UFO's: All Those Flying Emotions Crushed Your Game

This is a response to an article posted on August 7, 2008 by Seth Shostak [the Director of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence].

A copy of the original article is located at: Space.com

The text in Blockquotes are from the original article and my response is in regular text.

Reader warning: I'm taking off the kid gloves. If I seem angry here — a state of emotional discombobulation that seldom seems to be my wont — it's because people whom I barely know, or in some cases haven't even heard of, insist on propelling me over the precipice.

So you believe that you are under the control of these people? That they somehow make you angry to the point of 'losing it' maybe?

Having read a transcript of the Larry King show, I suspect what angers you is that you and your Nyesayer little buddy were both ROUTED by overwhelming logic, facts and testimony presented on that program by expert government trained witnesses.

Let's questions another item here: Do you believe that maintaining a 'facade' of 'combobulation' somehow makes a person MORE credible? There is your FIRST sin. Sophistry is a refuge of scientists, is it now? So as long as you can piss off your opponent and discombobulate them, YOUR version of reality wins over them? This is SCIENCE?!? (tsk, tsk. ...and you call yourself a scientist...)

Really, let me understand why you call yourself a scientist in the first place. Real scientists do not dismiss anything automatically. Nor do they insist that because they have not seen DIRECT visual first person evidence of something and/or touched something firsthand, that therefore it must NOT exist. Have you EVER seen an atom? It must not exist then, eh? Have you ever been to Antarctica? How do you know it exists then? Why would you believe others to tell you something and have you believe it unequivocally?

FACE FACTS: you are irredeemably PREJUDICED AGAINST the UFO community.

I will tell you, watching your irresponsible behavior in the media over the years (as evidenced by the outburst in your paragraph above) the only CREDIBLE conclusion I can come to is that you are a government plant, an agent placed to maintain a certain political position favorable to the government.

Ostensibly, the issue is extraterrestrial intelligence. Not whether it exists, but whether the aliens have come to Earth. This idea, often monikered as "the UFO hypothesis," is a belief that's neither fringe nor uncommon. A 2002 Roper poll found that nearly half of all Americans believe that alien craft have visited Earth, and an even larger percentage feel in their heart of hearts that the government is playing dumb about these cosmic callers.

Gee, the government NEVER lies to us.

But that's not what's causing the bile to marinate my gallbladder. Personally (and as regular readers know), I'm not convinced by the evidence presented so far that aliens are sharing our airspace. But the evidence for the UFO hypothesis isn't the point here. Rather, it's the lack of civilized discourse.

Again, why expect civilized discourse from people you have dismissed for decades as stupid lunatics? Your poisoning of the well is coming back to haunt you, is all.

For years, anytime I would write an article on these digital pages about the UFO question, I could be sure of quickly accumulating a dozen or so e-mails from offended readers. What struck me was that these respondents were less interested in trying to provide good evidence for landed aliens than they were in making brutal, ad hominem attacks on me.

If you felt you were dismissed before you even spoke a word, would you also not feel slighted and angry?

Do not look for hard evidence. If aliens do exist and are in contact with us, we are granted hard evidence at THEIR whim, not the other way around. I thought a logical guy like you, an esteemed scientist, one pretending to be interested in the extraterrestrial hypothesis, would have thought through these issues by now.

Somehow, the fact that I didn't share their convictions must mean that I'm an "evil, terrible person." This sort of automatic excoriation seemed to come with the territory. Talking about UFOs was like moonlighting as a metal duck in a shooting gallery.

If you are on the government dole, espousing their dismissive position vis a vis the topic of UFOs, then well, YES, you are terrible.

But some recent appearances on CNN's "Larry King Live" made clear to me that sheet-steel quackers are an abundant breed. Anyone who publicly doubts that alien spacecraft are sailing our skies risks being a target. On the last of these programs, I watched as folks who were there to describe their evidence for extraterrestrial visitation laid into the guests who were skeptical: Bill Nye (the Science Guy) and me. Several of the UFO proponents made puerile jokes about Nye's TV career, much of which has been devoted to teaching science to kids (it's hard to think of a more worthwhile endeavor, incidentally). Nye's responses were impressively dignified, although that didn't seem to faze those who found endless amusement in berating him.

So, because his responses were 'dignified' sounding, he must be correct? Really, you make us all out to be imbeciles. You clowns were against the wall throughout much of the interview because you insisted that the sworn testimony of what happened on that military base with the missiles all coming off line within seconds of the sighting was not worthy of your vaunted attention. You posit yourself to be SUPERIOR somehow to us simpletons who would believe in such things as little green men.

Yet you not only offered zero evidence to contradict the testimony, but you also flailed with silly and irrelevant asides, sophomoric feints deigned to throw off the discussion. Which made you seem weak and arrogant at the same time. I thought you scientists were supposed to be impartial and in command of logic and facts. Yet you seemed at a loss to explain the testimony, yet ALSO ironically stubbornly refusing to cede that these guys saw something which had no possible rational explanation.

How objective are you really when you refuse to accept that some things are unknown and that others are expressing to you IN TRUST all that they honestly have witnessed?

How are people supposed to react when they are told they are stupid and deluded anyway? But you know better, because in your degenerate little calculus, it is just not possible for aliens to be here on Earth now-- no matter what the contradicting circumstantial evidence arrayed in favor of the hypothesis nor who it is that is reporting it to you.

