A bit defensive today, eh? No part of anything I wrote had anything to do with tell you to "take a hike." Everyone who has responded here is trying to be helpful. Remember one of the cornerstone phrases of skepticism: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Related is: "claims presented without evidence can be equally dismissed without evidence." How can you expect a skeptical community to accept your claims of seeing an alien any other way, without any other evidence than personal experience? This can't be a new conversation pattern to you. You had to know what to expect. Perhaps one thing that can get overlooked in language is that I (and very likely most other people here) have no doubt that you experienced what you say you did, and that you aren't making it up. This is NOT the same as being critical of the interpretation of an experience.It was rather insulting to suggest that I was medicate or hallucinating as was first said in a previous post… Or did you forget about that? I do not require any extraordinary evidence, but apparently you do. You don’t know what you don’t know and may never know if you won’t allow yourself to explore the reports from people that claim to have seen aliens. I do not expect you to take my report of seeing aliens at face value. I would like to listen to your “constructive" criticisms. Another cornerstone of scientific skepticism is to keep an open mind and try to encourage others to bring more ideas to the table. Name-calling will not encourage others to come forward. Like I said earlier; this is not the forum I was expecting too find closed minded people that would suggest I used drugs or suffered from some mental disorder. Thank you for hearing me out and I do wish you all the best in the future. Walt You can "explore" all you want, but don't take any wooden nickels. If you don't demand extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims you are doomed to be duped at nearly every opportunity. Watch out for people selling the Brooklyn Bridge and get-rich-quick schemes. Your attitude makes you especially vulnerable to scams. Lois
True scientific inquiry was ignored after Immanuel Velikovsky wrote his book called “Worlds in Collision" back in 1950. You, being a person that is well read surly must have read his book? I hope I am not wasting my time with the unwashed of the world!That tells me all I need t know about your skepticism. You are not a skeptic, you are gullible. Velikovsky's hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited, mainly because it is physical impossible. And yes, I read Worlds in Collision when I was young. It is a ridiculous book.
It was rather insulting to suggest that I was medicate or hallucinating as was first said in a previous post… Or did you forget about that?No, I just didn't realize that you would consider that to be insulting. That was not my intent. In the interest of common empathy and understanding, could you selective quote each thing I said which you found insulting so I know how to avoid it in the future?
This forum group must have a person in it that can explain away the things I saw. The psychological or drug problem explanations failed the test in my humble opinion. As a true skeptic myself I can assure you that I did not want to believe aliens were real. Many other folks have reported seeing them as well that are respected members of the police and military. As a trained observer pilot for the US air force, working for the DEA I was able to spot drugs being grown from the air with great success. Please try to do better then to suggest it was a delusional experience.Perhaps, you're not as much of a skeptic as you think. Open mind or empty head? Are you a True Skeptic or a Pseudo Skeptic? True Skeptics / Open-Minded Skeptics Able to adapt and update their beliefs to new evidence and does not resist new information Asks questions to try to understand new things and are open to learning about them Applies critical examination and inquiry to all sides, including their own Are nonjudgmental and do not jump to rash conclusions Seeks the truth and considers it the highest aim, unafraid to challenge the status quo Does not consider the official version of anything to be infallible and above examination Thinks in terms of possibilities rather than in terms of rigidity and limitations Fairly and objectively weighs evidence on all sides Acknowledges valid convincing evidence rather than ignoring or denying it Possess solid sharp common sense and objective reasoning When all mundane explanations for a phenomenon are ruled out, are able to accept paranormal ones Urges others to think for themselves rather than adopting fixed beliefs of organizations and institutions Pseudoskeptics / Closed-Minded Skeptics Holds fixed belief systems that are resistant to change and denies data which doesn't fit into them Does not ask big questions to try to understand things, but judges them by whether they fit into their fixed beliefs Applies "critical thinking" only to that which opposes their beliefs and the status quo, but never to the status quo itself Carries a fixed set of rigid beliefs and denies everything outside of it without investigation Are not interested in truth, evidence or facts, only in defending their views Unable to challenge or apply skepticism to the status quo, establishment, or official version of anything Considers the official version of things to be infallible and above examination Unable to accept mysteries and uncertainty, cannot think in terms of possibilities Scoffs and ridicules anything outside their narrow and rigid paradigm Insists that everything unknown and unexplained must have a conventional mundane explanation Uses semantics and word games with their own rules of logic to try to win arguments When all mundane explanations for a phenomenon are ruled out, will still insist on them Does not encourage you to think for yourself, but preaches you to adopt the position of the establishment on every subject Denies all the above PseudoSkeptic traits, yet DOES them all and holds none of the traits of True Skeptics listed aboveWell, I'm so put in my place by this response. The diagnosis is the first step to finding a cure for your car or yourself. Welcome to my world of true skeptics searching for the fact, and just the facts where ever they take us. The point is that we don’t know what we don’t know! My observation of the incredible begs for answers so I can sleep better at night. There must be someone here that could shed some light as to what I saw as a child. I have already been traumatized so I don’t need blind uninformed critics suggesting meds may be my best help. As a true skeptic looking for answers I may have come to the wrong place.Walt Willis, are you sure you're not using appeal to emotion here? http://www.fallacyfiles.org/emotiona.html
The chances that you were actually abducted by aliens as opposed to hallucinating for whatever reason are very minimal. It's a simple math: we have zero evidence for aliens ever visiting our planet, whereas hallucination is not all that uncommon.“The “Probability" that you were actually abducted by aliens as opposed to hallucinating for whatever reason is very minimal." "It’s simple math that we have zero evidence for aliens ever visiting our planet, whereas the probability of having hallucinations is not all that uncommon." Please forgive my taking artistic liberties with your statement... If we are speaking of the law of probabilities you are correct, however if the earth has been without any black swans according to the scientific community, why should we look outside the box for them? We could all just not listen to the claims that there are black swans in Australia and go about our merry way and be happy. True scientific inquiry was ignored after Immanuel Velikovsky wrote his book called “Worlds in Collision" back in 1950. You, being a person that is well read surly must have read his book? I hope I am not wasting my time with the unwashed of the world! No, I would never read Velikovsky. I am too well read to know his stuff is garbage. ;-) You will have to try a bit harder if you want people to take you seriously on this forum.
Walt, I watched about the first three minutes of the video (or rather, listened), and it seemed to be just rambling. I’m not really in a position to waste half an hour of my limited Internet time. So what if you told me again, in your own words, what you experienced? When did it happen? How old were you? I gather the “aliens” just “appeared” by your bedside? Is that right? What leads you to think it wasn’t just a lucid dream? Anyway, begin at the beginning is always a good way to proceed.
OK, I didn’t think you were serious about this. The first clue was you using the expression “explain away”. This is not an expression Skeptics use. This is a Believer’s expression, because they don’t like uncomfortable facts and want them to “go away”. Skeptics want to EXPLAIN, so we need ALL the facts, uncomfortable or not. The problem is that we rarely have ALL the facts in cases like this, because all we have is the Believer’s subjective impression of the event. In short, we’ll probably never know what happened to you, only what you THINK happened, or rather what you’ve managed to talk yourself into believing happened. This is not intended to insult you. We all do it. It’s the nature of the way our memories work.