• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Casting Call for Listener Roundtable Show!

Forums New posts
I use a portable Blue Snowflake USB mic that hangs on my laptop screen and I listen through powered speakers connected to my laptop.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Angel of Ioren said:
No, but you're really close to the answer. It refers to that AI robot that ended up drowning in a pool because if fell down the stairs.
Click to expand...
That right there is a fantastic kind of synergy.

dalekw.jpg
 
Having Tim Good on to discuss how he went from Above Top Secret to his latest book, which just basically seems nonsensical might be cool.

Solid research in ATS to 'sending a girl telepathic thoughts and she looked at me therefore ET is among us' seems like a good case study of how good researchers seem to lose their objectivity.

It seems to be a recurring problem.
 
marduk said:
Having Tim Good on to discuss how he went from Above Top Secret to his latest book, which just basically seems nonsensical might be cool.

Solid research in ATS to 'sending a girl telepathic thoughts and she looked at me therefore ET is among us' seems like a good case study of how good researchers seem to lose their objectivity.

It seems to be a recurring problem.
Click to expand...
Tim Good is a curious case for sure. Maybe some early onset Alzheimer's combined with a less than discerning editor? Like you say, Above Top Secret and the follow-up revised edition Beyond Top Secret were excellent. He even fixed the thing Don mentioned about the phoney Air Force pilot in the revised edition. Alien Base is also an interesting read. But then we find out he actually gave Adamski's story credence? And the whole thing about aliens living among us takes us straight into the Twilight Zone. But then again. There are some pretty strange people out there. Maybe there are aliens that look like humans among us. How far down that rabbit hole do we want to go?
 
Usual Suspect said:
Tim Good is a curious case for sure. Maybe some early onset Alzheimer's combined with a less than discerning editor? Like you say, Above Top Secret and the follow-up revised edition Beyond Top Secret were excellent. He even fixed the thing Don mentioned about the phoney Air Force pilot in the revised edition. Alien Base is also an interesting read. But then we find out he actually gave Adamski's story credence? And the whole thing about aliens living among us takes us straight into the Twilight Zone. But then again. There are some pretty strange people out there. Maybe there are aliens that look like humans among us. How far down that rabbit hole do we want to go?
Click to expand...
The problem space in the maybe game is infinite with no way to tell if you've hooked onto anything. I'm not sure what the value would be.
 
marduk said:
The problem space in the maybe game is infinite with no way to tell if you've hooked onto anything.
Click to expand...
That's exactly why I tend to not delve too deeply into fringe ufology. But at the same time, I still have an interest in the paranormal in general and believe a lot of the phenomena is as real as UFOs. So there's not really a "maybe" in my mind about some of it. Then because my thinking on it suggests that the best explanation for it is something alien, there's a connection that makes logical sense ( to me ). So down the rabbit hole I go. It's cases like Good's that remind me not to wander so far off the path I get completely lost. This is how it goes for me:

Telepathic communication between aliens has been reported more than once. There are more than one report about aliens that look human. If we choose not to write both off, then why couldn't some sort of telepathic communication between us and human looking aliens be taking place? And why wouldn't choosing a high profile ufologist to experiment with make for an interesting case study? I know I'm out on a limb here, but it has to be fairly considered rather than simply dismissed. Consequently we get into the whole Aliens Among Us thing. I don't know exactly what I believe about it, but I do believe alien visitation is real, so it's a lot less far fetched for me to think it could be going on.
I'm not sure what the value would be.
Click to expand...
Interesting question. What is the value of anything other than the subjective value we as individuals place on it? For me the value of exploring these ideas is in gaining an expanded worldview. I guess most people don't relate to that because it's not something that can be packaged and sold ( except maybe as a book ).
 
Last edited:
Usual Suspect said:
That's exactly why I tend to not delve too deeply into fringe ufology. But at the same time, I still have an interest in the paranormal in general and believe a lot of the phenomena is as real as UFOs. So there's not really a "maybe" in my mind about some of it. Then because my thinking on it suggests that the best explanation for it is something alien, there's a connection that makes logical sense ( to me ). So down the rabbit hole I go. It's cases like Good's that remind me not to wander so far off the path I get completely lost.
Click to expand...

One of my pure math profs once told me something along the lines of math approximates reality, and has a tendency to describe it, but that doesn't mean that the two are actually related in any way, so don't get lost in it.'

I think that was a key takeaway for me, and a big part of deciding not do to post-grad work in pure math. Well, that and wanting to feed myself and get laid occasionally.

