Have you irrefutable proof to the opposite?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of opinions?

Are you unfamiliar with the point of a dialogue to validate your opinion?

You called out the majority of my post as “mince” Cougar, together with the following text I’d assume it’s meant as a negative.

Its all very well stating someone’s opinion as rubbish in an unqualified manner but at least have the temerity to explain why . If you can’t, just say so.  Maybe one day we or our successors will.find out the answer .

Or perhaps soften your response .  It’s aggressive, yet you have no counter.

I am very worried for the authors of the PhD’s theses that 5plusn8 is proofreading.  The application of critical thinking, reasoning and logic are not limited to science or engineering…  With that in mind, it would be interesting to understand the 5plusn8 position on philosophy…

Are you unfamiliar with the point of a dialogue to validate your opinion?

I don’t think anyone here is opposed to dialogue. On that basis, have you anything you’d care to use to validate…

Likewise I to am an advocate of alien intervention.

… that as an opinion?

@jamj1974

Particularly with regard to the philosophy of science 🙂

or “natural philosophy”

Its all very well stating someone’s opinion as rubbish in an unqualified manner but at least have the temerity to explain why .

When something is wrong on as many levels as the post cougar called ‘mince’ it’s virtually impossible to engage with it in a constructive fashion. Such nonsense requires either a massive wordy post to deal with all the issues or a one word dismissal. Some have the patience for the former but clearly not cougar and not me either.

Spin, the phrase you may be looking for is “fractal wrongness”. Wrong at every possible level, and no matter how closely you look. ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness 

Other useful phrases in the context of this thread include “Bullshit asymmetry” or “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” Ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bullshit

And for Kryton57 “Hitchens razor”  “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

Just one human mind can generate lazy and/or crazy statements, ideas or questions at a massive rate*. If they can’t be bothered to put the work into proving it don’t ask anyone else to put the effort into disproving it.

* e.g. Aliens built pyramids!

Earth 6000 years old!

Freddie Starr ate my hamster!

Man seen riding flying horse!

WWII bomber found on moon!

All humans infested with souls of ancient dead aliens executed in volcano!

I could go on, but I’m sure humanity will continue to rise up and fill the gaps in our stupidity.

Editto add: And then berate us for not taking them seriously.

There go you then Spin, you basically admitting that you have a strong opinion which differs from mine but have neither the time of will to evidence against it.  Yours and Cougars remains an unqualified opinion therefore and does not prove anything I said as “wrong” in the slightest.   Not an ounce of proof between the two of you.   I admit I also said I can’t prove it, which equally doesn’t make me right either.

You’re both just stating its “wrong” because its off the range of what is currently determined to be “normal” but that could well be a conception that changes in the future (I give you 29” wheels as an obvious example).  Only time will tell.

I work with a woman who thinks the moon landings were faked

Weirdly, she believes we’ve been to the moon, but just the Neil/Buzz landing was faked

Its not that mad .. I  think some of the pictures were a bit too good..

Imagine you’ve successfully landed on the moon and once you come back you develop your photos only to find that something didn’t quite work and you don’t have any 🙁

Your currently having a bit of one upmanship with the russians and you may have spent a lot of money so you really need some pretty pics.

Your mates friends making a movie with a really good moon set that you could borrow for a few hours and anyway youll be going back to the moon again so you will get some real pictures , no ones going to notice if you sort of reshoot it and get the nice publicity pics your country needs.

Only time will tell.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you’ve basically said (from what i infer from your post regarding Ancient culture “myths”) and a sciFci series from the ’60’s) that we’ve been visited by aliens already?

Unless you’ve got some proof, then yeah, it’s just stories. Having a crack at Cougar and Spin doesn’t make them less fictional.

on aliens – check out the drake equation and the fermi paradox

My belief – the zoo hypothesis.  Loads of aliens out there watching us but they are not going to contact us until we prove ourselves worthy 😉

Equally Nickc, does either of the using words like “mince” and “wrong” as the only argument make them any more fictional.  A status quo then.

Like a said, theres a mainstream view, and theres other views.  None of them have been proven without doubt – even the main stream, theres just an implied level of general acceptance.

Kryton

I refer you to my previous post

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

Its not up to ANYONE to bring the evidence to disprove your nonsense! Its up to you to prove it.

dudeofdoom

It doesn’t make sense.

