Are there believers posing as skeptics?

[Tyger]

Re: paranoia and gov't bureaucracy. @Tyger the history of the UFO phenomenon is loaded with all sorts of people who are themselves paranoid or were made paranoid by agents of the gov't - these are legitimate and well documented events. The thing to separate in gov't is that many independent agencies with their own funding take it upon themselves to determine who to spy on because thae are deemed deviants or potential threats to social order: protestors, anti-poverty and anti-racist activists, communists, peace protestors, and yes, ufologists. It's how power responds best to people suggesting realities alternate to the party line. Which groups gets the most $$$ devoted to monitoring, intimidation, opening their mail, tapping phones, heliopter observation etc. is dependent on what are the current tensions and influences of the day. We still live in that world. And yes, perhaps the most common instance of self-deluded paranoid thought is to believe that the helicopters are watching them. I've heard that one a lot.

It's especially ludicrous when one is aware of what high-tech surveillance can do now-a-days. Resorting to lumbering 'black helicopters' - who has the man power alone to do such? - makes no sense. What exactly would anyone in such a helicopter be observing - that would be worth anything?

When I lived in Los Angeles some years back, there was a period when my area was endlessly visited by police helicopters in the middle of the night. Blech. 'Police actions' - helicopter hovering for as long as an hour in one spot - making sleep impossible. (Reason why I moved, in fact). I was braced for the drug dealer to come racing through the house. I am now in an area that doesn't use choppers for police actions - but lo! a couple of nights ago, one showed up at 1:00 a.m., above one of the neighboring houses, searchlights waving, checking out the overflow from a gathering further up the street at the local park, and the splay of teenagers through the neighborhood. (How do I know? We called the police to find out what was going on - which I think everyone should do if they find a helicopter nearby and being an annoyance). I think these choppers are more an intimidation than a deterrent. Their uses are really limited when it comes to subtle surveillance - having a chopper hovering is a noisy affair - a 'blunted' blunderbuss of a 'weapon', meant to flush out or supervise a raw chase or on-going incident.

I think 'black helicopters' and MIB are urban legends - picked up and run with by the impressionable.

 

[Burnt State]

I think 'black helicopters' and MIB are urban legends - picked up and run with by the impressionable.

I agree with most of that, especially in the theatre of attempting to bring more true believers to your website. However, in the literature of real witnesses to the surreal re: ufo's and cattle mutes, both features are undeniable and worthy of recording and acknowledgement. The intimidation and creation of paranoia is real - most likely by those who feel their moral obligation and paycheque is about managing reality. I don't subscribe to Keel's demonic confabulation of MIB's but the notion of military personnel in suits telling people what they saw is not what they saw is not much of a stretch at all and is easily categorized in the same save of peace protestor cameras being confiscated by state agents so that the day's events can not be proven later on. In the age of everyone with a camera as a news broadcaster it's getting harder and harder to mange political reality.

Another point to consider is that when the state is listening with purpose and wants you to stay away from a topic they always let you know they are doing it for sake of intimidation. It has nothing to do with hidden surveillance - that's for actual investigative work and comes out of a different budget. These are all well known in the history of those activities listed above.

But this is all secondary. I'm much more interested in the ideas/posts preceding this regarding the fact, or supposition, that you are an alien and that we co-create reality unconsciously or by design.

 

[Tyger]

A couple of years ago I was looking for podcasts about monsters. This was around the time when discussing redheaded giants descended(?) from the Annunaki was the current thing. I came across a skeptical podcast discussing it. The guest was a archeology professor (I don't remember his name). This is the second time I've heard this person discussing the subject. He said the giant mummies found in the caves (I don't remember where they were located) were perfectly expected. According to him when the muscle and tendon on a corpse finally fully dry out the pressure they apply on the bone they are connected to ceases and the bone stretches. Therefore it is not unusual to find mummies that are eight feet tall.

The both times I heard him discussing the subject he said not to take his word for it. He said that like he tells his students, the people listening to him speak should look these things up for themselves. So I did. What I learned is that once the muscles and tendons get so dry that they no longer apply pressure on the bones they cover, the bones themselves are dry and they stay the same size. So this made me wonder. Was this professor lying to get name recognition or was he a believer pretending to be a skeptic and trying to spread misinformation among the skeptics of the subject?

I can't answer that false believer/skeptic thing but if I was in his class I would have jumped all over that bone stretching statement. That could probably happen when they are softer at birth but how could bone possibly grow after death, which means no more tissue regeneration either natural or from a congenital defect? Is it possible it could just be a matter of a professor testing his students reactions or to see if they're awake and turned on and willing to challenge anything thrown at then ? Maybe besides being a archeology assignment there was a psychological element to it ?

