Are you saying the show has made you a believer?BadFish said:I was orginally agianst the theory of UFO's, until I saw this show.
BadFish said:My point is, is it a good thing to keep our minds open to what is and isn't possible?
DaveC426913 said:Are you saying the show has made you a believer?
You really really want to think carefully about letting any TV show change your mind about anything.This needs to be said: It is important to keep an open mind. But not so open that your brains fall out.
To a rational thinker, it is as important to know what not to open our minds to. People once saw in evil spirits too.
While this belief is not unreasonable, it is completely unrelated to the question of whether the reports and incidents of UFOs are reliable and of what they indicate.BadFish said:I'm sure, at least, somewhere in the universe we are not alone. The universe is a big place.
From http://skepticreport.com/sr/?p=162kpax said:Overall, I thought "I Know What I Saw" was just ok. I was disappoint at how much time was devoted to the Rendlesham Forest Incident and how little time was given to the Belgian UFO Wave. The Rendlesham Forest Incident in my opinion is nothing more than misidentification of explicable lights coupled dishonest eye witness testimony. The Belgian UFO Wave is a far more intriguing case. The testimony of 100s of witnesses in the Belgium case is corroborated by at least one photograph clearly showing a structured craft and military radar. This evidence convinces me there was a craft of unknown origin in the skies above Belgium in 1990.
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It is important here to underline that the F-16 pilot saw no UFOs at all. I spoke with some of his friends who had laughed with him about the UFO hypothesis. Had it not been for the SOBEPS team, these so-called mysterious radar returns would have been labeled as ordinary “angels”. Another important thing is that at one point the “return” remained unchanged on the screen while the plane was maneuvring, which is indicative of an instrument failure. This is also what Lieutenant-Colonel Salmon from the Belgian Air Force Electronic War Center remarked when he was interviewed by journalists of Science & Vie Junior in 1992.
Let us now look at the famous picture taken at Petit-Rechain. It was internationally distributed by the SOBEPS team and was used for the covers of the two books which this private organization published about the so-called Belgian UFO wave.
The document depicts a black triangular silhouette against a bluish background supposed to be the night sky. One irregular illuminated surface appears in each corner of the triangle. In the centre there is a luminous spot surrounded by a reddish aura.
There are discrepancies between the photo itself and the testimony of the young man who claims to have taken it. The picture was reportedly taken with a reflex-camera equipped with a 55-200mm zoom lens set at a minimum of 150mm. The photographer alleges that he used a long time exposure (between one and two seconds) and pressed the shutter release button for approximately two seconds. But he also said he simply held the camera with his hands against the corner of a wall. Even if he exaggerated, and the shutter button was pressed only for one second, the object photographed could not have had sharp edges; it would have been completely blurred. On the contrary, the triangular object shows at least one sharp edge. The young man said he saw the enormous object in the company of his girl friend. This second eye-witness was so little impressed by the extraordinary apparition that she didn’t even keep her eyes on it! At one instance she said the object left instantaneously and at another time she admitted that she actually never saw it leave. More important: Pierre Magain, an astrophysicist from the Astrophisics Institute of Liège has mathematically demonstrated that the size attributed to the object by the young photographer is completely different from what the camera captured. So, one can conclude that the testimonies of the two witnesses are completely irrelevant to the picture.
CEL said:From http://skepticreport.com/sr/?p=162
This is where I keep coming up short.kpax said:Were those suffering instrument failure as well the same evening? Doubtful.
DaveC426913 said:You doubt that there could be a coincidental failure in independent instruments, yet you have no trouble believing something astronomically more unlikely.
Why are you so quick to jump to an incredibly unlikely conclusion?
You lost me. What does that have to do with what I was saying?kpax said:I don't believe for a second that the 100s of billions of dollars spent in research and development on black projects since the F117 have been unsuccessful.
DaveC426913 said:You lost me. What does that have to do with what I was saying?
DaveC426913 said:yet you have no trouble believing something astronomically more unlikely.
Why are you so quick to jump to an incredibly unlikely conclusion?
