Weird Stuff (tinfoil hat wearing goons only, please) - The Bear and Badger

superflyninja

Vela wrote:

superflyninja wrote:

All the derision and hostility by "proper scientists" of those excited by aliens etc is baffling.

Not really. Science simply requires evidence to test a hypothesis against, and so far we have none. Pretty much any astronomer (astro)biologist will admit that life is likely to exist in the universe, and probably in this galaxy. There is an enourmous amount of resources, stars and planets are common, and complex chemistry and molecules needed for life as we know it are frequently found in star forming regions. The scepticism regarding aliens on earth is not scepticism regarding life in the universe; it is scepticism that they are here, now. Absent a body or a piece of tech or comprehensive footage, the alien encounter stories are functionally indistinct from giant sea monsters, ghosts and devils.

Oh no I totally get that. Those are two hugely distinct topics.
I had listened to the Fraiser Caine "debate" about life out in the universe and that had me greatly riled up. I know he isnt a proper scientist, but echoes what I've seen many say. He basically totally ignored a point about alien life taking a form that we do not expect or recognise and kept to the line that life should look like us and exist in similar conditions. That sort of thinking annoys me greatly. Yes Earth life is our only frame of reference but it doesnt mean all life in the universe must follow this pattern.

Vela

No, but there are some very useful properties of the molecules and atoms we are made of. Carbon in particular, as well as the biphosphate cell membrane and how it behaves in water. These are fundamental properties of atoms that are some of the most abundant materials in the universe (low atomic number).

From a bastardised version of Occams Razor, doesnt it make sense that most life would be based around say, the smallest few dozen elements? Allowing for reactivity and chemical properties and the fact we observe these elements in molecular clouds, sun-like stars, supernovae remnants does point to it being a universe rich in the materials we are made of.

Of course, that is not to say life mightn't be very small and made of microscopic nuclei configurations on neutron stars (Dragon's Egg, written by a physicist author), or incredibly slow cognition organisms that live in cold, resource poor worlds, or any number of weird things.

The one thing that stands in favour of carbon based life is that it got started relatively quickly on an inhospitable (to us, now) Earth. In that sense, carbon based microorganisms should be common on Earth-ish and Sun-like systems. But multicellular life might be very very very rare. It took < 1 billion years for single cell life, but a further 3bn years for two cells to hang out.

superflyninja

Mr Vela I am in agreement with you!

Vela

Cell stock!

davyK

I can remember reading a theory about our computing technology advancing only after The Roswell Incident

Thinking out loud here as usual - but it doesn't really hold water when you look at the levels of technology we had even at the Apollo era. Some of the chips that were part of the launch system (that corrected the gimbal of the huge stage 1 rockets to keep it pointing up ) were extremely primitive. One was retrieved recently and when the package in the chip was exposed you could actually see the individual components that operated as logic gates - there were only a handful of them. It was simple discrete logic. The damn thing still worked by the way - will see if I can find the YT link for that.

Of course the main computers were processor based architectures but they were still very primitive. It is interesting to note that Apollo probably pushed on the progression of software running on operating systems instead of the metal.The LM guidance computer had an OS of sorts (it's what produced the famous 1202 alarm which was due to the CPU being unable to run all the tasks in RAM, resulting in it dropping the least important).

The opposite opinion to that is that we couldn't recreate what was found but it set us in the road to where we are today but I don't think we would have had the means to even figure out remotely how it worked. It is possible but unlikely. It would be like someone from the Victorian era finding an iPhone. A question of technology level not intelligence.

We were well on the way to modern architectures post WWII anyhow - which is before the whole UFO thing really took off in the 50s. Von Nuemann had created the concept of a stored program and code and data only being different ways of looking at raw binary.

I still contend UFO sightings - the vast majority at least - are experimental craft.

superflyninja

Watched Missing 411 The Hunters last night.
I thought it was pretty great actually. It's like the team listened to the criticism of the first and made this as a response. Its what the first should have been anyway.
Paulides is in the movie himself and I thought it was great that he concentrated on hunters, experienced outdoors folk. The involvement of the FBI in the first case makes me think they suspect serial killer involvement.
Anyhoo the facts as presented are very interesting. I'd be really interested in some counter investigations or an unfiltered view of the facts as they stand.

Dinostar77

superflyninja

Dinostar77 wrote:

Watched Missing 411 The Hunters last night. I thought it was pretty great actually. It's like the team listened to the criticism of the first and made this as a response. Its what the first should have been anyway. Paulides is in the movie himself and I thought it was great that he concentrated on hunters, experienced outdoors folk. The involvement of the FBI in the first case makes me think they suspect serial killer involvement. Anyhoo the facts as presented are very interesting. I'd be really interested in some counter investigations or an unfiltered view of the facts as they stand.

