wegs:
I’ll answer your last question for now in that it makes a difference in how the topic is perceived by skeptics. It’s not just a cult of tin foil hat wearing enthusiasts, posting off the mark YouTube videos, trying to gain followers. (To be clear, I don’t think that of you, MR. lol!
)
You're referring to the government investigations of UAPs here.
I would say that it is, in part,
because there is a cult of tin foil hat wearing enthusiasts clamouring for the government to pay attention to their concerns, that these government investigations have been happening. At least some of those tin foil hat people
vote. The government ignores them at its peril.
Apart from that, what makes you think there are no tin foil hat wearing enthusiasts in government, or the military? Being a Representative in Congress, or a decorated military officer, does not make you immune to irrationity or shoddy thinking. Some of your current Representatives are clearly off with the fairies when it comes to various topics. Their beliefs don't connect with real facts in the world.
I must say, I find it interesting that some in the UFO believer community have suddenly decided to trust the government and the military, after spending years shopping cover-up conspiracy theories around. So
now they think the government is going to get to the truth behind UFOs, for them?
The government has no interest other than getting to the truth, just like skeptics.
Everybody has their own interests, quite apart from the desire to get to the truth. Sometimes, those two things are compatible; sometimes they are not.
One thing about being a skeptic is that you learn not to put all your trust in a single person or organisation to tell you the truth - or even in a collection of people or organisations. Finding the truth of things is not about finding a guru to follow blindly. It's about following evidence where it leads.
Don’t you think the government’s involvement creates more credibility around the topic, in general?
Not unless the government ends up finding that the little green men are real after all. We'll have to wait and see, but preliminary signs are that the government (NASA, the military etc.) have taken an appropriate skeptical stance when it comes to the whole matter of UAPs, which is encouraging.
Could skeptics be wrong in their interpretations?
Anybody can be wrong in their interpretations. Generally, if you pay attention, when it comes to UAPs, you will see that the only people usually expressing any doubt about things are the skeptics. The believers are quite certain that it's the superadvanced aquatic aliens, or the extradimensional Martians, or the time-travelling ghosts.
Remember, it's the skeptics who gently suggest that it is possible that an eyewitness could be mistaken. It's the Magical Realists who insist that - no - that's impossible, because eyewitnesses are always "totally reliable".
You should start paying more attention to these differences. It often seems to me that you're just not paying attention to what you're hearing from both sides.
But, MR isn’t adamant about his interpretations.
That nonsense. MR is the man who says that eyewitness statements are "totally reliable". MR is the man who claims to know that most UFOs are "piloted craft". When he says such things, he is adamant. He doesn't express any doubt. He states such things as if they are facts.
This is very different to the careful way that skeptics such as myself describe what
might be true, what is a
possibility, what a list of
potential explanations might include. Skeptical statements - like scientific ones - often come with statements about the confidence of the person making them, too. "I think it could be this, but I'm not sure." "
If the eyewitness is correct,
then it is
reasonable to deduce that ..." "On the
other hand, if the eyewitness is wrong,
then ..."
He doesn’t claim space aliens.
It doesn't matter. Only occasionally does MR let slip what he
actually believes his UAPs are. One major mistake he makes is assuming that most of them must be instances of the same phenomenon, whereas the reality is that if we look at the
solved UAP cases there are different explanations for different cases. This speaks against the notion that most UAPs are the same thing.
What MR believes is that UAPs are, mostly, "craft" who have "pilots". In addition, he believes that these "craft" are technologically advanced, beyond the ability of regular human beings to construct.
It doesn't matter where MR actually believes these "craft" of his come from. Maybe they come from Mars. Maybe they are time-travelling ghosts. Maybe they are from a superadvanced (and unevidenced) civilisationa of aquatic lizard-people at the bottom of the Atlantic. It just doesn't matter, because he has zero evidence for any place of origin, just as he has zero evidence for "craft" or "pilots".
From reading through the various back and forth arguments over the years on here, he rules out the mundane quicker than you might, and you rule out the extraordinary, quicker than he might.
He rules out the mundane immediately. That's his working assumption, going in, for every UAP sighting. He has to be dragged kicking and screaming towards recognising that
any UAP is actually a weather balloon, or a mistaken sighting of Venus. And every time one of his "craft" does turn out to be Venus, instead of learning a lesson about making gullible silly assumptions, he just blocks it from his mind and goes looking for the next unsolved case.
In one sense, the extraordinary can never be ruled out. I gave an example in a recent post in this thread, not too far up from here. Once you've identified that an eyewitness was looking in the exact direction of a bright planet Venus, but reported seeing only an alien spaceship and no planet, it becomes reasonable to conclude that the witness probably make a mistake in interpreting what he was looking at. It's still
possible that there was a real alien spaceship parked in front of Venus, but far more evidence would be needed before that would become a reasonable conclusion to draw.
Unfortunately, James has responded to my thoughts relative to this, and states that he and skeptics in general don’t have any bias or motivation.
No. Everybody has biases. Given my experience in examining UAP cases over many years - not to mention the 70+ year history of no conclusive evidence of alien visitations - I am sensibly biased towards the view that the next UAP report in all likelihood won't turn out to be little green men. But that does
not mean I've made up my mind about the next UAP report in advance, as Yazata's Big Lie asserts.
As for motivations, everybody has them, too. My motivations in talking about and examining UAP cases include trying to model to other people how to apply critical thinking to the examination of evidence. That is a phenomenally useful life skill, applicable far beyond the tin foil hat nonsense of UFOs.
I am
not out to defend the dogma of science against a credible threat from UFO believers. Science isn't a dogma; to think that is to fail to understand how - and why - science works. Nor is science under any threat from UFO believers.
I am aware that a significant portion (I think it's in the 40-50% range) of Americans say they believe that, probably, aliens have visited or are visiting Earth. Since there's no good evidence to support that belief, there's a ton of work that needs to be done to try to educate those people. Not about what to think, but about
how to think.
“They’re not afraid” of alternative opinions, he says. We all have
some bias, but when I’ve suggested that Mick West is biased, they try to debunk my theory.
I asked you a bunch of
specific questions about your views on Mick West. I said that if you believe he got something wrong, you should post about what we got wrong and explain why he was wrong. I've heard nothing more from you, on that.
Your complaints about West's bias are the same ones I assume you have about me and the other skeptics here. Maybe West is just a proxy so that you seem less confrontational in accusing
us of all the things in my dot point list in my post above. I have responded, for myself, on behalf of West, and for skeptics more generally.
I don't think your assessment of skeptics is fair or accurate. I think you have bought into Yazata's Big Lie, for whatever reason. But there's not a lot I can do to correct your perceptions if all you're coming with is vague accusations of bias and closed-mindedness and such.
But, even if I posted the evidence, would it change your mind on West?
Evidence is the
only thing that will change my mind on West. It
should be the only thing that changes your mind, too.
West doesn’t do much in the way of heavy lifting; he just sprinkles seeds of doubt. There’s nothing inspiring about that to me. But, if his opinions resonate with you, that’s fine.
This shouldn't be about choosing a guru to follow blindly. Stop simply adopting somebody else's opinions without question. Think for yourself. Examine the evidence. That's what skepticism is.
