Love/ Hate UFOs
Sometimes I wonder about fundamentalist skeptics and their efforts to disprove all UFO and paranormal cases at all costs (to the point of ignoring evidence, casting the arguments to their own liking or engaging in character assassination.) The thing is, I wonder equally about believers who essentially do the same thing. Actually, they’re both pretty entertaining, maybe more than the phenomenon itself.
Sure, Billy Meier is ridiculous, the “drone” pictures are most certainly faked and anyone with a reasonably decent suite of software can make a pretty good video of craft flying over wind-whipped palm trees in Haiti. Does this leave any sort of hope for people who always enjoy a mystery, and realize that we probably haven’t learned all that there is to know?
If you’re the type of person who has settled on science (and perhaps an incomplete impression of its methods) as the way to make a determination on reality, you might think that it can solve the UFO problem. The scientific standards for repeatability, confirmation, and ultimate proof have not been satisfied by those pesky saucers and whoever pilots them (if that is indeed what is happening) and perhaps they will never be.
To a scientific fundamentalist, this means that there is nothing to the UFO subject, except perhaps as an epiphenomenon of psychology. For some of this group, the small segment of society who insist on the reality of UFOs are the enemy, who should be hounded by rationalists whenever they rear their wild-eyed heads. These people can’t stand those who look on the phenomenon almost as a religion (and in some cases as religion.) If a check isn’t kept on outlandish beliefs, they say, our society will tumble down the slippery slope of irrationality.
Nothing these people do, however will ever dampen the spirits of the UFO believers, who seemingly carry the banner of irrationality before them, marching as to war. The UFO haters live in willful ignorance of a preponderance of nagging evidence. UFO lovers usually ignore attempts at rational explanations, and pounce on those who even doubt the reality of alien visitors from other planets. Fortunately, they have a very large uphill battle with the rest of the population.
The smugness of the UFO disbelievers is an easy position to maintain in our society. The apparent desperation of the converts is like a political campaign whose candidate continues to fight on after most people have stopped listening.
The common denominator however, is belief. Both groups are really believers.
Then, there are rest of us–those who have accepted that snap judgments are often dangerous. In spite of the impression that the UFO lovers and haters give us that there is some sort of mammoth struggle for certainty on the issue, many people are perfectly content to let the subject simmer in the “maybe” pot. Unfortunately, most interested observers see the religious war going on and often fail to realize that their perceptions are being steered toward one camp or the other, and that they don’t need to be drawn inexorably in either direction. It’s a controlled conversation masquerading as a debate.
Enlightened, interested examination reveals that there is likely more the to UFO subject than misidentifications, hoaxes etc, but that the standards of proof that most of us use have not been satisfied yet. This scenario is both interesting and rewarding, because it keeps us on or mental toes.
There is something behind the phenomenon, and our attempts to understand it will continue tell us much about our own standards and methods of finding proof. The shift in perception will probably come from outside of the study of UFOs–a discovery that will tell us more about how we think about things on the edge of our current understanding, rather than what those things may be.
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May 12 2008 
May 12th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Well said!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Likewise. You Mr. Bishop, are the Switzerland of Ufology!
…But then again, weren’t the swiss banks the places where the nazis hid all their stolen money?? LOL
May 13th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Some are of the opinion that the obsession by skeptics towards irrational “rationalisations” for the UFO / Alien phenomena are related to the panic by some listeners to the 1938 Orson Welles radio show about Martian invaders!!!
But are we really to believe that in this day and age, in the “post-Sci Fi internet multimedia era”, that the public perceptions towards UFO / Aliens would be the same as it was 70 years ago?
May 13th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Very nicely put. The true believers and debunkers really do seem like the flip sides of the same coin, don’t they? Neither group employs lateral thinking, they simply ‘know’ the truth, according to their own particular mindset. Great post!
May 13th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Greg,
I agree with your assessment of the UFO “lovers and haters.”
