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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 10/03/2009 : 09:19:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
And no skeptic would rule out alien visitation with absolute certainty. It's just very unlikely. |
The problem is even assigning a probability like "unlikely" to the hypothesis. We've got no evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth. None. So saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to be the explanation for any event in Phoenix is to say that there's some prior knowledge of such things actually occuring and making an estimate of how often they occur. Saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to explain the Phoenix Lights is like saying that it's unlikely for a flipped U.S. penny to land chihuahua-side up. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 09:47:59 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Kil
And no skeptic would rule out alien visitation with absolute certainty. It's just very unlikely. |
The problem is even assigning a probability like "unlikely" to the hypothesis. We've got no evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth. None. So saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to be the explanation for any event in Phoenix is to say that there's some prior knowledge of such things actually occuring and making an estimate of how often they occur. Saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to explain the Phoenix Lights is like saying that it's unlikely for a flipped U.S. penny to land chihuahua-side up.
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How does "unlikely to the extreme" work for you? Because that's what I have been saying. Where else is there to go unless we are absolutely certain that no alien visitations have occurred? The point is, we have no reason to believe that they have occurred. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 09:56:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Kil
And no skeptic would rule out alien visitation with absolute certainty. It's just very unlikely. |
The problem is even assigning a probability like "unlikely" to the hypothesis. We've got no evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth. None. So saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to be the explanation for any event in Phoenix is to say that there's some prior knowledge of such things actually occuring and making an estimate of how often they occur. Saying that alien visitation is "unlikely" to explain the Phoenix Lights is like saying that it's unlikely for a flipped U.S. penny to land chihuahua-side up.
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How does "unlikely to the extreme" work for you? Because that's what I have been saying. Where else is to go unless we are absolutly certain that no alien visitations have occurred?
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Kil, don't buy into the absurdity. Sure, skeptics have to keep an open mind. But in the absence of evidence for even the existence of alien life, what we definitely know (and can more or less prove via mathematics) about the physical constraints of the universe, and the total and complete lack of evidence for any ET visiting earth... how is it reasonable to leave any space for that possibility?
Unevidenced assertions should be freely rejected. It is not reasonable to say there is any chance aliens have visited earth until you have some evidence they even exist.
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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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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 10:01:00 [Permalink]
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jakesteele said:
The Scientific Method is only as far knowing and far seeing as its present limitations will allow it to be. The edge of the cosmological, quantum envelope is continually getting pushed out, but unfortunately, there are people that frantically keep trying to pull back until finally they loose the tug-o-war contest. Thank God for open minded, visionary people leading the charge.
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That may be one of the most ignorant things ever said on these forums, and we have had some people say some truly ignorant things here.
Jake, you seem to lack even a basic grasp of the scientific method. The rigor we impose upon all truth claims via the scientific method must be strict. If it isn't then the whole thing collapses into uselessness.
You don't get to make an assertion, as a scientist, and expect to be taken seriously unless other people can verify and replicate your results.
I won't even start in on you for using the word "quantum" inappropriately... yet, as you also clearly don't understand the definition of the word.
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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 - 10/03/2009 : 10:06:23 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by jakesteele
And, of course, there's the Drake Equation. |
Which is purely speculative.| With all of these things going on, don't you think that 10-50-100 yrs. from now we might come up with some stuff that would astound us just like relativity and quantum mechanics would have blown Newton's mind? |
Don't know. That's why it's called "speculation," and not "science."| The Scientific Method is only as far knowing and far seeing as its present limitations will allow it to be. The edge of the cosmological, quantum envelope is continually getting pushed out, but unfortunately, there are people that frantically keep trying to pull back until finally they loose the tug-o-war contest. Thank God for open minded, visionary people leading the charge. |
Ah, yes, the personal attack against those nasty, closed-minded assholes who are trying to destroy peoples' dreams. So much for being civil.
That you wrote this means that you really don't understand the process of science. That you wrote this as a defense of the feasibility of alien visitation means that you're doing nothing more than creating "Forced Plausibilities." Really, let's look at your links:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/08/has-warp-speed-.html
Scientists get some massless photons to tunnel perhaps a few inches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre
Inventor of a theoretical "warp drive" which might require less than 3 solar masses of energy equivalent to drive a single small atom across the galaxy, or else it requires a railroad-like infrastructure to be in place in space before a trip can be made (or maybe not, since the "fuel" might need to be going faster-than-light itself).
