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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2009 : 20:46:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by jakesteele
At this point it is obvious you don’t have an answer to my questions. After doing more leg work that a debunker should do for himself before he starts debunking... | When did I "debunk" anything but the "it might have been aliens" speculation you wanted unnamed others to acknowledge?...I found a “fairly reasonable” explanation given by the pilot who made an official announcement. No thanks necessary, I’m just doing the job that any objective, logical, rational, open-minded person would do | Good for you! You did your own homework!http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008/05/phoenix-lights-project-snowbird-and.html
YOUNG: What about the arguments that the flares were visible longer than 1-hour, when the actual burn-time for parachute flares would be around 4 or 5 minutes?
SULLINS: They were dropping alot of flares. They were over that range for over an hour. One aircraft would go in, drop a couple of flares, make its run and attack a target, then another aircraft would come in from behind and illuminate the range again, so they were continually dropping flares in that area. | Gee, just like I mentioned as a possibility yesterday.
But, it seems that you have fallen for the "Official Story" after all. Isn't it bizarre that the non-military eyewitnesses say that the lights maintained a particular shape? None of them mentioned the lights going out and then coming back on, did they? The "Official Story" is full of holes, but you just keep on believing it if it makes you feel more comfortable.As soon as I get doing the leg work for you and find an answer to the first question, Henderson, Nevada, you'll be the second person to know. | Awesome! Thanks! I can't wait for you to go find the "Official Story" regarding those other lights. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2009 : 22:00:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by jakesteele
I gave the above examples of how far the human race has come in such a short time. If you look at the warp dive links you see earth already coming up with theoretical working models. Right now it would take a dylithum crystal the size of Jupiter, but it shows it can be done in theory. | Oh, forcryingoutloud. When it requires three solar masses to warp "a small atom," then it shows that using this "warp drive" to move an entire ship cannot be done. If the ship massed as little as 10,000 kg, and was made almost entirely of carbon, it would require about 2,594,827,586,206,896,552 galaxies the size of our own Milky Way to send it a distance of only 100,000 ly. Not stars, but galaxies. That's 2.59 quintillion, with a Q.
So, only 109 trillion (with a T) galaxies worth of mass to send our hypothetical super-light-weight ship made almost entirely of nanotubes and buckyballs from Proxima Centauri to Earth. Don't you think we'd notice something that big, as it tore our own galaxy apart just from gravity as it was being built?
Note well that including dark matter, there is the equivalent of only about 900 billion galaxies' worth of mass in the entire observable universe, so whoever built the thing would need access to over 120 observable-universe-sized bunches of galaxies and dark matter just to go 4.2 lightyears via this alleged "warp drive." It's beyond insane to think that this means that it is "technically possible."
Hell, as noted, even to warp a single "small atom" would require about three solar masses, so warping a single atom anywhere near our vicinity would send up alarms all over the Earth as amateur and professional astronomer both cried out "what the hell is that thing?!" as they traced origin of the shift in orbit of every nearby star, planet and rock.