I have the utmost respect for true skeptics and the “Switzerlands” (according to RPJ) of ufology. They keep the hoaxers under control, for the most part.
However, where do the witnesses, who are at the heart of the “preponderance of nagging evidence,” fit into this scenario? Once a person sees a UFO, there’s no going back to skepticism, unless the person doubts his or her own sanity. At the same time, most witnesses, do not slide into the kooky world of UFO fundamentalism. So, do they also sit somewhere in the middle, waiting on the truth?
May 13th, 2008 at 11:28 am
“The scientific standards for repeatability, confirmation, and ultimate proof have not been satisfied”
I’d agree with this statement to a degree but, setting aside the ufo thing for a moment, it strikes me as an open question as to how science’s demand for repeatability would be expected to respond to an intelligence that was an order of magnitude smarter than the scientist and didn’t want to be studied.
The social sciences don’t demand strict repeatability and look more at statistical patterns of behavior. From my vantage it appears that many skeptics seemed determined to demand that the repeatable observations obtainable in the natural sciences be applied to any hypothetical interaction with an advanced intelligence.
If a flying saucer were to land in the Rose Garden of the White House during an outdoor press conference, inscribe “We’re Here!” into the lawn with a laser beam and then fly away I don’t see how, in a technical sense, that would leave us with anything more than we already have in terms of evidence. It certainly doesn’t leave us with anything physical to repeatedly observe on demand.
It seems to me to be an open question as to whether our science is mature enough to potentially observe and study something that is much smarter than we are. I’d be interested in any books, fiction or non, that examine this question. Seems like it would be the basis for a good sci-fi novel.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Fair points, but “smarter than we are”
almost automatically asuumes the ETH is
the only valid one. Given the diversity
of sightings, its hard to imagine that
at least one space-faring civilization
didn’t/hasn’t thrown caution to the wind
and risked the censure of the rest of
the Galaxy by dropping in to visit the
Dali Lama, or tour the Louvre…( why do
we always assume an advanced culture is going to want to talk to our leaders?)
But people keep seeing things, and that
is enough for me-whether any of the
hypothosi(Correct plural?) are proved
in my lifetime or no, I’ll keep watching
the skies…
May 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
What I wonder about is the average person. The average person, even after much training, doesn’t have a lick of common logical sense or ability to scientifically reason. For example, the average person very often confuses what seems to be real with what is real. This is because they cannot tell the difference between the two. By itself, this is not a problem. People are free to use their imaginations and sometimes it can be wildly entertaining and inspiring when they do. The problem occurs when imagination and reality conflict with each other. One or the other has got to give way and reality is always the winner — no matter how hard you try, you cannot imagine a brick wall out of existence before you beat your head against one. Yet even after suffering through many such failures for themselves, the average person still refuses to question their beliefs but persists in their delusions, naively believing that if they were to ever be confronted by an illusion or hallucination, that they will somehow magically know that is an illusion or hallucination, or someone will tell them that it was an illusion or hallucination. They further convince themselves with logical fallacies such as the belief that if other people share their belief, then that belief must be real because illusions and hallucinations and delusions cannot be shared, therefore a small group of people (believers) cannot be duped by such things. They could not be more wrong. Therefore it should be no surprise when I say that the average person cannot understand the difference between a report of an object and evidence of the object reported. The most obvious difference between the two is that a report is not evidence; a report is simply words on a piece of paper. There are hundreds of thousands of REPORTS of Unidentified Flying Objects (in the classical sense of the term), but there have been absolutely no EVIDENCE of any Unidentified Flying Objects. What does that logically prove? Don’t ask the average person — they wouldn’t know.
