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perrodetokio
Skeptic Friend
275 Posts |
 Posted - 03/23/2007 : 12:43:03
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I have an issue with the meaning some people, including some skeptics and lots of wackos, give to UFO.
UFO is suppossed to mean Unidentified Flying Object. Which is just that: something floating/flying in the sky that canīt be identified.
But then, some people come along and talk about "UFOs" like the word actually means "an alien spaceship".
Question: If I see something traveling in the sky and you canīt identify it, it could be a number of vert mundane things, however you canīt be shure about it, wouldnīt you say you saw an UFO without inferring it was some alien spaceship? I thought thatīs why the word was coinned.
Same thing is when someone asks if I believe in UFOīs. If I believe in unidentified flying objects the answer is YES. But if the say UFOīs as in alien sapecships... well, thereīs no evidence about that, not credible and testable evidence anyway.
from The Skepticīs Dictionary:
quote:
A UFO is an unidentified flying object that has been identified as a possible or actual alien spacecraft. Such objects include meteors, disintegrating satellites, flocks of birds, aircraft, lights, weather balloons, and just about anything moving within the visible band of electromagnetism. So far, however, nothing has been positively identified as an alien spacecraft in a way required by common sense and science. That is, there has been no recurring identical UFO experience and there is no physical evidence in support of either a UFO flyby or landing.
I donīt know what this post has to do with anything but there it is!
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"Yes I have a belief in a creator/God but do not know that he exists." Bill Scott
"They are still mosquitoes! They did not turn into whales or lizards or anything else. They are still mosquitoes!..." Bill Scott
"We should have millions of missing links or transition fossils showing a fish turning into a philosopher..." Bill Scott |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 13:03:47 [Permalink]
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Some friends of mine are very good at identifying the make and manufacture of aircraft just from seeing the silhouette in the sky. Compared to their abilities, when I see a regular passenger airplane, it is a UFO. (Well, I can identify 747s from the distinctive hump.) So if someone asks me if I "believe in" UFOs, I usually don't have to wait long to be able to point to something in the sky that I cannot identify. The usual response is something like, "no, no, I mean extraterrestrials" with a look that tells me that I'm thought of as an idiot or simply too literal. "Oh, you mean alien spacecraft! No, I don't believe that any of those are visiting Earth."
But this is why Mark Raimer wrote "The War of the Words: Revamping Operational Terminology for UFOs." |
- 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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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 03/23/2007 : 13:24:54 [Permalink]
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I myself have actually seen an UFO. Haven't a clue as to what it was, but I'd bet a princely sum and give excellent odds that it did not contain Kang and Kronos on their way to abduct Homer.
It was just a large, moving light in the evening sky, and was seen by several of us at a house party. Not that big a deal, really -- another minor mystery that could have lots of solutions.
I will never understand why these things get interpreted as (snicker) alien spacecraft when Occham's Razor all but rules that out, clearly.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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perrodetokio
Skeptic Friend
275 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 14:03:34 [Permalink]
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Great link, Dave. Thanks!
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"Yes I have a belief in a creator/God but do not know that he exists." Bill Scott
"They are still mosquitoes! They did not turn into whales or lizards or anything else. They are still mosquitoes!..." Bill Scott
"We should have millions of missing links or transition fossils showing a fish turning into a philosopher..." Bill Scott |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 15:24:57 [Permalink]
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I've seen the Noss Triads once and they were really startling and cool. A triangle pattern of lights moving straight across the night sky. People who glimpse them often think they've seen alien spacecraft and call out "UFO"!
Lots of technical charts and such via this link,
http://calgary.rasc.ca/noss_triads.htm
but also a good general description. Somebody once told me that "NOSS" stands for "Naval Observatory Spy Satellites". Many amateur astronomers have spotted them. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 15:33:52 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Chippewa
Somebody once told me that "NOSS" stands for "Naval Observatory Spy Satellites".
Close. The link you provided says "NOSS stands for Naval Ocean Surveillance System."
