremely pre-occupied and biased in regards to UFOs, she was not only a very poor witness (as the book nicely shows, IMO)...but later on has shown that she interpreted any street-light etc. as "UFO" and seemed to have entirely lost the ability to critical think...she was even criticized for that by other researchers.

For me it is clear that Betty and Barney saw SOMETHING..but there are so many factors coming into play with this case that it (for me) entirely lost any credibility.

This case is a grey area for me.

* Cash Landrum case
Another often cited case which is "oh-so-air-tight". There is no question that they saw SOMETHING and there is also no question they experienced physical harm from the object which ultimately even led to the untimely passing of one of the witnesses.

However, you know that Betty (I think it was Betty) stepped out of the car and got the burns because she stared at the object for so long because she BELIEVED IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AND JESUS COMING OUT FROM THE LIGHT? What does this say about the witness(es)?

The religious views of the witnesses have zero bearing on this case. There was solid physical evidence here. Her religious views would not have had anything to do with the three of them receiving severe radiation poisoning, or the intense heat that left imprints in the car's vinyl. Those were observed by other people not affiliated with religion. Your argument is nonsense.

* Rendlesham Forest
has been a "good" case, over and over cited in the literature, up until a few years ago where Jim "came forward" with its ridiculous "binary code" tale...basically exposing at least himself as a hoaxer...basically invalidating the entire case.

That has to be about the weakest argument yet. Jim Penneston was not the sole witness in that case, there were numerous others, for starters. Plus physical evidence (radiation readings, ground markings, effects on the lights, ect) The case does not rest solely on him. Invalidating the case on that basis is ridiculous and weak logic.

On top of that....how does the binary code prove he is a hoaxer? Do you have PROOF of that? If not, than your argument is weaker than a contacee's.

*Belgian Wave /Phoenix "Lights"

Over weeks or months, people reported and saw huge flying triangles (and...we do INDEED have radar footage I think from a jet scrambling one of them)....but beside the fact that authorities saw them as well...sometimes for many minutes, we don't have a single photograph or footage? Explain that!

No photos? I would strongly suggest you actually do some research before making ignorant claims like this.

UFO Casebook

Phoenix - the same thing: Giant triangles are reported over a major city and seen by XXXXX people - and we don't have one bit of proof it even happened? How is that even logically possible? No one went inside and got a camera? Why is that? (Note that the existing footage which everyone knows is NOT the triangles, but the flare footage which ma not even have any relationship to the triangles)

Again, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Phoenix Lights

Many photos and videos were taken. They aren't great photos. You know why? Because the Phoenix Lights happened at NIGHT. And in 1997 (or even now in 2013), cameras just don't take great pics at night, especially those owned by the general public.

And so forth, and so forth...what I want to point out is that those so called "best cases" after some investigation and research all collapse and become "not so great anymore"...and of course the fact that we don't have a yota of proof which could stand a scientific investigation. Zero. Zilch.

Again, you are wrong. Not to mention that in many cases, the skeptic's "explanation" requires an even greater suspension of disbelief than the case itself. The Coyne case, for example:

Coyne Case

Not to mention that the 1956 Lakenheath Case, which the officially appointed debunking commision, the Condon Comittee, couldn't even cook up a way to dismiss it:

1956 Lakenheath

Washington Nationals Case. Official explaination: Temperature Inversions. LOL.

Washington Nationals UFO

Really, you need to do some fact checking.