I find this fascinating - that he was twice misleading the audience - and demonstrating on a large scale how we trust the 'expert' - how we 'have faith' in anyone who says 'scientist'. Further - even with that challenge - did the interviewer question the scholar? It's an example of accepting whatever is said without questioning - and hence are our 'assumptions' made that then skew our research and color our interpretations of our results. A significant lesson.

 

[Burnt State]

Basically it comes down to who can yell, "SCIENCE!"the loudest. Truth remains the elusive pursuit for those truly curious.

 

[Tyger]

But this is all secondary. I'm much more interested in the ideas/posts preceding this regarding the fact, or supposition, that you are an alien and that we co-create reality unconsciously or by design.

Too much can be made of the incidents - I mentioned them to show how we see through a filter - and I believe those three people were seeing through a filter. That filter was that 'there are aliens among us'. Particularly the Roswell tourist- she was obviously in a frame of mind to see 'aliens'. [The first one in San Francisco could have had to do with the fact that I was newly arrived from the Northeast - and I was 'different', yes.]

The man who did the 'trespasso' exercise with me was the surprise - to have jumped to 'alien' rather than 'advanced soul' - or - hey! why not? Initiate! But 'alien'? In a Sufi ashram? In a spiritual setting I would have assumed something more akin to spiritual concepts - how about 'angel'? But 'alien'?

How did I create that? If we create our own reality? In my youth I liked being 'different'. To be 'different' was 'cool' - to be 'different' was an affirmation. To be different was to affirm that I must be doing something right - ha! (The result of being low in the birth order with many older siblings one could annoy. If I could get one of them pissed - well, I must be doing something right! ) And I was a science fiction fan - so in my secret self maybe I found being called an 'alien' kinda 'cool'. And was inwardly tickled.

Ego. Pride. Any number of possibilities are up for grabs to explain it. I've never gone into it too much - except to cherish the fantasy (because I was a sci-fi fan) of being from another planet and that it's through actually incarnating on the planet 'just like a human' that 'the aliens are appearing on earth'. It doesn't help that a psychic once told me that I was one of 3,000 individualities from another planet that had come here - but that is an example of the psychic possibly 'picking up' my science fiction novel I was writing at the time. (She skewed the facts a bit but it is close enough to suggest that. Or maybe I was skewing the 'facts' in the novel. )

More intriguing is the question: where do thoughts come from? how do they originate? How is it that Leonardo was coming up with helicopters and submarines? How to explain the similarities between fantasy in the book 'A Dweller on Two Planets' and subsequent facts in the world a century later? Jules Verne? George Orwell?

 

[Burnt State]

One coud simply say, Tyger, that imagination is destiny.

 

[Tyger]

One coud simply say, Tyger, that imagination is destiny.

Ohhhh, don't say that!

Because you don't know the reason why 'we are here' [in the story]. Because we failed. Because we destroyed our world. It exists but only the most minimal of 'humanity' remains. It is definitely a world where the 'technology' - to be cryptic - is 'within'. Some of the fantasy artists that have been working in the last few decades have produced some pictures that are perilously close to the 'memory' [imagination] I have of what it is like to walk on that world.

How's them apples! We all have our stories.......I do love being alive on this earth! That I will say.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

In my humble opinion there are plenty of skeptics who knowingly spread possibly false information, but it must be said that their number is far fewer than 'believers' spreading rubbish.

What I mean regarding the skeptics is that some will often claim to have solved or explained some mystery/sighting etc when in fact all they've done is possibly offer a plausible explanation but with no way of knowing for sure if it is the actual explanation. Such maybe-explanations can become disseminated amongst the skeptical community and end up being taken as fact by some, not supposition which it actually is.

'Believers' are far, far worse than skeptics at this sort of thing but it shouldn't need me to point that out really as it is so obvious.

 

[Tyger]

In my humble opinion there are plenty of skeptics who knowingly spread possibly false information, but it must be said that their number is far fewer than 'believers' spreading rubbish. [...] 'Believers' are far, far worse than skeptics at this sort of thing but it shouldn't need me to point that out really as it is so obvious.

No, not so 'obvious'. Skepticism can be as much a belief-system as any other - the assumptions are just less overtly acknowledged. In fact, skepticism assumes a 'higher ground'. I have even observed skeptics - or those in a moment who are in the position of being skeptical - declare that they do not have to explain their assumptions, or the basis for their skepticism.

I think a more fruitful tack would be to look at human nature - believer or skeptic alike, and that is really a matter of position. A believer can be a skeptic under certain conditions and a skeptic can be a believer - it just all depends on what the topic under consideration is.

