THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
May 7, 2011
U.S. Presidents, UFOs and More Explored on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network. So we hope you'll be willing to help fill the gap if you can to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! Last summer, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. Now we want your help to add more affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, May 8, 2011: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris attempt to explore what the U.S. Presidents and other government officials knew and didn'€™t know about UFOs and their possible reality with Grant Cameron, who presents his evidence on The Presidents UFO Website.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Grant Cameron's Site: The Presidents UFO Website
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Theories Ahead of Evidence
By Gene Steinberg
In last week’s column, I wrote about the thresholds of evidence and conspiracy theories, such as the one that President Obama cannot possibly be a “native born” American, and must have been born in another country, therefore being ineligible to run for high office. This week, some of the so-called “birther” conspiracies have been reborn as “deather” conspiracies in the wake of the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden by Navy SEAL commandos.
A conspiracy?
Well, some suggest he wasn’t really killed, which is why pictures of his body aren’t being released. The official explanation, of course, is that the gruesome nature of those pictures might just inflame the evidoers. Or perhaps he died years ago, with his body kept on ice for the appropriate occasion. But the fact that his terrorist comrades have already admitted that he died should be sufficient to kill that story. But they will continue to debate the details of the operation, not wanting to admit that everything went off precisely as described. That the accounts about bin Laden’s alleged resistance – or lack thereof – to the attack were modified only increases the skepticism.
Now I’m not about to argue these two conspiracies, and their worth. I’m more interested in the mindset that chooses to find a complex answer instead of a simple one. Part of it stems from the common distortion of the meaning of the concept of Occam’s Razor, which is supposedly the belief that the simplest answer must be the truth. More precisely, according to recent definitions, it is “the principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.”
I think you’ll agree that the concept in using the fewest necessary assumptions doesn’t necessary mean the explanation must be the simplest, but that might be too fine a distinction to some.
Worse, the principle is often distorted in efforts to find easy answers. So it’s convenient to believe that the assassination of President Kennedy is, as the official accounts state, the act of a lone deranged gunman. But there have been compelling objections that appear to point to a more complicated, conspiratorial answer, that Kennedy’s death was the resulted of the actions of more than one person. From there, you can take your speculation to any place you want, to the limits of your imagination. There are loads of possibilities, but no final answers.
With our paranormal corner of the universe, the skeptics will frequently invoke Occam’s Razor to claim that there are perfectly ordinary explanations for UFO sightings. Maybe some cases seem unexplainable, but if you had all the facts, you’d see that the causes are quite mundane. We are not, they say, being visited by ET or any other unworldly entities.
Therefore, according to people who hold these views, flying saucer photos must either be fakes, or of perfectly conventional objects seen with unusual lighting conditions, thus making them appear alien. Radar sightings are due to unusual weather phenomena, and simultaneous visual sightings are also conventionally explained. When someone claims they were abducted by aliens, the skeptics will suggest that some unfortunate mental process is at work, so these cases are best left to mental health professionals to figure out.
With abductions, I do agree that victims are often severely traumatized, and thus, regardless of the cause, they should seek counseling. Indeed, the biggest debate about abductions has it that laymen are out of their league in performing hypnotic regression or related methods to interview subjects and gather evidence. Such investigative procedures should only be conducted by someone properly trained and certified in hypnosis.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem in paranormal research is the lack of repeatability. You may see a UFO four nights in a row, but there’s no guarantee the object will return on the fifth night, even though loads of witnesses are lining up to see this incredible celestial event. Yes, maybe that ghost does appear at midnight when the moon is full, but not when the investigators have all their gear present to measure the impact of the apparition’s presence. This cat and mouse game is what is repeatable, which makes the investigative process so difficult.