And that's the generous version of the theoretical "warp drive." The original version required more mass than the entire universe contains just to do the single-atom warping.If you remember, the first computer that, I believe it was the govt. or IBM built, we had was as huge as a building, working on vacuum tubes and not even as good as a decent hand-held calculator. Every step of the way, as paridigms come and go, there are two forces at work. One are the visionaries, and yes, some crazies too, and then you have the paradigm police. They tug at each other. The paradigm police get pulled along by the visionaries and the visionaries get restrained enough to keep from falling off the edge of the universe, if you will. | Yeah, Thomas Kuhn and his postmodernist supporters have a lot to answer for with that paper, seeing how many people, like you, don't understand it. The "warp drive" you're talking about exists entirely within the paradigm of General Relativity. It never represented a paradigm shift, and no paradigm police have been arguing against it. It looks to me like all the effort made in refining it has been for it to require less mass, but the best guess anyone's got still needs such huge amounts to do anything useful that it is technically impossible, even if the math of General Relativity allows for its existence.To say something is impossible as judged by our still very limited scientific constraints is like the old saying, “If God had meant for man to fly he would have given him wings.” That’s very short sighted. | Our own scientific understanding of the world is the only standard we have by which to judge anything as being possible or not possible. It's not short-sighted, it's the only choice we have. Anything else is an appeal to magic, and not a single paradigm shift has occurred because of things we didn't know. They have all occurred due to people taking what we did already know and merging it together in a new way.With our theoretical warp drive being technically possible, it opens doors we never knew existed. | But our theoretical warp drive is technically impossible. It is only theoretically possible. Technically, it cannot be done without destroying ourselves.Who knows what’s on the other side of the doors? The warp drive, or some variation of it, could possibly circumvent the time/distance restraint that we currently face in spite of what the naysayers and doubters think. | Not without ripping our galaxy apart with its own tidal forces.Me thinks they protest too loudly. | And you are living in a dream world. What really happened, Jakesteele, is obvious. You read a little bit about the theoretical drive, ignored the parts that didn't agree with your fantasies about interstellar travel and so you just didn't bother with trying out the high-school-level math needed to show the practical impossibility of the whole thing. You're a lazy thinker, and use your ignorance to justify magical concepts and your insulting of "debunkers."
It's been said that ignorance is bliss, but it's also been said that knowledge is power. I'd rather be powerful than blissful. You, Jakesteele, have obviously chosen the other option.
Really, what this all boils down to is that you are asking us to be humble in the face of what we (as a species) do not know, but you are refusing to be humble in the face of what you (as a person) quite clearly do not know. That's boldly hypocritical and flatly uncivil of you. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2009 : 22:38:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dave.....Scratches on rocks? Laser etching in a titanium plate? What does the medium matter, so long as it's durable enough to last umpty-ump thousands of years? | Any attempt to find such evidence would certainly be aided by at least an educated guess as to what evidence they might be looking for and on what medium it might be recorded. | Oh, you want to go looking for such evidence? Then I've got no help for you. Any speculation on the motives of the aliens would have to be just that: speculation. But only understanding the motives can create predictive power for a search for evidence.
So, if you think that long-ago ET visitors wanted to leave a message for more technologically advanced humans to find, I'd go looking for a plethora of indelible markings on non-corrosive materials situated in large ancient cities, especially on or around monuments, only because that's what I would do if that were my intent. Durability and conspicuousness would be the ET's watchwords, and it seems to me that we should have already found it. Look at what goes on with wholly Earth-bound time capsules, the Voyager and Mariner probes, and SETI's narrowcast of a signal sent to say, "hey, we're over here!" What better way for an ET with tremendous cosmological resources at hand to ensure that we get its message by flattening the side of a whole mountain range and writing/drawing on it with huge, deep letters that'd last for many thousands of years?
If, on the other hand, you want to find ancient scribblings left behind by aliens who were either bored or trying to teach advanced math to simple-math people, then any chicken-scratchings on any handy rock or clay tablet in just about any location will do. That scenario holds little predictive power for where to dig. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2009 : 22:42:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
It appears to me that Kil's position is qualitatively different in intent (and affect) than Dude's! | Dude's statement was entirely evidenciary in nature. And so, given new evidence, Dude would change his mind, just like Kil said. There is no difference. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2009 : 22:51:29 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dave.....Seems to me that you should have learned that any proposed ET explanation has to compete with the physics that we do know. We have reasons to believe that the sightings aren't aliens, so any hypothesis which includes aliens has to be more compelling than those reasons. | I certainly didn't learn that truism from my 2008 experience on SFN because I didn't have an ET explanation for the puzzle that I presented, nor do I now. A large number of people on this forum assumed that I did, however, and some apparently still do. | That all irrelevant, because you didn't have an ET explanation. Your complaint was that people here were dogmatically shooting down ET explanations (regardless of your lack of one), and I told you why that's not true.There are certainly reasons to doubt that most sightings do not involve live alien beings, but I have heard no compelling ones here, on this thread, nor in the many pages generated in 2008. | Okay, so the math and the physics aren't compelling to you, even though your later posts suggest that you are impressed by them. I suppose that just shows me (as if I didn't have enough examples with faith healers and creationists and climate deniers, etc.) that real-world science simply isn't compelling to some people. I guess that just means that your standard for a compelling argument are much, much more strict than mine. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 00:47:10 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
Oh, you want to go looking for such evidence? Then I've got no help for you. Any speculation on the motives of the aliens would have to be just that: speculation. But only understanding the motives can create predictive power for a search for evidence. | Then how do archaeologists understand the motives of ancient civilizations when they search for evidence of such civilizations? Answer, the archaeologists are looking for artifacts, not messages. Conclusion, perhaps in searching for ancient evidence of aliens we should look for alien artifacts as well as "time capsules"? Durability and conspicuousness would be the ET's watchwords, and it seems to me that we should have already found it. | Why? How long have we been looking for it? What is your evidence that it has not been found other than you don't know about it? I think that it would be time-wasting presumptive to assume that ancient visiting aliens would even want to communicate with later civilizations of man. I would look only for artifacts (some of which might be similar to the "messages" you presumed.)That scenario holds little predictive power for where to dig. | "Where to dig" is probably not nearly as important as "recognize what you have dug"!
