Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

This article was written by one local webmaster. It finally put into words what I've been thinking about a lot. So I translated it, and now I introduce it here to you. The original author is unlikely to care about this, because his page is more than 2 years without update and he also didn't reply yet. So if the sentence composition seems weird, don't complain, I translated it in quite a hurry and enthusiasm. I think the reasoning is correct and very relevant for those who proudly call themselves skeptics. Please try to not freak out.

Logical fallacy of skeptics
Skeptics say, that extraterrestrial visits are an extraordinary claim, this is why they require extraordinary evidence. This is why no evidence supports the alien visit, unless it is accompanied by irrevocable physical evidence, even if observations would directly point, within the boundaries of normal scientific evidence, to presence of a material object under intelligent control, with technology of propulsion beyond human understanding. It doesn't matter then how direct the observations show an anomalous vessel of non-human origin, skeptics insist, that the simpliest explanation must be accepted, unless there is physical evidence.

Skeptics also didn't define boundaries of extraordinarity. All evidence of any kind and quality is rejected, unless a physical sample is acquired. For example, if SETI radiotelescopes search for an anomalous, repeating signal with intelligent content, for example, mathemathical constant, and they filter out all noise of Earth and deep space, they need a piece of alien radio parabola or a dead alien, to determine extraterrestrial origin of the signal? It would be simplier to use the logic of UFO skepticists and claim, that the signal is nothing more than anomaly, until we get a physical evidence of extraterrestrials. But why then they search for a radio signal of extraterrestrial origin, if we don't yet have a physical evidence of the alien existence? We can't exclude a mistake, fraud, or human mistake with 100% certainity, so the simpliest explanation is the undetected mistake, not extraterrestrial signal. Right?

What is an "extraordinary claim"? We can understand extraordinary claim as a claim, that violates basic laws of physics. But extraterrestrial visits don't violate them. No matter how complicated it seems to us, interstellar travel does not violate physical laws. We simply don't know how probable it is, this is why it's not necessary to call extraterrestrial visits "extraordinary claims."

Despite of that, skeptics for a special reason insist on the idea, that probability of extraterrestrial visits is close to zero. This allows them to reject evidence, that would confirm presence of material object under intelligent control and with propulsion non-producible by humans. Skeptics say efficiently, that radar evidence is too "ordinary" evidence to satisfy "extraordinary claim".

This logic can be succesfully applied on any claim. For example, let's say that dinosaurs are an extraordinary claim. This claim does not require any logical justification, just as skeptics use their practically zero probability of extraterrestrial visitors. So we defined dinosaurs as an extraordinary claim. The next step is to reject all fossil evidence  for dinosaurs, because fossils are acceptable only for ordinary claims, like mammoths; for extraordinary claim of dinosaurs the fossils are worthless. As dinosaur skeptics we need physical evidence of intact whole dinosaur. To make it even more similar to skeptical approach, we don't need to defend the demand for a physical evidence of dinosaurs; the fact that it is an extraordinary claim allows us to demand the highest possible evidence. So we can demand a physical evidence, but will we get it? Is it worthy to ignore fossil evidence in our wait for physical evidence?

But we can broaden the analogy by using another logical tricks of skeptics. For example, dinosaur articles are published in magazines, that already believe in dinosaurs, so this is biased, preconceived, unilateral and hardly representative as a real critical view. We can proclaim, that all fossils are best explainable as frauds, misidentifications with known and unknown geological processes and hallucinations and/or bad interpretation of fervent archeologists putting their faith into mere anomalous stone. This is the "simpliest explanation" and because there's missing physical evidence of dinosaurs' existence, any explanation is simplier, no matter what it is.

This means, that we can use this logic by claim, that the existence of dinosaurs shouldn't be accepted, unless we find an intact frozen and preserved dinosaur, still with meat on bones and if that's not possible -- well, that's a pity. Is it reasonable to reject fossils just like skeptics reject radar-visual cases and ground-trace cases by UFO and demand a sample of preserved dinosaur, like skeptics demand an extraterrestrial sample?

