|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 02/21/2011 : 21:31:42 [Permalink]
|
Dave_W said:
| I don't think there's any need to go that far. |
I'm talking about sorting claims from non-claims, not actually evaluating a claim. If something can't be stated in a falsifiable way then it is impossible to evaluate it as a claim, therefore it isn't a claim at all.
But that has little bearing on the topic of this thread. ET visitation is clearly falsifiable. The thousands of people looking for ET over the last 60 years and the millions of man hours put into it have resulted in exactly no good evidence of ET visitation. The idea that the US government can keep a secret of that scale for 60 years is laughable at best. That adds up to the very strong conclusion that ET has not visited earth and that Edgar Mitchell is a fucking delusional crackpot.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
 |
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2011 : 19:31:05 [Permalink]
|
Dr.Mabuse.....
Originally posted by bngbuck
If such persuasive arguments really did exist there would be no need for terms like atheism, agnosticism or theism; there would be no need for argumentation on the subject. |
You're ignoring humankind's ability for self-delusion. Especially if it offers comfort to a fearful mind. |
Yes, sadly, your point is well taken. There will always be need to differerntiate the woosheep from the woogoats (and both from the werewoolves with a hungry agend to fulfil!) |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 14:40:23 [Permalink]
|
| After all, if the ET visitation hypothesis isn't remotely plausible from a physics-and-biology point-of-view (a certainly non-agnostic position) |
| then Mitchell's claims can be dismissed unless he can cough up some seriously extraordinary evidence instead of paranoid conspiracy theories. |
IF ET visitation hypothesis in not remotely possible from the viewpoint of today's science, then you would have a platform for your pleas of dismissal. Do you have compelling statistical evidence that a majority of today's astrophysicists, biochemists, astronomers, biolpgists and physicists DO, in fact, dismiss the possibility of Extraterrestrial sentient life and also the possibilty of visitation thereof? I would appreciate the link and references. Can you cough up any evidence that large numbers of serious scientists dismiss Mitchell as a paranoid crank? Cough it up, spit it out, and I will wipe it up with my handkerchief!| Then I will conclude that you won't even try to answer my logical arguments against the position you seem to hold. I mean, I could have a "learning experience" here by being shown that my arguments are either unsound or invalid, but your statements here make it clear that you won't be participating in that. |
As happens all too often with your "conclusions," you are dead wrong, I have not only tried, but very successfully answered your arguments. I do hope you have had a learning experience, for at least all the rest of us need them all the time. And I am here, participating - unlike the originators of this thread. |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 15:49:50 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
IF ET visitation hypothesis in not remotely possible from the viewpoint of today's science, then you would have a platform for your pleas of dismissal. Do you have compelling statistical evidence that a majority of today's astrophysicists, biochemists, astronomers, biolpgists and physicists DO, in fact, dismiss the possibility of Extraterrestrial sentient life and also the possibilty of visitation thereof? I would appreciate the link and references. Can you cough up any evidence that large numbers of serious scientists dismiss Mitchell as a paranoid crank? Cough it up, spit it out, and I will wipe it up with my handkerchief! |
So you think I should build an argument from popularity? No, thanks. The question can be resolved without polling scientists' viewpoints, and instead looking at the science itself.| As happens all too often with your "conclusions," you are dead wrong, I have not only tried, but very successfully answered your arguments. |
Really? I've seen no substantial or compelling answers to any of them. You maintain that you enjoy inconsistency, but that's not actually a defense of agnosticism. Neither is correctly insisting that nothing is absolute.| I do hope you have had a learning experience... |
Not this time around, it seems. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 16:20:57 [Permalink]
|
Dr. Mabuse.....
Your civilized European/Scandinavian courtesy and restraint brings a pleasant climate to the debate here when you post. Thank you for your manners, I appreciate it.Alien life forms should look and work pretty much similar to how we know life is on earth.
I base my opinion on the fact that any other planet which is capable of supporting life should look pretty similar to earth. The relative abundances of substances is pretty the same everywhere. With energy input, similar molecules will form. With pretty much the same amino acids, RNA-looking macromolecules wouldn't differ much from what they look like here. |
That is a pretty reasonable assumption. However, I question that we actually know the relative abundance and/or scarcity of substances and elements on other planets of this and other solar systems. It is cetainly possible that silicon, for example, might be not only more abundant but also more accessible on another planet with the gravity and density acceptable to life.