I am delighted, Dave, to discover that you have a few embers of sheer imagination glowing in that arctic cavern of negativity which houses your icy impossibilities of that which is not yet discovered nor even imagined! Speculation is certainly not evidence, nor does it produce evidence; but it has started many a fruitful search for evidence! |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 01:16:51 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
Dude's statement was entirely evidenciary in nature. And so, given new evidence, Dude would change his mind, just like Kil said. There is no difference. | Kil said:I leave the door open this far. If evidence is ever produced I would be willing to consider it if enough reputable scientists thought it was worth investigating. | Dude saidhow is it reasonable to leave any space for that possibility? | It appears obvious to me that Kil is open to the possibility while Dude is stating that there is no possibility. I am speaking of both intent and affect. Kil is reasonably stating that there could be evidence. Dude is unreasonably stating that no evidence could exist!
Of course both are speaking about evidence. That does not mean that their statements have the same intent of communication nor fervor of delivery!
There is a difference.
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 02:24:49 [Permalink]
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Dave.....
That all irrelevant, because you didn't have an ET explanation. Your complaint was that people here were dogmatically shooting down ET explanations (regardless of your lack of one), and I told you why that's not true. | My complaint had nothing to do with people shooting down ET explanations. It had to do with people assuming I was promoting an ET agenda, which I emphatically was not! If you have found archived postings showing that I commented on dogmatism, it certainly was secondary to my oft-repeated statement that I was not stating or implying that ET's were the cause of unexplained UAP.Okay, so the math and the physics aren't compelling to you, even though your later posts suggest that you are impressed by them. | They are not compelling to me because I cannot verify or dispute your elaborate calculations, but that does not mean I take them at face value. I would respect some recognized scholar's repetition of these mathematics and conclusions (such as Carl Sagan, for example) so if you can link or reference to an recognized astrophysicist's identical statements, I will remain open to persuasion that it is impossible for us to go to the stars today using today's physics.
But I not omly buy Jakesteele's argument that future physics will totally transcend today's physics, I was persuaded of that position while still in college sixty years ago! I am not a physicist, but I am aware of enormous progress both in theory and application since the forties. And for anyone to presume --speculate if you will -- that intelligent beings elsewhere in the Universe are manipulating matter and energy using the same stage of development of ours today, is not only arrogant speculation, it is almost certain to be wrong! Higher development maybe, lower development maybe, no development maybe, no intelligent beings, maybe! But not constrained by today's terrestrial knowlege.
It just doesn't make speculative sense (yes) to me to use our current state of knowledge as a standard for proclaiming what may or may not be possible in the future, or what may be possible now in a far-off galaxy of, for example, George Lucas' fecund imagination.
Of course it is all we have to go on. And so, in proper speculation, it should be a launching pad for sensible conjecture like the late, great Arthur C. Clarke did so well! But certainly that launch should take us to speculative realms higher and greater than the present where we start our imaginings!