Do you think the Russians were not watching the moon landing very carefully and listening in to the transmissions?

You admit they had a vested interest in the Americans failure, so if the fakery was as obvious as every (conspiracy theorist) says, why the silence from them? (or does the rabbit hole go even deeper than we suspect!)

Errmmm – the moon landings are ture beyond doubt.  conspiracy theories about the moon are proven wrong without doubt.
All opinions are not equal

Its not up to ANYONE to bring the evidence to disprove your nonsense! Its up to you to prove it.

Yet that statement doesn’t written for nor apply only to me does it?   See bold – you too have made an unqualified assumption.    Its not up to me to disprove you, Cougar or Spin either, just because the three of you can’t be bothered.

Anyway, we are arguing in pointless circles, lets not continue.

A status quo then.

not really…

the “aliens have been here before” is just made up to fit a 20/21st century cultural zeitgeist, it’s just mythic. Whereas at the very least the Fermi Paradox has some mathematic rationale.

Kryton

“A status quo then”

I think you mean that you have forced a draw through your gallant effort (like the knight in monty python)

You have produced an idea from nothing,

Offered no evidence, and

Declared your unsupported idiotic notion equal to all of the scientific, archaeological evidence which does not support your assertion. (Note I didn’t say “disproves”)

Brilliant!

Offered no evidence,

Neither has anyone else provided evidence against my theory in this discussion, so yes a status quo.

I think you mean that you have forced a draw through your gallant effort

I’m not claiming a moral victory, there’s no winners and losers here its just a discussion.

idiotic notion

Is it?  Feel free to enlighten me as to why with factual and evidential data.  Something no one else has provided either in the last 15 hours.

Apologies for the planespottery diversion –

But the SR-71 was not a defence project! It was built for the CIA, and flown by spooks, the whole thing was paid for by off-the-books funding and built by Lockheed’s Skunk Works

Not quite, the Oxcart was the CIA aircraft, the SR-71 was developed from it for the USAF. The A12 Oxcart is the one on the right.

If you can find a copy, there’s a book that covers the development, called ‘Skunk Works’, which is about the history of the place, and the amazing man responsible for designing the Blackbird and many others.

There’s an brief but interesting piece on the CIA website here and a more in-depth look at the program(me) here.

Ok,

The origins of these sorts of stories is based on Cultural Imperialism, (it still sort of goes on; you only have to read Guns Steel and Germs, and the sorts of trashy novels like Lensman) it has at it’s heart “Who built the pyramids? After all it couldn’t have been Black Africans”. In  Carter’s days, it was either Greeks (they worshipped at the idol of Classicism) or some other “lost” culture, ie Amazonian, or Atlantis, anything other than the truth staring them in the face, that it was indeed, Black Africans over 6000 years ago, that had built at Geza a building that remained the biggest man made structure for 4000 years.

Still, people (like you) can’t quite get over it. It may be subconcious, in some cases (Like Jared Diamond) yer actual racism, but…You still need to ask yourself, what is it that makes you question the evidence that these structures were built by ancient humans?

1)

I am very worried for the authors of the PhD’s theses that 5plusn8 is proofreading.

You overestimate my influence on the outcome of their labour, I just checked for typo’s, spelling, repeated words, references and figures coherence, readability etc. My opinions on the content were not required.
(To those of you questioning my grammar, I am better at spotting mistakes, but with my own work I am lazy where it does not matter, on STW it does not matter. Economy of effort.)

2)

The application of critical thinking, reasoning and logic are not limited to science or engineering…

If you read my posts, I never said that. I explicitly denied it.  For example:

This does not mean that if you don’t have any of these qualifications then you will be more credulous…..However I think that the higher the level of physical science education the less credulous you will be about these theories.

When I said

I totally disagree with this hence my theory requiring science education. Arts and social “science” require no understanding of logic and proof, they do logic, but many don’t get it.

I make the point that they don’t require it, does not mean that many of them do not use rigorous logic and critical thinking, but many of them do not, and get away with it. That’s harder to do with a science background.

