On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:51:05 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> There are those who believe in climate change not because they've
>> applied any rigor to it, but they have a "sense" that it's true even
>> though they haven't studied it personally.  They "take it on faith"
>> that the science/ scientists who support their point of view have done
>> their homework.
> 
>   To be fair, in subjects that I understand very little about (if
>   anything
> at all) I'm prone to believing the scientific community (especially if
> it's widely accepted) a lot more easily than anybody else. The reason is
> that I know (at least a bit) how science works and why it's more
> reliable than other forms of "investigation". Hence if two differing
> claims are made about an obscure subject, I find science's claim more
> reliable by default.
> 
>   So far I have had very few disappointments with this (if at all).
> All the disappointments have been on the other direction.

The thing is that there have been scientific studies done that show both 
results.  Some (on both side of the discussion) have been proven to be 
incomplete, incorrect, or flat out wrong.  That's why there's so much 
noise made about "falsified data" on the side of the "pro-climate change" 
group.

I just would note that I've not stated what my own belief on this subject 
is in the above paragraph.

>> (Incidentally, "UFOs" - are real.  I see things in the sky every day
>> that I can't identify - so for me, it is a flying object that's
>> unidentified. ;) )
> 
>   As I commented in another post, sometimes we should just accept
> colloquialisms as they are, even if they are technically speaking
> incorrect. Language changes and fighting against it is not very useful.

In this case, I agree, though "UFO" has come to mean "spaceship from 
another world".  But I still like playing games with literal meanings, 
too, if only to make people think.

Jim

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On 10/27/2011 10:16, Stephen wrote:
> On 27/10/2011 5:43 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It's complete bunk.
>
> So, say you. Earthling!

Say-a what you-a will, Monkey boy!

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 10/26/2011 11:06 PM, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> On 10/25/2011 22:43, Saul Luizaga wrote:
>>> The point being: there are indications of some things out there that are
>>> suspicious, and can't be explained
>>
>> Good so far...
>>
>>> but the logical conclusions are this and that... etc.
>>
>> If they can't be explained, how can you call your conclusions "logical"?
>
> Well all the recollection of testimonials, scientific testing of samples
> taken on sites and ufologist analysis, some ufologists with a background
> of decades and they having normal jobs, so I assume you don't hire crazy
> people so I think they reasoning is sound, they don't do it for a
> living, they are thinking normal people that dedicate their time and
> resources to find out the truth of course they must get money from their
> help but I doubt is big. Ufologists are far more scientific than you
> might think.
Otherwise sane people, with jobs, claim they *know* that the government 
is intentionally producing "chemtrails", on the basis of finding 
Aluminum in water (the single most common element on the damn planet, 
along side Silicon). Just saying...

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On 10/27/2011 1:44 PM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> I.e., by not calling (say) air force investigators who come to the
>> conclusion that those lights are actually russian fighter jets "ufologists",
>> you are of course amplifying how much evidence you think they have.
>
>    The military is biased and has their own agenda, and thus naturally they
> cannot be trusted! If a member of the military denies that a phenomenon is
> an alien spaceship, that's actually convincing evidence that it *was* an
> alien spaceship.
>
>    (Of course if a member of the military claims that it *was* an alien
> spaceship, he is immediately a trustworthy reliable source of inside
> information. Only those members of the military who deny it are unreliable.)
>
Of course, the third, and more likely option, that they are both partly 
lying to you, either the make sure, in case #1, that you don't hit on 
what it actually *was*, and in case #2, that you will ignore what it 
might be, in favor of the totally nuts, isn't even on the radar. The 
best lie is the one where you tell the person the absolute truth, but 
leave out critical details (such as what it really was, or any hint as 
to what it was). The second best is to tell the persons precisely what 
they are *sure* it is already.

Since its not plausible for the same person to claim both, at the same 
time, unless they are a Republican politician, of course, you need two 
different people, to present the apposing fictions. ;)

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On 10/26/2011 11:08 PM, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> I see what you mean and a "crazy" person obsessed is different from a
> respected ufologist, check the series, is not like that at all.
Believing only one implausible thing isn't any better, especially when 
most of the foundations behind the idea you are pursuing come, directly 
or indirectly, from the "crazy" people. It becomes a sort of cargo 
cultism. It doesn't matter which tribe member first became convinced 
that building runways and fake radio towers would bring back the 
airplanes, now everyone is just *certain* that they are just not quite 
getting it quite "right".

