Ann K
Senior Member.
No, absence of evidence is just absence of evidence, that's all. Anything beyond that is mere speculation.Absence of evidence is evidence of absence!
What is your "red line" that would make you unambiguously and sincerely say with full belief, "Aliens are real and are or have been on Earth"?
- Thread starter AllTheQuestionsToday
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tobigtofool
Active Member
I'm sorry I was quoting a very well known saying that has to do with science, philosophy, and discovery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence#:~:text=Evidence of absence and absence,a writing by William Wright.
When debating if something exists without evidence, then all of it is speculation, no?
Ann K
Senior Member.
Then you are quoting it incorrectly. The quote is "Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.
tobigtofool
Active Member
Well now we all know. How does that affect one's red line who seeks evidence? It's worth considering in this overall discussion is why I said it.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Do we have evidence of that beyond their anecdote? I missed it, if so. Which is always possible, there have been mountains of stuff written and said on video on these Navy UAP.
It would if it were placed in evidence, yes.
To circle back to the topic, anecdotes and evidence that is claimed to exist but which cannot be shown to anybody, even if for legitimate reasons, is extremely far removed from a hypothetical "red line, " in my opinion. Thats just more of the same stuff we've been fed for decades.
Mendel
Senior Member.
For it to be considered evidence, it has to exist.
Testimony that it existed 19 years ago does not show that it exists today.
For evidence to exist isn't anywhere near my "hard red line", but I hope nobody's red line is lower than that?
Ann K
Senior Member.
You misquoted something to say the exact opposite of the quote. Please don't pretend that doesn't matter, since you thought it was significant enough to quote it in the first place.
deirdre
Senior Member.
the second and third sentence are not connected to the first sentence.
He should have said "ah i see. But how does the quote 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' affect everyones red line?"
Bob Jase
Member
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I'm glad we have someone who can extract meaning from mutually contradictory statements and convert them into more coherent ones that can be responded to succinctly.
To me, the statement is irrelevant to where I've drawn my red line - I don't believe we have absence of evidence. I believe there has been an almost uncountable number of observations taken, and every single one with a clear result has had the conclusion "aliens are absent" (and the ones which have a less clear result still have "aliens are absent" as a hypothesis that cannot be dismissed).
Note: No-one's saying "evidence of local absence is evidence of global absence". But in the space that we've quite thoroughly searched, we have evidence of absence.
AllTheQuestionsToday
Member
Declassification and validation by bipartisan members of the House and Senate, being honest.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I am confused. The declassification and validation of data would make you disbelieve a claim it exists?
deirdre
Senior Member.
considering about 50% of your comments are written in an indecipherable way .. perhaps a bit less "judgy attitude" would be more appropriate, yea?
AllTheQuestionsToday
Member
Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I mean is that if (all hypothetical) the DOD said "fuck it" and dumped as much data as possible on the Fravor event into the public AND some group of bipartisan elected officials were briefed and everyone agreed there is no more data, then I'd have no reason to doubt it at that point.
Basically I'm a fan of government having to lay their cards on the table. I actually like government and the concepts around it. I'm as far from say libertarian (in the American context) as you can get generally. I just prefer my government to wear translucent clothes whenever possible.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Thanks, understood. Now I have to go try and get the image of a bunch of government officials in translucent clothes out of my brain...
Mendel
Senior Member.
so if there is no data, they can't do it, and then you'll never believe there isn't any
a vaguely defined group that does not exist either
everyone in that group has to unanimously agree? bipartisan?
this sounds to me that there is no practical way you'd ever believe there is no data when the Pentagon says there isn't. Which also means you've left the realm of rational discussion in that regard. There is no "good faith source" that can do what you want, which means the words "good faith" are meaningless. This statement:
... amounts to "I wouldn't believe any source that said there is no data, so I'm just going to believe they have data and are covering it up".
If you'd said so in the first place, I'd have saved myself the effort of looking up the Kirkpatrick quote for you.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
Well, yes in fact you can. You don't need the alleged 'more evidence' that somehow mysteriously always manages to be top secret classified yet supposedly everyone knows of its existence. If something is debunked on the basis of the existing evidence then I have yet to ever hear of a case where it was un-debunked due to 'more evidence'.
For example. Mick West in my view conclusively showed that the 'Go Fast' video speed effect was primarily due to parallax. How is more evidence going to change that ? Likewise with the FLIR flare effect on the 'Gimbal' video that gives the appearance of the craft 'rotating'. A pretty convincing argument that the 'rotation' is a camera effect and not real. How is 'more evidence' going to change that one ?
