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dr wu23 
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Joined: August 22 2010
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 Posted: April 24 2013 at 21:40 |
 The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny?
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
Status: Offline
Points: 20468
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Posted: April 24 2013 at 21:46 |
Dean wrote:
No one has said it is silliness or loony. Being sceptical just means questioning the evidence, not blindly dismissing it or blindly accepting it.
If you do not think those events that cannot be explained are extraterrestrial in origin but are some phenomenon messing with human consciousness then I've nothing to add here - once it becomes an affect on consciousness rather than a measurable physical event then I see no reason to look for external sources because we cannot quantify or measure the effect to determine an external cause so the problem cannot be addressed by the scientific method. |
It seemed to me several of the comments in the thread bordered on being facetious and silly. But I don't see why the 'scientific method' can't be used whether it's an objective phenom or one involving human consciousness. We measure brain effects all the time in neuroscience and other fields and use psychology to determine mental states. If it's 'supernatural' or ' metaphysical' in nature, something you obviously don't believe in being a material reductionist, then I agree that the 'scientific method' might not apply here. But if it's being created by an unknown intelligence then the 'scientific method' would apply if we could figure out some method to study the phenom.
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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The T
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Joined: October 16 2006
Location: FL, USA
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Posted: April 24 2013 at 22:12 |
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny? |
I'm just trying to prove that, unlike UFOs, we have evidence, empirical observable evidence, of the existence of trolls in our Universe.
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
Status: Offline
Points: 20468
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Posted: April 24 2013 at 22:29 |
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny? |
I'm just trying to prove that, unlike UFOs, we have evidence, empirical observable evidence, of the existence of trolls in our Universe. |
Oh...how droll. You must be British.
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 06:27 |
dr wu23 wrote:
It seemed to me several of the comments in the thread bordered on being facetious and silly. |
"Bordering on" is not the same. Failure to take a unsubstantiated claims seriously is failure of the evidence.
You yourself are not above mocking and being facetious:
dr wu23 wrote:
Saying it's all just loonies will get us about as far as those in the past who said rocks could not fall from the sky or man would never fly. |
Both those examples were perfectly valid statements when they were made and are perfectly valid under specific circumstances today - the full quotation of the former is 'Rocks cannot fall from the sky because there are no rocks in the sky' and that is perfectly valid if we constrain the definition of "sky" to being only the denser portions of the atmosphere (which is perfectly valid) - then the statement is true because the rocks are in space not in the sky and they fall through the sky and not from it. Observations that rocks did fall from the sky existed long before the statement was made, we now know that early iron and nickle artifacts made before we developed iron ore smelting were made from meteorites and there are many legends and stories from antiquity of "magical" weapons made from falling stars to that support that.
The latter statement is also true under specific conditions and constraints - man will never fly - we can construct machines that can fly and we can be passengers on them, so by the same reasoning we can make pigs and elephants fly, but neither pigs nor elephants can fly. We knew that heavier than air flight was possible long before anyone made the statement that 'man would never fly' - from the simple observation of birds and flying insects to the practical application of kites and balistics going back thousands of years. For man to actually fly our entire physiology would need to change, bone structure and composition, metabolism, heart power and size, muscle efficiency, our volume to mass index would need to alter and we would need to produce wings with a span of at least 8m without increasing our body-mass - the resulting species would not be "man".
dr wu23 wrote:
Yet... credible people; police, military,etc including several astronauts, claim to have seen ufos that did not look like anything they could identify and some of these credible people believe ufos are alien in orign. Other credible people over the years have had not only sightings but close encounters with seemingly unkown beings. So are we then to assume they are all lying or just plain crazy or seeing things...? |
...is, as I have said before, an "argument from authority fallacy". Ironically, your 'rocks could not fall from the sky' is a classic example of one such argument from authority fallacy. The 18th century French chemist who made that comment was Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (aka Antoine Lavoisier) - Lavoisier was a highly credible scientist of impeccable credentials, he disproved the existence of pholgiston and developed the law of the conservation of mass, he discovered oxygen and hydrogen and also predicted the existence of silicon and proved that sulphur was an element and not a compound. He was a renowned expert in his field (but not in astrophysics), of such repute that the French museums removed all meteorites from display (until a freak meteor shower 50 years later deposited over 2000 meteorites on France - then some frantic back-peddling ensued).
