TheVat

Source was the same one I posted up the page: Brian Dunning. I don't personally research every scientific issue myself, given the finite lifespan and being one person thing. His approach shows scientific rigor, not "preordained skepticism" whatever that is. Sounds like you are trolling, because you know the evidence here is incredibly flimsy and doesn't support that ardent desire to believe you share with your pal Fox Mulder. As for the length of the documentary (which, yes, I watched, and I'd love those minutes of my life back but what can ya do?), this seems like a weak shot (since I didn't specify the length of the video) and just more trolling because You Have Not One Shred of Evidence that deserves the term "evidence." You have a set of unrelated odd stories - some kids saw a strange man, someone saw some odd feet sticking out from under a blanket in a hospital, someone saw very short people in a hospital, some military trucks drove by....good Lord, I think Paul Bunyan had more empirical basis. We should probably be researching the existence of giant men who hang out with giant mules. Science has different standard than the law does. That was Swanson's point. The objective truth of what happened is not determined by voting or what narrative we might find "compelling." It is determined (to a reasonably high probability) by an abundance of solid data that constitutes evidence. No one needs to provide evidence that ETs did not visit Varginha - you can't disprove that sort of negative. Nor can anyone prove leprachauns never visited Varginha. The burden of proof is on you and the documentarian making all the extraordinary claims of alien visitation.

I'm glad that people here are at least noticing there are two different definitions. The second one seems like the one that is most widely used in philosophy, i.e. that atheism is an active belief (learned) that the universe does not have a deity of supernatural life force of any kind. Like most people, I feel that epistemological integrity (of the "who knows? there is no way to definitively disprove such an entity" variety) requires me to be agnostic. I generally assume that objective truths about the world are not dependent on my personal beliefs and that I am a finite creature who cannot have perfect knowledge of the universe and all conscious beings (god(s) or otherwise) in it. That agnosticism was also, I'm sure, learned. Anthropological evidence suggests that the default state of a human neural net is to view the world as somehow alive and full of spirits. We see a residue of that in the way that we personify inanimate objects. The sea was angry that day. My car is a stubborn bastard when it's cold in the morning. I hear the cottonwoods whispering above. The sun was merciless. Our primitive view of the world often emerges in poetry.

Again, the military arrival is easily fact checked. The convoy of military trucks going through town was nothing more than a convoy of military trucks going through town to be dropped off for scheduled maintenance, which was exactly what happened to them. The trucks dropping off strange mechanisms at the hospital were delivering new cardiovascular equipment. The ambulance was dropping off a corpse that had been exhumed as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The pair of small aliens at the hospital were expectant parents having their baby delivered — and they were little people. All of this information is widely available and pops right up during the most cursory search. I find it laughable the way completely unrelated events are cobbled together into this Roswellian tale, and we now have a town who economic health undoubtedly now depends on its UFO museum and its flying saucer water tank. If you want to pursue real scientific evaluation of evidence, then don't allow your own desires to render you gullible, letting hucksters connect the dots for you in exploitative YouTube videos. As for teenage girls, their reliability as witnesses should be questioned. Especially given other details and the weather being described as a "blustery rainstorm". I used to have teenage girls in my house and I can well recall their departures from objective observation of odd events. And the way 90% of their vocal communication consisted of giggling.

I lived in Eugene, Oregon for a year, when Knight lived there with his wife Kate Wilhelm. They were local celebrities, but only saw them once, roaming a street fair. The story sounds familiar, probably because the library where I lived as a teenager had a complete collection of the Galaxy Readers, the annual compilations of Galaxy magazine. I remember his short stories as dark, sometimes darkly funny, sometimes disturbing....I think he had a couple in the Dangerous Visions anthology. Here's a web version... https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1953-02

Yes, I recall some famous sighting in either Brazil or Argentina which was mentioned in UFO literature back then. Similar elements. Thanks for the links - the 1896 account does sound Wellsian. The extremely low density of the ETs was a nice touch.

Is the wind flapping the flag or is my mind flapping the flag?