Not seen it, will watch it. I heard his first documentary wasn't great and I haven't seen that either. It's good they've listened to the criticisms.

I honestly wouldnt waste time on the first one. It centred its story on a tragic child case. Which was wide open to the family/parents having done something terrible. It really didnt explain the thinking behind the whole "Missing 411" idea.
This new doc lays it out very nicely and clearly.

@Dinostar77 lemme know when you got that podcast up on the dropbox plz

Also would take any others of interest!

Dinostar77

Dinostar77

superflyninja

Dinostar77 wrote:

Superfly I will try to get the podcasts loaded tonight.

Good lad!

Dinostar77

superflyninja

Good man thanks! I'll grab this evening.l

SpaceGazelle

Dinostar77 wrote:

Whether we think Lazaar is a fraud or telling the truth, one thing he did do was to make area 51 the most famous airforce base in the world. Anyway to quote myself, the ATTIP program revelations (which made the front page of the New York Times and CNN covered it) and the uss nitimtz battle group encounters are probably the best evidence we have in the public sphere that there is some weird stuff going on. It could be completely terrestrial and could be an evolution of the stuff lazaar alledgly worked on or it could be from elsewhere who knows?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care? We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating...... * another video released, that is in the link * An F/A-18 Super Hornet military jet captured this infrared video from several miles away of an unidentified flying object moving at high speed.

SG waiting for your rebuttal on the ATTIP program (backed by senator harry Reid and funded by the pentagon) and the USS Nimitz encounter (which the pilots, radar crew and other a have gone on record, plus there are the videos from the F18 Super Hornets on objects only appearing in infrared light not visible light). But it's all bullshit because you say so. Or more to the point you call me a loon just for finding something strange and unexplained interesting. It's the wierd stuff thread, one should be able to discuss wierd stuff without being shot down and bullied at every opportunity by people like you.

I didn't mean for you to feel bullied, although you once threatened to kick the shit out of me for ridiculing something you said.

Anyway, I've been watching tinfoil hat people quite a bit lately go on about the Moon landings being a hoax, which would be amusing if it wasn't for a recent YouGov survey that had 1 in 6 Brits responding that the landings were staged. The problem is everone has a voice now and everyone's opinion is equally valid. Expert vs Noob is now a valid confrontation, and it's dangerous. If people propose something is true it's genuinely ok to call them idiots until they back it up with facts, especially if those people hold influence. It's not only ok but important.

The facts no longer matter, it's what people want to believe that's important. Climate change too expensive to tackle? Tell everyone it's bullshit. Now economists are pretty bad at predicting the future, as can be seen here with Brexit predictions.

So now politicians get extra leverage to dismiss academics as flawed if the academics are standing up to their policies. Science has perhaps shaped modern society more than anything else, and it's genuinely worrying when people believe things like the Moon landing hoax or that crashed UFOs helped develop lasers and integrated circuits, especially when it's demonstrably untrue. Religion is waning in many parts of the World which is great but holding on firmly in most. The flat Earth thing came from the religious right in The States and is spreading to people who aren't religious because internet. Now the flat Earth is a tiny movement tbf, but the Moon landing thing clearly isn't anymore. we seem to moving more toward replacing religion with something equally as damaging because if you don't need facts then you can do and say anything without fear, and get people to do and say anything.

It's always been about control, and the internet is not the democratisation of knowledge it should have been but fuel for dangerous people saying dangerous things.

davyK

I say this because I partially believe it and also to comfort myself.

This sort of thing will ebb and flow. This is a pretty frightening time (by design or otherwise it doesn't really matter). The US's moon is waning too and the East is rising. It's a time of change.

I think a lot of people react to this by reverting to something that comforts them no matter how irrational it may be.

Politicians, as Sir Robin Day once famously said in an interview that provoked a walk out, are here today and gone tomorrow. They tend not to be around long enough to actually make that much of a difference. The lot we have now are so incompetent I doubt they could even manage to start a war.

However we do seem to be in a time that can probably be equated to the 30s. There does seem to a sense of global madness at the minute and it is extremely unsettling. The US is currently the greatest threat to World peace in my opinion. Their belligerent behaviour and sabre rattlling are the sum of their sense of failing and the fact that an election is around the corner.

I don't think the US have the balls to escalate something like Iran that would cause harm to them - they just don't have the stomach for it. So if Russia were become involved they would wind their necks in after a spell of posturing on both sides. In a way it's good to have something like Putin as a balance even if he is rather unsavoury.

