Your opinion of UFOs, ESP, poltergeists, etc?

[The IbanezerScrooge]

The trouble is that there usually isn't a naturalistic explanation.

There is always a naturalistic explanation. That's kind of the issue. We've never observed anything that didn't have a natural explanation proposed.

There is typically only a smug dismissal of the witness's report as a hoax or an illusion or a hallucination

We've never had a naturalistic explanation over-turned in favor of a non-naturalistic one. Ever. Why should we ignore all of our previous knowledge and just accept the fantastical when there has never been an instance of it actually being shown to be true? That's not smug. That's just prudent.

no need to investigate, move along, nothing to see here.

Who says we're not investigating? SETI is a real thing that gets real government money. We're looking. We're investigating, but the only things we're finding are things that we would expect to find given our knowledge of physics and how reality works. Those things that we can't explain simply remain unexplained because there's no good reason to jump into fantastical, ill-defined, "super-natural" explanations. The leap is simply unjustified and we've never found a good justification to do it in any case. Ever. Not once.

 

[cloudyday2]

I hope they never stop making UFO, ESP, etc. documentaries. I find my entertainment from watching them and laughing at how people jump to conclusions about all that stuff. I don't believe any of it. I use too but then I got into my engineering education and physics. Realized from that that this stuff can't be true. With that said I do wish the Ancient Alien guys would go away - they just flat out make stuff up. And why doesn't that one guy comb his hair? Is he trying to be a new Einstein or something?

I think you are overstating when you say it "can't be true". There is a good book called "Unconventional Flying Objects" by Paul R. Hill ( Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis: A Scientific Analysis by Paul R. Hill ) where he argues that people are too quick to write-off the nuts-and-bolts spaceship hypothesis. Hill only had a bachelor's degree, but he actually taught classes in aeronautics and had some high-up jobs at NASA, worked on the Nike missile project, etc. ( Paul R. Hill - Wikipedia ) He gives as an example the way UFOs suddenly vanish and compared that to the way Nike missiles can seem to vanish due to their extremely high acceleration. He also looks at the colors described for UFOs and hypothesizes ionized gas and shows how the color changes make sense.

So I wouldn't just dismiss it all as "can't be true". Maybe there are more mundane explanations in psychology for some reports, but there is no reason we can't have alien robotic probes flying in our atmosphere (at least none that I can imagine).

 

[Steve Petersen]

I realize that many people think these topics are laughable,

Physical and Life Sciences is not the forum for this subject.

 

[GUANO]

There is always a naturalistic explanation. That's kind of the issue. We've never observed anything that didn't have a natural explanation proposed.



We've never had a naturalistic explanation over-turned in favor of a non-naturalistic one. Ever. Why should we ignore all of our previous knowledge and just accept the fantastical when there has never been an instance of it actually being shown to be true? That's not smug. That's just prudent.



Who says we're not investigating? SETI is a real thing that gets real government money. We're looking. We're investigating, but the only things we're finding are things that we would expect to find given our knowledge of physics and how reality works. Those things that we can't explain simply remain unexplained because there's no good reason to jump into fantastical, ill-defined, "super-natural" explanations. The leap is simply unjustified and we've never found a good justification to do it in any case. Ever. Not once.

I like when someone who claims to be non-religious speaks from the 3rd person as a ministering representative of a non-physical entity that supposedly holds intellectual authority over humanity. Gotta love irony.

 

[akaDaScribe]

I’ve never seen UFOs like most of the descriptions I hear about. However, I have seen lights that look like stars moving across the sky at what appears to be ridiculous speeds. I would think they were shooting stars except for the fact that they completely change directions. I would think they were some kind of plane, but they switch directions at like angles and without regard to inertia. I’ve probably only seen this like 3-4 times in my life time and it is always on very clear nights.

I’m not sure what it was. I find it interesting that people have been reporting UFOs since long before we could fly. It’s one of those things that I just let go because it’s just one of many mysteries that are unlikely to impact me in my lifetime.

 

[cloudyday2]

I’ve never seen UFOs like most of the descriptions I hear about. However, I have seen lights that look like stars moving across the sky at what appears to be ridiculous speeds. I would think they were shooting stars except for the fact that they completely change directions. I would think they were some kind of plane, but they switch directions at like angles and without regard to inertia. I’ve probably only seen this like 3-4 times in my life time and it is always on very clear nights.

I’m not sure what it was. I find it interesting that people have been reporting UFOs since long before we could fly. It’s one of those things that I just let go because it’s just one of many mysteries that are unlikely to impact me in my lifetime.