dr wu23 wrote:
But I don't see why the 'scientific method' can't be used whether it's an objective phenom or one involving human consciousness. |
We have been studying these as a professional discipline for over 250 years and failed to produce any tangible results because they cannot be subjected to the scientific method, which by definition is Formulation, Hypothesis, Prediction, Testing and Analysis. Every instance of investigation into these "para-" fields is perfectly happy with the first two steps but fails miserably on the remaining three. If you cannot predict an outcome based upon the formulated hypothesis, test the resulting data and analyse that for evidence that the prediction was true then you cannot apply the scientific method - if any one of those steps fails then the hypothesis is false. No branch of paranormal research has ever got past stage two. If it is an objective phenomenon (not a scientific term) then it will be measurable and testable - if it cannot then it is not, but since the opposite of objective phenomena would either be not objective or not a phenomena (or both) that does not automatically mean that it is '...involving human consciousness' ... the disproof of one does not prove the other.
In another example of irony, one of the supporters of this kind of research in the 18th century was Antoine 'rocks don't fall from the sky' Lavoisier, who was a supporter of Franz Mesmer (of Mesmerism fame) and the idea of Animal Magnetism (which is a Age of Enlightenment term encompassing psychokinesis, hypnosis, psychic and spiritual healing and all ports inbetween) ... which is more or less what you are suggesting with:
dr wu23 wrote:
An unknown phenomenon affecting human consciousness or an unknown sentience screwing with our consciousness or perhaps a new sociologica/psychological l phenomenon tied into human consciousness...? |
dr wu23 wrote:
We measure brain effects all the time in neuroscience and other fields and use psychology to determine mental states. |
Except we don't with any degree of accuracy or repeatability. What we do know, and have observed on many occasions, is the brain is an adaptive organ so measurements of brain effects are not conclusive evidence of anything.
We know there are some strange things that happen when we study what psychological effects on the brain can have on physiological effects.
- We know that if we give an ill person a sugar pill and tell them it is a sugar pill it will have no affect on their symptoms.
- If we tell them the sugar pill is a real drug it will have an affect on their symptoms.
- If we give them two sugar pills and tell them it's the real drug there is a bigger improvement still
This is a real effect that we can observe and we've given it a name - the Placebo Effect - but it the patient knows they are taking a placebo it can have a null or even negative effect.
- If we give them a real drug and tell them it is a sugar pill their symptoms will still improve.
- However, if we give them the real drug and tell them it is the real drug then their improvement will be even better.
None of this is proof that a placebo can cure an illness, because it cannot - it can alleviate a symptom and it can stimulate the body's natural immune system to effect a cure, but if that illness is incurable by the immune system the patient will not recover - a sugar pill will not cure cholera or malaria or polio or diphtheria - swap insulin for a sugar pill and you will do harm to a diabetic. Sometimes alleviating the symptoms is all we need - we know there is no cure for the common cold but we spend millions each year on cold remedies just to alleviate the symptoms.
All this is science because we know that the body is a self-repairing biological machine complete with a chemical factory of glands synthesising all manner of substances to regulate the function of that machine, all controlled by a central processor and communications network of high sophistication. We study the placebo effect as a reference point to measure the effectiveness of any external substances we develop to cure real illnesses that the body cannot fix and not as a cure in itself, we need to do this because those substances themselves are also subject to the placebo effect. This is all to do with how belief and expectation can affect us physically - it exists as a phenomenon and we study it - but it is not objective in any sense of the word. Extrapolating that real research into areas that cannot be demonstrated as actually existing is not part of the scientific method - the placebo effect does not show that an unknown phenomenon can affect human consciousness, nor does it predict that such a thing is even possible.
dr wu23 wrote:
If it's 'supernatural' or ' metaphysical' in nature, something you obviously don't believe in being a material reductionist, then I agree that the 'scientific method' might not apply here. But if it's being created by an unknown intelligence then the 'scientific method' would apply if we could figure out some method to study the phenom. |
To study it you have to demonstrate it exists.
Edited by Dean - April 25 2013 at 08:20
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What?