3)

With that in mind, it would be interesting to understand the 5plusn8 position on philosophy…

Particularly with regard to the philosophy of science

or “natural philosophy”

I don’t understand what you are asking? Natural Philosophy is/was the original foundation of  what is now called Science, in fact some philosophers are calling for a reunification of Natural Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science. I have read pretty widely from Russell, Grayling, Feyerbrand, Kuhn , Gould, Pinker Maxwell.
I can’t really define a “position” as such, I don’t keep up to date with current thinking, and I can’t say I remember all that I have read. But be assured that I’m convinced that Philosophy is the basis of science (and maths). What was your point?

As an aside, I don’t really want this to be about me, marginally suspicious that the three of you played the man not the ball there. A bit of an uncharitable undertone like “with that in mind”, are you trying to make assertions about my character?

I wanted to see if the general consensus was that a decent science education was a reasonable inoculation against specifically the moon landing conspiracies, i.e. once you understand at least some of how it is done, you realise a) how it was possible, b) how hard it would have been to fake.

lensman is not trash!.  Its a key part of SF history.  very very dated tho

I’ve been off grid for a few days, boy this thread has grown! I just wanted to correct a minor technicality on the Harrier:-

“There have been quite a few attempts to create a jet aircraft that could transition from vertical to horizontal forward flight, and the P.1127/Kestrel/Harrier wasn’t the first to achieve a smooth transition from vertical to horizontal flight, but it was a British aircraft. The Russians tried it, using small jet nozzles on the wingtips, nose and tail. It was a failure. The Americans attempted their own, one a prop-driven aircraft that took off vertically, standing on its tail, with a large contra-rotating prop to propel it. It was a failure as well. It was Rolls Royce who solved the problem using swivelling nozzles on the side of the main jet engine to vector the jet exhaust out of the sides of the plane instead of at the trailing edge of the wings or the tail.”

This is true apart from one small detail, it was Bristol Siddley who developed the Pegasus engine, Rolls-Royce then acquired Bristol Siddely in 1966, so Rolls-Royce can’t take the credit for the design and development I’m afraid. A small point but one that would annoy a few people I know. It was indeed the small ‘puffer’ jets in the wing tips and the tail that provided the stability in the hover. They could divert air from the engine bypass duct and generate upto 2000 lb of thrust to control the aircraft in pitch, rolls and yaw. Of course back then this was all done by the pilot, so required great skill, but modern VSTOL aircraft like the V22 and F35 now use computers to fly the aircraft in the transition. Another innovation of the Pegasus engine was that the Low pressure spool and high pressure spools of the engine contra-rotated, this canceled out any rotational forces from the rotating parts of the engine and negated the need for any sort of tail rotor type of mechanism to counter the gyroscopic reaction forces of the engine when manoeuvring in the hover.

5plus8 – I was just playing with words.  No serious point at all

nickc – exactly. It is a shame as Kryton and others are not in any way racist, but have been sucked into the web which helps perpetuate this.

tjagain- no issue.

Kryton

No-one else is making unsupported assertions.

Its up to you to prove what you say.

It is no-one elses responsibility to disprove your notion.

That doesn’t make both sides equal.

Am I being unclear?

For clarity, read this https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Russell’s_Teapot

“Russell’s Teapot draws attention to the formal logic behind the burden of proof and how it works.”

If you read that carefully, you may not be any the wiser but you will at least be better informed.

Its not that mad .. I  think some of the pictures were a bit too good..

Agree, along with your thinking behind it  – It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine US producing some fake photo’s.  This then leads to the naysayers saying the whole thing was faked as the photos don’t hold up to scrutiny.

I still don’t get the OPs original link between being able to fully understand how you could get to the moon leading to you then not thinking it was faked.  2 completely different things.

eat the pudding:

that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

There’s no proof that Aliens influence our development or have been present on earth,  so in context the lack of such evidence is evidence in itself they didn’t do either.

I get that.  But the opposite is also true – see Nickc’s post about Pyramids:

what is it that makes you question the evidence that these structures were built by ancient humans

Irrefutable evidence and therefore the existents of doubt, vis a vis that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

I also can’t believe it now implied I’m a racist based on these thoughts, only in STW..!

I also can’t believe it now implied I’m a racist based on these thoughts

Kryton, I don’t think for a second that you’re racist, please accept my unreserved apologies if that’s what my post implied, that wasn’t my intent at all.