If anything, every case where I have seen more evidence show up...as with the 29 Palms case not long ago...has only served to add to the debunk, not diminish it.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
tobigtofool
Active Member
My new hard red line is if they find the Ark of the Covenant and inside it is a bunch of working alien guns.
unclepaulie
Member
I've wondered the same, he had reams of info, folders everywhere.
I miss that old codger!
I'm open to persuasive evidence, but I'm also aware that my senses aren't perfect and that I and others can easily misinterpret things on first impression -- and that there's a cadre of grifters out there actively trying to fool us.
People should pay more attention to cognitive psychology and the difficulty all of us have of overcoming our prior assumptions, preconceptions, and context. Consider the priming that can occur from how a question is framed, like how a witness will interpret the speed of a car differently when the key word is changed in "About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?" Or the pareidolia that will turn out-of-focus bug splatter on a window into an alien pilot hovering in a translucent orb.
People should pay more attention to cognitive psychology and the difficulty all of us have of overcoming our prior assumptions, preconceptions, and context. Consider the priming that can occur from how a question is framed, like how a witness will interpret the speed of a car differently when the key word is changed in "About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted) each other?" Or the pareidolia that will turn out-of-focus bug splatter on a window into an alien pilot hovering in a translucent orb.
My red line is when an alien literally falls in a crowded place, gets put in a cage, and is captured on cameras. That's when I'll believe it.
And at the current moment I think that there is probably intelligent life in the universe, maybe they could even build a warp engine to quickly travel anywhere.... But there is no direct convincing evidence that they were or are already on Earth, and to go into conspiracy the government is hiding it I really want and do not welcome it. I understand that the government can successfully hide some of its plans and military developments. But the events of contact with aliens they would certainly not hide because of the large scale and importance of the event. Anybody would have blabbed about it and provided real material evidence. Not the circus that Grush was involved in.
And at the current moment I think that there is probably intelligent life in the universe, maybe they could even build a warp engine to quickly travel anywhere.... But there is no direct convincing evidence that they were or are already on Earth, and to go into conspiracy the government is hiding it I really want and do not welcome it. I understand that the government can successfully hide some of its plans and military developments. But the events of contact with aliens they would certainly not hide because of the large scale and importance of the event. Anybody would have blabbed about it and provided real material evidence. Not the circus that Grush was involved in.
JackTReason
Member
I'm on the low end of the scale. I accept the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but think it unreasonable to think it would come here to see us.
First, the distances are not merely physical, they're temporal. The light and signals coming from earth that announce our existence have only reached a fraction of the nearby galaxy, let alone planets beyond a hundred or so light years away. Most of the whole universe wouldn't know we are here if they were looking at us throw a giant telescope. Many would be seeing us as a molten ball, some wouldn't even see a planet here yet. Any civilization advanced enough to overcome the obstacles of such distances would be smart enough to see the pointlessness of making the trip.
I don't consider any of the UFO claims to be credible. Just like I don't consider Bigfoot sightings as credible. The millions of times people looked up and saw something they don't understand is not data reflecting some probability, it is millions of individual anecdotes, each one its own error. There might be 5000 people telling you they are the reincarnated Napoleon. We don't accept that one of them must be right. We recognize that the belief in reincarnation is strong enough to account for all of the claims being invented in the mind. The same goes for alien visitation. People want to believe aliens are coming, because believing that angels are coming is so pre-enlightenment. We have never had a visitor from outside of the earth that we can confirm to be real. So why should we even consider that this is a possible explanation for not understanding some vision? We include alien as a possibility because we are hoping for alien. It isn't a good reason to think they're coming. They're probably out there, but probably will never come here.
The awareness of the existence of aliens will come through the radio signals, and probably from so far away we will never get a return of our response.
If we could travel at the speed of light, and we heard a signal from one hundred light years away that was clearly from intelligent life, would we go? I don't think that would be productive. It would take multiple human generations to go and return, and we might find them gone when we got there. Or we might find them resistant to our visit. Or we might come back to find we had destroyed ourselves. The trip would be too long, and too costly. Especially since we can reply with radio signals just as quickly. We could spend generations passing down the knowledge of the signals we sent, and when we should be expecting replies. No wasted treasure, not generations of lost humans.
Would you wish to be born on a spaceship transiting the galaxy, never to see the planet your parents were from, or any planet for that matter, and knowing that you need to mate and produce offspring for there to be anyone to return to earth at all? No, such travel makes little sense.The same goes for the aliens (probably, I think).
First, the distances are not merely physical, they're temporal. The light and signals coming from earth that announce our existence have only reached a fraction of the nearby galaxy, let alone planets beyond a hundred or so light years away. Most of the whole universe wouldn't know we are here if they were looking at us throw a giant telescope. Many would be seeing us as a molten ball, some wouldn't even see a planet here yet. Any civilization advanced enough to overcome the obstacles of such distances would be smart enough to see the pointlessness of making the trip.