I know and you know — we all know — that not a single person reading this post can read minds or influence the roll of a pair of dice or remote view the contents of our rooms. In any pseudoscientific endeavor, it is vital that one only report the successes and never the failures. If some allegedly scientific organizations were to be honest and do that, fad diets would never become fads, ESP ability would become ESP inability, ghosts stories would remain as stories, and no one would believe in UFOs. Yet they are such popular and compelling fantasies that we could do such things or that such things could exist, that we are eager and willing to delude ourselves into remaining a believer by trying to inundate ourselves with lots of statistics that “prove ESP exists” or “prove UFOs exist”. Yet if someone really could move dice with mind power alone, why hide behind statistics, especially when you are dealing with a phenomenon that is not a statistical (random or chaotic) phenomenon by nature? If someone can move dice with mind power alone, set a pair of dice on the table and tell that person to to tip or move the dice using mind power alone. It cannot be done because such a thing does not exist anywhere except in the average person’s imagination. That still doesn’t stop paranormal researchers from constantly grasping at straws, looking for the tiniest loophole in the scientific method that they can exploit, rather then admit the obvious — that all the paranormal is about smoke and mirrors and never anything real. Likewise, I know and you know that not a single person reading this post has ever seen an ET piloted vehicle or has been abducted by “the visitors”. No amount of reported words will change that fact. It is a popular and compelling fantasy and some people are willing to go so far as to play the role as an abductee or an expert on something that cannot be demonstrated to physically exist outside their poorly thought out imaginations, so it remains only a fantasy that they cannot even tell is only a fantasy. They confuse it for reality just because it seems real to them.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
“there have been absolutely no EVIDENCE of any Unidentified Flying Objects.”
I am so loathe to feed The_Sage but just for the record, please define your terms and explain your definition of the word “evidence.” It obviously excludes all eyewitness testimony from qualified observers, all sensor data and all physical trace evidence. What exactly does your definition of “evidence” include? Be comprehensive in your definition and perhaps give some examples of what would qualify as acceptable evidence.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
“smarter than we are” almost automatically asuumes the ETH is the only valid one.
Yes, I am assuming ETH here just for arguments sake. With an extremely rare but otherwise natural phenomenon my understanding is that the way science usually works is that the phenomenon largely remains ignored until somebody comes up with a theory that predicts the phenomenon and the prediction is determined to be correct by observation sooner or later. If however there is an active intelligence behind some phenomenon with some set of unknown needs/desires/goals that is not easily predicted by some equations, the best we seem to be able to manage atm is looking at statistical patterns.
So, just for the sake of argument, assume it is smarter than we and can evade attempts at close scrutiny at will. Is there a step between looking at general patterns and having something on which you can experiment with on demand?
May 13th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I have to laugh at Sage. He is proving Greg’s point about extremism. For some reason, though, his comments raised my hackles. I didn’t know “average people” had such interesting imaginations. Maybe it’s to compensate for their lack “of logical common sense and ability to scientifically reason.” If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake…….
May 13th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
NOT_ANONYMOUS:
“…your definition of the word ‘evidence’…obviously…excludes all eyewitness testimony…”
Eyewitness testimony that cannot be backed up with physical evidence is only acceptable in a court of law, not a court of science. For example, Billy Meir or Phillip Kraph and or George Adamski. Those are all “evidence” to you but they are all silly and mutually contradictory storytales to the rest of us.
“…from qualified observers, all sensor data and all physical trace evidence”
…none of which exists in the case of UFOs. Show me a sensor with UFO data on it. Show me some physical trace evidence that could only come from a UFO. It doesn’t exist.
“What exactly does your definition of “evidence” include?”
I use the same definition of evidence that *science* uses: physical proof, objective observation, and repeatable experiment. Obviously your definition does not include that.
“…give some examples of what would qualify as acceptable evidence”
An actual ET piloted vehicle, an actual ET, clearly taken photos by more than one (unrelated) person from multiple vantage points, intelligent radio transmissions that can be confirmed to come from deep space, etc.
“So, just for the sake of argument, assume it is smarter than we and can evade attempts at close scrutiny at will”
Then the ETs are idiots because they failed at that too. Ever hear of Close Encounters of the Fourth kind? You cannot get any closer than that.