The UFO evidence satisfied a proof threshold of common scientific rules; unfortunately the evidence is rejected by dogmatic demands of scientific evidence.

Occam's Razor and skeptics
UFO skeptics don't understand the Occam's razor and misuse it regularly. They think they understand it, but they don't. It means that if several hypotheses of various complexity can explain a number of observations, the one with least number of proofless suppositions should be tried first. If this simpliest hypothesis is found to be wrong, then the next simpliest one shoud be tried, and so on.

But skeptics forget about two parts: the part about testing the simplier hypothesis and the part about explaining of all observations. What skeptic does is distorting and truncating of hypothesis, util it is "explained" by one of the simpliest hypotheses, which is opposite to the correct approach. The correct approach is to modify the hypotheses, until they fit observations. Nobody should modify observations, to make them fit a hypothesis and say: "if the object wouldn't be physical, we could also consider that it didn't move, didn't radiate orange color and wasn't 50 feet in diameter as it's described, then we can proclaim, that it really was Venus."

But this is all right for skeptics, because it is an "extraordinary claim", which is necessary to explain as soon as possible. Now, modifying observation, to make it fit on preferred hypothesis -- that is science? Or is it dogma? The answer is of course dogma.

Science versus skepticism 

Skeptics are skilled propagandists, who succumb to basic emotions. Skeptics like to veil themselves into the robe of science with claim, that their approach and conclusions are "scientific". But is skepticism really so scientific as skeptics want us to think?  It ensues from what was already written, that not. Skeptics are often in dissent with opinion of scientific community. If public consensus is in dissent with scientific, then scientists start a public campaign to discredit it's opinion. So the scientists are devoured by presupposed correctness of their opinions, that as fervent religional fanatics they must convert crowds on the side of truth, to save their own image.

Another reason for pseudo-scientific skepticism is, that these scientists do not represent all scientists, but rather a mere gang of propagandists, who think that science is the master of nature. When the nature showsn an anomaly, there is a violation of expectations, and that anomaly must be destroyed for science. How dares the nature to violate scientific laws and principles! Anomaly is a threat to validity of their work, so the scientists must get rid of it and convince themselves through wild logical fallacies, that this anomaly doesn't exist and to return the public on the side of truth about nature, approved by scientific community.
 

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Seriously though, If you

Seriously though, If you drop the word extraordinary then the statement “claims require evidence” remains true.

 

So what sort of evidence is needed to support a claim however it may be made? Well, if we are talking about extraterrestrial being, then we need only such evidence as cannot be explained in some other way. Heck but I have seen a couple of UFOs myself. The thing is that I don't know what they were. I have no explanations that fit my observations Even now, 40 years later, what I saw is still not explainable with known technology.

 

Here is a brief synopsis of my experience:

 

Back in the early 70's, I was outside at night and I saw a light, similar to a star in the sky. It could not have been a star because it was visibly moving. It was not likely to be any known form of aircraft based on the apparent speed and how it was turning. I watched it for at least half an hour doing tight turns and moving much faster than any type of plane could move. After a while, it was joined by another point of light and they kind of danced around for a while longer before they both went away somewhere.

 

It could have been aliens riding in spacecraft. However, I simply cannot say that and actually mean anything. It could have been some unknown type of military vehicle but since that night, we have learned about cool military vehicles that did not even exist back then, such as the F117. Whatever these two light were, nobody has ever said.

 

Basically, I have an observation with not even conjecture to back it up.

 

Actually, I can do a bit better because that is not the only UFO that I have seen. The other was in the middle of the day when I went out to get the mail. And here I have a good idea of what it was. It was definitely a military jet that looked to be a fighter. From nose to tail, the length was about 25 or so full moon diameters and it took a good 10 or so seconds to pass overhead.

 

What the hell a harrier was doing making a low altitude slow pass over my home town, I have no clue but that is clearly what I saw. Nothing else fits the profile.

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Geeze Luminon, it doesn't

Geeze Luminon, it doesn't even have to be aliens.

If my wife swears she put the milk in the fridge last night but it was out on the kitchen counter this morning, I'm not going to believe her unless there is evidence (like a video camera) that explains what happened.