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Snow Dog
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 23 2005
Location: Caerdydd
Status: Offline
Points: 32995
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 06:36 |
When I used to study the sky for hour after hour every night to learn the stars and constellations I never, ever saw anything I regarded suspicious. And as I have continued to look I still never, ever have. This is more than thirty years of sky watching off and on. Strange that a lot of people who don't normally look at the sky see all these "UFO"s. And I guess it a good term as long as it's unidentified. After all UFO does not equal Alien spacecraft. It can mean many things.
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 07:02 |
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Yeah, our satellites can nearly see the sausages in your garden's BBQ but they could never catch any of those flying saucers.
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Snow Dog
Special Collaborator
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Joined: March 23 2005
Location: Caerdydd
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Points: 32995
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 08:41 |
Gerinski wrote:
Yeah, our satellites can nearly see the sausages in your garden's BBQ but they could never catch any of those flying saucers. |
Which brings me to my final point that I forgot to include. 
Amateur and professional astronomers up and down this country and throughout thw world don't see UFOs.(Or flying saucers really as I said anything can be unidentified until it is identified)
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Peter
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: January 31 2004
Location: Canada
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Points: 9669
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 09:07 |
Dean wrote:
...we wait with baited breath. |
Dean, I am very impressed with your obvious mathematical and logical prowess (though I cannot follow it in detail).   I confess to being less than impressed, however, at your twice mistaking the word "baited" (as a trap or a hook gets baited) with the word BATED, (which derives from abated -- "diminished, stopped, held"). When you think about it, one's breath can be held in expectation (thus the cynnical expression "don't hold your breath"), but not baited (unless, perhaps, one puts a mint in one's mouth, in an effort to catch a girl). Now you know -- please bate/abate your erroneous use of "baited."  Thank you and carry on. 
Edited by Peter - April 25 2013 at 09:18
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"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 10:23 |
Peter wrote:
Dean wrote:
...we wait with baited breath. |
Dean, I am very impressed with your obvious mathematical and logical prowess (though I cannot follow it in detail). I confess to being less than impressed, however, at your twice mistaking the word "baited" (as a trap or a hook gets baited) with the word BATED, (which derives from abated -- "diminished, stopped, held"). When you think about it, one's breath can be held in expectation (thus the cynnical expression "don't hold your breath"), but not baited (unless, perhaps, one puts a mint in one's mouth, in an effort to catch a girl). Now you know -- please bate/abate your erroneous use of "baited."
Thank you and carry on. |
Oh no, it was definitely baited 
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What?
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: October 16 2006
Location: FL, USA
Status: Offline
Points: 17493
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 11:47 |
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny? |
I'm just trying to prove that, unlike UFOs, we have evidence, empirical observable evidence, of the existence of trolls in our Universe. |
Oh...how droll. You must be British. |
I can't be any more British
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 12:12 |
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny?
|
I'm just trying to prove that, unlike UFOs, we have evidence, empirical observable evidence, of the existence of trolls in our Universe. |
Oh...how droll. You must be British.
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I can't be any more British |
 neither can I.
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What?
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: October 16 2006
Location: FL, USA
Status: Offline
Points: 17493
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 13:06 |
Dean wrote:
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
The T wrote:
I dispute everything that has been said on this thread. |
Ok....what's your take on it then, or are you just trying to be...funny?
|
I'm just trying to prove that, unlike UFOs, we have evidence, empirical observable evidence, of the existence of trolls in our Universe. |
Oh...how droll. You must be British.
|
I can't be any more British |
neither can I. |
I'm not sure. I haven't acquired certainty about your expertise in all related to tea or about a real honest allegiance to the Monarchy.
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otto pankrock
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 02 2009
Location: canada
Status: Offline
Points: 330
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 13:38 |
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Phooey!!!
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The Doctor
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: June 23 2005
Location: The Tardis
Status: Offline
Points: 8543
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 13:40 |
otto pankrock wrote:
Phooey!!! |
This is essentially what Dean said, except he used approximately 10 billion words to do it.