Present science is certainly compelling for present events and within our present earthly environment and milieu; but it is not compelling at all when we let our imagination -speculation- range to far distant times and places!
I guess that just means that your standard for a compelling argument are much, much more strict than mine. | My standards are the same as yours. We differ as to which situations the arguments, that the standards support, may apply.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 07:55:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Then how do archaeologists understand the motives of ancient civilizations when they search for evidence of such civilizations? Answer, the archaeologists are looking for artifacts, not messages. Conclusion, perhaps in searching for ancient evidence of aliens we should look for alien artifacts as well as "time capsules"? | Archeologists understand the motives of ancient humans because they were human. An "alien artifact" from a species with technologies that are indistinguishable from magic by us could be anything, and so doesn't help the search.Durability and conspicuousness would be the ET's watchwords, and it seems to me that we should have already found it. | Why? How long have we been looking for it? What is your evidence that it has not been found other than you don't know about it? I think that it would be time-wasting presumptive to assume that ancient visiting aliens would even want to communicate with later civilizations of man. I would look only for artifacts (some of which might be similar to the "messages" you presumed.) | Good grief. I said if the aliens wanted to send us a message, then I would expect the message to be so conspicuous and durable that we would have seen it already. If you want to throw the premise out, don't act confused when my conclusion doesn't follow.I am delighted, Dave, to discover that you have a few embers of sheer imagination glowing in that arctic cavern of negativity which houses your icy impossibilities of that which is not yet discovered nor even imagined! | And I am bemused by your condescention.Speculation is certainly not evidence, nor does it produce evidence; but it has started many a fruitful search for evidence! | Again, if we speculate that aliens have visited the planet with technology so far advanced of our own that it looks like it's impossible, how does that help our search in any way? We are giving aliens carte blanche to violate our understanding of the laws of physics, so we wouldn't be able to say that they can't make a fusion reactor that looks like a mustard seed, or a spaceship that looks like a geode. In other words, allowing this premise prevents us from being able to tell the difference between an alien artifact and a natural object. You can't suggest that the ETs can get around the laws of time and space, but then assume that they'd make artifacts that we would be able to identify as artifacts.
Next post:It appears obvious to me that Kil is open to the possibility while Dude is stating that there is no possibility. I am speaking of both intent and affect. Kil is reasonably stating that there could be evidence. Dude is unreasonably stating that no evidence could exist!
Of course both are speaking about evidence. That does not mean that their statements have the same intent of communication nor fervor of delivery!
There is a difference. | When Dude began his remark with "But in the absence of evidence for even the existence of alien life..." only the most uncharitable reading is that he's not open to the possibility. Your selective quoting fails.
Next post:My complaint had nothing to do with people shooting down ET explanations. It had to do with people assuming I was promoting an ET agenda, which I emphatically was not! If you have found archived postings showing that I commented on dogmatism, it certainly was secondary to my oft-repeated statement that I was not stating or implying that ET's were the cause of unexplained UAP. | The complaint of yours that I was referring to was this one:What I learned was, that for the "critical thinker", if there is no irrefutable evidence (such as alien corpse(s), a landed or crashed "saucer", photographic or video evidence that is unassailable-- like all TV networks with extensive coverage coupled with lots of newspaper photographa and stories, etc., etc.,-- then "alien" i.e. extraterrestrial explanations for UAP must not even be considered,, much less presented with any degree of probability. That has everything to do with people shooting down ET explanations, and nothing to do with the fact that you weren't presenting one.They are not compelling to me because I cannot verify or dispute your elaborate calculations, but that does not mean I take them at face value. I would respect some recognized scholar's repetition of these mathematics and conclusions (such as Carl Sagan, for example) so if you can link or reference to an recognized astrophysicist's identical statements, I will remain open to persuasion that it is impossible for us to go to the stars today using today's physics. | So you would accept an argument from authority instead of doing the math yourself? It's not like I did anything more than look up some numbers and then add, subtract, multiply and divide with them. No calculus, trig or even geometry was involved. If you can balance your checkbook, you can verify the math all by your lonesome.But I not omly buy Jakesteele's argument that future physics will totally transcend today's physics, I was persuaded of that position while still in college sixty years ago! I am not a physicist, but I am aware of