Of course, the obstacles don’t mean there isn’t a load of eyewitness testimony, and a fair amount of accompanying evidence, that indicate lots of strange things are going on. But the search for the simplest answer may overlook key assumptions or data that are critical to understanding why. That, my friends, is where the concept of Occam’s Razor gets totally undermined.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2011 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
May 7, 2011
U.S. Presidents, UFOs and More Explored on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network. So we hope you'll be willing to help fill the gap if you can to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! Last summer, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. Now we want your help to add more affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, May 8, 2011: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris attempt to explore what the U.S. Presidents and other government officials knew and didn'€™t know about UFOs and their possible reality with Grant Cameron, who presents his evidence on The Presidents UFO Website.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Grant Cameron's Site: The Presidents UFO Website
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Theories Ahead of Evidence
By Gene Steinberg
In last week’s column, I wrote about the thresholds of evidence and conspiracy theories, such as the one that President Obama cannot possibly be a “native born” American, and must have been born in another country, therefore being ineligible to run for high office. This week, some of the so-called “birther” conspiracies have been reborn as “deather” conspiracies in the wake of the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden by Navy SEAL commandos.
A conspiracy?
Well, some suggest he wasn’t really killed, which is why pictures of his body aren’t being released. The official explanation, of course, is that the gruesome nature of those pictures might just inflame the evidoers. Or perhaps he died years ago, with his body kept on ice for the appropriate occasion. But the fact that his terrorist comrades have already admitted that he died should be sufficient to kill that story. But they will continue to debate the details of the operation, not wanting to admit that everything went off precisely as described. That the accounts about bin Laden’s alleged resistance – or lack thereof – to the attack were modified only increases the skepticism.
Now I’m not about to argue these two conspiracies, and their worth. I’m more interested in the mindset that chooses to find a complex answer instead of a simple one. Part of it stems from the common distortion of the meaning of the concept of Occam’s Razor, which is supposedly the belief that the simplest answer must be the truth. More precisely, according to recent definitions, it is “the principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.”
I think you’ll agree that the concept in using the fewest necessary assumptions doesn’t necessary mean the explanation must be the simplest, but that might be too fine a distinction to some.
Worse, the principle is often distorted in efforts to find easy answers. So it’s convenient to believe that the assassination of President Kennedy is, as the official accounts state, the act of a lone deranged gunman. But there have been compelling objections that appear to point to a more complicated, conspiratorial answer, that Kennedy’s death was the resulted of the actions of more than one person. From there, you can take your speculation to any place you want, to the limits of your imagination. There are loads of possibilities, but no final answers.
With our paranormal corner of the universe, the skeptics will frequently invoke Occam’s Razor to claim that there are perfectly ordinary explanations for UFO sightings. Maybe some cases seem unexplainable, but if you had all the facts, you’d see that the causes are quite mundane. We are not, they say, being visited by ET or any other unworldly entities.
Therefore, according to people who hold these views, flying saucer photos must either be fakes, or of perfectly conventional objects seen with unusual lighting conditions, thus making them appear alien. Radar sightings are due to unusual weather phenomena, and simultaneous visual sightings are also conventionally explained. When someone claims they were abducted by aliens, the skeptics will suggest that some unfortunate mental process is at work, so these cases are best left to mental health professionals to figure out.
With abductions, I do agree that victims are often severely traumatized, and thus, regardless of the cause, they should seek counseling. Indeed, the biggest debate about abductions has it that laymen are out of their league in performing hypnotic regression or related methods to interview subjects and gather evidence. Such investigative procedures should only be conducted by someone properly trained and certified in hypnosis.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem in paranormal research is the lack of repeatability. You may see a UFO four nights in a row, but there’s no guarantee the object will return on the fifth night, even though loads of witnesses are lining up to see this incredible celestial event. Yes, maybe that ghost does appear at midnight when the moon is full, but not when the investigators have all their gear present to measure the impact of the apparition’s presence. This cat and mouse game is what is repeatable, which makes the investigative process so difficult.
Of course, the obstacles don’t mean there isn’t a load of eyewitness testimony, and a fair amount of accompanying evidence, that indicate lots of strange things are going on. But the search for the simplest answer may overlook key assumptions or data that are critical to understanding why. That, my friends, is where the concept of Occam’s Razor gets totally undermined.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2011 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!