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Seth Shostak loses it

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Ezechiel

Paranormal Adept
UFO believers got one thing right. Here's what they get wrong.

Except that the Pentagon study seems to have found no good evidence for visitors. Yes, there was an intriguing military video purportedly showing a cluster of alien craft. But when I watched it, I noticed that the cluster was always in the center of the field of view — which suggests that these “craft” were actually caused by the instruments aboard the plane rather than something in the airspace in front of it. Experts will undoubtedly weigh in.

LOL
 
Wow. Someday they’re going have a name for Seth’s peculiar form of psychopathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, because the mental gymnastics required to be convinced that technologically advanced alien civilizations exist...but they could not conceivably be sending craft or autonomous drones to the Earth, appears to represent a truly unique neurotic condition.

I sometimes wonder if Seth’s stance on anomalous aerial vehicles (or simply AAVs - a term which I’ve seen in the press lately, and prefer to the broadly stigmatized and nonspecific term “UFO”), is just public relations - because it’s harder to justify searching the sky for radio signals if devices of extraterrestrial origin are entering our own airspace from time to time.

But when he writes articles like this one, he seems to be a devout disbeliever, and makes all kinds of glaring factual and logical errors to defend his irrational position. For example, as Ezechiel noticed, Seth doesn’t seem to understand that the recent Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) footage that we’ve seen recently, involves target-lock tracking that’s designed to keep the object in the center of the frame as the camera system pans and the aircraft moves.

He also fails to describe the footage accurately when he says:

“Yes, there was an intriguing military video purportedly showing a cluster of alien craft.”

But in both clips, we only see one object being tracked, not “a cluster.” Somehow he confused the audio portion of the GIMBAL footage, where the pilots discuss seeing other targets on their radar systems, with the video footage. So how reliable can his clearly prejudiced evaluations of other photographic evidence be?

I have no problem with that, btw – I wouldn’t expect a radio astronomer to be any better at photo analysis than, say, my mechanic. But I find it presumptuous of him to assert any level of expertise in that area when he can’t even accurately describe a simple video clip.

He goes on to ridicule a widely recognized feature of the AAV phenomenon – that they tend to be seen around military installations, nuclear facilities, and missile bases:

“I’m also wary of anthropomorphic touches — for example, when someone says, ‘They seemed friendly and just want to establish contact’ or ‘They’re buzzing our missile silos.’ The latter is particularly goofy. Any aliens who come from the stars are way ahead of us. If you could visit America 150 years ago, would you spend time inspecting the Union Army’s cannon-making factory at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal?”

He literally just ridiculed the allegedly “anthropomorphic touches” that he says he’s wary of, with an anthropomorphic touch, when he says “would you spend time inspecting.” Does it make sense that extraterrestrial beings gathering intelligence about our civilization would be interested in our defensive and nuclear capabilities? Of course.

Here’s a particularly amusing logical paradox that I find symptomatic of this form of neurosis:

“More than anything, I ask myself if the extraterrestrial explanation is compelling — or merely possible. Is the evidence proof-positive or only puzzling? The latter isn’t good enough.”

How absolutely ironic that a scientist who’s devoted his life to finding a radio signal from an alien civilization – and never actually found one, should be so eager to dismiss evidence that’s merely “puzzling.” “Puzzling evidence” is more compelling than “no evidence,” sir.

Then he makes a bizarre analogy, comparing the extraterrestrial explanation to a David Copperfield trick where the stage magician appears to walk through a whirling fan blade. The assumption here is that both are impossible – that it’s just as impossible for a more technologically advanced civilization to develop practical interstellar spaceflight capability, as it is for a man to walk through a spinning turbine.

And that’s really the heart of problem with Seth Shostak’s position – the boundless conceit of our men of letters to declare that whatever we humans haven’t yet achieved, must be impossible for all forms of intelligent life in the universe no matter how many thousands or even millions of years ahead of us they may be technologically.
 
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Wow. Someday they’re going have a name for Seth’s peculiar form of psychopathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, because the mental gymnastics required to be convinced that technologically advanced alien civilizations exist...but they could not conceivably be sending craft or autonomous drones to the Earth, appears to represent a truly unique neurotic condition.