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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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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2007 : 16:24:12 [Permalink]
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As a young teen, I was a UFO buff, even credulously believing, for about two months, George Adamski's crazy claims. I was a recreational believer.
My family owned a 50-power, 3-inch refractor telescope (beautiful brass thing, made in Paris in 1900), and with it I would dreamingly scan the skies, looking at everything from the moon's craters, the rings of Saturn, to the Galilean moons of Jupiter. It had no tripod mount, but my dad had attached it to a wobbly old floor lamp stand. Once, I was amazed to see a south-bound rocket cross between me and a new moon, just above the western horizon. (I believe it was a Thor missile, launching a spy satellite from an Air Force facility north of LA.)
And I watched UFO's. We lived on a hilltop in eastern San Diego's Encanto neighborhood, with a wonderful, sweeping view all the way to the ocean and Mexico's Los Coronado Islands. I was especially intrigued by the appearance of the strange behavior of lights in the sky to the north-west. I would watch these UFOs for hours, until finally one night I realized that I was looking in the direction of the Miramar Naval Air Station, home of "Top Gun." At that point, these UFOs became IFOs.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/23/2007 16:25:05 |
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Michael Mozina
SFN Regular
1647 Posts |
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Real Skeptic
New Member
United Kingdom
2 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 08:53:39 [Permalink]
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For a Skeptics site there seems to be alot of Apriori assumptions here Gentlemen (and Ladies).
1) I think the scientific term is UAP - Unidentified Arial Phenomenon and of course the objecive of any scientific study must be initally to clasify the data into catagories:
These are usually seperated as follows:
A: totally identified phenomena;
B: phenomena not identified with exactitude whose characteristics described by the witnesses make it possible to compare it to a well-known phenomenon;
C: phenomena that remain unidentified for lack of sufficient information;
D: phenomena not identified in spite of the precision of the observation report.
Obviously only phenomena D could possibly fall into the catagory of potential Alien spacecraft
There have been a number of these studies, most famously Blue Book (USA) and GEPAN
GEPAN Report to the Scientific Committee, June, 1978: "In 60% of the cases reported here (Type D Phenomena), the description of this phenomenon is apparently one of a flying machine whose origin, modes of lifting and/or propulsion are totally outside our knowledge."
Similar conclusions can be arrived at for the Blue Book special report 14 type D cases.
This of course does not conclusivly prove that these are Alien spacecraft but what it does show is that there is much more to the phenomena than unidentified lights in the sky.
Obviously from a Skeptical point of view the first thing to do is to realise that we Humans work by constructing mind maps on which to make decisions - however the Map is not the territory and our mind maps are certainly extremely low grade.
If we are not careful fall into the trap of dismissing reports of UFO's on the basis that we beleive them to be unlikely based on our inferior mind maps - the fact is we need to be extrmeley skeptical about any assumptions we might make without a full review of all the evidence. Especially evidence gathered and collated by specialist scientists.
When we review this in the case of UFO's or UAP's what we will find is that once the "Adamski's" and mistaken identity cases are removed there is a hard core of hard to explain cases which appear to be structured craft under inteligent control. Many of these cases have multiple witness' including rader, ground trace's and physical evidence.
As a real died in the wool skeptic I find the UFO's are lights in the sky which cas be explained stance highly improbable and at odds with the evidence. However this does not man that the Alien Spacecfarft theory is proved however is does seem to have sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation.
From a Skpetical point of view the Jury is still out but casual dismisall of the evidence is certainly naieve and foolish - Psudo skeptics such as J Randi, M Shermer and the late P Klass make themselves look complete idiots on this subject due to there total failiure to address the evidence in a mature way and scientific way.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 09:23:52 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Real Skeptic
A: totally identified phenomena;
B: phenomena not identified with exactitude whose characteristics described by the witnesses make it possible to compare it to a well-known phenomenon;
C: phenomena that remain unidentified for lack of sufficient information;
D: phenomena not identified in spite of the precision of the observation report.