CURIOUS:
“I have to laugh at Sage. He is proving Greg’s point about extremism.”
I have to laugh at you and what you consider extremism. Science, by any proper definition, is not extremism, unless you consider facts and logic “extreme” — in which case I would not want to see what you call taking the middle ground if it does not have facts and logic to it.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Regan,
Thank you!!
May 14th, 2008 at 12:44 am
LLPress,
There have been arguments that any sort of “disclosure” would destabilize the world too much. I don’t think that there is anything to disclose, except perhaps that there may be a non-human presence which interacts with us from time to time. That wouldn’t rattle too many cages, other than the people who would have to explain that there is nothing that they can do about it.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:45 am
RPJ,
Just what are you implying?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Siani,
It’s been said before and needs to be mentioned again from time to time. Thanks!
May 14th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Curious,
There may be as many reactions to sighting an unidentified as there are sightings. I don’t think that it can be categorized so easily, although Vallee had a chart he devised in the 1960s which took into account the subjective reactions of witnesses. People often make their own truth in the way that makes them feel the most comfortable.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:56 am
not anon,
I often think of the the “stranger than we can imagine” idea. Our ideas might look pretty strange to something that does not originate on this planet, or at least developed separately from humans or with its origins outside of our same space-time constructs.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:34 am
I have heard the semi- declaration of being an agnostic many times but lately the whole endlessly recycled subject has become boring like a dried flower arrangement, the same arguments, the same wack-a-moles popping up, the same episodic variations of plot lines ending in ambiguity, theres nothing new..the best books are reprints, people interviewing each other to kill time..the nostalgia of the golden age…its become a social-hobbyist niche like stamp collecting…maybe thats the conspiracy of aliens…we all become so bored and have discussed them into the ground that when they arrive..we say..oh, was that you up there…good job but I have to meet someone about a dog.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Greg,
All information gathered from our senses is filtered by our brains, so everything is subjective. As a group, we have a consensus reality. If, for example, you were to show 100 sighted people a white chair, and then ask them what it was and what color it was, you would get “white chair” 100 times. We need numbers, colors, shapes, and other concepts in order to communicate with each other.
The problem occurs with events and objects that are not a part of consensus reality. UFO’s, among other things, are examples of this problem. The Vallee classification system is meant to help researchers and witnesses describe their experiences in terms that can be understood by others, and to detect patterns in the behavior of the unknown objects. “It flew over my car.” — FB1. It flew over my car, and my car’s engine died.”– FB2, and so on. I agree these events are subjective because they have been processed by the brains of the witnesses, but to me the Vallee system is the objective “just the facts” (my apologies to Sage for using the word fact so loosely)approach.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Greg,
A very well written post and outline of the two (three) camps of general opinion and ufo’s and unknown phenomena. To me, it is about credibility. And, to me, at least several public figures have gone on record about what has been seen. I look only as far as some astronauts and Jackie Gleason for my `proof’ - (in addition to one lifetime ufo visual).
The fact is unknown phenomena occurs RARELY — so rarely that only personal accounts will be available. It is to those accounts that reliable scientific methods should be used to provide analysis.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Greg,
“I often think of the the “stranger than we can imagine” idea.”
From the recent newscientist.com article on sci-fi movies, regarding Solaris, “Stanislaw Lem, who wrote the original novel, was convinced that extraterrestrial life would be so strange that humans would be unable to understand it.”
I’m afraid that won’t do. I demand aliens that wear Nehru jackets, want to contact us via radio with their hand-held communicators and establish diplomatic and trade relations with NASA.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
“I demand aliens that wear Nehru jackets, want to contact us via radio with their hand-held communicators and establish diplomatic and trade relations with NASA”
What you will get instead are stories of broken-down spaceships, of abductees being put back into bed with their clothes on backwards or in the wrong vehicles, or of aliens using a wheat field as a method of communication, so the aliens must be idiots, not anything intelligent.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Not necessarily Sage, maybe the aliens act like idiots on purpose!
