I just wanted to say agree with you generally, and it's sad to see you're getting hate for stating what should be obvious points of valid skepticism.
Kaku has never shown himself to be a serious thinker and has always shown himself to be an opportunist looking to promote himself with whatever sensationalist crap he can get away with on cable news. So nothing new there.
I saw a clip of De Grasse Tyson talking about the UFOs. I haven't watched the entire interview but what I saw I thought was fine.
The main prior we should have for some of these craft that Navy pilots have seen is that they are Russian or Chinese drones, and the fact the Navy/ DoD apparently doesn't have a handle on that potentiality is a bit disturbing. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but there is a really well researched piece of journalism on this point. I haven't had time to read the entire thing but it's definitely worth a gander:
Thanks Mark! No idea how truth remains, honestly I’m kind of just impressed whenever truth makes a showing. As for wikis, I think there are a few blockchain ones - though many die in the Great Bear Cycle of crypto
What I always tell people who ask me is that every major atmospheric event (e.g., a meteorite) over an inhabited area generates (now-a-days) a plethora of data, images and video and even sound from cell phones and surveillance cameras and dash cams, etc., of whatever it is in the sky. Those data can then be analyzed by anyone to figure out the actual location and altitude and velocity and course changes of the object. No one has to depend on any given individual to this, and any faked data will be rapidly thrown out. Until that can be done that for UFO events, they have nothing.
As an example, the Chelyabinsk meteor came down over Russia, deep in Siberia in a formerly closed area (the Russian Los Alamos), but there was enough data that no one anywhere on the globe had any serious doubts what had happened, how it moved, what caused the damage, etc. Have all that for a UFO, and we can talk.
Agreed, and it's strange how cameras keep getting betters and yet every video remains a fuzzy far-away mess. Like I don't know exactly what the demarcation should be for when one starts believing in aliens, but I don't have to specify whatever that is to say: this ain't it.
New better IR cameras just mean the range to a fuzzy indistinct target is longer than it used to be, and that much harder for the pilot to viscerally "grok" the geometry.
When someone begins his research with the circular-logic axiom "it can't be aliens because nothing is ever aliens" (or the opposite axiom) it is not really interesting to learn what follows, because the reader knows that the researcher is not treating his subject intellectually. Okay, a "professional skeptic" has debunked something…the least surprising thing I can think of at the moment.
Professional skeptics and professional believers alike are playing a different game than truth-seeking. Instead they are each hunkered down in their respective foxholes, lobbing these predictable circular arguments at each other, starting out at the desired conclusion and working backwards.
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A second note: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a bad policy. Extraordinary evidence rarely presents itself effortlessly. Rather, one starts out with an extraordinary claim and minimal evidence. At this point "scientific skepticism" tosses the claim into the garbage. Instead, the correct approach is to consider the extraordinary claim may just actually have some merit—some explanatory power—and to thus collect and analyze evidence _objectively_.
In contrast, when we restrict ourselves to hypotheses where irrefutable evidence simply falls into our lap, waiting around and hoping to get lucky is the only path to making nature give up her secrets.
You are conflating an axiom with a prior. The two priors "there are aliens" and "there are not aliens" are not at all equivalent. They are not on equal footing in any way shape or form. As an example, yes, maybe ALL my friends have been displaced with lookalikes by the CIA, but that does imply I should treat that hypotheses with any sort of credulity. So there is a huge difference between a "professional skeptic" and a "professional believer" in your parlance. And that is why evidence should increase when the claim requires wild priors.
I'm classifying these claims as axioms because "there are aliens" and "there are not aliens" are merely taken on faith by each respective professional camp.
Even granting that you are using "prior" here loosely and qualitatively (I do get that you are not tacitly suggesting you've built a giant Bayesian model) I cannot see how in the world (pun intended) one could compute a practical "there are not aliens" prior.
I just wanted to say agree with you generally, and it's sad to see you're getting hate for stating what should be obvious points of valid skepticism.