This might lead to a silicon-based expression of life on that particular rock for example.. As I have pointed out with many references elsewhere in this thread; there are many biochemists and others that have written extensively on these possibilities.| Alien life forms should look and work pretty much similar to how we know life is on earth.. |
Maybe, and maybe not. The compounding of the essential elements - Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon silicon, even the "inerts" nitrogen, argon, etc. - might dictate the expression of "life"- whatever that is - into distinctively different forms than the earthly ones. I certainly remain agnostic as to the probable appearence and function of possible alien life forms.| If such life gets intelligent enough to build space crafts, that's another question. |
Spacecraft, intergalactic image transmission, really hairy Wookies messing with time travel and interdimensionality technology - we Romantics take our woo very seriously!| Also, another question is FTL-travel. Physics as we know it does not support this. Given that most advancements in physics the last 100 years have been refinements of already known natural laws.... |
Quantuum mechanics and a great deal of particle theory weren't ! | It is my opinion that future discoveries in physics will continue to refine and evolve our current understanding on natural laws rather than an iconoclastic revolutionary paradigm change that is required for alien visitations from other solar systems. |
It is my opinion that we will see the advent of an Ion elastic(neologism) Reformation and a veritable paradiddle of paradigm permutation in Physics in less than fifty years!| The simpler explanation is that people who claimed that saw space ships and aliens were hallucinating. |
Yes, Occam's pocket knife carves a bit cruder than do his sugical tools. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 16:28:21 [Permalink]
|
Kil.....
| Since I have what could be called a skeptics perspective on the idea that we are being visited by beings from worlds not our own, I really don't have much to add to the conversation. |
By your own admission you have a somwehat agnostic (narrow grey area) view on the subject. And I must respectfully disagree with "I really don't have much to add to the conversation." You most certainly do, as shown by your excellent contribution later. I really regret those that simply have nothing to say, even though they start threads like this. |
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 02/23/2011 : 16:47:15 [Permalink]
|
Ok, let's get down to the ol' nitty & the gritty. To those who claim sentient, aliens exist and have visited us, I say: Produce one! Simple, no?
We all know that has yet to happen despite the hysterics and histrionics of the woo and semi-woo. But could it happen; is it possible? Sure, why not, and it is equally possible and likely that Bigfoot exists, the chupabara is not a pathetic, mangey canine, and all Republicans are honest. But it would take Miracle Max to prove any of that.
I fail to see where there is any reason for discussion. As stated earlier, the Laws of Physics prohibit the journey, and the Theory of Evolution provides no guarantee that sencience even exists elsewhere in the Galaxy. And sometimes I wonder if it exists on Earth.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
| Edited by - filthy on 02/23/2011 16:49:26 |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 18:11:37 [Permalink]
|
The problem with alien visitation, simply put- there is no way we could keep it a secret.
If it had happened it would be public domain knowledge. That puts the matter to rest for all rational people, no further discussion required.
As for the idea of life outside our little spec of a planet.... I know its just speculation, and my official answer is going to be "maybe" (bng should approve of my agnosticism here), but given the scope of the space we occupy it seems unlikely we are alone in the universe.
As for little green men getting here or us getting there? I'm going to remain agnostic on this one as well. Burkhard Heim (now deceased, sadly) had some interesting ideas, Walter Droscher has filled them out a bit, and the physics community has not stomped them totally flat as yet. The chance they are on to something is small at this point, but not "mouse living on the sun" small.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2011 : 20:03:33 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
By your own admission you have a somwehat agnostic (narrow grey area) view on the subject. |
The size of one's "gray area" cannot be relevant to whether or not one is agnostic. People who proclaim agnosticism on a question position themselves inside the gray area, no matter how large or small. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 13:19:27 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
However, I question that we actually know the relative abundance and/or scarcity of substances and elements on other planets of this and other solar systems. |
I want to avoid the debate about knowing and knowing, and at what percentage of certainty does a measurement become fact and The Absolute Truth(tm)...
We know the relative abundances of substances and elements through spectral analysis of observed objects in space. Stars belonging to the same spectral classes as our sun reveals roughly the same composition as our sun in trace elements like iron, silica, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon...
Red dwarfs are older and contain less of these elements (because there hadn't been as many supernovas producing heavier elements back then), but they also have a much narrower life-zone because of less energy output. Class F stars and above have a problem with high UV-light output which photo-dissassociate molecules and seriously harms complex macro-molecules.
Spectral analysis of nebula where stars (and planetary systems) are forming reveal similar abundances.
When the proto-planetary disc is forming, and the center starts forming the star, the heat from it will distill the inner orbits to rocky material, rich in iron, nickel, silicon etc, and volitiles will boil and get swepped out to the outer orbits where they condensate due to temperture drops. Among those volitiles are water, ammonia, methane, carbondioxide and nitrogen. These get trapped in comets and planets like Jupiter & Saturn, but not in the asteroid belt which is inside the "too hot for condensation of volatiles"-zone.
Rocky inner planets form, and once each planet's gravity well is established and "well defined" (pub intended), volatiles from comets which return to the inner region and drops on the planet, will stay there to eventually for the basic building blocks for life.
| It is cetainly possible that silicon, for example, might be not only more abundant but also more accessible on another planet with the gravity and density acceptable to life. |
Time's running out. I'll have to address this at a later time.
|
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 16:30:08 [Permalink]
|
Dude.....
| The problem with alien visitation, simply put- there is no way we could keep it a secret. |
Exactly like there was no way that a secret like the Manhattan Project could not possibly be kept from the general public for over six years from it's inception at the first demonstration of the feasability of nuclear fission in 1939 at Pupin hall at Columbia University, to it's very public revelation to the public with the incineration of Hiroshima following the Trinity test in July/August 1945.