That's actually a somewhat common type of UFO sighting. A coworker saw something like that while camping, and I have read about similar sightings in a couple of UFO books. I believe there is a report in Blue Book of a group of astronomers at an outdoor party who witnessed a light in the sky trace precisely around the edge of the moon and do some other strange things. They were astronomers, but none of them had an explanation for what they saw so it was reported to Blue Book and dutifully filed-away with a shrug.

 

[cloudyday2]

There is always a naturalistic explanation. That's kind of the issue. We've never observed anything that didn't have a natural explanation proposed.

We've never had a naturalistic explanation over-turned in favor of a non-naturalistic one. Ever. Why should we ignore all of our previous knowledge and just accept the fantastical when there has never been an instance of it actually being shown to be true? That's not smug. That's just prudent.

Who says we're not investigating? SETI is a real thing that gets real government money. We're looking. We're investigating, but the only things we're finding are things that we would expect to find given our knowledge of physics and how reality works. Those things that we can't explain simply remain unexplained because there's no good reason to jump into fantastical, ill-defined, "super-natural" explanations. The leap is simply unjustified and we've never found a good justification to do it in any case. Ever. Not once.

Your reasoning seems to be circular to me. (Maybe "circular" isn't the right word - let's just say I don't follow your reasoning.) If we discovered that the Klingon Empire had stealthy space probes investigating Earth, that would be a naturalistic explanation - right? There is no reason Klingons can't exist somewhere.

Instead of "natural explanation" we should probably say "inconsequential explanation". What we are really debating is whether people should care about UFO sightings. If the UFO sightings can all be explained as hoaxes, misidentifications, secret government aircraft, hallucinations, etc. then there is no reason to investigate them. On the other hand, if there are Klingon space probes, then that is very consequential.

 

[cloudyday2]

Physical and Life Sciences is not the forum for this subject.

Hmmm. I guess it depends whether you think these are topics that science can investigate. I don't see any reason science can't investigate them. In fact there have been some scientific investigations that failed to find much.

 

[cloudyday2]

Summer, 1992... I was on a south Jersey beach at sunset with my dog... I wasn't high nor drunk. Off the shore, what I guessed at being perhaps 2 miles out, was a white light that was stationary save for it doing loop-da-loops and figure 8's in a confined area. After about 2 minutes I determined that this had to be some joker on a clam boat, with a spot light on the mast swinging it with a rope. As I was about to get up and leave, the object sped away at a speed I still, 26 years later, am taken aback by, to the south. There, probably off the coast of Atlantic City, it was shimmering. But being that many miles away now, I figured it went back to the figure 8's and loop-da-loops. About 30 seconds later it sped back to the same spot in front of me, did a couple of figure 8's and loops and then sped away straight up into the night sky.

It made no noise, gravity was under it's control, and the speed at which it moved (I have been in the Army, been on air bases and seen many air shows) was NOT even close to anything we have. What was it? Not sure.... but my account is not the account of a drug addict, but rather a very sane individual.

There was a second event a couple of years ago. My son and I were out chopping wood in the fall. A disc shaped object went right over our heads, slowly, I am guessing about 3000' off the ground and made no noise at all. It was grey, same color as the sky but just contrasting enough that it caught my son's eye. Not wanting to scare him, and not knowing what it was anyway, when he asked what it was I told him a drone. It wasn't... we don't have drones that are silent. Again... no drugs involved.

There have been many policemen, firemen, pilots, and so forth... who have seen things that might not be ET related, but do not fit into ANY aircraft descriptions we have. If we take off the top 99% of sighting and call them all kooks or, well, drug addicts if you insist... the remaining 1% of respected people who have seen unknown objects runs into the thousands, many thousands.

The funny thing about some UFO sightings is how they can seem to be performing for the witness. This seems to suggest hallucination, but sometimes there is more than one witness. Your second sighting had two witnesses. I don't doubt that some drones might look like grey saucers as you described, but what would it be doing there - a practical joke, just a coincidence? I had a sighting of a daylight disc that seemed to be appearing for me, but I was the only witness so I suppose hallucination might be the best explanation.

 

[Rajni]

The funny thing about some UFO sightings is how they can seem to be performing for the witness. This seems to suggest hallucination, but sometimes there is more than one witness.

One similar account I recently came across involved a "ghost plane", of all things:

Multiple Witnesses Report 'Ghost Plane' Sighting in England​

Edited to add: The object is identified as a plane (so not technically
a "UFO", but what's not readily identified is why-the-heck...)
-

 

[Ken Rank]

The funny thing about some UFO sightings is how they can seem to be performing for the witness. This seems to suggest hallucination, but sometimes there is more than one witness. Your second sighting had two witnesses. I don't doubt that some drones might look like grey saucers as you described, but what would it be doing there - a practical joke, just a coincidence? I had a sighting of a daylight disc that seemed to be appearing for me, but I was the only witness so I suppose hallucination might be the best explanation.