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/11935
Quantum teleportation. Nothing new here. To teleport any information requires a receiver to be put in place before teleportation is possible.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17476-ion-engine-could-one-day-power-39day-trips-to-mars.html?full=true
New ion engines with much more thrust than the old ones. They still don't provide a work-around for the energy requirements of travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
http://www.jlab.org/news/internet/1997/spooky.html
Quantum entanglement. Nothing new here (especially since it's a 12-year-old story).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3308109.stm
Stopping a signal pulse with self-interfering photons. Not new, but interesting because it might bring us one step closer to entirely optical computing.The links above show:
1. Stopping light in its tracks totally. |
Except that my hand does that, too.Teleportation of quantum states.| 3. Spooky effect at a distance. |
Yes, we've known about that for years.| 4. A way to get around the speed of light. |
This last is the one that's at least a little interesting and new-ish, but not because the methods represent feasible mechanisms for interstellar travel.
Sorry, Jakesteele, that the visionaries you admire haven't brought us anywhere closer to being able to say that travelling aliens are even remotely plausible. Quite the opposite, in fact. By "pushing the envelope," we have learned over the last century that we are much more limited than we once hoped. I very much appreciate their hard work and perserverence in the discovery of actual knowledge where all we once had was guesswork and dreaming. |
- 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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jakesteele
New Member
USA
37 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 10:14:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Originally posted by jakesteele
I was wondering if the debris of the flares from the Phoenix Light's was ever retrieved and shown to the public to corroborate the Official Story of the Air Force?
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I have no idea what this Phoenix Light is. (Traffic lights in the city of Phoenix AZ, or the light from the flames of a burning bird?)
Please post a link on the subject for reference.
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That's just it, I can't find a site that addresses that issue. What I did find is this: *(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/luu2.htm - “LUU-2 has a burn time of approximately 5 minutes while suspended from a parachute.”)
The flares burn out completely and someone on another site offered the explanation that the leftover chutes would probably be blown all over Hell's half acre.
1. If the flare burn 5 minutes and the lights were witnessed more than 5 minutes, it couldn't be flare that caused the lights.
2. If the military in the habit of dropping flares of populated areas? Seems dangerous to me and probably would have hurt someone or started a fire by now due to inevitable equipment malfunction of a flare getting detached from its chute prematurely.
3. If people in Phoenix were familiar with flares being dropped by the NG as part of regular training exercises, it seems strange to me that all of a sudden there is this strange optical illusion that makes flares 38 miles away from Phoenix appear as though they are overhead
4. I have yet to hear a decent explanation for the first sighting from the first incident that started in Henderson, Nevada, 243 miles from Phoenix and lasting a couple hours.
I am stating right out front that for the questions I have, so far I have not been able to find satisfactory answers. Not saying they're not there, just saying I can't find them. Simple as that. It is possible to have a middle ground stance. You don't have to totally believe one way or another.
Now, I can't stress this point enough. I am not saying they were flying saucers, I am simply asking questions about what appear to be unanswered questions about the Official Story. That's it, nothing more. So please don't do the typical debunker thing of saying, "Well, if you believe they are aliens..." |
Sacred Cows make the tastiest hamburgers |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 12:07:23 [Permalink]
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This is a great video that superimposes the nighttime Phoenix lights footage over daytime footage of the distant mountain range. Despite eye-witnesses who claim that the lights were too close to be beyond the mountains, this video clearly demonstrates that the lights wink out in the exact order and at the exact altitude that we should expect if they were distant flares dropping behind the mountains.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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jakesteele
New Member
USA
37 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 12:10:59 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
jakesteele:
Getting a debunker to say that UFOs are possibly alien is like pulling eye teeth from a pissed off gorilla. |
First off, unless we are actually investigating an indecent, we can't really be called "debunkers." And if our intent is to debunk, than we can't fairly assess an incident or a claim. So I reject the word "debunker" to describe skeptics. Looking for the most likely explanation is not the same as debunking, and I feel that you are using that word as a pejorative to describe those of us who default to critical thinking.
As for UFO's with aliens at the controls, what has to be considered first is every other possibility, because the least likely of all possibilities, within reason, is alien visitation. Given the time it would take to get here from even the closest star system with a habitable planet and intelligent life on it, and more, with the ability to make such a journey, makes the notion of alien visitations unlikely at best. I won't say impossible, but to any reasonable person, every other possibility has to be rejected first. And I do mean all of them. Alien visitation would be the most extraordinary of all possibilities.
Just because it's likely that life may exists on other planets in the Universe, and might even be a common occurrence, does not shorten the distance that would have to be traveled to get here from another star system. Sure, you can speculate on the possibility of civilizations so advanced that they have overcome that formidable an obstacle. But that's all it is. Speculation. As a critical thinkers, most of us would be hard pressed to default to speculation when more down to earth possibilities are available to us. Occums razor. Unless the evidence is very close to undeniable, there is simply no reason to go there.
