Good analysis of a questionable article. Ironically, it reminds me of what the physicist Donald Menzel mistakenly said over 50 years ago: "scientists of the twenty-first century will look back on UFO's as the greatest nonsense of the twentieth century."
I agree with your assessment of this article, but I can’t agree with your sentiment on “the others”. I really, really, wish I could and didn’t know what I know or have seen what I have seen, but I can’t. (Yet anyway.)
Please be a good skeptic on all this information as it becomes publicly available but not a debunker. True Skeptics are worth their weight in gold, debunkers are a dime a dozen. Trust no one, particularly those with vested interests and believe no one without credible evidence, and always look for possible misidentifications, explanations.
Trust the government at your own peril.
That said always remember that one that claims to be a wiseman clearly doesn’t know, and dogma is neither scientific or helpful. It’s completely ok to say sometimes it’s unidentified or I don’t know what the hell it is. When the explanations are less credible than the observer you have gone a bridge too far.
Doesn’t make it an alien ship from a distance planet, it just means we don’t know. And not only do we not know a lot, a lot of what we think we know simply isn’t so.
Well, it seems that you are creating some rather unusual criteria for coming to reasonable conclusions here, Steve. How did you come to the conclusion that "debunkers are a dime a dozen", but that "true skeptics are worth their weight in gold"? I think you might want to provide your understanding of the term "debunker" before going there. If you use a pretty standard definition of the word, you should probably arrive at some sort of meaning that includes "expose the falseness or hollowness of an idea or statement". Obviously you can superficially debunk without doing any meaningful research, but I would give credit to debunkers (including Brian) for FIRST deploying their skepticism and only then debunking.
You may not totally trust the government and you (and I) probably have good reason to not trust them always/routinely; but, because the government consists of people (many of them just as good or bad as the non-government part of the population, there is no reason to believe them any more or less than any other group of people (sales people and marketers come to mind immediately on one side and independent research scientists on the other).
Brian is not spouting dogma. I believe he is using his reasoning power to evaluate the odds of alien visitation from however far away. Of course, I can't speak for Brian - I am speaking for myself based on years of following, and sometimes assisting, his various DEBUNKING projects.
I agree with you that a lot of what we think we know is actually not true - it's just that we can't let that keep us from earnestly pursue truth and expose flimsy assertion for what they are.
to clarify: I am referring to the US government. Yes, many are not ideal. I just want to make sure that I am NOT referring to totalitarian governments or known crackpots within the US.
A cursory scan of the popular press reveals... videos from the military... Congressional hearings... SETI... people with respectable credentials jumping on the UFO bandwagon... enough (perhaps) to make an editor shout "why aren't we covering this hot topic?" It must be hard to resist.
What people should be asking is not what they have been hiding for 50-70 years but why the need to disclose anything right now at this particular moment in time. This is what is terrifying to me. I don’t want or need to necessarily know who is the wizard behind the curtain, etc. I already know more than I want too, but apparently some feel a need to disclose more. Why ?
Good analysis of a questionable article. Ironically, it reminds me of what the physicist Donald Menzel mistakenly said over 50 years ago: "scientists of the twenty-first century will look back on UFO's as the greatest nonsense of the twentieth century."
LOL. Well, he had every reason to believe he was right, just as we would if we said the same thing now. :-)
I agree with your assessment of this article, but I can’t agree with your sentiment on “the others”. I really, really, wish I could and didn’t know what I know or have seen what I have seen, but I can’t. (Yet anyway.)
Please be a good skeptic on all this information as it becomes publicly available but not a debunker. True Skeptics are worth their weight in gold, debunkers are a dime a dozen. Trust no one, particularly those with vested interests and believe no one without credible evidence, and always look for possible misidentifications, explanations.
Trust the government at your own peril.
That said always remember that one that claims to be a wiseman clearly doesn’t know, and dogma is neither scientific or helpful. It’s completely ok to say sometimes it’s unidentified or I don’t know what the hell it is. When the explanations are less credible than the observer you have gone a bridge too far.
Doesn’t make it an alien ship from a distance planet, it just means we don’t know. And not only do we not know a lot, a lot of what we think we know simply isn’t so.
Well, it seems that you are creating some rather unusual criteria for coming to reasonable conclusions here, Steve. How did you come to the conclusion that "debunkers are a dime a dozen", but that "true skeptics are worth their weight in gold"? I think you might want to provide your understanding of the term "debunker" before going there. If you use a pretty standard definition of the word, you should probably arrive at some sort of meaning that includes "expose the falseness or hollowness of an idea or statement". Obviously you can superficially debunk without doing any meaningful research, but I would give credit to debunkers (including Brian) for FIRST deploying their skepticism and only then debunking.
You may not totally trust the government and you (and I) probably have good reason to not trust them always/routinely; but, because the government consists of people (many of them just as good or bad as the non-government part of the population, there is no reason to believe them any more or less than any other group of people (sales people and marketers come to mind immediately on one side and independent research scientists on the other).
Brian is not spouting dogma. I believe he is using his reasoning power to evaluate the odds of alien visitation from however far away. Of course, I can't speak for Brian - I am speaking for myself based on years of following, and sometimes assisting, his various DEBUNKING projects.
I agree with you that a lot of what we think we know is actually not true - it's just that we can't let that keep us from earnestly pursue truth and expose flimsy assertion for what they are.
to clarify: I am referring to the US government. Yes, many are not ideal. I just want to make sure that I am NOT referring to totalitarian governments or known crackpots within the US.
A cursory scan of the popular press reveals... videos from the military... Congressional hearings... SETI... people with respectable credentials jumping on the UFO bandwagon... enough (perhaps) to make an editor shout "why aren't we covering this hot topic?" It must be hard to resist.
What people should be asking is not what they have been hiding for 50-70 years but why the need to disclose anything right now at this particular moment in time. This is what is terrifying to me. I don’t want or need to necessarily know who is the wizard behind the curtain, etc. I already know more than I want too, but apparently some feel a need to disclose more. Why ?