Certainly, the Russians' espionage apparatus was aware of the project, and I have no doubt that the same spy agency knows a great deal more today about ET than you or I do! Also, the CIA, etc. alphabet salad of government security agencies.
I also have little doubt that nuclear fission/fusion could have been kept a secret for many more years if it were not for the military necessity of ourselves or the Russians using and brandishing the weapon. The point here is not the question : How could such a secret be kept?...but rather: Has such a secret truly been kept? I really have no conviction as to the answer to that question, but there are certainly many shades of opinion on it today!| If it had happened it would be public domain knowledge. |
Is the degree of the knowledge that George Bush and Dick Cheney had of the existence or not of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to our starting a war there - is that knowledge "in the public domain"? Is the degree of private communication between Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs "in the public domain?" I think not.| my official answer is going to be "maybe" (bng should approve of my agnosticism here), |
Duly approved! | As for little green men getting here or us getting there? I'm going to remain agnostic on this one as well. |
I was hopeful that you would eventually come around to my view on this matter, and I welcome you to the ranks of those with slightly more open minds on subjects that are genuinely controversial!.| but not "mouse living on the sun" |
There have been moments recently when I would have been delighted to dispatch my mouse and all the apparatus attached to it to the surface of the sun!
|
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 16:44:38 [Permalink]
|
Dave.....
| So you think I should build an argument from popularity? |
Nothing to do with popularity Simply some substantiation from those who are better informed than you or I as to the validity of seeing Mitchell as a crank!| I've seen no substantial or compelling answers to any of them. |
Of course you haven't! Even if you had, you most certainly would not concede that. | You maintain that you enjoy inconsistency |
I maintain nothing of the sort. I said that I was comfortable with some inconsistency until sufficient data is received to resovle an issue. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 17:03:55 [Permalink]
|
Dave.....
| The size of one's "gray area" cannot be relevant to whether or not one is agnostic. People who proclaim agnosticism on a question position themselves inside the gray area, no matter how large or small. |
Another view would hold that one's "grey area" of agnosticism could be seen as a continuum from near white to near black - allowing for shades of grey, or, in this case, doubt.
As you, yourself clearly demonstrate in your former post...| people are free to simply invent or widen gray areas where none might otherwise exist |
|
| Edited by - bngbuck on 02/24/2011 17:10:27 |
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 17:09:49 [Permalink]
|
Bill to Dave:
Of course you haven't! Even if you had, you most certainly would not concede that. |
You know. It doesn't even matter what the conversation is about. If you Bill actually believe that about Dave, than you should stop responding. What's the point?
Now, I don't believe that Dave would purposely not concede a point just for arguments sake. I'd take him at his word.
Of all people, I hate to be the one to jump in here, but enough is enough. You guys aren't going to agree and there is enough thread here for people to make up their minds about who is right. So it's time to move on, for fucks sake... |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2011 : 17:59:44 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
Nothing to do with popularity Simply some substantiation from those who are better informed than you or I as to the validity of seeing Mitchell as a crank! |
Okay, you want me to build an argument from authority. I'm still not biting, since we can go directly to the science.| I've seen no substantial or compelling answers to any of them. |
Of course you haven't! Even if you had, you most certainly would not concede that. |
That has to be the most deliberately insulting thing I've ever seen you write.| You maintain that you enjoy inconsistency |
I maintain nothing of the sort. |
Okay, I was mistaken.| I said that I was comfortable with some inconsistency until sufficient data is received to resovle an issue. |
Which has nothing at all to do with the internal inconsistencies in your positions... Actually, no, it is instead another demonstration of your inconsistencies.
Next comment:Originally posted by bngbuck
Another view would hold that one's "grey area" of agnosticism could be seen as a continuum from near white to near black - allowing for shades of grey, or, in this case, doubt. |
Yes. That's not "another view" at all.As you, yourself clearly demonstrate in your former post...| people are free to simply invent or widen gray areas where none might otherwise exist |
|
Well, I certainly can't say that I'm surprised that I demonstrated something with which I agree.
And one from someone else:Originally posted by Kil
You guys aren't going to agree... |
The saddest part about this is that bngbuck won't even discuss the matter on which we disagree. And now he's gotten so confused about the argument that he's presented what I think as "another view!" He's done the same with the "opinion" debate, going so far as to completely mischaracterize the argument and accuse me of "selective amnesia." It's so badly done that I think either his mind is going, or he's intentionally trolling. Maybe both. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Moon-walker claims alien contact cover-up