Remember Nixon & Kissinger’s “madman theory” that was applied to try to end the Vietnam war and in the alliance of the russians, by convincing them Nixon was crazy enough—and powerful enough—to use nuclear weapons against them? There was a really good article about this printed on Wired magazine a few months ago; and while I read it, I couldn’t stop thinking that scenario might apply with the UFO phenomenon:
*)UFOs behave in erratic and trickster-like manners, so for all practical purposes they seem crazy to us.
*)And they have displayed powers beyond the capacity of any nation or civil group, like floating over Los Angeles in 1942 while being fired by anti-aircraft batteries, without any evident damage; hovering a gigantic vessel in 1997 over a major populated city in the most powerful country in the world… or even flying awfully close to the restricted air space of the private ranch property of the leader of said nation in 2008!
So, maybe this is all part of a game based on the same psychological maneuvers Kissinger and his Harvard buddies devised 30 years ago to defeat the viet-cong, only this is made on a much grander scale, both in scope and time span.
Pure wild speculation, I know. But still…
May 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
“I couldn’t stop thinking that scenario might apply with the UFO phenomenon”
So UFOs want us to think they are going to use nuclear weapons against us?
If you take a closer look at your analogy, you will see that it is flawed.
Remember, Nixon acted like he was crazy, not like he was an idiot like the ETs do. If the ETs have a purpose, they are not consistently displaying a single purpose, as Nixon did — and that is what a *purpose* implies.
“Pure wild speculation, I know. But still…”
It isn’t wild speculation, it is inventing excuses to try and keep a belief alive that otherwise would die.
PS — UFOs have *never* been observed to act crazy. Crazy implies lack of reason or self-control and UFOs have never been observed to display either.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
“So UFOs want us to think they are going to use nuclear weapons against us?”
No Sage, but they have appeared near nuclear bases of both super-powers and playfully dodged Air Force jetfighters of several countries (like Iran & Brazil) when they scramble to intercept them. We can recognize that as a display of power, eventhough we have yet to understand its ultimate purpose.
“If you take a closer look at your analogy, you will see that it is flawed.
Remember, Nixon acted like he was crazy, not like he was an idiot like the ETs do. If the ETs have a purpose, they are not consistently displaying a single purpose, as Nixon did — and that is what a *purpose* implies.”
To threaten the whole human race to nuclear annihilation just to end a local war in Asia might be considered utter idiocy by some people, Sage
You’re right the UFOs/aliens/whatever do not seem to display a single purpose, or maybe the ultimate purpose requires different staged phases. Nixon’s plan had an ultimate purpose (end Vietnam) but consisted of several stages: make the north-vietnamese nervous at the Paris talks, send Kissinger with the russians to warn them his boss had the finger on the button, and scramble the bombers across the Artic.
Anyway, the whole point of the comparison was to speculate that the madman theory only works—or was intended to work— when your opponent think your actions are unpredictable, and that you’re powerful enough to accomplish your intentions, eventhough those are not clear to him. With those two ingredients your opponent may be quick to listen to your demands the moment you state them.
Unpredictability & power. That IMO can be found in the UFO phenomenon, and that may be one of the reasons some governments decided to mantain their covert studies of UFOs classified—until now. If there’s something that makes men in uniform nervous is a threat they cannot control, and if that threat does not follow familiar scenarios, well… does 9/11 ring a bell?
“It isn’t wild speculation, it is inventing excuses to try and keep a belief alive that otherwise would die.”
Maybe you’re right. But by now you should know that I’m a sucker for “what ifs”
Anyway, I really don’t put too much weight on my own “theory”, but it’s interesting to think about, nonetheless.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
So – Sage – are you telling us that the whole UFO “phenomenon” is some kind of mass hallucination with no objective existence at all?