Perhaps the flairs did burn too long to be flairs. Can you not think of any other possibility other than it was alien vessels? Because until every other possibility proves unlikely in the extreme, and only then, can you even begin to posit alien visitation, with the understanding that much more substantial evidence would be required than strangely behaving lights in the sky, before you can form any kind of workable hypothesis. You don't get to fill in a mystery with an extremely speculative answer. "I dunno" will suffice. To a skeptic, anyhow...
I am reposting this part of another post to show that there truly more things in the heaven and earth...
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/08/has-warp-speed-.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/11935
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17476-ion-engine-could-one-day-power-39day-trips-to-mars.html?full=true
http://www.jlab.org/news/internet/1997/spooky.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3308109.stm
The links above show:
1. Stopping light in its tracks totally.
2. Teleportation
3. Spooky effect at a distance.
4. A way to get around the speed of light.
And, of course, there's the Drake Equation. With all of these things going on, don't you think that 10-50-100 yrs. from now we might come up with some stuff that would astound us just like relativity and quantum mechanics would have blown Newton's mind?
Here's what gets me about the Drake Equation thing. Most debunkers will say that they think there probably is life somewhere in the universe but they never define "life". Once you've opened the door to the possibility of life you have to include anything from bacteria to fungus to primitive sentients to highly advanced civilizations to some bizarre life form we can't even imagine (see Star Trek). Bacterial life is no more or no less likely or unlikely than advanced life.
Now, of course, you consider the most logical things first...Occam's Razor. But let us not forget that Occam's Razor is a double edged blade. Occam's Beard© - the simplest solution is not always the best.
So far I have not heard anything but a Forced Plausible© to explain the first event. I have questions that are still unanswered about the second event. Why on earth would I grasp at the first thing that sounds plausible when so far, I see gaps in the Official Story. I'm not saying that those gaps can't or aren't filled, just that with the research I've done so far and the questions I have asked so far, the gaps have yet to be filled. Help me out if you can, please.
1. What explanation was given for the first event?
2. Did the lights over Phoenix last longer than the burn time of the flares used by the National Guard.
3. Did the people see lights overhead that were actually optical illusions from 38 miles away?
4. Is the Govt. in the habit of dropping blazing hot flares over civilian populations?
The Scientific Method is only as far knowing and far seeing as its present limitations will allow it to be. The edge of the cosmological, quantum envelope is continually getting pushed out, but unfortunately, there are people that frantically keep trying to pull back until finally they loose the tug-o-war contest. Thank God for open minded, visionary people leading the charge.
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Sacred Cows make the tastiest hamburgers |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 12:11:13 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by jakesteele
Now, I can't stress this point enough. I am not saying they were flying saucers, I am simply asking questions about what appear to be unanswered questions about the Official Story. That's it, nothing more. |
Except for when you demand that scientists and other "debunkers" admit to the possibility that they might have been flying saucers. If you held no interest in such an explanation, you wouldn't be complaining when it's not examined.
By the way, the same site that you link to for the LUU-2 also has information on the LUU-4 (7 minute burn time) and LUU-19 (infrared). |
- 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 - 10/03/2009 : 12:28:40 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by jakesteele
I am reposting this part of another post to show that there truly more things in the heaven and earth... |
This is ridiculous and insulting, Jakesteele. It's obvious that there are more things in the heavens and in the earth than are dreamt of by you, but to assume that other people haven't considered these things while assessing the possibility of alien visitation is nothing more than a plea for your own ignorance.| Occam's Beard© - the simplest solution is not always the best. |
And this is your plea for people to give serious consideration to your fantasies.| So far I have not heard anything but a Forced Plausible© to explain the first event. |
And so far, you have presented nothing but a Forced Plausible for why people should think that alien flying saucers are "feasibile."| 2. Did the lights over Phoenix last longer than the burn time of the flares used by the National Guard. |
If they lasted longer than 7 minutes each (important word, there), then they weren't military flares, period.| 3. Did the people see lights overhead that were actually optical illusions from 38 miles away? |
It's happened before, with inversion layers and all. What was the weather like?
On a different tack, what does "overhead" mean in a technical sense?| 4. Is the Govt. in the habit of dropping blazing hot flares over civilian populations? |
From your own source, the LUU-2 is desgined to completely burn out (even the canister). The hot stuff doesn't reach the ground. |
- 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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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 13:19:31 [Permalink]
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Dude:
It is not reasonable to say there is any chance aliens have visited earth until you have some evidence they even exist. |
Me:
Where else is there to go unless we are absolutely certain that no alien visitations have occurred? The point is, we have no reason to believe that they have occurred. |
I'm not buying into anything. And I don't know how you got that from what I wrote. If you don't allow for even the tentative conclusion that we are not being visited by aliens, I don't know what to say. If you are so absolutely sure that we are not being visited by aliens that's fine. It just falls out the realm of what we generally promote as critical thinkers. I did mention back there that there must be much better evidence for alien visitation than mysterious lights in the sky, before we can consider alien visitation as anything other than extreme speculation. Maybe you missed that.
