So you are more interested in the story instead of the facts?
You are inferring a lie when a simple mistake will do. People misrecollect things all the time, even air force colonels and presidents. In our country we have come to expect this.
I honestly don’t know, but there is a list of people who appear to be recognized by the “UFO” community. You asked me what I thought and I answered. One thing for sure is that if one does their research off of other people’s they’re not serious enough to be called anything-ologist.
Of the people I’ve read there are about four I think really quailify as scientists. My favorite is Stanton Friedman. His work is deliberate and dispassionate. He is what you’d call a “believer” I guess, but he takes a fairly logical approach to the things I read of his. He could be a goof ball, but he doesn’t come across that way to me.
Of course, for the four I found that I liked there are literally thousands who never go to an archive, never do any real digging, have never been to any of the sites of events, and who don’t triple source anything. I don’t think these people should call themselves UFOlogists. Just my opinion.
And this is why you’re not conduction a real investigation, you’re trying to find support for your already arrived at conclusion. Human memory is awful in this manner, and shouldn’t be relied on without verification.
That’s true and I don’t use just one instance to make up my mind either. But if a pattern of “misrecollections” seems to favor the drama or the flattery of the story, then I know I am being bullshitted. Like I said, for the most part somebody who is telling the truth could give a crap if you believe them or not. It’s the people who NEED you to believe them that I am suspicious of.
I never said I was conducting an investigation. And my conclusion is that most UFO sightings are bullshit. I find some of the stories interesting. Kind of like telling ghost stories around a camp fire. I don’t really believe there’s a guy with a hook for a hand but it’s fun to get all freaked out about it.
On the other hand, I take respectable people at their word and I can say (to my surprise) they are not all kooks and weirdos like I grew up thinking they were.
As I said before, I don’t claim expertise and I don’t really consider myself a defender or UFOs, but I will defend my right to talk about it without being lumped in willy-nilly with nonsense. Kind of like the abduction stuff. I really don’t have any patience for it. Alot of people say that makes me closed minded, but I never said I was the arbiter of impartiality. I’m just a guy reading and writing on something I find interesting. So, there it is.
So when you referred to degrees in Ufology and peer-reviewed Ufology journals when I queried as to what an authentic “UFOlogist” was, you were…?
Dude, this is Great Debates. If you want to just tell spooky stories around the campfire, maybe you could ask the mods to move this to MPSIMS?
I probably wasn’t totally clear. What I meant to say is that the plausibility of the idea that extraterrestrial intelligence is and has been visiting us is low.
The same… thing. The thing that I quoted. That lots of trustworthy people claim to have seen ghosts etc.
The quality of the story is dependent on the quality of the facts. I enjoy it more when it’s believable. I write. That’s what I do. Sometimes I write about things that interest me and sometimes I have to write about other stuff. I didn’t think I’d like the UFO stuff, but I do. Mostly its like an anthropological thing. Forget for a second what we’re talking about and then ask yourself; Why after the sighting in Washington State in 1947 did SO FREAK’N MANY people freak out and start reporting anything and everything? Why did the government have to shut down its program and create a secret one just to avoid the flood of what had to be bogus reports? Are people really that fragile? Are they really that desperate to be a part of something? It really is weird. Then you look at the stories I listed for you. Either they’re true or they’ve been carefully constructed to look like they’re true. Why would so many people participate in that? It boggles the mind. Not everybody will see it that way, but I really do wonder why people do that - not only with UFOs but with all manner of conspiracies.
A nitpick - he saw light aircraft, almost certainly not jets.
The jets involved with this story were military jets dropping flares on the other side of the Phoenix mountain range. But the large “object” that people described over Phoenix was a shape that their minds filled in between lights of separate light aircraft.
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I never said I was conducting an investigation. And my conclusion is that most UFO sightings are bullshit. I find some of the stories interesting. Kind of like telling ghost stories around a camp fire. I don’t really believe there’s a guy with a hook for a hand but it’s fun to get all freaked out about it.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not the sightings that are bullshit, it’s the interpretation of them as extraterrestrial (or in the case of ghosts as supernatural) in origin that’s bullshit. That’s why the two things are pretty much the same and on the same level of credibility. There is no real evidence that either interpretation has any shred of credibility that puts them on par. It’s basically people using anecdote or dodgy interpretation of an event (when we aren’t talking about either outright lies or complete fabrications of course) that’s bullshit.
Are you still pissed? Get over it already. Seriously.
And I wasn’t telling spooky stories here I was talking about why these two things get lumped together. I think its wrong. Some people don’t. What I learned is that the people here who lump them together do so because they don’t find any of it credible.
When I ask the UFO crowd they don’t like it when stuff gets lumped in.
When I ask the paranormal crowd they give a mixed answer depending on how they see UFOs.
It seems that you put anyone that ties UFOs and the paranormal together into the “paranormal” group instead of the UFO group.
Ever hear of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy?
I agree with you except the part where you say they’re the same thing. I’d say bullshit is the same no matter which flavor, but if any of the stories are real (or real enough) then I don’t think they should be lumped in anywhere. I don’t know anything about the paranormal stuff so I am probably a little biased against it, but if the same panel of people told those stories as tell about UFO sightings, I’d probably believe some of them too.
For the most part I have found maybe a dozen of the UFO stories that I’ve read about to be credible enough to be shown respect. I don’t know if they’re true or not, but the witnesses believe in what they saw. And most of them don’t start out saying they think its an alien space craft. That seems to come later, probably because other people say it. Another thing I believe is common to some of the UFO stories and other conspiracies is that while it may not be aliens, the government has gotten caught lying A LOT. If they just said, “Yeah, we have no idea what the hell that was.” once in a while they’d come off more credible. But they make up crazier stuff than the UFO dudes do. There always remains the possibility that both sides are full of crap and the truth is option “C”. That’s probably true in a number of cases.
I didn’t say that. I said the people here that put them together do so because the find neither credible. And the paranormal people are divided. Some are UFO people and some are not. I call them paranormal people because the do radio shows called “Paranormal Radio” and “Paranormal Investigation Hour” and crap like that. If they said UFO Central and talked about palm reading I’d say they’re UFO people who believe in paranormal stuff too.
Have you Googled “angels and aliens” yet? Let me help you with that. Do you honestly think that all those links are from people that don’t believe in either ufos or the paranormal?
A major UFO publication by people that also believe in the paranormal. Did that one in just two clicks, RadioActiveRich-how hard did you look?
And you must consider religion and paranormal to be one in the same. I don’t.
It’s funny that you picked that one. That magazine (and UFO Magazine) are why I asked the question in the first place. I wrote an article about UFOs and other “phenomena” etc for another magazine and a bunch of UFOers wrote that they were displeased that I included non-UFO stuff in there. Their specific examples of why they didn’t like it were UFODigest and UFO Magazine. To each his own I guess.
Having said that, are you under the impression that I didn’t think they got lumped together a lot? 'Cause I am the one who defended the opposite earlier.
And UFO magazines are not all written by UFO or Paranormal people. Or do you think that every writer for Sports Illustrated throws a mean fastball?