If aliens are on earth their behavior is indistinguishable from no aliens being on earth. If I flip the switch in my head from believing that aliens are on earth to aliens not being on earth, what will I do differently?
(Human-like level of intelligence) aliens imply many things, like reduced intelligence explosion risk and presence of alien-related risk. You might want to shift donations or research focus accordingly.
(Getting outside the intent of your thought experiment, there is also the problem that just as a belief has implications, it has considerations that would sustain it, so an isolated incorrect belief won’t survive on its own, you need systematic change in a lot of related knowledge (perhaps including some anti-epistemology) for it to take. Even if two beliefs have identical implications, they may have different causes, which is sufficient to distinguish them.)
What’s the link between evidence of what is, and prescription of what should be done?
I think I could come up with a suitable prescription in the case of alien presence on earth: Try to contact them.
Thus, now we have a prescription, but does that make the available evidence more or less convincing?
Basically, the evidence, if it points to aliens, points to aliens who I can’t touch or interact with, who ignore all human attempts at communication, and who can convincingly hide enough so that almost no one believes they exist. The Aliens are like an invisible dragon
Also by the way: how can you so easily dismiss thousands of eyewitness reports as evidence? The studies does not align with that conclusion:
The study itself dismissed thousands of eyewitness reports.
About 69% of the cases were judged known or identified (38% were considered conclusively identified while 31% were still “doubtfully” explained); about 9% fell into insufficient information. About 22% were deemed “unknown”, down from the earlier 28% value of the Air Force studies.
In the known category, 86% of the knowns were aircraft, balloons, or had astronomical explanations. Only 1.5% of all cases were judged to be psychological or “crackpot” cases. A “miscellaneous” category comprised 8% of all cases and included possible hoaxes.
~2200 of the 3600 cases were outright solved. Dismissing eyewitness testimony wouldn’t be so easy if eyewitness testimony weren’t so comically unreliable. In the absence of physical evidence, it seems plainly silly to mutate “we couldn’t trace this vague claim back to any FFA scheduled flight plans” into “high tech alien visitation.”
Assuming these people actually saw something, how can we make the leap to aliens? The interpretive jump from [some kind of light] to Alien Space Ship seems no different to me than deciding that a toast burn/water stain/oddly shaped tree knot is an apparition of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior. Neither conclusion would be proposed in absence of a preconceived bias toward it. I don’t know; therefor Aliens.
Seriously, is this the level of discussion: “the study discarded some eye witness reports, so I am fully justified in discarding the rest as well” ?
“Assuming these people actually saw something, how can we make the leap to aliens? ”
As discussed elsewhere you are completely right. In the cases where we just see something on the sky that cannot be explained by anything we know, we cannot just jump to the aliens conclusion. But it leaves a massive phenomena to be explained, which should spark massive scientific investigation.
Also this resolution doesn’t account for the cases where little grey men actually emerge from these objects. They may not be from another planet, but alternative hypothesis’s aren’t really a dime a dozen here.
Seriously, is this the level of discussion: “the study discarded some eye witness reports, so I am fully justified in discarding the rest as well” ?
The trend is for these mysteries to have boring solutions. Eyewitness testimony is known to be unreliable. There is no physical evidence. All that is left is a very small amount of people who claim to have seen something that they don’t understand; color me unimpressed.
But it leaves a massive phenomena to be explained, which should spark massive scientific investigation.
I would imagine that the number of eyes and instruments aimed upwards would be at an all-time high already. Satellites are recording images of our planet from every angle. What, exactly, should scientists be studying? What evidence is there to pour over? How can new evidence be gathered?
Also this resolution doesn’t account for the cases where little grey men actually emerge from these objects.
Have little grey men actually emerged from objects? Or is that just what people have claimed? There is a significant difference between those two statements and your choice of phrasing indicates an unjustified bias.
A personal note: I suffer from chronic sleep paralysis and regularly have wild, terrifying hypnagogic hallucinations, many of which take on the form of the standard alien abduction scenario. An unintended consequence of my childhood obsession with The X-Files, no doubt. I have seen demons, elder gods, and greys with my own wide open eyes and I believe in none of them. When confronted with an unknown, it is possible for the mind to run amok with myth and fantasy. We’re all susceptible to this and cannot be cautious enough about what we accept as truth.
“The trend is for these mysteries to have boring solutions. Eyewitness testimony is known to be unreliable.”
As discussed elsewhere in this thread this is not the same as saying they all are 100% fallible. By far, as stated in the Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14.
“There is no physical evidence. All that is left is a very small amount of people who claim to have seen something that they don’t understand;”
Where did you get these statements from? Thin air? Any references on it? You obviously hasn’t looked into this.
“Have little grey men actually emerged from objects? Or is that just what people have claimed? There is a significant difference between those two statements and your choice of phrasing indicates an unjustified bias.”
As said in the original post my belief is utterly uninteresting—I could be lunatic. What matters is the arguments and references I can come up with.
As discussed elsewhere in this thread this is not the same as saying they all are 100% fallible.
No disagreement here. Where we seem to disagree is whether or not the 22% remaining unknowns qualify as positive evidence towards anything.
Where did you get these statements from? Thin air? Any references on it? You obviously hasn’t looked into this.
I assumed that if there was physical evidence then you would have used it to bolster your argument. Is there any?
I read the wiki article you linked to. I came out believing that the study concluded that 22% of cases could not be explained. This, apparently, means a lot more to you than it does to me. No big deal.
Historically, humans from one group have succeeded in infiltrating humans of other groups,and all without superior intelligence or technology beyond what we all know about (or could if we read the internet).
I think what we already know is that if there are aliens, they are either relatively smart with relatively good tech, or they are biologically similar enough to us to pass the relative cursory inspections that most of us give most of the rest of us while going about our normal lives. Or both.