The IPM report even successfully identified the creature seen by the three young women. The place where the creature was spotted was the home of Luiz Antônio de Paula, about 30 years old and intellectually disabled, who lived there with his parents and family. As de Paula was nonverbal, locals had nicknamed him Mudinho, which means "little mute." Mudinho was known to the neighbors to spend his time crouching and examining small objects he found, like cigarette butts and sticks. There are photographs of him floating around the Portuguese language Internet — very skinny, hunched over, squatting as he studies a twig, and apparently wearing a diaper. At last report, Mudinho still lives there to this day, and still continues his favorite activity. The lead author of the IPM report, Lt. Col. Lúcio Carlos Pereira, wrote: As Mudinho did live there, and that was his typical behavior, then for the young women to have seen a space creature there would have to have been two such beings — the known one, Mudinho, and the hypothetical one, an alien — but as they reported only one skinny humanoid crouching in the mud, and not two, we are left with no rational support for there having been any beings present other than Mudinho. Today, the three women do still give interviews about their experience. There is one very important detail that has changed since their original story: Today, they say they knew Mudinho well, and had even given him cigarettes in the past; so of course they would not have mistaken him for an alien. However, in their original reports from 1996, they said they didn't know him, and took him for a devil when they saw him. It's one more example of stories changing and growing to fit a changing and growing narrative that gains mass traction in pop culture. Everyone wants to be in on it, and everyone wants to be seen as credible and correct. I agree with @Moontanman that there is a body of cases that do appear to represent truly anomalous and unexplained aerial events, and these may at some point turn out to be some fascinating atmospheric phenomenon that expands our view of things. They should not be dismissed, and should be studied. But these Stanton Friedman generated narratives are mostly self-promoting flapdoodle and just piss poor science. As Dunning notes: Friedman's whole career, in fact, consisted of compiling bits and pieces of poor-quality evidence, mainly unverified eyewitness testimony usually taken years or decades after an event; and then composing an original alien visitation story that incorporates all those bits and is presented as the factual account of what happened. He's best known as the original author of the Roswell mythology, in which he worked with a retired mortician named Glenn Dennis. In 1989 — more than four decades after the 1947 Roswell crash was alleged to have happened — Friedman carefully wove together a string of snippets of Dennis' assorted memories of having worked in that town, and created the story we know today of a spaceship crash and small alien bodies being recovered. It was published in 1991, the first time that story even existed. Friedman couldn't have cared less that the things Dennis thought he remembered actually took place over a span of twelve years and had nothing to do with each other; his goal was to craft an original UFO narrative. That was Friedman's thing. That was what he did professionally...

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4853 If you want the entire story as told by the UFOlogists, you have a great source. The 2022 documentary Moment of Contact interviews a number of the people who were involved, and presents it as a true case of alien visitation. It also offers a stark example of how these stories grow and change enormously over the years. Original eyewitnesses tend to add story elements, often bridging their own recollections to those of others; new people intrigued at the prospect of some notoriety always "come forward" and claim to have been there; and imaginative authors always, always, always add no end of creative enhancements that, over time, blend in and come to be accepted as part of the standard narrative. The inevitable result is a story full of incredible events, all supported by amazingly trustworthy eyewitnesses, all inexplicable as anything Earthly. Such a tapestry offers fertile soil for any documentary filmmaker. One thing such filmmakers hope you never do is go back and read the original newspaper accounts, because what you tend to discover is that almost nothing particularly interesting happened — until later years festooned the facts with embellishments....

(more tidbits from the Oxford link) The project involved 57 researchers who conducted over 40 separate studies in 20 countries representing a diverse range of cultures. The studies (both analytical and empirical) conclude that humans are predisposed to believe in gods and an afterlife, and that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind. (...) The...project...sought to find out whether concepts such as gods and an afterlife appear to be entirely taught or basic expressions of human nature. (....) Project Director Dr Justin Barrett, from the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, said: 'This project does not set out to prove god or gods exist. Just because we find it easier to think in a particular way does not mean that it is true in fact. If we look at why religious beliefs and practices persist in societies across the world, we conclude that individuals bound by religious ties might be more likely to cooperate as societies. Interestingly, we found that religion is less likely to thrive in populations living in cities in developed nations where there is already a strong social support network.' (me: this is pretty sketchy so i will be on the lookout for more detailed papers and PR research)

Good question. I'm just getting started on this, so DK yet. My guess is this has been a pretty active area of study in anthropology, so probably there's peer review out there.

Well I think Sagan was indicating the way that people tend to take folk beliefs about the world and causality and shape them into myths and metaphysical belief systems. This Oxford study found that people are predisposed to dualism and beliefs in spirits, gods, and afterlife. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm#:~:text=The studies (both analytical and,impulse of the human mind. There's other research as well. One person believing something might be just personal superstition. Add a few more people and pretty soon it's a religion, humans being social animals who like to share and organize their beliefs.