The people looking for Atlantis are similar. Its plausible that a whole 
hell of a lot of stuff they are stumbling over, and following "may" lead 
to artifacts of prior civilization, the problem is, Atlantis isn't going 
to be that civilization. It is, and always has been, nothing but a 
single mention in some old poem, and 100% of everything since is based 
on the works of one total kook. Not one scrap of anything the man wrote 
was researched by him personally, he didn't travel, didn't do 
archeology, or so much as leave his house, except maybe to buy some new 
book on speculative archeology, or mythology, which he used to create 
his works. He just strung a mass of bits and pieces of half discovered 
stuff together, and concluded it "pointed to" something that no other 
record *anywhere* from ancient times even remotely suggests is real, 
existed, or gives a name to.

He was Tolkien, before people knew that the sort of stuff Tolkien wrote 
was "fiction", and everything we know about Atlantis, is pretty much 
indistinguishable, in its reality, from Mordor.

Ufology is a crazy mix of stuff from people that fall into one of three 
categories:

1. We think its something like what all the nuts prior to us claim.

2. We don't know, but sort of hope that some advanced civilization has 
better science than us, so it *could be* something sort of like, #1, 
only without the crazy.

3. We don't know at all, but we sure as hell don't trust anyone else to 
figure it out, especially the military, government, or most scientists.

In short, even the relatively sane ones are still paranoid.

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On 10/26/2011 4:14 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:10:42 -0400, Warp wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson<nos### [at] nospamcom>  wrote:
>>> It's not just ufologists and 'new age hippies' - it's pretty much
>>> anyone who believes something.  It's people who "believe" in climate
>>> change.
>>
>>    I really hope that wasn't meant to imply that you oppose the concept
>>    of
>> climate change.
>
> My inclusion/exclusion of topics has nothing to do with my position on
> those claims. :)
>
>>    (I agree that you shouldn't believe scientific claims just because
>>    they
>> say so, but instead you should understand where those claims are coming
>> from and what their justification is, as well as understand how the
>> scientific method works and why it's different from superstition and
>> conspiracy theories. It's just that I'm not sure what you meant by the
>> above quote.)
>
> There are those who believe in climate change not because they've applied
> any rigor to it, but they have a "sense" that it's true even though they
> haven't studied it personally.  They "take it on faith" that the science/
> scientists who support their point of view have done their homework.
>
> That's no different than believing in UFOs because MUFON exists and they
> say UFOs are real.
>
> (Incidentally, "UFOs" - are real.  I see things in the sky every day that
> I can't identify - so for me, it is a flying object that's
> unidentified. ;) )
>
> Jim
Which is certainly true. But, the counter argument is that the guy that 
stays on the plane, because he is sure that angels are carrying the 
wings, will stay on the plane, while the guy that thinks they "zapped" 
everyone, including the plane with an "anti-gravity ray", might just be 
dumb enough to open the door and jump out. There may be no functional 
difference between the two, but one has a bloody lot higher odds of 
being right, or surviving, even if its by accident. lol

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On 10/27/2011 2:55 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:51:05 -0400, Warp wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson<nos### [at] nospamcom>  wrote:
>>> There are those who believe in climate change not because they've
>>> applied any rigor to it, but they have a "sense" that it's true even
>>> though they haven't studied it personally.  They "take it on faith"
>>> that the science/ scientists who support their point of view have done
>>> their homework.
>>
>>    To be fair, in subjects that I understand very little about (if
>>    anything
>> at all) I'm prone to believing the scientific community (especially if
>> it's widely accepted) a lot more easily than anybody else. The reason is
>> that I know (at least a bit) how science works and why it's more
>> reliable than other forms of "investigation". Hence if two differing
>> claims are made about an obscure subject, I find science's claim more
>> reliable by default.
>>
>>    So far I have had very few disappointments with this (if at all).
>> All the disappointments have been on the other direction.
>
> The thing is that there have been scientific studies done that show both
> results.  Some (on both side of the discussion) have been proven to be
> incomplete, incorrect, or flat out wrong.  That's why there's so much
> noise made about "falsified data" on the side of the "pro-climate change"
> group.
>
Sadly, the whole "controversy" is pure bullshit, as is the "falsified 
data". Yes, this happens. It happens among paid for shills, working for 
places owned by people with clear agendas, who are, as has been said, 
"have a hard time understanding something, when they are paid not to." 
When there is a concerted effort to use the trappings of scientific 
investigation to promote profit, or denial, and the general public is 
actively discouraged from either knowing enough to tell the difference, 
never mind how to tell the difference, its hardly surprising that public 
trust is lost, and it becomes easier to confuse people with false 
information.