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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Snow Dog
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 23 2005
Location: Caerdydd
Status: Offline
Points: 32995
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 13:41 |
The Doctor wrote:
otto pankrock wrote:
Phooey!!! |
This is essentially what Dean said, except he used approximately 10 billion words to do it. |
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 13:44 |
The T wrote:
I'm not sure. I haven't acquired certainty about your expertise in all related to tea or about a real honest allegiance to the Monarchy. |
And I'm not sure if he has garnet-colour carpeted walls and separate cranes for cold and warm water in the wash basin
Edited by Gerinski - April 25 2013 at 13:45
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: October 16 2006
Location: FL, USA
Status: Offline
Points: 17493
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 14:04 |
Gerinski wrote:
The T wrote:
I'm not sure. I haven't acquired certainty about your expertise in all related to tea or about a real honest allegiance to the Monarchy. |
And I'm not sure if he has garnet-colour carpeted walls and separate cranes for cold and warm water in the wash basin
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All this, plus his words on this thread, tells me he is closer to HAL 9000 than to a proper Victorian Gentleman
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 14:17 |
 Then you can be more British. |
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What?
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
Status: Offline
Points: 20468
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Posted: April 25 2013 at 14:50 |
Dean wrote:
dr wu23 wrote:
It seemed to me several of the comments in the thread bordered on being facetious and silly. |
"Bordering on" is not the same. Failure to take a unsubstantiated claims seriously is failure of the evidence.
You yourself are not above mocking and being facetious:
dr wu23 wrote:
Saying it's all just loonies will get us about as far as those in the past who said rocks could not fall from the sky or man would never fly. |
Both those examples were perfectly valid statements when they were made and are perfectly valid under specific circumstances today - the full quotation of the former is 'Rocks cannot fall from the sky because there are no rocks in the sky' and that is perfectly valid if we constrain the definition of "sky" to being only the denser portions of the atmosphere (which is perfectly valid) - then the statement is true because the rocks are in space not in the sky and they fall through the sky and not from it. Observations that rocks did fall from the sky existed long before the statement was made, we now know that early iron and nickle artifacts made before we developed iron ore smelting were made from meteorites and there are many legends and stories from antiquity of "magical" weapons made from falling stars to that support that.
The latter statement is also true under specific conditions and constraints - man will never fly - we can construct machines that can fly and we can be passengers on them, so by the same reasoning we can make pigs and elephants fly, but neither pigs nor elephants can fly. We knew that heavier than air flight was possible long before anyone made the statement that 'man would never fly' - from the simple observation of birds and flying insects to the practical application of kites and balistics going back thousands of years. For man to actually fly our entire physiology would need to change, bone structure and composition, metabolism, heart power and size, muscle efficiency, our volume to mass index would need to alter and we would need to produce wings with a span of at least 8m without increasing our body-mass - the resulting species would not be "man".
dr wu23 wrote:
Yet... credible people; police, military,etc including several astronauts, claim to have seen ufos that did not look like anything they could identify and some of these credible people believe ufos are alien in orign. Other credible people over the years have had not only sightings but close encounters with seemingly unkown beings. So are we then to assume they are all lying or just plain crazy or seeing things...? |
...is, as I have said before, an "argument from authority fallacy". Ironically, your 'rocks could not fall from the sky' is a classic example of one such argument from authority fallacy. The 18th century French chemist who made that comment was Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (aka Antoine Lavoisier) - Lavoisier was a highly credible scientist of impeccable credentials, he disproved the existence of pholgiston and developed the law of the conservation of mass, he discovered oxygen and hydrogen and also predicted the existence of silicon and proved that sulphur was an element and not a compound. He was a renowned expert in his field (but not in astrophysics), of such repute that the French museums removed all meteorites from display (until a freak meteor shower 50 years later deposited over 2000 meteorites on France - then some frantic back-peddling ensued).
dr wu23 wrote:
But I don't see why the 'scientific method' can't be used whether it's an objective phenom or one involving human consciousness. |
We have been studying these as a professional discipline for over 250 years and failed to produce any tangible results because they cannot be subjected to the scientific method, which by definition is Formulation, Hypothesis, Prediction, Testing and Analysis. Every instance of investigation into these "para-" fields is perfectly happy with the first two steps but fails miserably on the remaining three. If you cannot predict an outcome based upon the formulated hypothesis, test the resulting data and analyse that for evidence that the prediction was true then you cannot apply the scientific method - if any one of those steps fails then the hypothesis is false. No branch of paranormal research has ever got past stage two. If it is an objective phenomenon (not a scientific term) then it will be measurable and testable - if it cannot then it is not, but since the opposite of objective phenomena would either be not objective or not a phenomena (or both) that does not automatically mean that it is '...involving human consciousness' ... the disproof of one does not prove the other.
