Aliens, yay or nay?

[bombadil.360]

You already agreed that we can never objectively know anything. All we can do is make inferences by comparing our sense data and experiences with the reported experiences of others.

That which we experience directly deserves more credibility than that which we hear about from others, and we should ask others to provide evidence of their claims before WE assign any truth to their claims.

we can indeed know something objectively, but such an knowing is non-transferable, and hence in a way can be said to be subjective, as only the individual subject is able to experience it.

maybe even two or more people can come to objectively know the same object of knowledge, however, it's still subjective in their unique approach and expression/description of such.

also, if you say that what we experience directly deserves more credibility than what others experience; why would you go around asking for empirical proof of aliens, ghosts or souls?

who am I to judge BOG or anyone else in regards their direct experience of any such event?

that's the problem with all the pseudo-scientists trapped in Scientism, somehow they have fooled themselves into thinking that they themselves are the absolute point of reference, talk about narcissism...

 

[Anti]

we can indeed know something objectively, but such an knowing is non-transferable, and hence in a way can be said to be subjective, as only the individual subject is able to experience it.

maybe even two or more people can come to objectively know the same object of knowledge, however, it's still subjective in their unique approach and expression/description of such.

^^^ Agreed.

also, if you say that what we experience directly deserves more credibility than what others experience; why would you go around asking for empirical proof of aliens, ghosts or souls?

Because empirical evidence is stuff that I can EXAMINE DIRECTLY. Having directly examined it myself, it ceases to be YOUR data and becomes MY data. Thus it is more credible if the person making the claim can supply said evidence rather than testimony.

who am I to judge BOG or anyone else in regards their direct experience of any such event?

If you mean "judge" as in "look down on" then you are NOBODY to judge and NEITHER AM I. If you mean "evaluate his claims" then you ARE judging, just as you are judging me. You do it all the time. The function of consciousness is to judge that which cannot be intuited. To make decisions. To choose. To judge.

that's the problem with all the pseudo-scientists trapped in Scientism, somehow they have fooled themselves into thinking that they themselves are the absolute point of reference, talk about narcissism...

I'm attempting to have a discussion. People are making claims. I am asking for the evidence of those claims.

For instance if I say I saw a bird... that happens all the time. You probably believe I saw the bird.

But if I say 20 years ago, I saw Sasquatch and he cooked me dinner, and he burned the sausage.... you probably never had an experience anything REMOTELY close to that... your first reaction would likely be skeptical inquiry.


If I was your guru you would nod your head vacantly and instantly "KNOW" that Sasquatch was real and a real nice fella, but also a lousy cook.

If you generally respected me, you would ask for more information.

If I was known for spouting crazy stories and never being able to back them up, you might just ignore me, or laugh off my words as the babbling of a madman.

Any of which would be judgment on your part.

 

[bombadil.360]

Because empirical evidence is stuff that I can EXAMINE DIRECTLY. Having directly examined it myself, it ceases to be YOUR data and becomes MY data. Thus it is more credible if the person making the claim can supply said evidence rather than testimony.

this is the part that's very complicated to understand:

you cannot, and let me type this again, cannot, examine empirically stuff that is of no concern to pure science.

you cannot empirically examine a ufo sighting story; operating word here being 'story'.

you cannot empirically gather evidence or proof out of the subjective experience of an individual to determine shit.

that's the slippery-slope where all the psuedo-scientists fall into eventually reaching the bottomless pit of Scientism i.e: Dawkins et all.

by Judging I mean: what give precedence to your subjective experience of life in general over another's, when it comes to try to embody a point of reference through which credibility can be established?

this 'judging' from a healthy point of experiential reference is only applicable in obvious manifestations of simple psychological disorders: paranoia, narcissism, etc...

but when it comes to religion, philosophy and in this case experienced ufo sightings, it's pretty useless.

 

[Anti]

this is the part that's very complicated to understand:

you cannot, and let me type this again, cannot, examine empirically stuff that is of no concern to pure science.

define pure science.

you cannot empirically examine a ufo sighting story; operating word here being 'story'.

you cannot empirically gather evidence or proof out of the subjective experience of an individual to determine shit.

Agreed. This is my stance as well. Therefore when people present subjective experience and label that subjective experience, I can ask questions in order to better understand their statements and then ask for evidence if they present a claim.