Immediately following this post, I replied as to why one might not find the witnesses entirely credible. I was hoping to keep the discussion going on that matter, but there was no reply. In a science forum when someone posts a critique (see the linked information in that post) of scientific methodology, especially where data collection is concerned, that seems like a fruitful path towards learning and further research. So that was disappointing. And as I posted I had no settled beliefs or firm conclusions, just a sense that the data was compromised. I share this reviewer's reaction.... https://rogersmovienation.com/2022/10/15/documentary-review-more-proof-of-a-ufo-encounter-thats-nothing-of-the-sort-moment-of-contact/ There is no “concrete” evidence that what happened in January of 1996 in the city of Varginha, Brazil was caused by an alien spacecraft, well, none that’s presented in director James Fox‘s latest UFO documentary, “Moment of Contact.” There are no photographs, no “crash” debris, not even local TV coverage at the time provided much more than what some folks told interviewers then who repeat their stories for Fox and crew 26 years later, about what they saw. Fox has an eyewitness take us to a non-descript piece of land, where, after some hunting around, he shouts (in Portuguese with English subtitles) “It was here! HERE!” Fox interviews the current mayor of Varginha, and asks him the same loaded and pointless question he peppers young people on the street with — “Do you believe” that a UFO crashed here, that there were survivors, that the military perhaps with US help, spirited them away? Absolutely, the mayor of a city with a UFO monument and saucer-shaped museum says, I mean, his nephew’s girlfriend saw things. She did....

Thanks for a big LoL! Areligious seems to be a choice with humans given that we seem to be wired (as Carl Sagan noted in The Dragons of Eden) for supernatural beliefs about mysterious forces in the world. Until fairly recent times, wherever one grew up there were religious/mystical beliefs widely held and taught, so a dismissal of such beliefs usually involved some process of scrutiny followed by rejection. I have no discomfort with religious people if they walk their talk. Really depends on the individual. Some are phonies, and use religion to bash others and feel superior. Some are genuine seekers of spiritual peace, wisdom, compassion, and ways to be their better selves. Nothing bad about PLAU. (just saw this thread, so am sorry if I haven't responded to individual (non pigeon-based) posts)

This is going to get expensive. Sidewinder missiles are not cheap. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo Did a superpower showdown provoke the U.S. into using a fighter jet to shoot down a hobbyist group's research balloon in Canada? That's the question the public — and the FBI — wants to answer, after the U.S. military shot down several unidentified airborne objects last weekend. A military spokesperson tells NPR it's their understanding that the FBI has spoken to the hobbyist group in question — the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, based just north of Chicago — in an apparent attempt to determine whether their small balloon might have inadvertently caused a big ruckus....

Can't add much to this fine thread, but will say that I've noticed science forums often seem to provide a space where those with an ASD can interact pretty well. Though my training was in biology/medicine, then information science, my later work was more social work and counseling and sometimes brought me into contact with ASD persons and some of the obstacles they deal with. SFN has a fair number of regulars who are used to communicating with non-native speakers and getting over the language bumps, sans condescension, and I think that skill also maps onto clearing misunderstandings with ASD persons. (And then there are people like Markus, who leave me wondering if the D in ASD really belongs there, i.e. maybe we should just view it as a different cognitive style, and quite an effective one at that. )

I thought this line, in a Washington Post article on polar vortexes and weather, was amusing... "A sudden stratospheric warming ensues when air temperatures in the stratosphere rapidly increase. " And illustrates one of the problems with science journalism when the writer is trying too hard to explain everything clearly. Still, a bit surprised an editor didn't catch the redundancy. Or maybe tautology is the word.

Could we stipulate that personal taste, if not shared callously or translating to prejudicial action, is what it is and best left alone? As for the topic, it seems reasonable to say homophobia is learned. The strongest prima facie case for that has been touched on here: those who aren't raised with anti-LGBT biases in their culture do not seem to be homophobic. (while they may have personal tastes and things they prefer not to do or watch, as is characteristic of all humans) I would speculate that language, in many modern nations, still serves to transmit homophobic memes. C___s___er is still a common term of insult towards men, where I live. Many political forums had posts disparaging male Trump toadies as "s__ing on Trump's d___." Language tends to be a repository of cultural biases.

