Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/newspostings/1701-1800/1797

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From: [e-mail] (Tony Presser)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo,alt.alien.research,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Skeptic fallacies, a select few (was Re: Falsifying the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis)
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 19:41:06 GMT
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On 11 Jun 1996 03:09:32 GMT, some clueless person named
[e-mail] (Edward Flaherty) babbled:

>Subject: Re: Skeptic fallacies, a select few (was Re: Falsifying the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis)

>Brian Zeiler <[e-mail]> writes:
>>
>> I think most skeptics fail to realize that physical proof is an absurd
>> demand ...
>
>I suppose it is an absurd demand, especially when none exists.

   You have no evidence to support that, only conjecture on your part. All
you can say for sure is that you personally have seen no physical evidence.
>
>> ... and they further fail to realize that we have 100% of all the
>> evidence OTHER than physical proof:  video, photos, radar-visual cases,
>> ground trace cases, bizarre government behavior like the CIA's
>> infiltration of NICAP, and so forth.
>
>Videos and photos can and have been faked.

   I can use styrofoam and shaving cream to fake a birthday cake, too. That
doesn't mean that there are no real birthday cakes or that ALL birthday
cakes are fakes. You have committed two fallacies here--dicto simpliciter
and hasty generalization--with this vapid and ill-considered statement.
>
>Radar systems routinely produce anomolies.  Were every anomoly
>judged an extraterrestrial, then there would hardly be room
>enough on this planet for us terrestrials.

   Strawman fallacy. No one but an idiot would ever claim that every
anomaly is an extraterrestrial object. Because your premise is flawed, your
conclusion is meaningless.
>
>"Bizzare government behavior" is hardly evidence of alien
>visitation.  Governments have been behaving in such manners
>for millenia.

   Another strawman--you're getting very adept with this fallacy. He is
talking about bizarre government behavior relative to UFO information, not
government behavior in general. Your last sentence, your premise, is an
irrelevancy since it has nothing to do with the subject of UFO phenomena.
>
>> We have a huge body of solid evidence, but no physical proof
>> that can be clearly identified as being alien in origin.
>> Skeptics apparently lack the critical reasoning skills to apply
>> an inferential framework to the aggregate data set and instead
>> prefer to dismiss it without physical proof.
>
>You admit that there is no physical evidence for the alien
>visitor hypothesis, and yet you continue to support the thesis.
>It appears that it is the UFO buffs who lack the disciplined,
>skeptical reasoning abilities of science, not the skeptics
>themselves.

   You completely misunderstood, or deliberately misrepresented, the above
claim. Not having a physical artifact of clearly ET origin does not mean
there is NO evidence. As for disciplined reasoning abilities, you have yet
to demonstrate any.
>
>Bayesian inference techniques are appropriate in my discipline,
>economic, because much of what we study can never be directly
>observed.  But the hypothesis that UFOs are actually alien
>visitors is directly testable by the scientific method, which
>means the claim of visitations must be supported by strong,
>thoroughly analyzed physical evidence.
>
>An extaordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

   No it doesn't. This inane mantra from Sagan sounds good, but means
nothing. Any claim of any sort requires "sufficient" evidence of its
validity. There IS sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that
something not of human origin is infringing on our planet. We don't know
what it is or why it is here or what it wants, but we can observe it, and
we have. If you want to remain in denial, you are free to do so. That is
not, however, the best way of determining the facts about something.
>
>> On a related note to your last point (I already snipped it), another
>> logical fallacy of skeptics -- last one, it's getting late -- is
>> their pompous rants about Occam's Razor, yet they don't even understand
>> what Occam's Razor means.  They think they do, but they don't.  What it
>> means is that when several hypotheses of varying complexity can explain a
>> set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should
>> be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions.
>> If this simplest hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is
>> chosen, and so forth.
>
>Fully correct.  Let's apply the Razor to the UFO hypothesis.  Suppose
>many respectable and credible people in a town say they saw a UFO
>on a given night.  Their stories are more or less consistent, and
>collusion seems unlikely.  There are, as I assume you know, many
>possible explanations for the event:  weather phenomena, conventional
>aircraft with unconventional lighting, unconventional aircraft,
>meteor fragments burning up in the atmosphere, weather balloons,
>swarms of luminescent insects, Earth satellites burning up while
>re-entering the atmosphere, secret military aircraft, hoaxes,
>and of course, alien spacecraft.
>
>Which of these possibilities requires the fewest assumptions?
>Which requires the most?  In my opinion, the alien spacecraft
>assumption requires the most assumptions.  First, we must
>assume that life exists elsewhere in the universe -- a highly
>probabl, but as yet undemonstrated proposition.  Next, we
>have to assume that intelligent, space-faring civilizations
>exist -- a less probable and still undemonstrated proposition.
>Then we have to assume that in the immentity of the galaxy
>this supposed civilization exists somewhere near us.  This is
>a bold assumption because we already know that none of the
>stars near the Earth have planets.   And from the Drake
>Equation (only a guess, admittedly) if these civilizations
>were strewn randomly throughout the galaxy, then the closest
>would still be about 200 light-years away.  Finally, we have
>to assume then that out of the dizzying selection of destinations,
>those aliens would want to visit us for some reason.

