UFO Theory and Middle Ground.

Great Debates
1

I have to tell you, I am probably as skeptical as anyone else on these boards, particularly when it comes to UFO conspiracy theories. Greys, Area 51, men in black. All of it is clearly nonsense, I agree.

But I do wonder if some people of the skeptical scientific bent aren’t being a little too skeptical. They seem to just reject every theory that is offered by these people out-of-hand. It seems, to me at least, they never even seriously consider them. They are so closed-minded, apparently owing to the people they happen to be dealing with.

Anyways, as the title of this thread suggests, I wonder if there is any middle ground anywhere between these two groups.

Specifically Ancient Astronaut Theory. Again, some of its proponents’ claims are rather outrageous. But to me, it does in some ways sound like Zoo Hypothesis, which I believe has some kernel of truth to it (i.e., it is at least possible).

And then, if scientific skeptics can learn something from UFO conspiracy theorists, maybe the reverse is true. Maybe the UFO people can learn something from the scientists. Am I wrong?

:):):slight_smile:

2

Of course the UFO people can learn something from the scientists. The problem is that they refuse it out of hand.

I can’t begin to understand what you think you’re asking. Do you really for even one second believe that scientists haven’t investigated thousands and thousands of UFO claims, the ones you’re saying they dismiss out of hand? Dozens of independent investigations have taken place since the 19th century. (I wrote about one from then. They didn’t start with flying saucers. WHAT WAS IT? The Mystery Airship of 1896)

No scientifically accepted evidence has ever been put forward for any UFO claims. And yet they continue to be checked constantly, with nothing found. (Many people notice that UFO sightings have gone down instead of up in this era where everybody carries cameras every moment.)

You’re starting from a ridiculously false premise. Small wonder you’re coming up with a ridiculously false conclusion.

3

Sure. But it has to start with one side showing me an alien. Until then, it doesn’t really matter what idea or “theory” they’ve proposed because there’s no evidence to support it and no way to disprove it.

4

Science isn’t about compromise and middle ground. It’s about evidence.

5

Which specific hypotheses from the UFO people is it you feel are treated with less respect than they deserve? You mention ancient astronauts, which is nonsense upon nonsense upon nonsense and mainly consists of ignoring reasonable interpretations of ancient artistic expression and defending oddball interpretations with the best cherry picking good cognitive dissonance can motivate.

Is there some specific sub-hypothesis of ancient astronauts you think has even a shred of decent evidence supporting it?

Now the Zoo Hypothesis definitely doesn’t, since it’s an attempt to explain why hypothetical existing aliens aren’t coming around for tea. It’s a conspiracy theorists wet dream, a hypothesis strengthened by the absence of any evidence.

6

I would have thought that the evidence would have started coming in much more quickly once we all started carrying high definition cameras in our pockets at all times. But, no. Still no evidence.

7

I was always of the opinion that the reason why it was so hard to prove was due to the tech they would undoubtebly have if said aliens were able to traverse such long distances, and usually go about their business undetected, and that the eyewitness accounts were generally when we caught them off guard or outliers. All supposition obviously.

I thought this video was pretty good.

8

[quote=“Ryan_Liam, post:7, topic:828073”]

I was always of the opinion that the reason why it was so hard to prove was due to the tech they would undoubtebly have if said aliens were able to traverse such long distances, and usually go about their business undetected, and that the eyewitness accounts were generally when we caught them off guard or outliers. All supposition obviously.

I thought this video was pretty good.

[/QUOTE]

Funnily enough our technology for detecting such things keeps improving, whether it be cameras, radar systems, or other, but the UFOs always happen to result in marginal signals and blurriness. Could that possibly be because they are all misidentified natural phenomena or instrument anomalies?

I’m not watching a half hour video.

9

Then don’t watch it.

In the video they go through some of the cases that Project Blue Book couldn’t account for in regards to them being natural phenomena or instrumentation anomalies.

I’m a skeptic as well, but it is sometimes interesting.

10

I sometimes hear people say there should be a middle ground between diehard antivaxers and pro-immunization advocates. I am unconvinced there is a middle ground between pseudoscience promoters/conspiracy theorists (of any stripe) and those who espouse evidence-based science.

