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#1 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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Alien visitation and negative universals
A negative universal is a claim to the effect of "X does not exist." If X were impossible, then X would not be able to exist, however if X is possible then the only way to prove that X does not exist (supposedly) is to look in the domain where X is supposed to be but notice it's absence. That would be feasible for small domains: a room if you're looking for a turtle, but for a domain such as the universe it would be hard to check.
I believe negative universals weaken the claim that aliens have not visited us due to the fact that one could not easily check all of human history to notice the absence, nor all places around Earth. What are your thoughts on this? |
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#2 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Aug 2016
Posts: 3,735
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Cellphone cameras.
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"When someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!" |
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#3 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Scottsdale, AZ, USA, North America, Earth, Sol, Milky Way
Posts: 3,401
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Bored on this Friday afternoon, eh?
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- "Who is the Greater Fool? The fool? Or the one arguing with the Fool?" [Various; Uknown] - "The only way to win is not to play." [Tsig quoting 'War Games'] |
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#4 |
Merchant of Doom
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Somewhere between the central U.S. and Hades
Posts: 12,168
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I believe pink bubble gum should be bubble gum flavored, not some weird kiwi-cherry or something.
I also believe Russell's teapot was chartreuse. |
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#5 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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Turtle/snake. What's next?
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#6 |
Do you want to date my Avatar?
Moderator Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Florida
Posts: 25,000
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Third thread with the same logical mistake.
The claim isn't, "There are no aliens." The claim is, "I see no reason to believe in alien visitation without evidence." If you have no evidence, you have nothing. |
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I have the honor to be Your Obdt. St L. Leader |
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#7 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#8 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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#9 |
Scholar
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Texas
Posts: 122
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/subscribe
: popcorn : |
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#10 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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This thread seemed to have died immediately. With that in mind, what do you have to say about various whistleblowers who've worked for the government and came out and claimed to have witnessed aliens? I know it's not a very strong argument, but I'm just curious.
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#11 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#12 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#13 |
Now. Do it now.
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 22,832
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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#14 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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#15 |
Now. Do it now.
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 22,832
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The first. Be careful.
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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#16 |
Scholar
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Texas
Posts: 122
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#17 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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#18 |
Show me the monkey!
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 19,724
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The aliens may have come to visit the earth every day of the week back when we had dinosaurs. Some of those alien dudes may have grifted and charged admission fees to other aliens when an earth visit was supposed to be free. We don't know if that happened. We don't see obvious evidence that there was alien dinosaur-watching but we can't really know.
The other thing we can't really know is if aliens came here to have secret sex. This would be like when you were a youngster and you took your girlfriend somewhere private to be able to feel her body under her clothes but not have other people knowing that you did it. There were hidden or remote places that you could walk or ride your bikes or even drive to do that sort of thing. Earth may have been a place where aliens fooled around with each other, so to speak. It makes you think and really wonder. A person could think about this so intensely that they stop paying their mortgage or stop buying food for their children. It really makes you stop and think. This forum is for people who stop and think. Like you. |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#19 |
Now. Do it now.
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 22,832
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There's an implied acceptance in this sentence of at least the claim that they are whistleblowers. That is enough to suggest that you aren't approaching their story with sufficient scepticism. I'd need evidence that they are who they claim they are, worked for who they claimed they worked for, and that they had access to whatever they claim access to........before I even got to the stage of calling them a whistleblower, let alone giving any credence to their claims.
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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#20 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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This is from a whistleblowers website and is supposedly a transcript of a briefing to Ronald Reagan informing him of general information about alien visitors:
http://www.serpo.org/release27a.asp |
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#21 |
Thinker
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Posts: 221
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#22 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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Sounds like a badly written comedy sketch.
"M CASEY: Well, it appears everyone is, but as you will see Mr President, this stuff is pretty high up on the food chain. We call it ATS or "Above Top Secret." This stuff has its own classification and markings. We have a special container, special printers and copiers for this stuff. Every word of this material is printed on special paper then placed inside special covers. The caretakers have taken special efforts to protect all of this stuff from being released inadvertently or copied by some unauthorized person." Sooper sekrit. |
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#23 |
Safely Ignored
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 8,898
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#24 |
Thinker
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Posts: 221
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#25 |
Thinker
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Posts: 221
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#26 |
Now. Do it now.