Obviously only phenomena D could possibly fall into the catagory of potential Alien spacecraft |
"Obviously?" Not at all. You're assuming that something that looks like some "well-known phenomenon" is definitely not an alien spacecraft, which is a ridiculous assumption to make. You're also assuming that an unidentified phenomena which lacks much information couldn't "possibly" be an alien craft! How insane is that?!| This of course does not conclusivly prove that these are Alien spacecraft but what it does show is that there is much more to the phenomena than unidentified lights in the sky. |
So what? If the Emperor is naked, then what's the point of talking about the cut of his lapel or the number of buttons on his shoes?| Obviously from a Skeptical point of view the first thing to do is to realise that we Humans work by constructing mind maps on which to make decisions - however the Map is not the territory and our mind maps are certainly extremely low grade. |
And by bringing that up, you ensure that we are aware that any UFO report that you don't dismiss will be based upon your inferior "mind map."  What better way to shoot your argument in its foot than to argue for the frailties of human knowledge in general? What better way to undermine the alleged "precision of the observation report" of class D phenomena?| When we review this in the case of UFO's or UAP's what we will find is that once the "Adamski's" and mistaken identity cases are removed there is a hard core of hard to explain cases which appear to be structured craft under inteligent control. Many of these cases have multiple witness' including rader, ground trace's and physical evidence. |
So what? Mind maps is all.| As a real died in the wool skeptic I find the UFO's are lights in the sky which cas be explained stance highly improbable and at odds with the evidence. However this does not man that the Alien Spacecfarft theory is proved however is does seem to have sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation. |
There is zero evidence that we've been visited by extraterrestrials. There is much evidence that people have seen and recorded things which have not been explained. "No explanation" equals "aliens" only so far as "no explanation" also equals "God" or "fairies" or "flying leprechauns." In other words, not at all.| From a Skpetical point of view the Jury is still out... |
Technically, without evidence of aliens themselves, the jury was never convened.| ...but casual dismisall of the evidence is certainly naieve and foolish - Psudo skeptics such as J Randi, M Shermer and the late P Klass make themselves look complete idiots on this subject due to there total failiure to address the evidence in a mature way and scientific way. |
What evidence would that be? Please be precise. |
- 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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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 09:28:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Real Skeptic
As a real died in the wool skeptic I find the UFO's are lights in the sky which cas be explained stance highly improbable and at odds with the evidence. However this does not man that the Alien Spacecfarft theory is proved however is does seem to have sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation. |
Sightings that remain unidentified even after several possible causes have been investigated remain just that--unidentified. I'm glad that you understand this doesn't mean "the Alien Spacecfarft (sic) theory is proved," but I'm afraid you're badly confused if you think it counts as any evidence at all for alien visitors. Ruling certain causes out does not automatically rule others in. Proving that a specific sighting isn't a cloud formation does not lend any support to the guess that it is a spaceship. Such a wild claim would need its own positive evidence in its favor.
You seem to be under the impression that wherever there is a gap in our explanation for an unidentified aerial phenomenon, the alien spacecraft hypothesis becomes a more favorable candidate. This is absolutely untrue. Arguments from ignorance are always logical fallacies, whether one is positing a god-of-the-gaps or an alien-of-the-gaps.
James Randi, Michael Shermer and the late Philip Klass never ruled out the possibility that some UFOs are alien ships, they pointed out (entirely correctly) that there is zero evidence that they are. Far from looking like "complete idiots" on the subject, their position of tentative disbelief is exactly in accordance with rational skepticism.
The jury is not out. The judge long ago dismissed the case due to lack of evidence. If investigators ever uncover new and compelling evidence, the jury can be reconvened, but right now there just isn't enough to make a case.
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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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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 18:47:28 [Permalink]
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RealSkeptic, Perrodetokio, Dave, et al....
Perro, you quote the esteemed Robert Todd Carroll as saying....| A UFO is an unidentified flying object that has been identified as a possible or actual alien spacecraft. Such objects include meteors, disintegrating satellites, flocks of birds, aircraft, lights, weather balloons, and just about anything moving within the visible band of electromagnetism. So far, however, nothing has been positively identified as an alien spacecraft in a way required by common sense and science. That is, there has been no recurring identical UFO experience and there is no physical evidence in support of either a UFO flyby or landing. |
How can anything that is unidentified simultaneously be identified? As soon as a UFO is identified, it no longer is a UFO, rather it becomes an IFO!