 

Disclosure: My wife would never leave the milk out.  But I might.  Sad

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Seriously though, If you drop the word extraordinary then the statement “claims require evidence” remains true.

 

So what sort of evidence is needed to support a claim however it may be made? Well, if we are talking about extraterrestrial being, then we need only such evidence as cannot be explained in some other way. Heck but I have seen a couple of UFOs myself. The thing is that I don't know what they were. I have no explanations that fit my observations Even now, 40 years later, what I saw is still not explainable with known technology.

Well, if that's it, then why not add the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors among the most probable explanations? If nothing else really fits on the evidence, then there is no shame in pointing out alien visit as the most probable choice.
Every rational person assumes, that our life-friendly environment can't be unique in the universe, if intelligent life appeared here, it may and will appear also somewhere else. And searching for potentially habitable planets is not that hard, our telescopes already found a few of them. So why won't we take this idea to it's logical implications? Just try it, don't be shy. It's almost like blaspheming the Holey Spirit, perhaps awkward at first, but you'll get used to it Smiling
 

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
Here is a brief synopsis of my experience:
Well, you're not the only one. There are many military officers and specialists in retirement, who have even better observations and decided to share them. Apparently, our space neighbors really don't like missiles with nuclear warheads.

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Um OK. I am not afraid to

Um OK. I am not afraid to ask questions. I just don't see how one can go in certain directions with no evidence.

 

Last Thursday, Sarek of Vulcan was born. When he is like 80 years old, he is going to fuck Amanda of Earth because it is logical to do so. Eventually, Spock will hang out with some guy from Iowa (who only works in space).

 

Later on, Jean Luc Picard will meet some dude who thinks that he is god because he can do whatever he feels like. But he really can't do lots of stuff because someone other than him decided that there really needs to be rules about what Q can do. Oh did I mention that Q is supposed to enforce those rules?

 

Oh, It also bears mention that like 150 years from now, captain Archer is going to step through a door into the 25th century and he is not going to mention the event to anyone because he lives in a world where the prime directive has not yet happened.

 

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So much wrong with that one...

Wow Luminon, where to begin... I realize you didn't write this, but by posting it here in the manner in which you did lends it your implicit support. With quotes like this 

Luminon wrote:
I think the reasoning is correct and very relevant for those who proudly call themselves skeptics.

it's obvious that you agree with this man's faulty "logic".

So, onward, into the land of bat shit crazy!

Luminon wrote:
This is why no evidence supports the alien visit, unless it is accompanied by irrevocable physical evidence

Yes, I would need physical evidence before I came to the conclusion that it WAS an alien life form. You would demand physical evidence if I was claiming I had seen hobgoblins, fairies, or unicorns, all of which have as much evidence for them as an alien life. Does that mean that alien life does not exist or has never visited our planet? NO, we can not say that for certain. What we CAN say for certain though, is that at this point, with our lack of hard evidence, it would be inappropriate to automatically think E.T. when it could be any number of other things.

Luminon wrote:
Skeptics also didn't define boundaries of extraordinarity. All evidence of any kind and quality is rejected, unless a physical sample is acquired.

No. Real evidence is not cast out. Blurry photos which could be an armada of space ships OR a swarm of gnats are not conclusive enough to be considered evidence. Look at the "Bigfoot" or "Loch Ness Monster" pictures, which are clearly fakes. If you didn't demand physical evidence, you would have been fooled like many have been and be out in the woods on a wild snipe hunt (a fictional bird, if you never heard of them). Without physical evidence, all you have are some horrible pictures which could be any number of things, but which certainly are NOT monsters. Look at the picture of the "face on Mars". At a certain angle, due to visual pareidolia, it looks as if it IS a face, almost as if it was made by an intelligent agency. But on closer inspection, we can see that it's just a hill, nothing special about it other then a good lesson about how our eyes and brains can fool us. Without the physical evidence of the Mars rovers going to the hill and seeing it for what it really is, i.e. just a hill, people would (sadly are) be still looking for "the martians".