May 16th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
“[UFOs] have appeared near nuclear bases of both super-powers and playfully dodged Air Force jet fighters of several countries (like Iran & Brazil) when they scramble to intercept them. We can recognize that as a display of power”
No we can’t since you are filtering the data. UFOs have appeared everywhere, not just as nuclear bases, but people get more excited and remember the nuclear base visitations more so than the other kinds of visitations which the vast majority are nowhere near any nuclear bases. There are, on average, about 10,000 UFO sightings a year, and yet how many of those do you think involved jet chases?
“To threaten the whole human race to nuclear annihilation just to end a local war in Asia might be considered utter idiocy by some people”
What some people consider is unimportant since what is most important is that it is not idiocy. To be crazy implies having no purpose and having no self-restraint, and the alleged ETs do not fit that profile. Idiots have a purpose but they are just incompetent at fulfilling it, just like the ETs do.
UFOs are unpredictable, but so are idiots. UFOs have power but they have never displayed any incentive to use it. The whole point of being powerful and unpredictable is to intimidate your opponents, but clearly if UFOs occupants are so far advanced above us that they would not have a need to intimidate us. It would be a stupid thing to do, especially for as long as they have been doing it, which only further proves that they are idiots is they have been doing so. Sorry but no, the madman theory doesn’t work here because it is only a human tactic requiring a human way of thinking that doesn’t work very well every time it is used.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
“Are you telling us that the whole UFO “phenomenon” is some kind of mass hallucination with no objective existence at all?”
What I am telling you is that the UFO fad is some kind of mass delusion with no objective existence at all.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
“…but clearly if UFOs occupants are so far advanced above us that they would not have a need to intimidate us”
Hmmm… interesting point. Worth thinking about during the weekend
“UFOs are unpredictable, but so are idiots. UFOs have power but they have never displayed any incentive to use it.”
Ok, so we agree that UFOs are unpredictable & have power, at least?
May 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Oh, I almost forgot: Have a good weekend Sage
May 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Greg,
“All information gathered from our senses is filtered by our brains, so everything is subjective. As a group, we have a consensus reality”
There is a group of people that are an exception to that rule and they are called scientists. Like I often tell people, science is not a democracy.
Their take on reality is not based on just their inaccurate senses or filtered opinions of what their inaccurate senses tell them, it is based on a very accurate and very successful methodology that goes beyond those things. If anyone is interested in the pursuit of truth, they would take the scientific approach only because there is no other approach that has worked in finding the truth as well and as repeatably as science has.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Sage,
You’re right, all that glitters is gold and science is objective and therefore infallible. And this is due to your “methodology”. No. I’m sorry, that’s just crass. Does your methodology stand up to your methodology? Didn’t you mommy teach you what a paradox is? Jacques Vallee once stated that the human mind is not unlike a computer in that it’s only as good as the information it’s processing.
“Their take on reality is not based on just their inaccurate senses or filtered opinions of what their inaccurate senses tell them, it is based on a very accurate and very successful methodology that goes beyond those things.”
I contemptuously laugh in your general direction.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
“Does your methodology stand up to your methodology?
In the last two centuries, the scientific method has been responsible for producing electric light and power, radio, television, atomics, the entire science of organic chemistry ranging from dyes to synthetic drugs, automobiles, airplanes — practically an entirely new civilization! So what do you have that works better than that? Absolutely nothing. I will continue to stick with what has been proven to work while you continue to stagnate in your questionable methodology.
“Didn’t you mommy teach you what a paradox is?”
Who cares, unless you have a paradox somewhere that you would like to share with us?
“Jacques Vallee once stated that the human mind is not unlike a computer in that it’s only as good as the information it’s processing”
Why should any thinking person care what Jacques Vallee said?
“I contemptuously laugh in your general direction”
The laugh is on you, unless you can come up with something better than the scientific method.