In many case the "different studies produce opposite results" 
unfortunately is a mix of bad studies (there are a whole hell of a lot 
of those, especially among those trying to "prove" some seriously stupid 
shit, or trying to use scientism to promote pseudoscience), there are 
cases where they just failed to do a large enough sample size, of other 
conditions distorted the result. And, unfortunately, especially in 
medicinal research, there is a time limit between patent, production, 
and pay off, which inherently biases the system to try to get positive 
results, prove the medicine as soon as feasible, and make back the cost 
of research, as quickly as feasible, before the patent runs out. This 
means high cost, sometimes poor control in testing, or even cherry 
picked data, in the sense of de-enphasizing data that implies possible 
problems, combined with fast tracking of what "appears" to be a 
successful product.

Usually this isn't critical, but with medicine often becoming more 
precise, exacting, specific to conditions, and thus, prone to unknown 
variables, or even hard to test for effects, in many cases, its creating 
some big problems. However, in nearly every case where a failure has 
arisen, there was prior evidence, in the studies, ignored or otherwise, 
indicating that the problem *might* have existed. Thus its not a failure 
of science, but a failure to "apply it" properly.

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On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:27:56 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Otherwise sane people, with jobs, claim they *know* that the government
> is intentionally producing "chemtrails", on the basis of finding
> Aluminum in water (the single most common element on the damn planet,
> along side Silicon). Just saying...

No, no, no, we all know it's because they've fluoridated the water. ;)

Jim

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On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:48:25 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Which is certainly true. But, the counter argument is that the guy that
> stays on the plane, because he is sure that angels are carrying the
> wings, will stay on the plane, while the guy that thinks they "zapped"
> everyone, including the plane with an "anti-gravity ray", might just be
> dumb enough to open the door and jump out. There may be no functional
> difference between the two, but one has a bloody lot higher odds of
> being right, or surviving, even if its by accident. lol

I'm not sure what this is in reference to from what I wrote.....?

Jim

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On 10/26/2011 11:45 PM, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> yeah, you know every possible outcome and you know everything there is
> to it and for a fact you can demonstrate there can't be anything else,
> sure... your opinion hardly could be more biased, but OK, I see now how
> difficult is to reason when the people don't want to and find some
> intellectual pretext to not do so. But is your opinion and I respect it.
Where is the evidence that aliens are a plausible explanation, at all. 
We don't even know if "alien" is a coherent definition, or just a 
anthropomorphic projection of the original meaning of "outsider" to some 
non-existent thing from another planet. We simply don't know. The answer 
to, "What is it?", is either, "something known", or "I don't know". 
Unless you already have real, clear, evidence that space aliens are 
real, or any of the other myriad supposed things they "might be", as 
suggested by such UFOlogists, its no more a coherent, never mind 
plausible, explanation than that its time travelers, ghosts, holograms, 
pixies, or magic tea pots.

I don't have a damn clue, any more than they do, what the hell they are. 
But I do bloody well know that I **don't** have a clue, and that there 
is, therefor, no reason to pull some random science fiction term, from 
Orwell and the like, out of my butt, and say, "I think this is a 
reasonable thing for it to be." By that definition of "reasonable" 
demons, ghosts, Ayakashi would have made just as much sense, a few 
hundred years ago. And, there where lots of *examples* of prints, 
mysterious burn marks, strange and spooking feelings, and people 
claiming to have personally *seen* those things, at the time too, even 
including, "artifacts", in some cases, "owned by them", which, 
"disappeared", but where of, "unearthly origin", according to the people 
that handled them.

I am not telling you what I know these things are. I am telling you why 
its absurd to assume, just because a lot of people currently think its a 
space ship, instead of a sky dragon, and find that more "scientific", 
with no more evidence than was once used to *prove* the sky dragon, that 
those people have any better idea what they are dealing with, or a more 
plausible answer, without clear evidence, than a 10th century peasant, 
who thought it was spirits, or a 15th century Japanese priest, who 
thought he saw a demon lord menacing his village.

Having a more modern, "We haven't a damn clue, but this sounds good!", 
version doesn't make it, or the witnesses, or the explanations, or the 
vague and inconclusive "evidence" that you see with UFOs any more 
reasonable.

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