There is absolute proof that all the types of ancient structures that have the mill stone of “Alien worship/help/building” hung around their necks were designed created by ancient indigenous human cultures. Again, think why it is that no-one thinks the English didn’t build any number of Castles, but structures that are concurrent with that, (the beginning of Angkor Wat for example) still have a whiff of Eric Von Danikan about them?

And it’s repeated, The Nazca lines, Inca Temples…any number of Meso-Mexican temples…and on and on.

Neither has anyone else provided evidence against my theory in this discussion, so yes a status quo.

Theory? You mean “what I reckon” don’t you?

Anyway, we are arguing in pointless circles, lets not continue.

Before we move on to other things I’d like to add my name to ‘you’re talking mince’ camp.

Yeah the Colliseum was just hard working Romans – although it wasn’t built in a day

But Machu Picchu and Teotihuacan needed friendly aliens

Kryton

Still no evidence to back up your notion then.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Neither has anyone else provided evidence against my theory in this discussion, so yes a status quo.

I’m sure someone upthread has said this already but…

What you’re doing is known as shifting the burden of proof and it’s a fallacious argument form. If you make an outlandish claim it’s up to you to supply evidence of it, not up to me to refute it.

I’m not going to get pulled into implied insults or derogatory comments, its been interesting, thanks Nickc mostly as there’s some direction to some interesting reading for me, but – I’m out.  🙂

As an aside, I don’t really want this to be about me, marginally suspicious that the three of you played the man not the ball there. A bit of an uncharitable undertone like “with that in mind”, are you trying to make assertions about my character?

5plusn8.  I  very sorry if I have come across that way – I have no intent to make any negative assertions on you character.  No undertone or overtone of that nature was meant.  Please accept my apologies.

I (Understandably, I believe.) inferred that you were questioning the presence of critical thought in non-science or engineering degrees.  That I would disagree with.  That is all – nothing else and certainly not questioning your grammar.

Or perhaps soften your response . It’s aggressive, yet you have no counter.

It was not meant to be agressive, and I’m sorry if it came across that way.

As for a counter, well, you’re right, I don’t have one. Because it’s not possible to have one. This is a lazy way of trying to give credence to random beliefs because it’s impossible to disprove a negative. It’s Russell’s Teapot, or if you like, the majority of god-based religions.

I can say with a degree of confidence that there’s no such thing as god. The theists go “prove it” and I can’t, because it’s not possible. It will only ever possible to prove them right, by finding some form of evidence to substantiate their belief. The fact that over millennia not a single shred of evidence has come to light to support this idea coupled with Occam’s Razor leads me to conclude that our modern notion of “god” is likely beyond reasonable doubt in my mind to be a man-made construct. But I can’t prove it.

Which leads us nicely to a thing called Burden of Proof. See, I don’t have to prove anything. If you’re making wild claims about alien technology (or god) then it’s your responsibility to put forward supporting evidence to back up your claims if you want them to be taken seriously. If you can show us something that proves what you’re saying then I’ll believe you (and you’ll also be very, very rich). If all you’ve got is tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories then I’ll cheerfully dismiss them as mince, or some other less-aggressive term for “nonsense” if you prefer.

Cougar, this is the point about science, and the philosophy of science that many non scientists (and scientists it has to be said) do not get. Science is never right, any theory backed up by evidence and experiment just has the best explanation until better evidence comes along.
Things like Newtonian Physics, (I know you know this anyway) without some serious equipment it is hard to find flaws in Newtonian Physics, it is demonstrably correct in 99.99999% of everyday observable situations, but we know that in theory it is wrong and everything is controlled by Quantum Physics. So it is equally feasible that at some point in the future Quantum physics will be wrong and we will have a greater theory (Hawkin was heading that way anyway) .

and everything is controlled by Quantum Physics.

Well Quantum Physics in combination with General Relativity – which is the the theory that explains some of the slight observational flaws in Newtonian Mechanics  – the orbital precession of Mercury being the most commonly cited example.

So it is equally feasible that at some point in the future Quantum physics will be wrong

We actually already know its wrong or rather that its at least incomplete – it doesn’t incorporate gravity at all.  Likewise General Relativity doesn’t work at quantum scales

Richard Feynman once said that science was “a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance”.  Science just gets on with the job of being less “wrong” I don’t think its ever trying to be completely “right”