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 22,832
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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#27 |
Now. Do it now.
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: UK
Posts: 22,832
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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#28 |
Just the right amount of cowbell
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Well past Hither, looking for Yon
Posts: 5,804
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I concur with fagin. To first blush, it looks very fictional. Without going into specifics, that whole discussion about the classification (5th & 6th paragraphs) looks like it was made up by someone with very little experience with classified programs.
And the dialog looks . . . amateurish in places. And the science is just wrong. |
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"In times of war, we need warriors. But this isn't a war." - Phil Plaitt |
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#29 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 17,501
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Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my hard drive? ...love and buttercakes... |
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#30 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,652
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As to the logic of the OP, the equivalent argument applies to positive Universal's "X exists everywhere". It is the universality that's relevant not the parity.
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"The cure for everything is salt water - tears, sweat or the sea." Isak Dinesen |
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#31 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 17,501
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Well, no, we don't have to do that because we have a public site of the same name. Said site throws out any amount of crankery. The fact that this supposed report name drops ATS is a big hint. Go to ATS if you value your sanity so little. But I bet you are a denizen there already.
ETA: Bet you read GLP too. |
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Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my hard drive? ...love and buttercakes... |
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#32 |
Safely Ignored
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 8,898
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#33 |
Scholar
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 88
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According to wikipedia:
"Project Serpo is a science fiction fantasy launched as though true onto several UFO-oriented web forums starting in November 2005. Gullible UFO "researchers" such as Bill Ryan, Kerry Cassidy and Linda Moulton Howe were totally bamboozled by this fiction. Author Len Kasten swallowed the story so ..." |
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#34 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: As far away from casebro as possible.
Posts: 5,726
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Oops.
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#35 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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#36 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2017
Posts: 221
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Do you consciously make an effort to believe only when evidence is favorable? I think that people don't really choose what to believe but are convinced of something. I lean towards belief that aliens have visited us because I don't think it's that unlikely. Give a civilization a million more years than ours and perhaps they can figure out a way to get around traveling faster than light. If they can get to Earth in a matter of months, weeks, or days, then there's a good chance they've visited us provided there's a lot of them. Do you really not believe aliens have not visited us because you only believe what you have evidence for or could it be something else? (I know that there's the whole thing about it seeming improbable, but considering what I've written a few sentences ago, it's probably not that improbable)
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#37 |
Guest
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#38 |
Scholar
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Texas
Posts: 122
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The Milky Way galaxy is ~ 100K LYs in diameter. Even if you travelled at 10x SoL it would take 10K years to traverse. Our nearest galaxy, Andromeda, is ~ 2.5M LYs away... do the math.
At best humans will travel to Mars, and I have my doubts that will actually happen. Space is an extremely hostile environment for humans and all vertebrates for that matter. There's no reason, whatsoever, to think it would be different for any species advanced enough to attempt it. Not to mention the psychological implications of spending years, or a lifetime, aboard a relatively small craft. The whole concept is preposterous. Unless, of course, you have a FM pill.... |
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#39 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 7,495
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Heya, Wonder.
I was an admin on the world's biggest UFO forum (alien-ufos/alien hub) for years and years. I started off "agnostic" on the topic when I started looking into ufos, and became increasingly skeptical of the evidence as time went on. There really isn't any great evidence that we've been visited, although the strength of the evidence is kind of in the eye of the beholder, sometimes. The strongest evidence favoring the "something has gone on" side is in the declassified military/air force transcripts and files. Pilots really were reporting some weird stuff, and saying things like "Whatever that is, it's moving in a way that nothing from Earth can!" (I personally think it might have been a small outbreak of true mass hysteria, or something like that.) There are lots of now now confirmed as military aircraft sightings, too, that once looked like "proof" of UFOs. So: my rule of thumb is, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Because of that, I think it's far more likely than not that the still-unexplained stuff has some mundane explanation. |
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts ~ Bertrand Russell |
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#40 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Central California Coast
Posts: 2,600
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If you can't prove it, you can't make definitive claims of it happening.
Thems the rules. |
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Disingenuous Piranha |
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