The one I said was a drone to my son was probably 40' in diameter. It was daytime and I live well out into the country and know everyone around...

The other one... here is the funny thing. At that time you still didn't tell anyone these things because they would see you as crazy. But, after a few weeks I had to tell somebody so I chose my best friend. I began to tell him the story and as I was telling it his demeanor changed dramatically. I finally got to the point where I said "it went south and far as I could see" and he then picked up the story (talking right over me) and described it coming back to the place it started and then shooting up into the sky (after some more figure 8's and circles). He was 2 beaches down with his girlfriend and saw the same thing. About 5 years later I was watching In Search Of and they covered a story off California's coast with actual video and what they showed was exactly the same thing I saw. What was it? Who knows... but I am not open to that kind of imagination... I even own a huge telescope, I spend a lot of time looking up.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Your reasoning seems to be circular to me. (Maybe "circular" isn't the right word - let's just say I don't follow your reasoning.) If we discovered that the Klingon Empire had stealthy space probes investigating Earth, that would be a naturalistic explanation - right? There is no reason Klingons can't exist somewhere.

Instead of "natural explanation" we should probably say "inconsequential explanation". What we are really debating is whether people should care about UFO sightings. If the UFO sightings can all be explained as hoaxes, misidentifications, secret government aircraft, hallucinations, etc. then there is no reason to investigate them. On the other hand, if there are Klingon space probes, then that is very consequential.

Sure, fair enough. I guess maybe we need to categorize these things, right? From a scientific and naturalistic POV there's nothing wrong with positing things like Bigfoot or spacecraft or aliens. Those in themselves are naturally derived things that could potentially exist and not break any laws of physics (well... kinda) or evolutionary theory. The problem arises when these things are claimed and no evidence is given for the claims. And then, when pressed the evidence that is given is found to be fake or identifiable with something totally benign.

When this keeps happening over and over again, even though Bigfoot could totally be real from a scientific POV, the skeptical approach is warranted. You believe you saw Bigfoot? Fine. I don't really believe what you saw was actually Bigfoot. You may have seen something that you interpreted as Bigfoot, but all of this previous data suggests you are more likely mistaken about that interpretation. I'll wait for some better evidence and analysis on the topic before I believe you by default. Before I care. If you double-down on that I might graduate my opinion of you to dishonest and potentially a liar. Further still and your sanity comes into question. That's just how it is.

Same for UFO's and aliens. Even more so for ESP, miracles and religious claims since those add an extra layer of fantastical, indemonstrable processes and entities as explanations that we're just supposed to accept at face-value. That's just not the way to go about finding the true nature of the reality or our world.

 

[cloudyday2]

Sure, fair enough. I guess maybe we need to categorize these things, right? From a scientific and naturalistic POV there's nothing wrong with positing things like Bigfoot or spacecraft or aliens. Those in themselves are naturally derived things that could potentially exist and not break any laws of physics (well... kinda) or evolutionary theory. The problem arises when these things are claimed and no evidence is given for the claims. And then, when pressed the evidence that is given is found to be fake or identifiable with something totally benign.

When this keeps happening over and over again, even though Bigfoot could totally be real from a scientific POV, the skeptical approach is warranted. You believe you saw Bigfoot? Fine. I don't really believe what you saw was actually Bigfoot. You may have seen something that you interpreted as Bigfoot, but all of this previous data suggests you are more likely mistaken about that interpretation. I'll wait for some better evidence and analysis on the topic before I believe you by default. Before I care. If you double-down on that I might graduate my opinion of you to dishonest and potentially a liar. Further still and your sanity comes into question. That's just how it is.

Same for UFO's and aliens. Even more so for ESP, miracles and religious claims since those add an extra layer of fantastical, indemonstrable processes and entities as explanations that we're just supposed to accept at face-value. That's just not the way to go about finding the true nature of the reality or our world.

I guess the problem is that dismissing evidence without any formal investigation creates a catch-22 - you never can build-up a body of formally-investigated evidence that makes you take new evidence seriously if you are overly dismissive. I read about a UFO sighting just outside a conference building filled with astronomers. The excited person told of the UFO sighting but not a single astronomer was willing to simply step outside the building and take a look. That level of skepticism is going too far I think.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

And, just to expand a bit on #32; I've been commenting from the stand point of someone else telling me about these things or showing me a video or something. From my own personal experience when I've seen "UFO's" or other strange things my first thoughts weren't, "Look! Aliens!" or "[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]! FRAKING BIGFOOT!". It was, "wow some ind of plane just flew by" or "Man that was a huge bear!" or a guy in a suit. Point being I think one has to be predisposed to believe the fantastical before accepting other people's fantastical claims as plausible by default. I mean, it's kind of obvious. I'm not one of those people.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

I guess the problem is that dismissing evidence without any formal investigation creates a catch-22 - you never can build-up a body of formally-investigated evidence that makes you take new evidence seriously if you are overly dismissive. I read about a UFO sighting just outside a conference building filled with astronomers. The excited person told of the UFO sighting but not a single astronomer was willing to simply step outside the building and take a look. That level of skepticism is going too far I think.

"Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!"

Like I said, these things are being investigated. Scientifically. I think maybe you're just expressing disappointment in the results so far. It's okay. It'll get better.

For what it's worth, you know you could always go back to school and get an advanced science degree, do your internship in a lab somewhere, get a fellowship and do your own research, publish some papers and start investigations into these things with the backing of the scientific community and prove it all to be true. Just sayin'. Options.

 

[Bobber]

I hope they never stop making UFO, ESP, etc. documentaries. I find my entertainment from watching them and laughing at how people jump to conclusions about all that stuff. I don't believe any of it. I use too but then I got into my engineering education and physics. Realized from that that this stuff can't be true. With that said I do wish the Ancient Alien guys would go away - they just flat out make stuff up. And why doesn't that one guy comb his hair? Is he trying to be a new Einstein or something?

I've watched for entertainment many UFO documentary series. Our of about 10 the only one I thought was any good was UFO Hunters, which went 3-4 seasons. Quite interesting that one.

 

[Sanoy]

There is always a naturalistic explanation. That's kind of the issue. We've never observed anything that didn't have a natural explanation proposed.

That is what science does, it outputs naturalistic explanations. In any event, whether actually supernatural or not, science will provide a naturalistic answer. What's important is not that it stamps out an explanation, but whether the explanation accounts for the facts or explains something.

Back when I thought this was all malarky, before I spent any time looking into it, I just gave one of the 3 blanket explanations... "They hallucinated it", "they missidentified what they were seeing", "they are lying". But these are not scientific explanations. They are statements of naturalism or ones world view. Hallucination is just a statement that it didn't happen, not what happened. Missidentification is just a statement that it wasn't an alien craft, not what the craft was. Lying is just a statement that it didn't happen.

None of these "explanations", on their own, are satisfying explanations. I'd rather not believe it, so I have looked for a satisfying debunking from science but I have yet to see a scientist take on the responsibility of researching the phenomenon first. Instead they just seem to reach into the bucket of easy explanations and just start tossing them out like I had learned to do.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

That is what science does, it outputs naturalistic explanations. In any event, whether actually supernatural or not, science will provide a naturalistic answer. What's important is not that it stamps out an explanation, but whether the explanation accounts for the facts or explains something.

Back when I thought this was all malarky, before I spent any time looking into it, I just gave one of the 3 blanket explanations... "They hallucinated it", "they missidentified what they were seeing", "they are lying". But these are not scientific explanations. They are statements of naturalism or ones world view. Hallucination is just a statement that it didn't happen, not what happened. Missidentification is just a statement that it wasn't an alien craft, not what the craft was. Lying is just a statement that it didn't happen.

None of these "explanations", on their own, are satisfying explanations. I'd rather not believe it, so I have looked for a satisfying debunking from science but I have yet to see a scientist take on the responsibility of researching the phenomenon first. Instead they just seem to reach into the bucket of easy explanations and just start tossing them out like I had learned to do.

This gets us to the question of how does one use science to investigate these things, specifically those with that extra layer of magic like miracles and ESP? For believers, this seems like a simple answer: Allow for the indemonstrable entities and mechanisms. Allow for the supernatural. Just allow for it. What does that look like? How does science allow for those explanations and remain solid in its integrity?

I have looked for a satisfying debunking from science

This seems backwards to me. I would be first looking for a satisfying explanation from those making the claims. Those are in short supply.

 

[cloudyday2]

I've watched for entertainment many UFO documentary series. Our of about 10 the only one I thought was any good was UFO Hunters, which went 3-4 seasons. Quite interesting that one.

I can't think of a single UFO documentary I have watched that was worth much. Most of the books are lousy too. The problem is that the people creating movies and books are mostly trying to make money. If distorting the facts or selectively presenting the facts makes for a more saleable product, then that is what they do.

 

[cloudyday2]

For what it's worth, you know you could always go back to school and get an advanced science degree, do your internship in a lab somewhere, get a fellowship and do your own research, publish some papers and start investigations into these things with the backing of the scientific community and prove it all to be true. Just sayin'. Options.

LOL, I have nightmares occasionally about going back to college and realizing that I'm way too old and stupid to compete with the young whipper-snappers. Nope I will have to leave that to others.