Kaku has never shown himself to be a serious thinker and has always shown himself to be an opportunist looking to promote himself with whatever sensationalist crap he can get away with on cable news. So nothing new there.
I saw a clip of De Grasse Tyson talking about the UFOs. I haven't watched the entire interview but what I saw I thought was fine.
The main prior we should have for some of these craft that Navy pilots have seen is that they are Russian or Chinese drones, and the fact the Navy/ DoD apparently doesn't have a handle on that potentiality is a bit disturbing. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but there is a really well researched piece of journalism on this point. I haven't had time to read the entire thing but it's definitely worth a gander:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos
Thank you Dan! I hadn’t seen that. Certainly it would be very easy to confuse a drone with an alien spacecraft, especially if distances were unclear
I love this. How does any true truth remain? ...And, what is Wikipedia's secret? Are they not sort of a facts blockchain?
Thanks Mark! No idea how truth remains, honestly I’m kind of just impressed whenever truth makes a showing. As for wikis, I think there are a few blockchain ones - though many die in the Great Bear Cycle of crypto
Bravo. My feelings exactly.
What I always tell people who ask me is that every major atmospheric event (e.g., a meteorite) over an inhabited area generates (now-a-days) a plethora of data, images and video and even sound from cell phones and surveillance cameras and dash cams, etc., of whatever it is in the sky. Those data can then be analyzed by anyone to figure out the actual location and altitude and velocity and course changes of the object. No one has to depend on any given individual to this, and any faked data will be rapidly thrown out. Until that can be done that for UFO events, they have nothing.
As an example, the Chelyabinsk meteor came down over Russia, deep in Siberia in a formerly closed area (the Russian Los Alamos), but there was enough data that no one anywhere on the globe had any serious doubts what had happened, how it moved, what caused the damage, etc. Have all that for a UFO, and we can talk.
Agreed, and it's strange how cameras keep getting betters and yet every video remains a fuzzy far-away mess. Like I don't know exactly what the demarcation should be for when one starts believing in aliens, but I don't have to specify whatever that is to say: this ain't it.
New better IR cameras just mean the range to a fuzzy indistinct target is longer than it used to be, and that much harder for the pilot to viscerally "grok" the geometry.
That’s a really good point - a disconnect between pilot and instrument
When someone begins his research with the circular-logic axiom "it can't be aliens because nothing is ever aliens" (or the opposite axiom) it is not really interesting to learn what follows, because the reader knows that the researcher is not treating his subject intellectually. Okay, a "professional skeptic" has debunked something…the least surprising thing I can think of at the moment.
Professional skeptics and professional believers alike are playing a different game than truth-seeking. Instead they are each hunkered down in their respective foxholes, lobbing these predictable circular arguments at each other, starting out at the desired conclusion and working backwards.
===
A second note: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a bad policy. Extraordinary evidence rarely presents itself effortlessly. Rather, one starts out with an extraordinary claim and minimal evidence. At this point "scientific skepticism" tosses the claim into the garbage. Instead, the correct approach is to consider the extraordinary claim may just actually have some merit—some explanatory power—and to thus collect and analyze evidence _objectively_.
In contrast, when we restrict ourselves to hypotheses where irrefutable evidence simply falls into our lap, waiting around and hoping to get lucky is the only path to making nature give up her secrets.
—James Cropcho
You are conflating an axiom with a prior. The two priors "there are aliens" and "there are not aliens" are not at all equivalent. They are not on equal footing in any way shape or form. As an example, yes, maybe ALL my friends have been displaced with lookalikes by the CIA, but that does imply I should treat that hypotheses with any sort of credulity. So there is a huge difference between a "professional skeptic" and a "professional believer" in your parlance. And that is why evidence should increase when the claim requires wild priors.
I'm classifying these claims as axioms because "there are aliens" and "there are not aliens" are merely taken on faith by each respective professional camp.
Even granting that you are using "prior" here loosely and qualitatively (I do get that you are not tacitly suggesting you've built a giant Bayesian model) I cannot see how in the world (pun intended) one could compute a practical "there are not aliens" prior.