enormous progress both in theory and application since the forties. | "Progress" that didn't involve the sorts of paradigm shifts that would be required for our future physics to be so different from what we know now as to be unrecognizable. The Kuhnian shifts were things like the Copernican revolution or the downfall of Phlogiston, both of which were preceded by "knowledge" that wasn't based on science, but on dogma. Einstein didn't overturn Newton, he added a correction to Newton that actually imposed limits on the world that were previously unknown.And for anyone to presume --speculate if you will -- that intelligent beings elsewhere in the Universe are manipulating matter and energy using the same stage of development of ours today, is not only arrogant speculation, it is almost certain to be wrong! | Then the door is wide open, and all fictions must be considered equally, and science cannot progress.It just doesn't make speculative sense (yes) to me to use our current state of knowledge as a standard for proclaiming what may or may not be possible in the future, or what may be possible now in a far-off galaxy of, for example, George Lucas' fecund imagination. | It may not make sense to you, but our own knowledge is the only standard by which we can judge anything.Of course it is all we have to go on. And so, in proper speculation, it should be a launching pad for sensible conjecture like the late, great Arthur C. Clarke did so well! But certainly that launch should take us to speculative realms higher and greater than the present where we start our imaginings! | Sensible conjecture by whose standards? By our current understanding of physics, nearly undetectable alien ships making three-hour fly-bys of our planet is completely insensible.
It's important to keep your eye on the ball, here, bngbuck. With our current understanding of physics, if the whole world were to band together in a truly massive endeavor to create an interstellar starship we little humans could do it. But the ship would be a huge colony ship carrying a mind-boggling amount of fuel in order to slow down at the other end of the (likely) one-way trip, and so would be visible for quite a long time to even amateur astronomers with small telescopes. If we could figure out how to freeze and automatically (robotically) revive a human adult, the size of the ship could come down some. And if we just sent a robotic ship, it could be made smaller still. But we're not talking about a cosmic RV to go touring, especially since any antenna carried to communicate with home will have to be gigantic.
In other words, I'm sure Sagan was right in that if we don't destroy ourselves, we will one day journey to the stars. It's just not going to so that we can float over a city like Phoenix for a few hours and then vanish. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 08:32:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dude.....
Just agree that your statement is, at best, vague and ambiguous. | I'll make this deal with you. You plead guilty to trychoschistism and I'll revise my post for clarity.
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The only word I know that even remotely resembles that word is for a structure in the ectoderm of protozoans...
Plug that word into google and you get zero hits.
So maybe you need to edit your little pontification, use an actual word instead of (being the generous person I am I'll grant its just a spelling error) one so misspelled that google can't even suggest an alternative.
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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 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 09:36:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Originally posted by bngbuck
...trychoschistism... | The only word I know that even remotely resembles that word is for a structure in the ectoderm of protozoans...
Plug that word into google and you get zero hits.
So maybe you need to edit your little pontification, use an actual word instead of (being the generous person I am I'll grant its just a spelling error) one so misspelled that google can't even suggest an alternative. | I think he's asking you to admit that you are bald. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail) Evidently, I rock! Why not question something for a change? Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 17:35:52 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Originally posted by bngbuck
Dude.....
Just agree that your statement is, at best, vague and ambiguous. | I'll make this deal with you. You plead guilty to trychoschistism and I'll revise my post for clarity.
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The only word I know that even remotely resembles that word is for a structure in the ectoderm of protozoans...
Plug that word into google and you get zero hits.
So maybe you need to edit your little pontification, use an actual word instead of (being the generous person I am I'll grant its just a spelling error) one so misspelled that google can't even suggest an alternative.
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It is. And it is a word placed into various thesaruses for pussyfooting. It links to no definition on its own and the reference is to Moby Thesarus II by Grady Ward.
Appears to have been made up recently. Grady Wards' own online Moby Thesarus II has no definition for the word.
The word as spelled correctly (allegedly) is trichoschistism. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 18:02:16 [Permalink]
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Dave, Jakesteele, Kil, et al .....