Luminon wrote:
For example, if SETI radiotelescopes search for an anomalous, repeating signal with intelligent content, for example, mathemathical constant, and they filter out all noise of Earth and deep space, they need a piece of alien radio parabola or a dead alien, to determine extraterrestrial origin of the signal? It would be simplier to use the logic of UFO skepticists and claim, that the signal is nothing more than anomaly, until we get a physical evidence of extraterrestrials. But why then they search for a radio signal of extraterrestrial origin, if we don't yet have a physical evidence of the alien existence? We can't exclude a mistake, fraud, or human mistake with 100% certainity, so the simpliest explanation is the undetected mistake, not extraterrestrial signal. Right?

Wrong. If a radio signal was received, and we could determine that it was unlike other natural radio phenomena that we have heard, then it could be reasonably assumed that the probability of it being from an intelligent source is higher then not. Does that mean the it IS a signal from an intelligent source? No. But the more complex and "unnatural" it is, the more weight is given to that being a possibility. Instead of saying, like you and the other woo heads, that it IS alien in origin, skeptics will never be so arrogant to assume that we have "the truth". Our belief is proportional to the amount of evidence presented, not what we would like to be true.

Luminon wrote:
What is an "extraordinary claim"? We can understand extraordinary claim as a claim, that violates basic laws of physics. But extraterrestrial visits don't violate them. No matter how complicated it seems to us, interstellar travel does not violate physical laws. We simply don't know how probable it is, this is why it's not necessary to call extraterrestrial visits "extraordinary claims."

We may not know how probable life is in this universe, but to claim that an alien species becoming sufficiently advanced enough to travel many light years across the cosmos isn't extraordinary is absurd. So many other things could potentially be the cause of many UFO sightings, and to claim that it's perfectly logical to automatically jump to it being a species capable of interstellar travel instead of many other possibilities is irresponsible. It could be any number of possibilities which don't include life forms capable of crossing the galaxy. Does that automatically rule out aliens? No. But it does mean that its much less likely then it being some sort of classified military technology, or even your mind playing tricks on you, or something that takes many less assumptions.

Luminon wrote:
This logic can be succesfully applied on any claim. For example, let's say that dinosaurs are an extraordinary claim. This claim does not require any logical justification, just as skeptics use their practically zero probability of extraterrestrial visitors. So we defined dinosaurs as an extraordinary claim. The next step is to reject all fossil evidence  for dinosaurs, because fossils are acceptable only for ordinary claims, like mammoths; for extraordinary claim of dinosaurs the fossils are worthless. As dinosaur skeptics we need physical evidence of intact whole dinosaur. To make it even more similar to skeptical approach, we don't need to defend the demand for a physical evidence of dinosaurs; the fact that it is an extraordinary claim allows us to demand the highest possible evidence. So we can demand a physical evidence, but will we get it? Is it worthy to ignore fossil evidence in our wait for physical evidence?

Wow, there is so much wrong with that I don't even know where to begin. To start, how can you say that there is no physical evidence for dinosaurs? How are fossils NOT physical evidence? The article states that fossils for "ordinary" things, like mammoths (an extinct animal), are physical evidence, yet somehow dinosaurs (an extinct animal) which have the same kind of fossil evidence to support them are somehow "extraordinary" and the fossils we find are no longer physical evidence. This makes no logical sense. Somehow the writer equates somebody looking up at the sky and seeing some strange lights as the same as innumerable fossils. Sorry, Luminon, but they are nowhere near the same. One is something you are seeing with your easily fooled eyes and brain and you have no other evidence other then your visual perception. The other is a PHYSICAL object which can be not only seen but TOUCHED by many humans and not just the original viewer.

Luminon wrote:
But we can broaden the analogy by using another logical tricks of skeptics. For example, dinosaur articles are published in magazines, that already believe in dinosaurs, so this is biased, preconceived, unilateral and hardly representative as a real critical view. We can proclaim, that all fossils are best explainable as frauds, misidentifications with known and unknown geological processes and hallucinations and/or bad interpretation of fervent archeologists putting their faith into mere anomalous stone. This is the "simpliest explanation" and because there's missing physical evidence of dinosaurs' existence, any explanation is simplier, no matter what it is.