In fact, it can be so important to a skeptic's belief system that such-and-so be 'not so' that all manner of mental gymnastics will be employed to shore up the denial of a sound argument. Happens all the time in science, I can tell you.

Question: how many 'believers' in science are spreading 'rubbish'? Quite a few, in my experience, because most people don't really understand the science. A hint is when there is polarization - and the presence of passion - an 'us' and 'them', the 'true' and the 'untrue'. (Shades of the old religious/philosophical wars). You know the old adage: the moment one feels anger, one has ceased to argue for the truth and begun to argue for oneself.

What one thinks is important. Freedom of thought is significant. Thought has power - it is more powerful in the long term than a weapon. Tyrants know that. What do dictatorships at once clamp down on? What do gangs of youths require - male or female? Group-think.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said once: "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." And by 'ability to function' I interpret it to mean that one can maintain goodwill, good humor and a kind of neutral 'above the fray' intellectual demeanor. We want warm hearts but cool heads - not cold hearts and hot heads - the latter is the signal of illness. Hot heads are not thinking straight.

 

[Tyger]

Warning: this is a bit of a rant!

May as well post this here, because I have been finding the claim of 'pseudo science' in the chat to be a red herring - though one hears the claim - or accusation - of 'pseudo science' everywhere these days. It's exactly what it seems to be imo - a 'theological' parry-and-thrust. It's an example of science-as-religion.

We really do live in a construct of reality - much of which is not really 'true', only a provisional idea - a story - sometimes a good story, but that's it. Yet because science - or the interpreters of science - say it is fact, it becomes so for the millions who pay attention to such pronouncements.

As I was just reading: "the debunker's claim of pseudo science [...] has become the mantra of dogmatists of late, those who prefer not to look at the anomalous data."

I was on Amazon buying the book "Cataclysm!: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C." by Allan and Delair, and was reading the reviews when I came upon the little gem that follows. It is an example of what really can and does happen in the 'hallowed halls' of 'real science' built by 'consensus' - from a review-of-a-review on Amazon - regarding Halton Arp [who just died on December 28, 2013 R.I.P.]

"It's rather well known that "good science" often gets swept under the rug when it's "inconvenient" for mainstream scientists whose pet theories (Big Bang for example) are currently "in fashion" and they want them to remain "in fashion" to continue to receive funding, at the exclusion of others. That's not the ideal of science, that's a perversion of science.

"For example, for decades, Halton Arp has presented solid evidence that redshift =/= recessional velocity =/= distance for 100% of cases. In several cases, he has even imaged objects that, according to their "redshift distance" would be on opposite sides of the universe (essentially, supposedly far enough that they couldn't possibly be interacting), are interacting with each other and energetically. This can't happen under the "standard model." This fact could partially or completely undermine the Big Bang theory, if validated. So, darn right, they try to actively suppress the notion in order to keep their own jobs and funding. They revoked his telescope time in the USA, refused to publish a number of his papers in respectable journals (despite good solid data), and he had to move to another country to get telescope time.

"Have his results been published? On occasion, but for the most part, no. Not because of "bad science," but because of "blind science." The peer review comittees refused to even look at many of his results because "it doesn't conform with the Big Bang theory." He has published papers in some slightly lesser-known journals (still peer-reviewed) and magazines. He also has published several books in the so-called "vanity press" (i.e. anything "non-academic") relating to the issue of "peculiar galaxies," quasars, and has pretty well laid out how he was ostracized for his unconventional view of the universe, gathered over several decades.

"Recently, he and several colleagues have even completed a survey of quasars and their higher-than-random-chance relationship to the minor axes of Seyfert galaxies. I don't know if he'll actually get the results published, since a number of journals refuse to even hear contradictory evidence to the Big Bang, and reject it out of hand, often without even reading it.

"So, let's not claim that "empirical science" is perfect, or unbiased. Unfortunately, with centralized grant funding and oligarchical peer review boards, it has become a bit of an unfairly biased medium. Especially when those on the "review committees" who actually might have a chance of understanding what you wrote (i.e. they're in your field of science) are the ones whose papers you're probably directly contradicting with your "unconventional" results. So, they'll simply reject it, out of hand.

"Gone are the days when a scientist can put out good data and have it fairly reviewed by impartial peers, regardless whether it supports or contradicts the current "in fashion" theory.

"Now, I'm not saying the book that this response to a response to (well you get the idea) is necessarily an example of good science. I'm just saying that not all "good science" actually makes it into journals. And simply because one person's ideas aren't mainstream does not make them de facto pseudoscience. It's quite possible to have good results and valid data and still have one's ideas rejected by the mainstream peer review system. Unfortunately, those authors then become marginalized and msut sometimes resort to the so-called "vanity press" to express their views of the data they have attempted to collect. It happens."