I sometimes wonder if Seth’s stance on anomalous aerial vehicles (or simply AAVs - a term which I’ve seen in the press lately, and prefer to the broadly stigmatized and nonspecific term “UFO”), is just public relations - because it’s harder to justify searching the sky for radio signals if devices of extraterrestrial origin are entering our own airspace from time to time.

I think youve nailed it.

He wants to go down in history as the one who found them, not the guy who couldn't see the forest for the trees.

You know, That guy who wanders the house looking for his glasses for an hour only to be told they are sitting perched on top of your head.

His funding comes from the looking, not the finding.
 
We'll eventually get there from here but.... they couldn't possibly get here from there :D I think Stanton Friedman has been sarcastically chiming this for decades.

It's infinitely earth-centric and sadly has its basis in religion. It's a crying shame that funding for the aerial phenomena threat assessment program funding was cut due to religious objections as per Harry Reid.

In short, belief in Satan is to blame.:rolleyes:

I-Team: UFO study focused on U.S. military encounters

Start the video at position 4:17 . No way in hell born-again evangelical USA will deal with this subject... just leave this to atheist China. You're wasting your f'ing time guys, GW Bush said it best: Rapture is on the way.

Reporter George Knapp: "Did you hear that, that it's evil?
Harry Reid: "Yes. I think there are a lot of people who don't like it for a number of reasons and religious views. It didn't fit with what they wanted to spend money on."
 
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You'd figure that after all the catholic church sex scandals, protestant pastor scandals of the past 15 years religion would have taken a back seat ? Think again...
Open the military's pandora box and you'll find a massive infiltration that's far from being cleaned up and sadly happens to be a major impediment to any progress on the UAP issue.

'Witness for Jesus' in Afghanistan
"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business."
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You may not realize it but the pendulum was full swing into high strangeness for a large part of the US population back in the '60s and early '70s.
Landing on the moon while a big chunk of your population was either snake handling, talking in tongues in Pentecostal churches or barely starting to walk away from oppressive religious ideologies has it's consequences :confused:

Resolving the disconnect will take a huge effort... hopefully not with Betsy DeVos in charge LMAO.
 
https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/09/religion-and-american-armed-forces

Mr Weinstein insists that contrary to the stereotype some people might have, he is not a "Chardonnay-drinking liberal"—he is a Republican, and proud to come from a family with a strong military tradition. But he regards creeping fundamentalism as an impediment to a coherent military and hence a "national security issue". Besides, "mixing nuclear weapons with apocalyptic end-time theology is very dangerous." Even if they have an open mind about Bibles in hotel rooms, many people will say "Amen" to that.

I personally would address this 'national security issue' before UAP's ;) but then again Luis Elizondo, as an insider, likely experienced this first hand and decided to take another path.

So the real battle here is really 'creeping fundamentalism' in the armed forces VS 'understanding UAP's' ... We've heard Harry Reid bring lip service to that fact but I can't wait to hear Luis Elizondo's version.

166cfc7f988c859a63ec54394145ac4d.jpg
 
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I think youve nailed it.

He wants to go down in history as the one who found them, not the guy who couldn't see the forest for the trees.

You know, That guy who wanders the house looking for his glasses for an hour only to be told they are sitting perched on top of your head.

His funding comes from the looking, not the finding.

That's the gist of it... Should funding be directed to near-earth investigations instead of scanning the milky way for artificial signals (Radio), he's basically out of a job.

SETI institute founded in 1984 (34 years ago).... Luis found a HELL of a lot more stuff in 5 years (2007-2012) for a lot less money (22 million$ ... 10% of a single jet fighter) ;)

1425_3.jpg
 
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UFO believers got one thing right. Here's what they get wrong.

Except that the Pentagon study seems to have found no good evidence for visitors. Yes, there was an intriguing military video purportedly showing a cluster of alien craft. But when I watched it, I noticed that the cluster was always in the center of the field of view — which suggests that these “craft” were actually caused by the instruments aboard the plane rather than something in the airspace in front of it. Experts will undoubtedly weigh in.

LOL

So he wrote that January 3. It would have been easier to understand if he had written it a bit later:


Shostak is a good example of the sort of people I wrote in my first post on this forum a while back:
oddly enough, for many scientists it is science when it comes to SETI or human space exploration, but the idea of someone reaching here instead of we reaching them seems somehow laughable. It's one of those rare instances when people I tend to look up to and side with suddenly make exceptions to the sort of logical thinking and communication they usually follow.
 
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