Another epic fail of a paragraph. The dinosaur articles in the "biased" magazines only come from the position of dinosaurs existing because of the wealth of PHYSICAL evidence to support their existence. As to proclaiming any number of insane things about the validity of fossils and their origins (the equivalent of plugging you ears and screaming "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" over and over again), it's just a example of trying to grab and hold the air in front of you. Lets go through the list:

Fossils as frauds - For all of them to be frauds with NO ONE coming public about the biggest conspiracy in human history is inconceivable. FAIL!

Fossils as misidentification - For all of them to be misidenifications with not one scientist seeing the error is just as inconceivable as them being frauds.

Fossils as hallucinations - You can see a hallucination, but you really can't feel a hallucination. For everyone to be having the same hallucination, worldwide, is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!

None of those "answers" are anywhere near as simple as them being the bones of long dead animals. So the example that the "lack of physical evidence" for dinosaurs lending credibility to aliens coming to earth just make him look like a loon, and it makes you look like a loon for thinking it sounded like a good argument.

Luminon wrote:
This means, that we can use this logic by claim, that the existence of dinosaurs shouldn't be accepted, unless we find an intact frozen and preserved dinosaur, still with meat on bones and if that's not possible -- well, that's a pity. Is it reasonable to reject fossils just like skeptics reject radar-visual cases and ground-trace cases by UFO and demand a sample of preserved dinosaur, like skeptics demand an extraterrestrial sample?

No, sorry, we don't need a frozen one when we have the bones. Bones ARE physical you know... don't you? Dots on a screen/crop circles are nowhere near the same thing as digging up somethings bones, no matter what you say. When you dig up something's bones, you can safely assume that it was once alive, now is dead, and probably lived around the area in which it died. A dot on a screen could be any flying object, not necessarily of alien origin. Crop circles... really, CROP CIRCLES?

Luminon wrote:
Skeptics are skilled propagandists, who succumb to basic emotions. Skeptics like to veil themselves into the robe of science with claim, that their approach and conclusions are "scientific". But is skepticism really so scientific as skeptics want us to think?  It ensues from what was already written, that not. Skeptics are often in dissent with opinion of scientific community.

WTF?!?! I have never met a scientist who WASN'T a skeptic. Science is BASED on skepticism of previously assumed ideas. That is the polar opposite of being dogmatic. Actually, if anyone is being dogmatic, it is the people claiming alien origin, since no amount of evidence would convince them that it was not of alien origin. At least us skeptics are willing to admit the possibility of aliens visiting earth, even if it's extremely improbable and has most likely not happened yet. Just show us the evidence. I would love to meet an alien life form, to be able to interact with a life form not of this earth is an exhilarating prospect, but do I think it's already happened? No.

Luminon wrote:
Another reason for pseudo-scientific skepticism is, that these scientists do not represent all scientists, but rather a mere gang of propagandists, who think that science is the master of nature. When the nature showsn an anomaly, there is a violation of expectations, and that anomaly must be destroyed for science. How dares the nature to violate scientific laws and principles! Anomaly is a threat to validity of their work, so the scientists must get rid of it and convince themselves through wild logical fallacies, that this anomaly doesn't exist and to return the public on the side of truth about nature, approved by scientific community.

Dude, Luminon, that whole paragraph is another example of EPIC FAIL! Science is the explanation of nature. If something comes up which questions our current understanding, it will go through the same rigorous examination as any other aspect of science. If it has the evidence to stand the test, we can safely assume that it is REAL. If it doesn't have the evidence to stand up to questioning, then it should be cast into the same bin as the geocentric solar system or of the flat earth.

To say that it is the rigorous testing that is the enemy is to open our minds to the stupidest of ideas to have popped into the human mind. We would be having arguments about the structure of our flat earth, or how the voices we hear created by our mind are actually coming from objects all around us and are independent from our minds. Pure insanity.

So, in closing, this article does nothing but solidify your standing as a kook. Thanks Luminon for another completely crazy rant which gave me much entertainment reading and tearing to pieces. GET IN THE SACK!

