April 13, 2014 Listener Roundtable

[HoJack]

Here is another. This one is a recreation of the 1952 DC UFO case. (Actually, a recreation of a photo I think came from a Disney documentary, not sure of the source.)

 

[HoJack]

And here is another, this one from the 1942 Battle of LA photo.

 

[Sentry]

I wrote HoJack with a question about these recreations, and he assures me that he's using his powers for good. Pretty scary, though that something that looks so good can be created this way. What blows it for most of the fakes is the "bad acting" of their UFO, having it move in an unbelievable way.

Getting back to using the technique positively, I'd like to see these dramatic recreations on show offer more than one version of the UFO, since they usually go with an unambiguous alien craft. If that's exactly what the witnesses describe, okay. But if they saw some distant weird light, don't turn it into a Spielberg mothership!

 

[HoJack]

Yes, I know what you mean with the TV shows. Here are some more fake videos (I assure everybody, I made all of these to play in the background on a wall of TV monitors for a kickstarter video, not to fool anybody).

This one was fun to do. It's not as good as the original hoax video was, but I made sure the trees moved in the wind, etc. The resolution is really small on this because the render time was insane at full resolution.

 

[HoJack]

I also did a bunch of fake versions of the opening credits from a bunch of TV shows and movies. Here are a few of those.

 

[nameless]

@HoJack , great stuff man.

 

[Polterwurst]

Yup. Seeing as how you are obviously acquainted very well with the software and an expert in these techniques, I hope you'll chime in when another video shows up that looks convincing but might be CGI.

 

[HoJack]

For sure. The ones that trick me are the ones that are not CG, but things like reflections and bugs, etc.

 

[Randall]

Interesting show and a great change of pace.

Question: Doesn't the "I saw a talking rabbit" story invalidate the previous assertion that human beings are excellent eye-witnesses and can be believed when they relate stories of what they think they saw, be that alien produced UFOs or articulate rodents?

Excellent point, and like I always say, context is everything. The skeptics would have us believe that when it's convenient for them to say so, human perception is so fallible as to be completely useless for evaluating the objective reality of a situation. However what they often fail to mention is completely useless as compared to what? When pressed it's usually compared to mechanical instruments. However mechanical instruments are notorious for failing. I do PC technical repairs so trust me; I know, and besides that it's just plain self evident. Machines fail every day, and what's more, almost none of them have the ability to repair themselves and none come close to human intelligence. So I'm not claiming that human perception is infallible; only that in a given random situation it is good enough to take reports of strange things seriously.

I was reminded of the above again during a recent episode of the new Cosmos series where Neil deGrasse Tyson ( notorious UFO skeptic ) explained that the human eye has more atoms than there are stars in the known universe, and how it evolved an exceptional capability over the course of millions of years to accurately distinguish various kinds of objects from one another. All very interesting. But dollars to doughnuts if you were to say that you saw a UFO to him, suddenly that very same piece of amazing evolutionary optics would turn into an unreliable piece of human biology that isn't capable of discerning a bird from an airplane, from an alien spacecraft.

What shall we call this odd psychological juxtaposition of opinion? It seems to be some sort of selective bias triggered by keywords associated with UFOs and the paranormal in general.

 

[Sentry]

A topic that was briefly discussed on the show is addressed from an unlikely, but qualified source.
The need for abduction victims to get professional (not amateur) help.
The Big Study: Abduction and Hypnosis: a Letter from the Past.

 

[Randall]

I finally listened to the round table today. Great intro there ( LOL ). I really should get that Skype connection working. BTW, I really love participating on the show. The last time was with our friends Goggs, Pixel & Sand ( download here ), and in that show I talked briefly about the UFO sighting I had in 1975 ( 1:12:58 mark ). This time I felt as though I was in very good company with our two other participants Curt and Howard, and once again, the show seemed to go by far too fast. If Gene keeps me on his standby list maybe we can get into more of the details in the not too distant future ! Thanks for the experience and thanks to everyone who listened .

 

[Wade]

"...I was reminded of the above again during a recent episode of the new Cosmos series where Neil deGrasse Tyson ( notorious UFO skeptic ) explained that the human eye has more atoms than there are stars in the known universe, and how it evolved an exceptional capability over the course of millions of years to accurately distinguish various kinds of objects from one another. All very interesting. But dollars to doughnuts if you were to say that you saw a UFO to him, suddenly that very same piece of amazing evolutionary optics would turn into an unreliable piece of human biology that isn't capable of discerning a bird from an airplane, from an alien spacecraft.
What shall we call this odd psychological juxtaposition of opinion? It seems to be some sort of selective bias triggered by keywords associated with UFOs and the paranormal in general..."[/QUOTE]

There are dead on points and then there are dead on points

 

[trainedobserver]

I was reminded of the above again during a recent episode of the new Cosmos series where Neil deGrasse Tyson ( notorious UFO skeptic ) explained that the human eye has more atoms than there are stars in the known universe, and how it evolved an exceptional capability over the course of millions of years to accurately distinguish various kinds of objects from one another. All very interesting. But dollars to doughnuts if you were to say that you saw a UFO to him, suddenly that very same piece of amazing evolutionary optics would turn into an unreliable piece of human biology that isn't capable of discerning a bird from an airplane, from an alien spacecraft.

What shall we call this odd psychological juxtaposition of opinion? It seems to be some sort of selective bias triggered by keywords associated with UFOs and the paranormal in general.