Presumably, Mr. Carroll meant: "A UFO is what was a previously unidentified flying object that has been identified....."
But then he goes on...."an unidentified flying object that has been identified as a possible or actual alien spacecraft. Such objects include meteors, disintegrating satellites, flocks of birds, aircraft, lights, weather balloons, and just about anything moving within the visible band of electromagnetism."
Carroll does not mean that a possible or actual alien spacecraft is the same kind of object as meteors, satellites, birds, balloons, etc. Neither does he mean that a UFO is an object that has been identified as either a meteor, etc., or an alien spacecraft! It may remain as a UFO! Unfortunately, his syntax and tense are so screwed up, one does not really know what he means!
What he should have said was: A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Period!
Upon investigation, some UFO's have been identified as meteors, satellites, birds, etc. So far, however, nothing has been positively identified as an alien spacecraft in a way required by common sense and science. |
Real Skeptic, when I first discovered SFN about 10 months ago, we explored various aspects of the UFO/UAP phenomenon for twenty-five odd pages of discussion! There is no reason to revisit all that here. However I would like to emphasize this:
1. There have been many thousands of UFO/UAP sightings over the past seventy years.
2. A great majority of those sightings that have been investigated, have been clearly demonstrated to be of relatively mundane origin - conventional aircraft, the moon, meteors, balloons and outright fakery and fraud - including photographic fakery!
3. There have been a reasonable number of sightings that have been carefully investigated, and for which no explanation was found. These remain as the only "true" UFO's!
4. There has never been any public information regarding UFO/UAP that indicated any acceptable proof or inalienable evidence of "alien" or extraterrestrial origin of UFO/UAP phenomena.
5. It is statistically much more probable that the remaining "true" UFO/UAP sightings, and those to come in the future, are and will be of of man-made (human, not "alien") origin of one sort or another (exotic aircraft or missiles, hoaxes, man's tomfoolery of man of some sort), or else some type of visual illusion (moon, meteor, clouds, etc.)
6. Conversely, nothing has been or likely will be discovered in such investigations to demonstrate that certain UFO/UAP phenomena cannot be evidence of alien or extraterrestrial visitation! However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not an absence of adverse evidence!
7. With reference to.....A: totally identified phenomena;
B: phenomena not identified with exactitude whose characteristics described by the witnesses make it possible to compare it to a well-known phenomenon;
C: phenomena that remain unidentified for lack of sufficient information;
D: phenomena not identified in spite of the precision of the observation report.
Obviously only phenomena D could possibly fall into the catagory of potential Alien spacecraft |
.....only "totally identified phenomena" completely exclude the possibility of Alien spacecraft. A majority of the carefully examined and investigated sightings have been classified as identified.
| When we review this in the case of UFO's or UAP's what we will find is that once the "Adamski's" and mistaken identity cases are removed there is a hard core of hard to explain cases which appear to be structured craft under inteligent control. Many of these cases have multiple witness' including rader, ground trace's and physical evidence. |
I have studied many hundreds of unexplained UAP sightings and I have not read one that I felt required a mandatory explanation of "structured craft under inteligent control". A possible explanation, to be sure, perhaps a hypothesis of human control or even a high level of automation of some sort. Certainly nothing that demanded an explanation of control by extraterrestrials! Or rejected it, for that matter!
8. I personally, strongly feel that there should be more, rather than less, highly structured scientific investigation of true UAP - past, present, and future. Investigation totally absent of a prejudicial mind-set either pro or con of "alien" explanations.
There is an incredible amount of webspace devoted to UAP. Far too much of it is posted by "true believers". This is a shame as it lends a certain stink to any UFO/UAP discussion or investigation! It is damnably difficult to express an open mind about this subject because of the almost bi-polar convictions of those who are interested - a bi-polarity that is represented by either a {UFO=Little Green Men=horseshit} mentality; OR a {UFO = Absolute Fact = Fuck you skeptics} mentality! We need a {UFO/UAP=fascinating Phenomenon=Let's find out!} mind-set.