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Extraterrestrial life is

Extraterrestrial life is extremely likely to exist, given what recent planet finding has revealed.

The problem with UFO's is not the likelihood or otherwise of ET, it is that it seems highly improbable that there would be an advanced civilization close enough to Earth to be able to get here within a practical time-period and without the expenditure of truly incredible amounts of energy, at least according to all current and even most fringe theories of physics.

 

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BobSpence1

BobSpence1 wrote:

Extraterrestrial life is extremely likely to exist, given what recent planet finding has revealed.

The problem with UFO's is not the likelihood or otherwise of ET, it is that it seems highly improbable that there would be an advanced civilization close enough to Earth to be able to get here within a practical time-period and without the expenditure of truly incredible amounts of energy, at least according to all current and even most fringe theories of physics.

 

I'm just waiting for him to start plugging "over-unity" devices next.


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"Extraordinary claims

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" != "I have no evidence for <x>. Isn't that extraordinary?"

So many theists claim actually having support for their ideas would somehow destroy their awesomeness.

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As soon as I saw

As soon as I saw "extraterrestrials" I got the sensation I was reading a Marvel Comic.

"Delusion, taste the sensation".

UFOs, Ouija boards, third man on the grassy knoll, and deity beliefs are nothing but crap. They all fit the category of "I like the idea so therefor it must be true".

It still amazes me how much time someone will spend trying to convince themselves the absurd is fact and how elaborate they express their delusions. They get a grade of F for testing and falsifying data to find facts, but get an "A" for creativity.

Mental masturbation does not replace replication and falsification and independent verification.

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Let me put it this way: if I

Let me put it this way: if I claim I was abducted by Aliens, and that the only thing I have to prove it is a rock (suppose, for the sake of this example, a common rock found on Earth. So common, in fact, that it is even found in my backyard) that I supposedly found inside the space-ship, my claim would be dismissed.

What kind of proof is a rock exactly like those found on Earth that extraterrestrials came and abducted me? And if we were to accept my pebble as "adequate" proof, the next day Billy Bob from Nebraska is going to claim that he was swallowed by an Invisible Mutant Chicken and bring some grass stains in his pants as proof and have it accepted as reasonable evidence

Summary:

You need something extraordinary because the nature of your claim is extraordinary. Simple logic.

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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Seriously though, If you drop the word extraordinary then the statement “claims require evidence” remains true.

 

Sort of like Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn without the whole 'hermeticy' stuff?

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Observations of flying

Observations of flying objects, that are clearly non-natural, non-man-made and obviously intelligently controlled, is not an extraordinary claim. For such a claim there is enough evidence - like testimonies of people who had keys to nuclear warheads, photographs, videos, radar records, army records, and so on. Every government of the world has UFO files, even Vatican, who's aerial territory is ridiculously small. This excludes the notion, that UFO's are just overgrown birds and drunk rogallo pilots. Quite oppositely, UFO is taken very seriously, in this world where aerial space and national integrity is jealously guarded by military.
Many phenomena were already commonly accepted as existing, although there is much less evidence available, mainly in astronomy.

Don't ask me for these documents, ask your government or any government that already released some of them. A real skeptic would go after these professionally made UFO observations.

It seems that most of people out of America doesn't believe in UFO abductions, mutilated cows, implants and so on. UFO activity is absolutely independent on these rumors.  They seem to be much more interested in nuclear material.
http://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2010/2010-03.htm#ufosinthenuclearage

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OK, I am fairly sure that

OK, I am fairly sure that you just linked to a story about how nuclear missiles are so fragile that they can be jumpstarted from hovering UFOs. That and apparently, when the space aliens start messing with them, the only way to turn them off rests not with the aliens but with the guys who have access to the “off button” in the launch control center.

 

Let's take that as a claim and ask what evidence could possibly support it. Well, for starters, you could try linking to proof that there actually is an off button in the silos. A photo would be nice.

 

I bet that you can't do that because there is no such button. In fact, launching of nuclear missiles is, by design, so complicated as to make it nearly impossible for one to activate randomly.