If aliens are on earth their behavior is indistinguishable from no aliens being on earth. If I flip the switch in my head from believing that aliens are on earth to aliens not being on earth, what will I do differently?
(Human-like level of intelligence) aliens imply many things, like reduced intelligence explosion risk and presence of alien-related risk. You might want to shift donations or research focus accordingly.
(Getting outside the intent of your thought experiment, there is also the problem that just as a belief has implications, it has considerations that would sustain it, so an isolated incorrect belief won’t survive on its own, you need systematic change in a lot of related knowledge (perhaps including some anti-epistemology) for it to take. Even if two beliefs have identical implications, they may have different causes, which is sufficient to distinguish them.)
well if there were absolutely no cues of evidence I would definitely see your point.
All the evidence is functionally useless. None of it says anything about what should be done or can be done.
What’s the link between evidence of what is, and prescription of what should be done?
I think I could come up with a suitable prescription in the case of alien presence on earth: Try to contact them. Thus, now we have a prescription, but does that make the available evidence more or less convincing?
Basically, the evidence, if it points to aliens, points to aliens who I can’t touch or interact with, who ignore all human attempts at communication, and who can convincingly hide enough so that almost no one believes they exist. The Aliens are like an invisible dragon
Well if there were absolutely no cues of evidence they would indeed be like the invisible dragon. So actually I think we agree.
By the way, the reports also include conversations with them (obviously I can’t know whether these reports are authentic).
Also by the way: how can you so easily dismiss thousands of eyewitness reports as evidence? The studies does not align with that conclusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book#Project_Blue_Book_Special_Report_No._14
The study itself dismissed thousands of eyewitness reports.
~2200 of the 3600 cases were outright solved. Dismissing eyewitness testimony wouldn’t be so easy if eyewitness testimony weren’t so comically unreliable. In the absence of physical evidence, it seems plainly silly to mutate “we couldn’t trace this vague claim back to any FFA scheduled flight plans” into “high tech alien visitation.”
Assuming these people actually saw something, how can we make the leap to aliens? The interpretive jump from [some kind of light] to Alien Space Ship seems no different to me than deciding that a toast burn/water stain/oddly shaped tree knot is an apparition of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior. Neither conclusion would be proposed in absence of a preconceived bias toward it. I don’t know; therefor Aliens.
Seriously, is this the level of discussion: “the study discarded some eye witness reports, so I am fully justified in discarding the rest as well” ?
“Assuming these people actually saw something, how can we make the leap to aliens? ”
As discussed elsewhere you are completely right. In the cases where we just see something on the sky that cannot be explained by anything we know, we cannot just jump to the aliens conclusion. But it leaves a massive phenomena to be explained, which should spark massive scientific investigation. Also this resolution doesn’t account for the cases where little grey men actually emerge from these objects. They may not be from another planet, but alternative hypothesis’s aren’t really a dime a dozen here.
The trend is for these mysteries to have boring solutions. Eyewitness testimony is known to be unreliable. There is no physical evidence. All that is left is a very small amount of people who claim to have seen something that they don’t understand; color me unimpressed.
I would imagine that the number of eyes and instruments aimed upwards would be at an all-time high already. Satellites are recording images of our planet from every angle. What, exactly, should scientists be studying? What evidence is there to pour over? How can new evidence be gathered?
Have little grey men actually emerged from objects? Or is that just what people have claimed? There is a significant difference between those two statements and your choice of phrasing indicates an unjustified bias.
A personal note: I suffer from chronic sleep paralysis and regularly have wild, terrifying hypnagogic hallucinations, many of which take on the form of the standard alien abduction scenario. An unintended consequence of my childhood obsession with The X-Files, no doubt. I have seen demons, elder gods, and greys with my own wide open eyes and I believe in none of them. When confronted with an unknown, it is possible for the mind to run amok with myth and fantasy. We’re all susceptible to this and cannot be cautious enough about what we accept as truth.
“The trend is for these mysteries to have boring solutions. Eyewitness testimony is known to be unreliable.”
As discussed elsewhere in this thread this is not the same as saying they all are 100% fallible. By far, as stated in the Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14.
“There is no physical evidence. All that is left is a very small amount of people who claim to have seen something that they don’t understand;”
Where did you get these statements from? Thin air? Any references on it? You obviously hasn’t looked into this.
“Have little grey men actually emerged from objects? Or is that just what people have claimed? There is a significant difference between those two statements and your choice of phrasing indicates an unjustified bias.”
As said in the original post my belief is utterly uninteresting—I could be lunatic. What matters is the arguments and references I can come up with.
No disagreement here. Where we seem to disagree is whether or not the 22% remaining unknowns qualify as positive evidence towards anything.
I assumed that if there was physical evidence then you would have used it to bolster your argument. Is there any?
I read the wiki article you linked to. I came out believing that the study concluded that 22% of cases could not be explained. This, apparently, means a lot more to you than it does to me. No big deal.
To quote, prefix a line with a greater-than sign
>. For more tips, click the ‘Show help’ button on the bottom-right of the edit box.Is drethelin an alien trying to throw us off the scent? (it was worth the negative karma so go ahead.)
Are you not familiar with the typical epistemological process of discovering something and then investigating it further?
That is actually NOT what you already know unless you have assumed the conclusion, that there are not currently aliens on earth.
What we know right now is we see what we see, and what we see is what we see whether there are aliens here or not.
Historically, humans from one group have succeeded in infiltrating humans of other groups,and all without superior intelligence or technology beyond what we all know about (or could if we read the internet).
I think what we already know is that if there are aliens, they are either relatively smart with relatively good tech, or they are biologically similar enough to us to pass the relative cursory inspections that most of us give most of the rest of us while going about our normal lives. Or both.