I mean, I would spend all day in front of a blackboard on some proof about some abstract concept with no numbers in sight, and somehow it was 'math.' And it didn't have anything to do with anything, you know? It was an abstraction, a game of shuffling concepts around, ultimately it was interesting but didn't lead anywhere for me.

Godel caused a deep and fundamental intellectual problem for me. As did things like this: Banach–Tarski paradox - Wikipedia

I think that's true in many pursuits, be them formal or academic or business or whacky. Once you get to the game of pushing problems around without solving anything, you have to ask yourself why you're doing that.

If you can't test it against reality, I just decided it was entertainment. And I could find far more interesting ways to entertain myself than math! Off to the pub full of girls I went.

Interesting question. What is the value of anything other than the subjective value we as individuals place on it? For me the value is in gaining an expanded worldview. I guess most people don't relate to that because it's not something you can package and sell.
Click to expand...

For me, it's not about the packaging and the selling. It's about the touchstone with reality, the stake in the ground you can measure from.

It's like a blank spot on a map with "here there be dragons" on it. Only the rest of the map is blank, too.

Personally I'd prefer to drop some pretty grounded stakes in the ground to start basing our understanding of the landscape. That's not a shot at you or anyone else; everybody's got their own groove on.
 
Last edited:
marduk said:
One of my pure math profs once told me something along the lines of math approximates reality, and has a tendency to describe it, but that doesn't mean that the two are actually related in any way, so don't get lost in it.'

I think that was a key takeaway for me, and a big part of deciding not do to post-grad work in pure math. Well, that and wanting to feed myself and get laid occasionally.

I mean, I would spend all day in front of a blackboard on some proof about some abstract concept with no numbers in sight, and somehow it was 'math.' And it didn't have anything to do with anything, you know? It was an abstraction, a game of shuffling concepts around, ultimately it was interesting but didn't lead anywhere for me.

Godel caused a deep and fundamental intellectual problem for me. As did things like this: Banach–Tarski paradox - Wikipedia

I think that's true in many pursuits, be them formal or academic or business or whacky. Once you get to the game of pushing problems around without solving anything, you have to ask yourself why you're doing that.

If you can't test it against reality, I just decided it was entertainment. And I could find far more interesting ways to entertain myself than math! Off to the pub full of girls I went.



For me, it's not about the packaging and the selling. It's about the touchstone with reality, the stake in the ground you can measure from.

It's like a blank spot on a map with "here there be dragons" on it. Only the rest of the map is blank, too.

Personally I'd prefer to drop some pretty grounded stakes in the ground to start basing our understanding of the landscape. That's not a shot at you or anyone else; everybody's got their own groove on.
Click to expand...
No worries. Nothing taken as a shot against me. You make very fair points. The one about math is particularly good, and I tend to use it myself whenever someone makes the claim that some sort of mathematical theory justifies some paranormal thing or another. I'm no math wiz, but that doesn't mean I can't see where basic premises give rise to the problems. In a way I think not being inside the ketchup bottle gives me a clearer perspective on these sorts of alleged connections. For example it seems to me that the Banach -Tarski paradox is possible from only a purely conceptual point of view because of the infinite number of points in the conceptual framework, whereas in the real world, spheres are composed of a finite number of particles to begin with. So it's sort of a 3D Zeno's Paradox. Not long ago someone brought up Mobius strips during a dinner conversation, and that's another interesting situation.
 
marduk said:
... For me, it's not about the packaging and the selling. It's about the touchstone with reality, the stake in the ground you can measure from ...
Click to expand...
To address the specific point above, I think it's fair to say that with UFOs, we're dealing with something physical rather than purely conceptual. It's not a purely abstract concept for those who have seen one, that's for sure. So comparing them to pure math isn't really a fair analogy. However some of the way-out-there explanations for them that some people come up with do fall into that category e.g. the interdimensional hypothesis. That's where we cross over from what's really going on to the kind of abstract ideas ( and sometimes math ) that you allude to.
 
Last edited:
Angel of Ioren said:
You guys should go hang out in person since you're both from Calgary, and record the conversation for the rest of us. Would probably be pretty interesting.
Click to expand...
To be fair, he did ask me to hang out a while ago and I said no - was spending a lot of time out east at that time.

And very dickishly on my part I forgot about it until this very moment.

Sorry man, I'll PM you in the next little bit.
 
Back
Top