 

For one, the systems are not even electrified unless a launch order is in effect.

 

For two, there is a two man rule that requires two people who are seated like three yards apart to each turn a key at the same time. Some documents even suggest that there needs to be an activation from more than one bunker at the same time to light the nuclear candle.

 

I could go on but the point is that there is no reason to include an off switch because it I so damned hard to get them active in the first place.

 

Nuclear reactors do have an off button. Dozens of them per reactor, in fact. They are called SCRAM buttons. Nobody is really certain why they have that name but there is an apocryphal story from the Manhatten Project. Apparently, the first reactor had as a control system, a rope that had to be tensioned in order to keep the control rods out of the reactor. Some dude had the job of standing over that rope with a fireman's ax in case it needed to be cut, Hence the term may refer to Safety Cut Rope Ax Man. Another version of the story is that the guy with the ax was told to watch Doctor Fermi and he was ordered to cut the rope if Fermi “scrammed” running from the area.

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Jormungander
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Luminon wrote:Observations

Luminon wrote:

Observations of flying objects, that are clearly non-natural, non-man-made and obviously intelligently controlled

Here is the problem. They aren't obviously non-man-made. Imagine if while the US government was testing B2 bombers or vertical lift jets, some people witnessed them in action from a distance. The B2 bomber would look bizarre and unlike any human aircraft that people were familiar with. So someone would say "Aha! That means that it is aliens!" And if someone saw an early vertical lift jet from a distance rising straight up into the air, hovering and then shooting off over the horizon, that person might also claim that it would have to be alien because no human aircraft to their knowledge can possibly move like that. Thanks to the government's secrecy about some kinds of military aircraft, people could easily wrongly think that a very strange looking and unnaturally moving air vehicle had to be an alien rather than a human air craft.

And they would actually be correct in saying that it is a UFO. UFOs do exist. In the sense that you can observe a flying object that you can not identify. That in no way means that they are extraterrestrial. That's they key point. Just because you don't recognize it and are unfamiliar with it's flight capabilities, that does NOT mean that you get to blame aliens on it.

 

Luminon wrote:

For such a claim there is enough evidence - like testimonies of people who had keys to nuclear warheads, photographs, videos, radar records, army records, and so on. Every government of the world has UFO files, even Vatican, who's aerial territory is ridiculously small. This excludes the notion, that UFO's are just overgrown birds and drunk rogallo pilots. Quite oppositely, UFO is taken very seriously, in this world where aerial space and national integrity is jealously guarded by military.

Of course. Air security is a matter of national defense. People take that very seriously. And so if they can't ID an aircraft, that make note of it and might try to investigate what is happening. That in no way implies extraterrestrials though. Again, being unable to successfully ID an aircraft does not warrant blaming aliens on it.

 

Luminon wrote:

Many phenomena were already commonly accepted as existing, although there is much less evidence available, mainly in astronomy.

Don't ask me for these documents, ask your government or any government that already released some of them. A real skeptic would go after these professionally made UFO observations.

Yeah, the government keeps very good records of UFOs spotted by the military. Again, I just don't see the aliens in all this. Failing to ID some mystery thing in the sky does not mean you get to announce that the government is tracking aliens.

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Jormungander wrote:Here is

Jormungander wrote:
Here is the problem. They aren't obviously non-man-made. Imagine if while the US government was testing B2 bombers or vertical lift jets, some people witnessed them in action from a distance. The B2 bomber would look bizarre and unlike any human aircraft that people were familiar with. So someone would say "Aha! That means that it is aliens!" And if someone saw an early vertical lift jet from a distance rising straight up into the air, hovering and then shooting off over the horizon, that person might also claim that it would have to be alien because no human aircraft to their knowledge can possibly move like that. Thanks to the government's secrecy about some kinds of military aircraft, people could easily wrongly think that a very strange looking and unnaturally moving air vehicle had to be an alien rather than a human air craft.

And they would actually be correct in saying that it is a UFO. UFOs do exist. In the sense that you can observe a flying object that you can not identify. That in no way means that they are extraterrestrial. That's they key point. Just because you don't recognize it and are unfamiliar with it's flight capabilities, that does NOT mean that you get to blame aliens on it.