I see. You are attributing the sightings to military projects.kpax said:How did I lose you? Clearly I was responding to the two points you made about me jumping to astronomically unlikely conclusions:
The point is, visititation is inarguably more unlikely than multiple instrument failure, by orders of magnitude. Instrument failure is established fact. It's not a big reach to suppose a coincidence of failure.kpax said:With that said, why would ET visitation be astronomically unlikely anyway? Nothing is astronomically unlikely given an astronomically long timeline. The universe is plenty old enough to have spawned an intelligent civilization capable of traveling between the stars. I would bet (all in) that such civilizations exist in the vastness of space. I wouldn't bet they have visited Earth however. The evidence available doesn't convince me to make even a small raise.
Kronos5253 said:If you can find it... And sorry in advance for the lack of specifics. My explanation does it no justice.
There was an episode of "Investigation X" on Investigation Discovery on October 3rd about "a forensic investigation of the mass UFO sightings in Stephenville, Texas, Kokomo, Indiana, and Southwick, Massachusetts."
It was a very compelling episode. They had eyewitnesses from a police officer that saw an object hovering over/near the courthouse that he clocked with a radar gun going 27mph, and someone who obtained the radar schematics for that night and it saying that there was indeed 3 objects hovering over the courthouse. There were 7 or 8 eyewitness accounts that had photographs, one of which was a professional photographer. She took her camera out and put it on a tripod and did a long exposure, knowing that if the object was moving (unlike a star) it would leave a trail. It was a pretty crazy episode...
If you can do some research on it, or find the episode, I suggest giving it a look, my description does it no justice whatsoever, and I can't find the episode anywhere. IMO it would be a good one to add to this list, because they had a LOT of evidence suggesting that there was some type of unidentified object being chased by f-16's in the area.
a Mind at a Time said:
DaveC426913 said:You doubt that there could be a coincidental failure in independent instruments, yet you have no trouble believing something astronomically more unlikely[...]
If a radar set gave a false reading, say once in 1,000 times, then two giving false readings simultaneously will occur once in 1,000,000 times. This straightforward. (Granted, it is simplified but the facts cannot be denied.)
ideasrule said:When the F-16's got a radar lock on the craft, they lost it in a few seconds because of the craft's maneuvers. These maneuvers were seen by both radar and ground observers. For all of this to be a coincidence, three different types of sensors, F-16 radar, ground radar, and the human eye, would have to fail simultaneously and in exactly the right fashion to corroborate each other's accounts.
kpax said:One thing that's must not be overlooked is that the radar returns were captured on a separate night entirely than the mass sightings.
Granted.ideasrule said:There were 4 separate radar detections of the March 30, 1990 craft, two by ground and two by the F-16's. 13 000 thousand people saw it, 3000 of whom provided written statements that agree extremely well with each other. When the F-16's got a radar lock on the craft, they lost it in a few seconds because of the craft's maneuvers. These maneuvers were seen by both radar and ground observers. For all of this to be a coincidence, three different types of sensors, F-16 radar, ground radar, and the human eye, would have to fail simultaneously and in exactly the right fashion to corroborate each other's accounts. If the chances of a radar failure is 1/1000 and the chance of a hallucination is 1/2 (a very generous estimate), the total probability would be (1/1000)^4 * (1/2)^13 000: a ridiculously low number. Not to mention if 13 000 different instruments did fail at the same time, they would likely produce very different results that completely contradict each other: that's not seen in this case.
Our "thinking there might be ET" as an argumnent in your favour is circular reasoning.ideasrule said:I find your claim that alien visitation is "astronomically more unlikely" dubious. If you could give even a rough order of magnitude to the terms in the Drake equation, you'd already do better than any other SETI researcher has, and the Drake equation says nothing about the probability of life developing interstellar travel, its likelihood of visiting other solar systems, its likelihood of making contact, its likelihood of not announcing itself as alien, etc. How can you know whether it's unlikely or not without any useful estimate of the actual probability?
I'd thought that was the line of reasoining in this discussion. It could well have been an assumption I added.ideasrule said:As another person mentioned, you also assumed that the radar and visual observations either had to be spurious or the craft had to be alien.