Compare the following two statements:

"I saw a strange thing in the woods. There were lights and sounds I've never seen before and I saw a glowing object that seemed to be hovering above the trees."

"I saw an alien space ship in the woods one time."


The first requires no evidence. No extraordinary claim has been made. People have been known to see strange things from time to time. It's recorded in histories. We may personally have seen weird things.

The second is a claim that presupposes many things:

• Intelligent life could exist (reasonable)
• Intelligent life PROBABLY exists (still reasonable, given the sheer size of the universe)
• Intelligent life DOES exist (extraordinary claim, requires evidence)
• Intelligent life exists and has the capability, resources and desire to travel across intersteller space (extraordinary claim! requires evidence)
• Intelligent aliens are here interacting with humans (extraordinary claim, requires evidence)
• and so on...

Why should you or I or anyone take such claims seriously without some kind of corroborating evidence? The invisible blue unicorn is standing behind you. If you turn to look, he will spear you through your chest with his horn. If you act normal, you will not feel his presence. If you go about your day, everything will be fine. If you turn and look for the unicorn, he will move and stay behind you. You cannot smell him, see him, taste him, touch him or sense him with your mind. But he is there and will eat your soul if you don't eat sugary breakfast cereals on wednesday afternoons between 3-4pm. And he says Leap Years were invented by the devil and looking it up is blasphemy.

by Judging I mean: what give precedence to your subjective experience of life in general over another's, when it comes to try to embody a point of reference through which credibility can be established?

Your own subjective experience of life has precedence in your own life. For the sake of discussion with others, it makes sense that the claims people make be judged by the evidence provided. Lacking evidence, an honest, rational person simply admits that they aren't sure exactly what is what, exactly as BOG did when questioned about it. I fully respect that.

this 'judging' from a healthy point of experiential reference is only applicable in obvious manifestations of simple psychological disorders: paranoia, narcissism, etc...

but when it comes to religion, philosophy and in this case experienced ufo sightings, it's pretty useless.

What do you suppose you are doing with these two statements?

 

[beatlejuice999]

yea in films mann,loads of different alien typeS
Here amongst us theres too much arguing that makes loads of alien types a reckon

or ya might call em monster ****** tw*t mot***f***** ,b***h etc

 

[bombadil.360]

What do you suppose you are doing with these two statements?

What I'm doing with those two statements is obviously stating that what I first called Judging is in regards an individual trying to be the absolute point of reference in terms of what can be considered credible or not. again, obviously, an individual is only able to be his/her own point of reference and hence his/her own judge, specially when it comes down to determining whether what he/she saw was a ufo or a mere hallucination. get it or too difficult still?

by pure science I mean: biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics.

this means that only within these areas of knowledge does empiricism holds any weight; outside of it, it's just considered Scientism and Narcissism.

anyway, already downed a whole bottle of stolychnaya to my head, gonna eat something and hit the sack.

peace!

 

[Anti]

this means that only within these areas of knowledge does empiricism holds any weight; outside of it, it's just considered Scientism and Narcissism.

So we must simply accept anything that anyone says if it doesn't fall strictly into the disciplines of mathematics, biology and chemistry?

Then I say you're wrong. And you have to accept it. Or you're just being a narcissist.

Have a great night!

 

[PascalLacsap]

Even ultra conservatively, there must be millions of inhabited planets in the universe. We are neither alone nor unique.

 

[OliverMollusc]

yes

both here and other planets

 

[BushyOldGrower]

Yes, the experiences people relate do often have similarities that as a totality persuades people to choose to believe what they like.

Sometimes seeing is believing and I accept that my opinions are subject to error and this is always true even of science. We do try to be logical in our approach to new experiences and I appreciate good science.

What I wonder about is why someone would want to try and disprove like making fake crop circles. A funny thing to fake to debunk something.

 

[legalizeDK]

"Antony van Leeuwenhoek did not have much education or a scientific background, yet he defied all odds to be reckoned as a great scientist through his skillful observations, insight and unmatched curiosity. He revolutionized biological science by exposing microscopic life to the world"

before he discovered bacteria no one would have believed that microorganism existed. but he had the advantage that the world is full of microscopic life, the ufo thing is very elusive and when people see a ufo they usually dont run around equiptment to measure or document what they are seeing.

how would one document such a thing?