I don't consider any of the UFO claims to be credible. Just like I don't consider Bigfoot sightings as credible. The millions of times people looked up and saw something they don't understand is not data reflecting some probability, it is millions of individual anecdotes, each one its own error. There might be 5000 people telling you they are the reincarnated Napoleon. We don't accept that one of them must be right. We recognize that the belief in reincarnation is strong enough to account for all of the claims being invented in the mind. The same goes for alien visitation. People want to believe aliens are coming, because believing that angels are coming is so pre-enlightenment. We have never had a visitor from outside of the earth that we can confirm to be real. So why should we even consider that this is a possible explanation for not understanding some vision? We include alien as a possibility because we are hoping for alien. It isn't a good reason to think they're coming. They're probably out there, but probably will never come here.
The awareness of the existence of aliens will come through the radio signals, and probably from so far away we will never get a return of our response.
If we could travel at the speed of light, and we heard a signal from one hundred light years away that was clearly from intelligent life, would we go? I don't think that would be productive. It would take multiple human generations to go and return, and we might find them gone when we got there. Or we might find them resistant to our visit. Or we might come back to find we had destroyed ourselves. The trip would be too long, and too costly. Especially since we can reply with radio signals just as quickly. We could spend generations passing down the knowledge of the signals we sent, and when we should be expecting replies. No wasted treasure, not generations of lost humans.
Would you wish to be born on a spaceship transiting the galaxy, never to see the planet your parents were from, or any planet for that matter, and knowing that you need to mate and produce offspring for there to be anyone to return to earth at all? No, such travel makes little sense.The same goes for the aliens (probably, I think).
Rick Robson
Active Member
About the scale you presented here, I'm not ashamed at all to tell you that I'm in the 100 range since about twenty years ago now. What differs me from many others is an extremely anomalous series of UFO events that I witnessed that was officially corroborated on my county's website. Besides the fact that back then I was l not a layman on hard science (in '87 I graduated in electronic engineering because of an early passion for physics), which sure helps one to critically analise the grade of anomaly of any sighting experience. I wonder whether there still are many people remaining silent about their witnessing experiences because of fear of ridicule, bullying etc. Never happened to me anyway in spite of my openness to talk about it.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
If there is not already a thread about it, it sounds interesting, if you don't mind a bunch of skeptics trying to explain it in prosaic terms!
Rick Robson
Active Member
If there is not already a thread about it, it sounds interesting, if you don't mind a bunch of skeptics trying to explain it in prosaic terms!
I deem my experience as impossible to be discussed that way alas. It happened in 2003 and didn't last documented in my county's website for more than five years or so, IIRC. Sorry but I don't feel comfortable making anecdotal accounts of the event that I witnessed. The only part of it though that maybe might be explained away is the possibility that back then there already was holographic technology enough capable of projecting high up in the sky various full coloured drawings of a flower, a lizard and others with astounding perfection for as long as various minutes, mind you. That's about it, that's what actually stands out from any other UFO sighting that I've come to know about.
Again, sorry but not worth it talking about the rest of my experience.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
No worries. Certainly not trying to pressure you.
Keep looking up! (Kiter saying that also works in UFO threads...)
Rick Robson
Active Member
No, what I said is not about pressure, I was pointing out about how meaningless most of the acnedotal UFO reports can be, but I see I wasn't clear.
Don't know what you're saying on your last sentence about "keeping looking up".
Rick Robson
Active Member
Never hear about "Kiter", maybe that's some well-known figure on this forum?
Rick Robson
Active Member
Good points!
I'm not sure though that the UFO subject discussion can go any further without some hard evidence to back it up, I see all this discussion as kind of like beating a dead horse.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Sorry again! This is a good example of why I should avoid colloquialisms or slang!
Kiter means "person who flies kites," "Keep looking up" means either "keep looking up at the kites," or in Metabunk UFO threads maybe "Keep looking up at the UFOs," or also informally it means "keep being happy!"
Ann K
Senior Member.
Rick Robson
Active Member
I really don't have a clue, because the drawing lines were continuous, exactly like using a colour pencil. Lo and behold, the flower for example was bicoloured: The petals in red and the stem with its leaves in green. And they were so far high in the sky that only with binoculars one could tell what those drawings were about. Awesome.
Was that some kind of drone technology already developed back then in 2003? Maybe some expert would explain to us how it was done?