   A lot of assumtions, with virtually nothing to support them. This is
another strawman. What you say is correct; it is also irrelevant to the
issue of what exactly is happening. You have conveniently deleted all the
verified evidence of experts, witnesses, scientists, videos, etc.
>
>All of the other explanations for the event are far more
>likely than the alien visitor hypothesis.  In the absence
>of any physical evidence in support of any of the hypotheses
>above, the alien one would be the first to go.

   And when all mundane explanations have been examined and rejected, what
is left is the truth--regardless of how unlikely it may seem to you.
>
>> But, in SkepticLand, this means that the simplest explanation MUST be the
>> right one without even testing it for inconsistencies, i.e., UFOs are
>> misidentifications of terrestrial phenomena.  Because it Must Be Right,
>> these skeptics who lack critical reasoning refuse to progress down the
>> hypothesis hierarchy to explain the data in full -- that is, they refuse
>> to change the hypothesis to explain the data.
>
>By your own earlier admission, there is no hard data to
>explain -- no physical evidence.  There is only antecdotal
>"evidence."

   You misrepresented him again...tsk, tsk, tsk! There is a great deal of
evidence, physical as well as anecdotal. There is not a physical artifact
that has been positively identified in a laboratory as ET (that I
personally know about). Big difference there.
>
>> Take a radar-visual case where an atmospheric physicist and a radar
>> expert engineer will agree that it HAD to have been a solid object.  What
>> do the skeptics do?  They have NEVER refuted ANY of these cases with
>> scientific criticism.  Instead, they flock like sheep to the bleats of
>> an aviation journalist who KNOWS that they're really inversions, all
>> while NEVER addressing this scientific research.  Oh, it had to have been
>> an inversion, DESPITE the fact that the EXPERTS ruled out inversions!
>> What next?  Well, they say, it must be an error.  Sure, why not! Can't
>> explain it any other way?  The witness was lying!  Drumming up
>> tourism, why not!  Yeah!  Anything to preserve the Simple Explanation.
>
>
>Which explanations requires the fewest assumptions:  A liar, a human
>error, or an alien spacecraft?  (To say nothing of the other
>possibilities)

   Another vapid and meaningless statement. I'm surprised that you haven't
noticed your propensity for making these. The explanation that requires the
fewest assumptions is the correct explanation, no matter how much it
disturbs you.
>
>    In my view, the problem with UFO buffs is that they
>want to wrap their UFO research with the credibility and the
>look of real science without being subject to its methods
>and standards of evidence.  They want it both ways.

   They want WHAT both ways? Nevermind, the point is that you are simply
wrong here. Serious UFO investigators use standard procedures for examining
evidence. The first thing they do is to rule out normal, mundane
possibilities. When the ordinary is ruled out, the extraordinary is
pursued.
>
>    I think alien visitations are possible.  I also think
>the search for ET life is a worthy occupation of science.  But
>just because we want there to be life on other worlds, or aliens
>to come visit us and share their knowledge does not make it
>so.  Where we have strong emotions we are liable to fool ourselves.
>This is the reason we "skeptics" require physical evidence.  If
>someone comes along and says "quantum mechanics is all wrong;
>I have a better theory," then he had better be prepared to
>present mounds of strong physical evidence for the close
>scrutiny of his peers.  Otherwise, his claim will be dismissed
>out of hand, and rightfully so.

  Of course, so what? However, that is not what you are doing. You are
dismissing all evidence by saying there is none. Sagan does the same thing.
It is not the skeptic who is a problem in the investigation of UFOs. It is
the debunker who dismisses out of hand anything that contradicts his or her
absurd claims of Venus, swamp gas, plate tectonics, hallucination, lies,
and human stupidity.  The "if I can't explain it, I'll simply dismiss it"
approach is not by any stretch of the imagination *science*.
>
>    The claim that UFOs are of alien origin simply cannot
>be supported by the physical evidence.

   Yes, it can. And has been. You just don't like it.

>If and when the day
>comes that someone says they have a bit of unknown metal or
>a technology so bizarre that it cannot be human, or some
>other bit of remarkable physical evidence, and that
>they submit it to the scientific community for peer review,
>and that the community agrees in some fashion that the
>evidence is not from Earth, will I then consider the
>UFO hypothesis to be something other than a kind of
>hokie religion.

   Sigh! I'll tell you what. Keep your blinders on. Stick your head in the
sand. Be like the Christian Scientist who died and went to hell, and sat in
a corner sucking his thumb and saying "It ain't hot and it don't hurt, it
ain't hot and it don't hurt." Stay as ignorant and uncurious as you like.
But don't then operate under the foolish notion that you have something of
value to contribute.
>--
>Edward Flaherty             Web Site:
>Department of Economics            http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~eflahert
>Florida State University
>[e-mail]

============================================================
UFO BUMPER STICKERS:

My abductee is an honor student.
Honk if you love Rigel.
Reptilian on board.
Sirius, love it or leave it.
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=============================================================