Far too many have made up their minds that either there is no such thing as a true UFO, or else "so what?" And far too many others are certain that all UFO's are indeed occupied by "greens" or "greys" and no other explanations are even feasable!
A pox on both their houses! |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 19:17:12 [Permalink]
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While I don't disagree with you Bngbuck (there is never too much investigation going on); one must keep in mind that there is only a limited amount of funding to go around.
And, really, the UFO/UAP has already been investigated (Bluebook; the GEPAN among other things) and the investigators finally settle for: 'interesting; but not enough to drop the null hypothesis'. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 19:29:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
How can anything that is unidentified simultaneously be identified? As soon as a UFO is identified, it no longer is a UFO, rather it becomes an IFO! |
I'd guess that Carroll was distinguishing UFOs from UAPs.
And I can identify a lightbulb as a pony, it just doesn't mean my identification is correct. How about this for a re-write:| A UFO is an unidentified flying object that has been identified by the crackpots as a possible or actual alien spacecraft. |
Oh, you also objected:| ...only "totally identified phenomena" completely exclude the possibility of Alien spacecraft. |
That still leaves open the possibility of aliens who visit the Earth in spacecraft disguised as 747s or blimps or clouds of swamp gas or meteors. If we see a 747 and simply dismiss it as a 747, we're just as guilty of abusing our fragile "mind maps" as if we were to dismiss an oddly behaving speck of light in the sky as not a craft belonging to our alien overlords. Surely Real Skeptic's protestations must apply to "normal" phenomena also. And surely if the little green men have the technology to waste time and energy doing uncommunicative fly-bys over extremely small localities (and then vanish), we must assume they've got the skills to disguise their craft as nearly anything they want it to be.
In other words, as soon as we assume the aliens have what would be, to us, technology so far advanced that it's indistinguishable from magic, then none of the four categories could possibly exclude alien visitation because, well, the aliens know magic! |
- 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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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 19:46:05 [Permalink]
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Let's look at the logistics of the thing (I've done this before and won't get into it too deeply this time, as I find it logical and therefore boring).
If we should have had alien visitors, from whence did they come? There are no known, inhabited planets anywhere near ours and indeed, the closest (and faintest) possibility is a number of light years distant (don't remember how many). As the speed of light cannot be exceeded, nor probably even approached, even the closest distance is a daunting one. So, unless we are talking a whole, new set of Laws of Physics, a ship would have to be one that would support generations of crew and some pretty extensive agriculture. The ship would dwarf an aircraft carrier and would have been spotted, probably by an astronmer, long ago.
Or an immortal crew that doesn't eat, and I refuse to accept that.
Ockham's Razor applies here. Those cases where there is no explanation are most likely just an uncommon, natural phenomena, not alien visitors.
The second question is: Why bother? What would an alien find here? It would find a planet dominated by a single, highly aggressive, even murderous, and prolific species that would make any contact a risky business indeed. They're studying us, perhaps? If so, they have a very strange, now you see 'em, now you don't, way of going about it.
Crop circles, cattle mutilations, abductions of crazy people and so forth as evidence in favor? Don't make me laugh; I have a cracked rib and it hurts. Well anyway, it would hurt if I actually did have a cracked rib. I've had 'em before and know. It would hurt. A lot.
I also get a rib-grinder out of the descriptions by "abductees." They describe small creatures that look like any of us with a hangover. Most likely, evolution being what it is, they would look nothing like us, and quite possibly be so alien that we might not even know if they're sapient.
I love science fiction just as much as the next Trekie-nerd, but it has done us no favors with our natural paranoia concerning the unknown.
I think that I can safely state that, due to the sheer logistics and a lack of any emperical evidence whatsoever, there has never been an alien visitation. But don't tell the Roswell Chamber of Commerce I said that. The Nessie devotees and the Hovindites already have a price on my head.....
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Does UFO now mean "Alien Spaceship"?