Most certainly. A highly likely explanation.ideasrule said:Why could it not have been a military craft, or perhaps not a solid object at all? There's no evidence that the "thing" is alien, but
Well, the sightings don't prove a thing exists, until we have a body, as it were. Certainly, the sightings prove that they all saw something abnormal.ideasrule said:its existence and apparent ability to drastically outperform unclassified fighter jets are both beyond doubt.
ViewsofMars said:Did anyone read this paper? I read the abstract.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ASPC..400...35F
It appears to me from the abstract that UFO's are Astronomical Pseudo-science. This ties into my last post to this topic on the previous page, #194.
Ivan Seeking said:Pseudoscience refers to a methodology, not a subject. While it seems to make some people feel better if they can erroniously label observer reports, or the review of such reports, a pseudoscience, this is really just a manifestation of laziness and personal bias. There is plenty of pseudoscience associated with the subject, however the subject itself is not a science or a pseudscience. It is a body of reports and claimed observations having varying degrees of credibility.
It is pseudoscience to claim that all UFOs are military aircraft since we don't know that to be true. It is also pseudoscience to claim that some UFOs are flown by ET; that is, unless you have seen ET yourself. Then it becomes a claimed observation.
Proton Soup said:christianity is also a religion based on eyewitness testimony
Ivan Seeking said:If you don't know anything about the subject, then please read the UFO Napster before commenting. The last time that I checked, Christians don't have any RADAR data showing Jesus ascending into heaven. It also grows tiresome debating with people who aren't willing to learn a little bit first.
There are also the issues of quantity and quality. While we have no scientific evidence for ET, we do have highly compelling evidence that the UFO phenomena is far more than an illusion - far more compelling evidence than we find associated with any religion.
Ivan Seeking said:Pseudoscience refers to a methodology, not a subject. While it seems to make some people feel better if they can erroniously label observer reports, or the review of such reports, a pseudoscience, this is really just a manifestation of laziness and personal bias. There is plenty of pseudoscience associated with the subject, however the subject itself is not a science or a pseudscience. It is a body of reports and claimed observations having varying degrees of credibility.
It is pseudoscience to claim that all UFOs are military aircraft since we don't know that to be true. It is also pseudoscience to claim that some UFOs are flown by ET; that is, unless you have seen ET yourself. Then it becomes a claimed observation.
Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The more extraordinary the claim made, the more extraordinary the evidence need be.baywax said:How is it that in a court of law a witness can make or break a case when in the instance of a sighting or report of an unusual event they are pretty well considered unbelievable?
Ivan Seeking said:If you don't know anything about the subject, then please read the UFO Napster before commenting. The last time that I checked, Christians don't have any RADAR data showing Jesus ascending into heaven. Nor am I aware of any military jets chasing angels [or maybe they do!].
There are also the issues of quantity and quality. While we have no scientific evidence for ET, we do have highly compelling evidence that the UFO phenomena is far more than an illusion - far more compelling evidence than we find associated with any religion.
It grows tiresome debating with people who aren't willing to learn a little bit first. Pseudoscience includes the practice of arriving at conclusions while having no real knowledge of the subject.
English aside, Forum Rules require an attempt at clear communication: spelling, punctuation, grammar.the pro said:no there where many before jesus many others and there are many old civilisations that proves the ancien aliens theory sorry for my english there is 1 the piramide of gizis the egypts have siad that it was build in 23 eyers and if yes u need to put a stone every 9 sek that's imposibel i think aliens exist why not why shoud we only be in the glaxy or univers
baywax said:How is it that in a court of law a witness can make or break a case when in the instance of a sighting or report of an unusual event they are pretty well considered unbelievable?
ideasrule said:That the jury places so much emphasis on eyewitness testimony is a major problem in the legal system. Countless times, witnesses have lied, exaggerated, or had good intentions but unreliable memories. Actually "unreliable memories" is a redundant phrase; the human brain was not designed to gather information just to store it away, and there are studies where participants are shown a mysterious crash site, led to believe it was a UFO crash, and, when interviewed weeks later, claim all sorts of details they never saw.
DaveC426913 said:Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The more extraordinary the claim made, the more extraordinary the evidence need be.