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A problem arises in the interim period between the first observations of a phenomenon and the moment when our official scientific institutions recognize the reality of the phenomenon. What about those unfortunate witnesses who observed meteors and were told that they couldn't have seen what...

I don't know, Archie. I'm not prepared to prescribe a protocol for the further articulation of this or any other disciplinary paradigm that could be associated with abduction study. I can speculate, but it will be uninformed speculation and therefore not worth much. I suppose it depends on...

Yeah, that's generally what I'm trying to convey. Sure, there were people doing abduction research before Hopkins (Raymond Fowler, etc.), so in that sense I suppose Hopkins isn't a "pioneer" in the strictest sense of the term, but Hopkins appears to be the first researcher whose work has...

Who's going to determine which parts of Hopkins's research we hang onto and which parts we get rid of? That would be those who take up the task of further developing the paradigm he originated. I can't be specific in this case, Archie. The fundamentally unpredictable nature of research may...

Rainey’s most significant accusation was that Hopkins at some point became so credulous that he lost his ability to differentiate between hoaxers and authentic experiencers. Something happened to change a man who once (supposedly) knew when Linda Cortile was telephoning him “pretending to be...

Thanks for the info, Archie. As indicated in my last post, I've read the conference proceedings. They do, as you indicate, represent a wide range of work by a large collection of scholars, but they don't tell the story of how the presentations were being received behind the scenes, discussed...

Archie, Did you attend the conference? I've read the published conference proceedings, but the only reaction to the conference I've read from an attendee is CDB Bryan's book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. Bryan gives the impression in his book that the consensus you speak of was...

Commenting On Bostrom Would you be willing to indulge me and walk me through the simple logic? What are the premises, how do we know they are valid, and to what conclusion(s) do they lead? Or, failing that, would you be willing to refer me to a philosophical text that offers this logical...

Textbook screen memory, Archie?

Commenting On Bostrom If that's true, you should be able to refute Bostrom's argument by citing specific passages and exposing their invalidity. When that happens, I'll start taking your criticisms seriously. But not before. Kindly explain how you became privy to this knowledge. Paul...

Commenting On Bostrom There's always Frank Tipler's controversial and polarizing Omega Point theory, as well. Tipler lost me when he converted to theism, but his pre-conversion work (up to and including 1994's The Physics of Immortality) provides a fascinating (if wildly speculative) set of...

I'll agree that there's no evidence for it, unless you think anomalous experience can be explained as the sporadic and temporary intrusion of the simulators' reality, or perhaps the simulators themselves, into our own reality. This is of course only one of many interpretations of what anomaly...

In order to know this, you would have to possess an intimate knowledge of the simulators' cognitive function. Since, by definition, the simulators would be unknowable to you, you could not impose arbitrary limits on their capacity to know their creation. Perhaps the simulators would be a...

They could have their own cultural mores, and if they chose to, they could judge their simulations based on that same set of mores, even though the simulations would be likely to have their own cultural standards for right and wrong. That would seem capricious, cruel, and unjust to the...

While I'll need to doublecheck, I'm not sure that Bostrum is arguing that running such a simulation would be ethical because of the fear of observation it would engender in the simulated. Instead, I think he argues that an interesting and unintended consequence of a Russian Doll cosmos in which...

Absolutely, I'd be interested. May I humbly suggest as possible guests the editors of Varieties of Anomalous Experience (Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley C. Krippner)? Lynn co-authored the book's chapter on abductions with Stuart Appelle and Leonard Newman, who might also make good...

Nick Bostrom at Oxford University argues in "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" that the odds favor the computational model: " If there were a substantial chance that our civilization will ever get to the posthuman stage and run many ancestor-simulations, then how come you are not...

Richard Dolan seems to think that this is the case, or at least that it is highly probable. Pages 457-461 of the second volume of his UFOs and the National Security State contain the account of Brad Sorenson, who claims that in November of 1988 he attended an open house and air show at Norton...

Although the Roper Poll provides a sensationalist talking point, has it ever been taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community or the ufological community at large (except for Hopkins and Jacobs, that is)? It apparently met with disdain and outright hostility when the results were...

I've tried to carefully qualify my statements about this so far. I make liberal use of "if." "If Rainey's accusations are legitimate." "Determing if/when Hopkins started to allow himself to be deceived..." and so on. Throwing out decades of research is not something to be undertaken lightly...