I lived through the 80s as an adult - a time of genuine fear about nuclear conflict. I still have recurring nightmares about a holocaust. We had a drunken Yeltsin on one side and Reagan losing his marbles and destablising by waffling about Star Wars defence on the other. No doubt rational people were operating behind the scenes. We have to believe that is still the case no matter how it is presented to us by the media.

If we do get out the other side , and I expect us to - though I have a feeling we are in the early stages of the breakup of the Union - at least wrt N.Ireland, the big learning point we have to take away is to not dismiss apparent populist idiots as a serious proposition when they start appearing on the horizon. They have to be challenged and squashed before they get any traction.

[Deleted User]

Dinostar77 wrote:

It's the wierd stuff thread, one should be able to discuss wierd stuff without being shot down and bullied at every opportunity by people like you.

I remember this jarring with me at the time but, since you’ve brought it up again, I’m going to point out that it’s complete and utter bullshit.

This logic would be along the lines of me creating a thread called “Bitches Be Cray-Cray: Thread for Alphas Only” and then complaining when people called out the misogyny and sexism I typed in there. For the record, it would not be a defence of my actions to say, “I’m not saying it’s definitely true that women are inferior, I just find it interesting that so many men think they are, and have websites and three hour YouTube videos devoted to it.”

If you’re going to subscribe to a school of thought that uses Joe fucking Rogan interviews as a key element, expect to be shot down on a regular basis until you see some sense.

Kow

Well now I'm with Dino.

Tempy

There’s definitely a line between the playful whimsy of “what if alien watching us?!”* to denigrating the blood, sweat, tears and actual lives and deaths that people gave to achieve some of humanities greatest feats by indulging in lending legitimacy to certain conspiracy theories.

Remember when Buzz Aldrin laid out that Conspiracy Theorist who accused him of being a liar? The level of disrespect that idiot was showing the hundreds of people who worked so hard to achieve something monumental deserved nothing less.

*I grew up being obsessed by UFO and abduction stories and I still utterly love them, but I also think 99.9% of all conspiracy theory and UFO stuff is fuelled by people feeling the need to be more important than they, and we as a species, ultimately are. It’s cosmic solipsism, the idea that we’re anything more than a speck of sleep on the lid of the dreamer’s eye.

bad_hair_day

Happy it's not 100%.

Kow

With a lot of the conspiracy stuff, whether it's true or not is not very interesting to me. The how and why people believe it is more intriguing.

Kow

With flat earth stuff, clearly it's not true so why bother with it? Because the people involved and their beliefs and methods are interesting.

Tempy

The universe is vast and unknown but I also genuinely believe mankind’s desire to feel important clouds the majority of interesting stuff. The idea that someone like Joe Rogan is some kind of truth detecting wonder man is just utterly hilarious to me. He’s a loon fuelling other loons. It’s comical.

Kow

Joe Rogan just lets any loon talk through him. I've never found him to be any kind of truth detector.

Kow

A bit part of conspiracy is that it's entertaining. And that's probably part of the problem. If something is entertaining you allow it more time. More time and it becomes more normalised and believable.

Tempy

Of course, but many people do think that. People can obviously think what they want, but I reserve the right to arch my eyebrow into orbit.

I fucking love a good conspiracy, Foucault’s Pendulum is one of my favourite books hands down.

Kow

Fantastic book. You should read The Illuminatus Trilogy and Mothman Prophecies too, it you haven't.

In fact, The Illuminatus Trilogy is a conspiracy book that comes surrounded by conspiracy, so it's a double whammy.

SpaceGazelle

Tempy wrote:

but I also think 99.9% of all conspiracy theory and UFO stuff is fuelled by people feeling the need to be more important than they, and we as a species, ultimately are. It’s cosmic solipsism, the idea that we’re anything more than a speck of sleep on the lid of the dreamer’s eye.

bad_hair_day

Tempy/SG, religion often says how important we are (Universe created just for Earth). I'd argue UFO 'nuts' are saying no such thing, and creditable aviation witnesses/secret investigations are not the same as Billy from Ohio getting anal probed on the prairie.

Edited.

Tempy

I disagree. C’est la vie.

SpaceGazelle

I think we all sympathise witth a general feeling of powerlessness, especially in a society as globalised and capitalist as this, but it's not snobbish to shoot down people who are ignorant.

A physicist wouldn't start telling a sparky how to wire a house, yet we get situations where Dr Astrophysics PhD is having to debate the Moon landings with John Smith, postman, on national fucking television. Now I know it's not a scientific show but it is a popular one, and one where seemingly 1 in 6 believe the postie.

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