I've forgotten the original topic, but perhaps this is relevant: Q. What is the difference between a chickpea and a garbanzo bean? A. Donald Trump never had a garbanzo bean on his face. Stupid joke, right? It's funny partly for the wordplay, partly because it references Trump's alleged activity at a Moscow hotel, and partly because there are cultural stereotypes about the decadence of the rich. It's partly driven by the same notion of excess that informs the classic joke that's been around since the seventeenth century usually called "The Aristocrats." I won't tell it (it's filthy), and you've all probably heard it. Both jokes, and others like them, assume that certain sexual acts between people that are less "proper" or "normal" than others are a sort of degradation. The ordinary person, bound by middle-class morality, is invited to look down on this degradation and enjoy a laugh. Maybe some homophobia (and this would definitely be in the category of learned) is a result of social stratification - there's a sort of middling mainstream where you don't have much power, so historically the options for feeling okay with your lot were to look up at the powerful and see their excess and corruption, and look down on groups that have been downtrodden, judged as lazier or deviant or just stupid (or various combinations of those). Classes of people in the middle were in the least secure position, so there developed ways to punch up AND punch down. I don't know, just playing around with this, and dinner beckons (would you believe chickpeas are involved?)

The examples are just used to underscore that some things some people enjoy are gross to others. No one is saying "X is equally gross as Z" in some disparaging way AFAICT. Indeed that's why I posted the example earlier about heterosexual fondling on the Quad, specifically to point out there are many behaviors, including hetero, where I think "getting a room" is a great idea. You are extracting something prejudicial that is not (for my posts anyway) at all there. And I would caution against confidence regarding your knowledge of what's in my head or anyone else's. I think @zapatos has just further clarified the distinction between distaste and prejudice.

Haha! With the preparation I described, perhaps "into the compost pile." (weird nutritional science aside: for Caesarean babies, there is now an emerging line of evidence that such a salad, if the fecal donor is a parent with good digestive health, might have healthful benefit to their developing intestinal microflora colony)

I think the distinction between prejudice and taste has been pretty clear here. If I judge someone taking a shit on a tossed salad with distaste, I don't have to try a bite to make certain of my judgment. Someone may find any act distasteful for them personally on whatever basis they wish, e.g. an extrapolation from their own aesthetic preference. If I don't care for body parts shoved up my asshole, that's not a prejudice against others, just my personal preference. Why would someone who is into that care what my preferences are, when I don't care what theirs are? This just seems like a fairly simple ethical concept to grasp. Everyone just minds their own business in the boudoir. Easy peasy.

This being a philosophy thread, I feel it's worth asking if there is much mileage to be had in determining if distaste (i.e. aesthetic preference) should be grounded in reason. The chat still veers into conflating tastes and prejudices, which are not the same thing. I don't want my face peed on. Not my taste. But I have no prejudicial attitude towards those who do. Nor is there a compelling reason to remedy my distaste or determine if it has a rational basis. Why does @Intoscience have to remedy what seems to be a personal taste that has no adverse effect on society? If this is an ethics thread, that potential effect on others, or lack of, would be the relevant matter.

Bioinformatics is one whose meaning changed quite a bit. In the early 70s it was the study of information processes in biotic systems. Now it's a broad interdisciplinary field that combines biology, chemistry, physics, computer sci, IT, and math/stats to analyze and interpret biological, medical, and health data. IOW, it started out mainly about sequencing then broadened vastly.

Well, yes, it's bad behavior that is noticed. And this points to a real demarcation between homophobia and aesthetic aversion. To silently harbor distaste (because you know it's just your own squeamish quirk or whatever) is what tolerant people do. To express it is to move towards intolerance and inviting others to join in with condemnation (or passive-aggressive variants). Unfortunately a lot of people's morality is little more than an aesthetic leaning (derived from a jumble of childhood impressions) which then someone with an intolerant agenda plays upon and steers towards harsh judgement. In my own aesthetics, I am an equal-opportunity eye-averter. I'm just as averse to see some dude clutching his GF's boobs in the Quad as I am to two dudes tongue kissing. Neither seems wrong to me, I just prefer humans pursue foreplay in rooms or shrubbery. I cannot imagine turning this preference into an ideology or a doctrine. In the words of Groucho Marx: Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlor.

Licking at a dried residue, perhaps. Bolton is a superhawk, who doesn't believe in international law, the UN, treaties, or much of anything that doesn't involve America annihilating any nation that might get in our way. He is dangerously stupid. And a rabidly anti-Muslim bigot. No wonder Trump appointed him as National Security Advisor. And maybe running for president. LoL!