No, that's not what I mean. Vertical take-off and acceleration can be mistaken by a civilian amateur for impossible, but not by military professionals!!! I don't mean such an ordinary stuff as you. I mean something, that directly violates any physical properties that an airplane with propulsion jets can have. I once already wrote a report of an astronomer from a small observatory near my city.
"The object moved at 6000 km/h, then slowed down on 3000 km/h, then did a sharp 90° turn and DISAPPEARED."
That pretty well sums up what do I mean by UFO. Someone should make a distinction of "unidentified flying object" and "unidentifiable flying object". The latter is something that is very well and often observed, and thanks to these plentiful data we can say with certainity that it can not be indentified as anything we know!
 

 

Jormungander wrote:

Yeah, the government keeps very good records of UFOs spotted by the military. Again, I just don't see the aliens in all this. Failing to ID some mystery thing in the sky does not mean you get to announce that the government is tracking aliens.

I'd like you to adress my point on that. Failing to identify something because of lacking information is one thing, but being absolutely unable to identify something is a different problem. Because, if an aircraft freakin' disappears both from radar and plain sight, then not even experts will believe that U.S. government is trying a new toy.

As far as I am concerned, these aircrafts are etheric, and their dense visible form is only temporarily maintained for us to see.

 

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
OK, I am fairly sure that you just linked to a story about how nuclear missiles are so fragile that they can be jumpstarted from hovering UFOs. That and apparently, when the space aliens start messing with them, the only way to turn them off rests not with the aliens but with the guys who have access to the “off button” in the launch control center.
IOW, tl/dr. Fail!

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
Let's take that as a claim...
I'm sorry for your time, but it is exactly opposite. The link is to interview with person who gathered testimonies from retired military offices. And these testimonies are about how the missiles were often DISABLED by hovering UFOs. So they wouldn't launch no matter what.

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"I mean something, that

"I mean something, that directly violates any physical properties that an airplane with propulsion jets can have. I once already wrote a report of an astronomer from a small observatory near my city.
"The object moved at 6000 km/h, then slowed down on 3000 km/h, then did a sharp 90° turn and DISAPPEARED."
That pretty well sums up what do I mean by UFO. Someone should make a distinction of "unidentified flying object" and "unidentifiable flying object". The latter is something that is very well and often observed, and thanks to these plentiful data we can say with certainity that it can not be indentified as anything we know!"

Let me guess - the object in question was clocked visually? Please tell me how this person could eyeball something and determine it was moving at 3-6000 km/h. My eye would record that as "Damn that's fast" and not do much more.

Wouldn't more information be available if instruments were used? Or is "Etheric" just a word you use for "I don't want to look for an explanation that might mess with my belief"?

I read through a lot of the information you provided in the link. I especially liked the "I did something nice for a homeless guy" "Creme's Master said you did something nice for Maitreya/Jesus" letters. Talk about feel good religion.

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Um no Luminon, your link was

Um no Luminon, your link was quite specific.

 

Quote:
Schuur told me that during the time when each missile was the focus of interest of this object, the missile appeared to be manipulated electronically and the launch activation was actually initiated. In other words, each of the missiles was in turn preparing to launch. Schuur told me that he and his missile commander had to activate what’s called the ‘Inhibit Switch’, which prevented the launch of the missiles.

 

 

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Luminon wrote: Observations

Luminon wrote:
Observations of flying objects, that are clearly non-natural, non-man-made and obviously intelligently controlled, is not an extraordinary claim. For such a claim there is enough evidence - like testimonies of people who had keys to nuclear warheads, photographs, videos, radar records, army records, and so on.

Luminon wrote:
No, that's not what I mean. Vertical take-off and acceleration can be mistaken by a civilian amateur for impossible, but not by military professionals!!

You realize that not all members of a military organization are privy to all of it's classified secrets, right? And you do know that prototype/test aircraft are not always known to all those without classified access? So, yes, even military members can be kooks.

 

 

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