I’m reminded of an 1864 cartoon promoting General George McClellan as the “reasonable” compromise candidate for the Republican nomination. The cartoon shows two feuding child-like figures, Abraham Lincoln and the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis, who are having a tug-of-war with the American flag and are about to tear it in two, but are prevented from doing so by McClellan, who towers over them, looking mature and regal. In reality, McClellan (in addition to being a lousy field general) was a rather slimy and calculating appeaser.

Way too much time as already been spent on debunking UFO theories, alien abductions and the like. As has been repeatedly said, you can’t reason people out of goofy ideas they didn’t come up with on the basis of reasoned thought.

If advanced civilizations* really did make it to earth, they’d make their presence known eventually and it’d be flamingly obvious to everyone, skeptics included.

*or backward ones that happened to have mechanical aptitude. :slight_smile:

11

If UFOs did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

12

If there were alien beings observing the earth, why would they use things such as crop circles to send us obscure “messages”? Presumably, if they’ve been observing us long enough, they would learn our major languages and contact our world capitals directly with technology familiar to us, such as video, telephone, or some Skype-like kind of technology.

13

I don’t think it’s a matter of being closed minded. SETI indicates the contrary.

Bottom line is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Without it those claims can’t be taken as much more than mental jogging and posthumating.

14

Of course there are *Unidentified *Flying objects. Poor vision, mistaken identities, instrument glitches, lack of detail, secret test flights, difficulty of estimating speed and distance, almost as many reasons for not identifying something as identifying it.

And so what? The fact that many things cannot easily be pinned down because of the lack of hard evidence one way or another should never be an excuse for saying: See? Aliens must be visiting us!

Unidentified flying objects are just that. Until they are identified they are meaningless noise. If you want to believe then I have some good NORAD sightings of Santa Claus to sell you.

15

Space is really, really, big. Our Voyager crafts, travelling at all the speed we could give them, are just now leaving our solar system. They are headed to nowhere and will take longer than the age of our sun to get there.

Everyone else, assuming there is anyone else, which is a really, really, big assumption, has to follow the same rules.

And then there is the question of why. Why go great distances to find what? The raw materials seem to be the same everywhere. Why go farther than you need to find them? Solar/star systems seem to be all made of the same stuff.

Our imaginative writers have postulated a universe where we are the young race, just waiting to be contacted by our elders. This has put a strong coloring on our thought process. None of the speculative fiction imagines that we are the elder race and that there is noe one to contact, because there is no one to contact. Maybe some intelligent squids on some water world.

We live in the Orion Spur, off of the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. We only see a few thousand of our local stars in the night sky. Very local but forever out of reach.

But we can detect stars and galaxies, and the light and radio waves from them at incredible distances. So what do we find? Nothing that cannot be explained by natural phenomenon. There should be some indication of others actions, even at a distance. So we postulate a zoo hypothesis to explain that we are quarantined. This is an idea to keep the science fiction stories alive.

Occam’s Razor requires that we think in simpler terms. We are for all practical purposes alone. We will never even find an indication of other intelligent, technological life out there. If they exist, they can never travel the distances to make unexplained lights in our sky, and then just leave.
The whole idea is preposterous. We are alone, we will always be alone, and we will never find even an indication that we are not.

16

The purpose of a theory is to explain observations (data, facts, etc). Is there any observation that is best explained by UFOs? I don’t know of any.

17

Halfway between right and wrong? Why would anyone want to go from right to half-right?

18

The Great Airship Mystery from 1981 is another book about this case. It is must reading for anyone who feels that there must be something behind all the UFO sightings. Back then there were newspaper articles of the airships being seen by multiple people, of people speaking to the pilot (who said he was from New England) including sightings by respectable observers.
It obviously never happened.
Charles Fort published a lot of sightings, long before there were flying saucers. He didn’t try to debunk anything.
There is nothing there, people.

19

There are two reasons we know for sure that UFOs are not aliens and real.

  1. When a meteor fell in the Soviet Union, it was captured by multiple cameras. If UFOs were real, and buzzing us, they would be all over YouTube.
  2. If there was a coverup, the President would of course get told. Anyone believes that Trump wouldn’t tweet about this brand of illegal aliens in a second?
20

And about how Democrats are plotting to get them registered to vote in upcoming elections. :eek:

I agree that the upsurge in social media and ubiquitousness of cellphones would make it impossible for interstellar visitors to remain hidden. Selfies taken with Alpha Centaurians would be commonplace online.