I really haven't had as much fun here since the UAP thread in '08. I have to spend the next week or so in Seattle and I'm going to be too busy to stay involved while gone, but I really hope that this thread keeps going and I can pick up next week.
Dave says he doesn't have a dog in this race, Jake appears to be beating a paralyzed horse, Kil's trying to figure the odds on a dog and pony show, and this certainly isn't my first rodeo. I truly hope Jakesteele has sufficient resilience and skill to endure another week without being proclaimed a sophisticated troll and Banished from the Kingdom (well, kicked off the track for impiety anyway)! Last update I can do 'til next week.
First post:
Dave.....
Archeologists understand the motives of ancient humans because they were human. An "alien artifact" from a species with technologies that are indistinguishable from magic by us could be anything, and so doesn't help the search. | It seems to me that artifacts with apparently "magic" qualities would attract attention and make the search easier. Why, then, have none been found? I don't know that that is the case! Good grief. I said if the aliens wanted to send us a message, then I would expect the message to be so conspicuous and durable that we would have seen it already. | Bad joy, I was addressing that very premise. I feel it is more likely that we would find artifacts rather than messages. If you want to throw the premise out, don't act confused when my conclusion doesn't follow. | It's your premise! I'm not acting confused nor am I. I was asking you to defend it, which you did not.And I am bemused by your condescention. | Well, thank you for your bemusement which I did not intend, nor did I intend condecension. I wished to express pleasure at discovering a facet of your personality that I had previously missed!
Again, if we speculate that aliens have visited the planet with technology so far advanced of our own that it looks like it's impossible, how does that help our search in any way? | Perhaps to direct our search toward the "impossible?"...we wouldn't be able to say that they can't make a fusion reactor that looks like a mustard seed, or a spaceship that looks like a geode | Highly unlikely unless they intended to do that.In other words, allowing this premise prevents us from being able to tell the difference between an alien artifact and a natural object. You can't suggest that the ETs can get around the laws of time and space, but then assume that they'd make artifacts that we would be able to identify as artifacts. | I don't suggest that the aliens get around anything, only that they might manipulate matter and energy using enhanced "laws of time and space". And it might be easier for them just not to leave any artifacts rather than purposely leaving artifacts that were countefeits of earth-natural objects.
Again, your post assumes intent to conceal. Chance replication of mustard seeds or geodes would be unlikely. Because your premise is one of alien "magic", some of their artifacts would probably be "magical". If they wished to conceal (the diametric opposite of send a message) we very likely would not find artifacts. We certainly would not find messages. I feel it is unlikely that aliens would either want to message us or hide evidence of their visit us and I would not take either in consideration in any search I would direct. Inadverdent evidence is what I would expect.
Next post:
When Dude began his remark with "But in the absence of evidence for even the existence of alien life..." only the most uncharitable reading is that he's not open to the possibility. Your selective quoting fails. | When Dude ends his remarks with "how is it reasonable to leave any space for that possibility? charitability considerabily constricts and your biased perception becomes obvious!
Next post:
The complaint of yours that I was referring to was this one:
What I learned was, that for the "critical thinker", if there is no irrefutable evidence (such as alien corpse(s), a landed or crashed "saucer", photographic or video evidence that is unassailable--like all TV networks with extensive coverage coupled with lots of newspaper photographs and stories, etc., etc.,-- then "alien" i.e. extraterrestrial explanations for UAP must not even be considered,, much less presented with any degree of probability. | That's fine, we have been talking about two different threads. I was referring to the 2008 thread when speaking of being misjudged; in the 2009 thread I spoke to what I (and others) perceive as Étroit d'esprit, basically narrow-mindedness,
That has everything to do with people shooting down ET explanations, and nothing to do with the fact that you weren't presenting one. | Agreed, and it was in a different post addressing a different issue!So you would accept an argument from authority instead of doing the math yourself? It's not like I did anything more than look up some numbers and then add, subtract, multiply and divide with them. No calculus, trig or even geometry was involved. If you can balance your checkbook, you can verify the math all by your lonesome. | It's not the math I question, it's the whole of the argument. No offense, but I don't necessarily accept you as an authority. Perhaps you are, if so, credentials are in order. If someone with the approximate status of Sagan offered the identical argument and calculations supporting it, it would be of more persuasion to me, and the conclusion I gave would follow. "Progress" that didn't involve the sorts of paradigm shifts that would be required for our future physics to be so different from what we know now as to be unrecognizable. The Kuhnian shifts were things like the Copernican revolution or the downfall of Phlogiston, both of which were preceded by "knowledge" that wasn't based on science, but on dogma. Einstein didn't overturn Newton, he added a correction to Newton that actually imposed limits on the world that were previously unknown. | I would add "speculation" to "dogma" and take it back to Aristotle. Your analysis is true enough, but I was only talking about 60-odd years and your remarks encompass many hundreds. I did not mean to imply that the epochal events mentioned in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions were not measured in epochal time.