The key concept here is identification. Can a person identify an extraterrestrial or alien spacecraft? Not unless they know what an extraterrestrial or alien spacecraft looks like. Do you? Does anyone? The short answer to that is of course, "no."

It is possible for someone to recognize that they cannot identify an object as fitting any category of known objects (for them). It can be classified as unidentified or even unknown, but it cannot except in the most romantic and hopeful sense, be classified as an alien spacecraft no more than you can classify talking bunnies as cyptids.

We can make a guess and say that the object might be a space craft from another civilization, but it would just be a guess and not a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination. What would a space craft from another civilization look like? How could you tell? Unrecognizable? Not a good qualifier.

At this point in time (and I believe this has been true for several decades now) it is practically impossible to tell a sufficiently advanced aircraft from a "UFO." Given the classified and secret nature of aircraft and weapon development I cannot imagine any one person being able to categorically state that any given unidentified or otherwise publicly unknown flying object is positively not a man-made object.

Delores Cannon said something rather telling at the UFO conference I just attended. "Believers don't require any proof." If you believe in alien visitation then you'll see alien spacecraft where someone else will see an unknown and unidentified object. I'm just not so quick to call something alien or extraterrestrial anymore. I don't know what is going on, and I don't think anyone else does either, no matter how much they insist that they do.

 

[trainedobserver]

A topic that was briefly discussed on the show is addressed from an unlikely, but qualified source.
The need for abduction victims to get professional (not amateur) help.
The Big Study: Abduction and Hypnosis: a Letter from the Past.

This is of course a major point that just keeps getting swept under the rug and dismissed. Get professional help. Don't go to Jimmy-Joe-Bob and his band of paranormal case busters or get on the sofa of his hypnotic-regressing grandmother. And for pity's sake do not go to a UFO conference and look for help there.

 

[Randall]

The key concept here is identification. Can a person identify an extraterrestrial or alien spacecraft? Not unless they know what an extraterrestrial or alien spacecraft looks like. Do you? Does anyone? The short answer to that is of course, "no."

It's not so much about identification as it is classification. Alien craft ( UFOs ) are a class of objects that are alien to our global civilization, and it is entirely possible to be reasonably certain whether or not such a classification applies to a given case by applying deductive reasoning to the evidence. So contrary to your assertion above. Yes I can tell what an alien craft looks like because its appearance, behavior, and so on don't correspond to anything that's not alien. This is exactly how the USAF filtered out reports of UFOs from reports of other types of craft, and in support of that you might want to check out the links in my signature line.

 

[Sentry]

This is of course a major point that just keeps getting swept under the rug and dismissed. Get professional help. Don't go to Jimmy-Joe-Bob and his band of paranormal case busters or get on the sofa of his hypnotic-regressing grandmother. And for pity's sake do not go to a UFO conference and look for help there.

Chris Rutkowski recently posted about this on his blog, Ufology Research:
Ann Druffel's recommendations about working with UFO abductees
"She also spoke out very strongly on having clinical professionals such as psychologists and medical doctors (including psychiatrists) help evaluate and treat abductees for their "emotional damage" caused by either the trauma of their experiences themselves or by the consequences of their coming forward with their stories."

 

[Jimi H.]

Just wanted to say this was a great show!

You all sounded good, and we got some good explanations about individual takes/views on the subject matter, all the way from the classic nut-and-bolts view to Gene's more destabilizing questioning of our own perceptions. A real roundtable!

 

[Randall]

Just wanted to say this was a great show!

You all sounded good, and we got some some explanations about individual takes/views on the subject matter, all the way from the classic nut-and-bolts view to Gene's more destabilizing questioning of our own perceptions. A real roundtable!

Thanks Jimi, that means a lot because you have made a lot of great posts here and we know you don't just BS around !

 

[Constance]

At this point in time (and I believe this has been true for several decades now) it is practically impossible to tell a sufficiently advanced aircraft from a "UFO." Given the classified and secret nature of aircraft and weapon development I cannot imagine any one person being able to categorically state that any given unidentified or otherwise publicly unknown flying object is positively not a man-made object.

That was not the case in the first 30-40 years of the modern ufo period, which is why Kevin Randle recommended several years ago that ufo researchers concentrate on what was recognized and investigated in those earlier decades. There's more than enough in the documented history of those decades on which to conclude that the intruders were 'not us, not ours'. From there a rational process is required to form a reasonable hypothesis about what their origin is most likely to have been.

 

[trainedobserver]

That was not the case in the first 30-40 years of the modern ufo period, which is why Kevin Randle recommended several years ago that ufo researchers concentrate on what was recognized and investigated in those earlier decades. There's more than enough in the documented history of those decades on which to conclude that the intruders were 'not us, not ours'. From there a rational process is required to form a reasonable hypothesis about what their origin is most likely to have been.

That is not the same thing as sure knowledge. Also, the phenomena is not monolithic in presentation and presumably not in source. Sorting one root cause from the other seems an impossible task.

I am in complete agreement that many UFO reports appear to be describing beings and vehicles from outside of contemporary human civilization. However, to say that alien visitation has occurred or is occurring is beyond actual verification, for me at least. The fact that every single bit of "undeniable proof" that has been presented over the years is anything but, subtracts from my hope of ever seeing verification, if that is an actual desirable outcome, which I seriously doubt.

I can't say with any degree of certainty that any UFO report describes something that can be undeniably declared a real-world alien craft. Can you?