 

[bombadil.360]

So we must simply accept anything that anyone says if it doesn't fall strictly into the disciplines of mathematics, biology and chemistry?

Then I say you're wrong. And you have to accept it. Or you're just being a narcissist.

Have a great night!

no, it means that the empirical method is only applicable to the pure sciences.

not applicable to anything else.

there are other methods of determining how accurate something is outside empiricism and pure science.

is any of this registering over there? lol...

have you even looked up what Scientism is? it is exactly what you are stuck in... trying to use the ruler of science to measure everything, even those things that fall outside the design of what empiricism is able to deal with.

you cannot measure aesthetics empirically to begin with... aesthetics includes everything that deals with Beauty; that means: love, art, food, friendship, religious experience, etc...

the whole of aesthetics is a much larger portion of the human experience than all the pure sciences together; hence it is short-sighted and narrow minded to think that all must bow down to the measure of empiricism.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Aesthetics will not give you the answer to "what is that thing in the sky?". It will allow you to say that it is beautiful and amazing but doesn't do a damned thing about telling you what it is or where it came from. Science is the appropriate tool here.

For what it's worth, here's some Richard Feynman quotes about what science is and is not;


"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."

"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt."

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.”

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?"

"Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which 'are' there."

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

“So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.”

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

“The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”


edit; Oh, I saw a great bumper sticker yesterday.

"You don't have to believe everything you think"

 

[Anti]

 

[BushyOldGrower]

Science or religion?

Science or religion?

Good conversation.

How many angels can fit on the head of a pin was once a big debate but it wasn't good science.

Science doesn't scoff at the idea of alien life at all anymore...SETI is real. We expect to hear them eventually. Some fear the aliens are coming but I don't.

Crop circles must scare some to try and fake them.

Buddhism is logical and cause and effect is like science but is Buddhism a religion?

Is science pure? Nah...

Lotta bad science presented as facts passes for true. Carl Sagan in The Cosmic Connection, asserted that there couldn't be one god because of the light speed limitation and he also said there wasn't enough metal in the galaxy or some stupid shit like that being the reason no ufos have visited the Earth. sheesh...

That religion. when Buddhism asserts that reincarnation is fact this is religion too.

When people try to use science to disprove ufos they are better off getting a good religion.

 

[bombadil.360]

Aesthetics will not give you the answer to "what is that thing in the sky?". It will allow you to say that it is beautiful and amazing but doesn't do a damned thing about telling you what it is or where it came from. Science is the appropriate tool here.

of course aesthetics will not give you the answer as to what's the true nature of ufos... my example about aesthetics was simply to demostrate such ample side of the human experience where empiricism is useless.

to add, sure, it is through science that we can determine the real nature of ufos, however, it is not through science that we must judge whether what an individual experienced in relation to ufos is true or not.

how do we know this? it has been done a lot, and no conclusive answers have been found; in fact, such stubborn insistence that we must probe 'tirefully' anyone who claims to have seen an ufo to 'get the truth out of him', has done more damage than good.

there's a thin line between studying the phenomena of ufos scientifically, and quite another matter trying to tell someone who experienced something with ufos that he's just wrong because he can't empirically prove his experience. operating word here being experience, which btw falls under the realm of aesthetics.

peace!

 

[gaiusmarius]

come on lets stop arguing about what is proof and what isn't, i want to read more encounters of the strange kind with unexplained or identified objects, lol. you too having a row about what is scientific proof and what is personal opinion etc is not so interesting as people telling of their strange encounters imo

 

[Jellyfish]

I remember one time I was riding my bicycle at night with an alien in the basket in front, and all of a sudden, the bike took off in the air and started flying around. I can't remember what happened after that, but when I woke up next morning, I had the taste of popcorn in my mouth. Weird, huh?

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

come on lets stop arguing about what is proof and what isn't, i want to read more encounters of the strange kind with unexplained or identified objects, lol. you too having a row about what is scientific proof and what is personal opinion etc is not so interesting as people telling of their strange encounters imo

Someone posted on this thread or on the paranormal thread going around, about a YouTube series where retired pilots tell their stories of unexplained encounters. I was trying to find that post this morning but have had no luck.

 

[unthing]

anyone want to share their subjective experience with transforming machine elves or how did it go..