I'm hoping that you have just misunderstood what I am saying. Perhaps I could have worded it better...
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 13:48:19 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by jakesteele
4. A way to get around the speed of light. |
This last is the one that's at least a little interesting and new-ish, but not because the methods represent feasible mechanisms |
Making photons go slower than c isn't a feat. We've know about it for almost as long as we've know that light were photons. The most interesting is by how much.
The photon travelled slower than 3*10^8 m/s, but it travelled at the speed of light in that medium (because the medium was more dense than vacuum). The medium limits the speed: if you made a liquid that slowed a photon to 10 knots, you wouldn't be able to pilot a submarine through it at 11 knots.
To travel faster than a photon in vacuum, you need to travel in a medium less dense than vacuum.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 15:39:25 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Making photons go slower than c isn't a feat. We've know about it for almost as long as we've know that light were photons. The most interesting is by how much.
The photon travelled slower than 3*10^8 m/s, but it travelled at the speed of light in that medium (because the medium was more dense than vacuum). The medium limits the speed: if you made a liquid that slowed a photon to 10 knots, you wouldn't be able to pilot a submarine through it at 11 knots.
To travel faster than a photon in vacuum, you need to travel in a medium less dense than vacuum. |
Actually, the slowing down photons experiment didn't really slow them down at all. Per the article, the researchers basically found a way to create a pair of "virtual mirrors" (for lack of a better term), between which the photons bounced at c, indefinitely. The point to it wasn't to slow light or to stop it, but to store a light pulse and release it at will. In other words, an all-optical bit of memory.
The other faster-than-light thing that Jakesteele posted was to information about the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical Star Trek-style "warp drive" which, unfortunately, would require converting gazillions of galaxies into pure energy just to send something as small as a nickel from here to our own galactic core.
Neither are any help for any aliens trying to get to Earth. |
- 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 - 10/03/2009 : 19:37:36 [Permalink]
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Kil,
It seems as if you are leaving some possibility open that Jake's "event" could have been caused by aliens. Am I 100% sure it wasn't aliens? No, but only in the same sense that I am not 100% sure Ricky can't crap out that SUV. Your wording seems a little loose maybe.
The correct response to claims of alien visitation is to ask for evidence, and if that evidence is not fotrhcomming, or isn't actually evidence, the we can simply dismiss the claim.
The whole alien thing is a layered series of assertions, none of which have any supporting evidence. Aliens exist, they have the abilty to come here, they share a human-like curiosity to explore, they are aware of us, and only then do you get to the part about them actually visiting earth to mutilate a cow or ten.
Saying that gravity fairies are what is responsible for gravity is less absurd, since you can actually demonstrate the mass attraction of gravity.
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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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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2009 : 20:25:00 [Permalink]
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Dude:
Kil,
It seems as if you are leaving some possibility open that Jake's "event" could have been caused by aliens. Am I 100% sure it wasn't aliens? No, but only in the same sense that I am not 100% sure Ricky can't crap out that SUV. Your wording seems a little loose maybe. |
I leave the door open this far. If evidence is ever produced (and I don’t mean mysterious lights in the sky) that aliens are visiting us, I would be willing to consider it if enough reputable scientists thought it was worth investigating. And that goes for all claims that we generally regard as almost assuredly false. We must be at least that open, which isn’t very, or we truly do become nothing more than debunkers.
Dude:
The correct response to claims of alien visitation is to ask for evidence, and if that evidence is not fotrhcomming, or isn't actually evidence, the we can simply dismiss the claim. |
Agreed.
Dude:
The whole alien thing is a layered series of assertions, none of which have any supporting evidence. Aliens exist, they have the abilty to come here, they share a human-like curiosity to explore, they are aware of us, and only then do you get to the part about them actually visiting earth to mutilate a cow or ten. |
Agreed. It’s all nothing more than wild speculation.
Dude:
Saying that gravity fairies are what is responsible for gravity is less absurd, since you can actually demonstrate the mass attraction of gravity. |
Well, no. The alien claim is not more absurd for the reason that there really are planetary systems out there, and probably, somewhere, life. We haven’t detected any life, let alone intelligent life, but we are reasonably confident, given the size of the universe, that life exists somewhere. Fairies, on the other hand, are about as likely as Ricky crapping out an SUV because there is no detectable realm of existence that would account for them.
But right here, I am down to nit picking…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Phoenix Lights flare debris