Scaramanga
Senior Member
That tends to be my view too...that there really isn't a coherent 'UFO Phenomenon'. There's just loads of people unable to identify prosaic objects. One cannot make a 'phenomenon' out of so many disparate accounts. There's a bizarre reasoning that goes on by which 'unidentified'...which means nobody knows what an object is....gets converted into 'alien'. Exactly the same as happens when people claim that some obscure 'orb' on a photo ( no doubt a reflection off dust ) is the long lost ghost of Auntie Maud for no good reason other than they can't figure what it is.
JackTReason
Member
That's about the size of it. That process you mentioned is probably best called argument from ignorance, or from personal incredulity. That's the "What else could it be?" argument.
JackTReason
Member
In reading what I wrote I realized I never answered the red line question. What would it take to make me a believer in alien visitation?
That is a tough one. I'm not even certain that I would believe a saucer landing on the White House lawn, and POTUS himself declaring it so.
And this doesn't require any particular President or party.
With the division bubbling over in this country and around the world I would welcome the arrival of aliens, as this might cause humanity to set aside our differences and work together. Thus, the announcement from the White House would be quite timely and serendipitous. Which means it might not be real.
If they landed in my yard, I am not sure how I would tell the difference between actual aliens and carefully crafted hoax aliens. Or, I would be forced to admit some skepticism of my own understanding of what I saw. The same goes for many people believing they saw them too. People can be fooled.
I supposed it would have to be widespread arrival and announcements, coupled with frequent interactions with aliens, being unmistakably obvious in their differences from humans. And this would have to persist over a period of time. In short, when they become ubiquitous over the world.
But I ain't holding my breath. I don't think they've been here, and I don't think they're coming.
That is a tough one. I'm not even certain that I would believe a saucer landing on the White House lawn, and POTUS himself declaring it so.
And this doesn't require any particular President or party.
With the division bubbling over in this country and around the world I would welcome the arrival of aliens, as this might cause humanity to set aside our differences and work together. Thus, the announcement from the White House would be quite timely and serendipitous. Which means it might not be real.
If they landed in my yard, I am not sure how I would tell the difference between actual aliens and carefully crafted hoax aliens. Or, I would be forced to admit some skepticism of my own understanding of what I saw. The same goes for many people believing they saw them too. People can be fooled.
I supposed it would have to be widespread arrival and announcements, coupled with frequent interactions with aliens, being unmistakably obvious in their differences from humans. And this would have to persist over a period of time. In short, when they become ubiquitous over the world.
But I ain't holding my breath. I don't think they've been here, and I don't think they're coming.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
I don't think they're coming because I don't think there is anyone to come. I think all the ' there must be intelligent life out there ' people have grossly over-estimated the likelihood of other advanced civilizations. It's all wishful thinking. You cannot base any argument on a sample of one, and no amount of ' look at the sheer number of planets out there ' actually proves anything because we simply don't know what the odds of life forming actually are. They could be so low that we are totally alone in the universe. Nobody really has any idea.
What's more, beyond a certain distance we might just as well be alone as any civilization would be undetectable. And I very much doubt anyone from 10,000 light years away is having such a long trip just to do proctology on hapless Arizona loggers.
JackTReason
Member
Hahaha! That last was funny. I sometimes raise doubts that aliens would come here to kidnap drunks and rape cattle.
We are now searching Mars for signs of life, and so far coming up empty. With Mars being in the Goldilocks Zone of our solar system, it would change the odds of life occurring if we don't find it there. It may be far more rare that we imagine.
I am not prepared to suggest that it doesn't exist (didn't and won't), but I agree that the staggering distances make other life irrelevant.
It is the time more than the distance.
captancourgette
Active Member
Why not?
Energy/time are the only things stopping them. Its not like they need aliens in those ships. I assume any alien craft would just be drones, like what we send now to the various planets.
The thing is it would take a remarkable short time span (a few 10s of million years, compared to the universes 13.4billion) to visit nearly all stars in our galaxy, travelling at ~10% speed of light.
I could envisage us having the tech in 100-200 years, once/if we finally unlock fusion, (provided we don't wipe ourselves out) to send ~100 van nuemann machines to the nearby stars, which once there, send more to the nearest stars etc, thus blanketing the galaxy relatively quickly.
A majority of planetary scientists believe that life has existed on mars, though this ain't confirmed yet. And of course theres a vast difference from single cell to multi-cellular life, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount extra terrestrial life. This all leads to the obvious famous Fermi question 'where are they'
GeekFurious
New Member
As someone who was a long-time believer that we were being visited by aliens (well into my 30s), at this point in my skepticism journey, I would need reliable scientific consensus based on physical evidence. No amount of video or "military/government insider" information will move the needle. That is too easily faked and people are too easily convinced to believe in magic. And my brain is also clearly willing to believe in something extraordinary without extraordinary evidence, so I can't trust my intuition either without reliable scientific consensus based on physical evidence.
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