Bngbuck
And for anyone to presume --speculate if you will -- that intelligent beings elsewhere in the Universe are manipulating matter and energy using the same stage of development of ours today, is not only arrogant speculation, it is almost certain to be wrong! | Dave
Then the door is wide open, and all fictions must be considered equally, and science cannot progress. | Rubbish! In the first place, by your own specification we are considering science fiction here, not science, It might be that science could emerge from SF speculation, but "cannot progress" is silly. Selection from "all fictions" is essential, and a far better speculation is that ET development is not identical to our's. As to "all fictions must be considered equally," why?It may not make sense to you, but our own knowledge is the only standard by which we can judge anything.
| I answered this in my earlier post:Of course it is all we have to go on. And so, in proper speculation, it should be a launching pad for sensible conjecture like the late, great Arthur C. Clarke did so well! But certainly that launch should take us to speculative realms higher and greater than the present where we start our imaginings! | Sensible conjecture by whose standards? By our current understanding of physics, nearly undetectable alien ships making three-hour fly-bys of our planet is completely insensible.] | Yes, by our current understanding of physics your statement is true. But your speculation is that our current understanding of physics defines the aliens current understanding of physics, and that is not necessarily true in sensible conjecture!It's important to keep your eye on the ball, here, bngbuck. With our current understanding of physics, if the whole world were to band together in a truly massive endeavor to create an interstellar starship we little humans could do it. But the ship would be a huge colony ship carrying a mind-boggling amount of fuel in order to slow down at the other end of the (likely) one-way trip, and so would be visible for quite a long time to even amateur astronomers with small telescopes. If we could figure out how to freeze and automatically (robotically) revive a human adult, the size of the ship could come down some. And if we just sent a robotic ship, it could be made smaller still. But we're not talking about a cosmic RV to go touring, especially since any antenna carried to communicate with home will have to be gigantic. | I certainly don't maintain that an interstellar ship is possible/practical today I would raise the possibility to medium in another hundred years. Google up some of your favorite futurists and see what they anticipate. They maintain that their profession is logical extrapolation.
But my flights of fancy in my post to you were much more focussed on the reverse trip -- the another-galaxy inhabitants visiting us now, or in the past. We havent yet speculated on the future ET visit, which is an entirely different paradigm. Your laundry list of clumsy eventualities attendant to a journey to another star system is fair enough as a description of Earth-dwelling intelligent aliens in the year 2009! The natives of a planet in Andromeda may well be past the point of caring about such expansive endeavors!
BTW, why devote valuable speculation time to EMR communication between imaginary ships and their imaginary home planet? A fully automated, self-programmable robot would be the way to make for more fuel space and you might get that speed up to c/2. And what's few thousand years between computers?
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 18:08:56 [Permalink]
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Dude.....
Plug that word into google and you get zero hits. |
I am sorry that you don't have greater resources, but an adequate vocabulary does help in composition and reading |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2009 : 18:16:48 [Permalink]
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Valiant Dancer......
It links to no definition on its own. Appears to have been made up recently |
I've got a Benjamin that says I can prove origin before 1974 and also can give you a definition link. We'll need a third party to hold the money!
trychoschistism! |
Edited by - bngbuck on 10/06/2009 18:33:06 |
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