In another example of irony, one of the supporters of this kind of research in the 18th century was Antoine 'rocks don't fall from the sky' Lavoisier, who was a supporter of Franz Mesmer (of Mesmerism fame) and the idea of Animal Magnetism (which is a Age of Enlightenment term encompassing psychokinesis, hypnosis, psychic and spiritual healing and all ports inbetween) ... which is more or less what you are suggesting with:
dr wu23 wrote:
An unknown phenomenon affecting human consciousness or an unknown sentience screwing with our consciousness or perhaps a new sociologica/psychological l phenomenon tied into human consciousness...? |
dr wu23 wrote:
We measure brain effects all the time in neuroscience and other fields and use psychology to determine mental states. |
Except we don't with any degree of accuracy or repeatability. What we do know, and have observed on many occasions, is the brain is an adaptive organ so measurements of brain effects are not conclusive evidence of anything.
We know there are some strange things that happen when we study what psychological effects on the brain can have on physiological effects.
- We know that if we give an ill person a sugar pill and tell them it is a sugar pill it will have no affect on their symptoms.
- If we tell them the sugar pill is a real drug it will have an affect on their symptoms.
- If we give them two sugar pills and tell them it's the real drug there is a bigger improvement still
This is a real effect that we can observe and we've given it a name - the Placebo Effect - but it the patient knows they are taking a placebo it can have a null or even negative effect.
- If we give them a real drug and tell them it is a sugar pill their symptoms will still improve.
- However, if we give them the real drug and tell them it is the real drug then their improvement will be even better.
None of this is proof that a placebo can cure an illness, because it cannot - it can alleviate a symptom and it can stimulate the body's natural immune system to effect a cure, but if that illness is incurable by the immune system the patient will not recover - a sugar pill will not cure cholera or malaria or polio or diphtheria - swap insulin for a sugar pill and you will do harm to a diabetic. Sometimes alleviating the symptoms is all we need - we know there is no cure for the common cold but we spend millions each year on cold remedies just to alleviate the symptoms.
All this is science because we know that the body is a self-repairing biological machine complete with a chemical factory of glands synthesising all manner of substances to regulate the function of that machine, all controlled by a central processor and communications network of high sophistication. We study the placebo effect as a reference point to measure the effectiveness of any external substances we develop to cure real illnesses that the body cannot fix and not as a cure in itself, we need to do this because those substances themselves are also subject to the placebo effect. This is all to do with how belief and expectation can affect us physically - it exists as a phenomenon and we study it - but it is not objective in any sense of the word. Extrapolating that real research into areas that cannot be demonstrated as actually existing is not part of the scientific method - the placebo effect does not show that an unknown phenomenon can affect human consciousness, nor does it predict that such a thing is even possible.
dr wu23 wrote:
If it's 'supernatural' or ' metaphysical' in nature, something you obviously don't believe in being a material reductionist, then I agree that the 'scientific method' might not apply here. But if it's being created by an unknown intelligence then the 'scientific method' would apply if we could figure out some method to study the phenom. |
To study it you have to demonstrate it exists.
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Dean....you do like to run on and on and not really address the issue at hand but your last statement managed to be on topic.
dr wu23 wrote:
If it's 'supernatural' or ' metaphysical' in nature, something you obviously don't believe in being a material reductionist, then I agree that the 'scientific method' might not apply here. But if it's being created by an unknown intelligence then the 'scientific method' would apply if we could figure out some method to study the phenom. |
"To study it you have to demonstrate it exists."
The UFO phenom by definition clearly exists;...the question is what does it represent? Human misperception, etc or something other..? You obviously 'believe' there is nothing here at all...so for you no more discussion is really needed.
cheers......
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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The UFO Phenomenon