I, too, was attacked, generally along the lines that, since I don't investigate UFO reports, I'm not qualified to opine on whether I find them convincing or not. Well, that's bunk. And it's certainly not how science works. I don't need to be an astronomer specializing in black hole research, nor do it myself, to gauge whether someone's claim that they've found one of these collapsed objects in the center of some galaxy or other is credible.

If you do not actively seek out lines of evidence on a subject, then no, you really cannot make informed comments on that subject. If I knew nothing about black holes, it would be easy for me to dismiss their existence. Black holes are not politically charged, unlike aliens, though.

I will repeat, you and your naysayer colleagues, continue to ignore that any human encounters with anyone more intelligent than us places us at the short end of the stick in terms of hard evidence. We are beholden to THEIR interests. This factor that incorporates intelligence into the equation would seem to invalidate the contributions of typical scientist crutches such as Occam's Razor. OR is rendered irrelevant and useless when faced with dealing with any intelligent agent as an opponent, even if they are not necessarily more intelligent. One example I like to use. Forced to make a decision based on OR, a person seeing a rock in a yard would HAVE to assume that rock is a rock (the simplest explanation), not that it is a speaker or key holder in the shape of a rock. Intelligence is the difference-- an intelligent agent placed the fake rock there. Well, if you refuse to believe in the possibility of intelligent agents, then where is your argument? It is rendered irrelevant. You are proven WRONG.

I can do that based on the methodology, the reported data, and (to be brutally frank) the reputation of the investigator and their professional affiliation.

For making such a claim, either you are a deluded dupe or else an informed government agent. It is not exactly groundbreaking news that governments commonly have an interest in disseminating false data to the people, in hiring shills to spread misinformation, or any of a number of other gambits. With the case of something that may potentially point to intelligence more advanced than HUMANS, you can imagine how much more effort government leaders would put into falling all over themselves to try to keep the reality they know about aliens a secret, if only from a strategic military standpoint.

So, only government supported PhDs are qualified to speak, huh? You will do well in the New World Order, the one where disinformation will be rampant. Such a scientist you are. You should be ashamed. That, or blame the university that trained you so wrongly.

The burden of proof in science is on the person making the claim. And if the only way the investigator can convince others is by insisting that their audience shift careers and start doing their work, then something's gravely amiss. Carl Sagan was asked his opinion about many matters in which he had no research background. His thoughts on same were valuable and worth hearing.

Sagan was an ass and a tool of the elites. He is considered valuable why? Because he had those initials--- p. h. d.-- after his name? Because he looked good on teevee?

Again, classical science becomes useless when dealing potentially with intelligences more advanced than humanity. What is your point exactly? That they should deliberately be leaving us bread crumbs? Who is to say they do NOT-- deliberately OR accidentally? Crashed alien ship reports have routinely implicated government as the confiscator of the evidence, often within hours of the initial event. It is easy for you to dismiss eyewitness accounts, but WHY? Do you feel you are so superior that you do not need to communicate with other people who do not have PhD behind their name? why would you feel that way? Are mere police officers too stupid for your consideration? How about four star generals? U.S presidents? Apollo astronauts? Are they also imbeciles to you?

You make me ashamed to call myself an amateur scientist, with tools like you infesting the airwaves and the discourse.

Needless to say, there were a number of vituperative e-mails awaiting my delectation after the "King" shows (and, to be fair, some nice ones, too). One of the loveliest, from the executive director of an advocacy group that hopes to wrest loose UFO secrets supposedly held by the government, included these well-wishes:

"While we don't expect you to go away anytime soon, there is one consolation. Everything you have said and written on the subject of UFO/ET phenomena is archived - audio, video, email, paper. You can be assured that when this issue is finally resolved, post Disclosure, every time you open that ill informed mouth of yours, that archive will be brought to bear and you will be eviscerated. You deserve nothing less."

I agree with this writer. For decades, you paid government agents have been shilling a hoary old story that has had so many holes punched in it that the tattered remains are no longer enough to have protected you from the attacks you sustained on the Larry King Show that night. So now you finally cry FOUL?!? When you KNOW you were outed? Where is my tiny violin?

Although I disagreed with this gentleman's conviction that a massive cover-up has kept alien visitation from our clear notice, I told him that I would not want him "to be eviscerated, now or in the future." His rejoinder was massively unfriendly and threatening.

Again, you 'acting' civil means you have one up on him, huh? What is with all this ACTING, and PRETENSE? Put your gloves on, because the age when you government agents could continue to pull wool unquestioningly are SO OVER.

So what's wrong here? Why is it that so many members of the UFO community feel that they need to be bullies? Yes, I'll freely admit that many scientists are dismissive of the UFO hypothesis — often to the point of ridicule. I can understand the frustration occasioned by that. "I don't get no respect" can be a legitimate plaint, and I'm sure that some UFO proponents feel that pain.

Don't pretend this is high-minded. It has long been a KNOWN FACT that the government has encouraged the media to portray the UFO question as ripe for ridicule. You, my little tool, play along, either knowingly or not, but you play along with the script. Since I consider you a smart person, I also suspect you KNOW the game. Or do you disbelieve the reports that the government encourages the ridicule of the subject in the first place?

Nonetheless, if after 60 years of claims, the only way that those who believe we're hosting extraterrestrials can make their point is by wielding the blunt weapon of personal attack, then the whole issue has gone off the rails.

Meaning what? That you are no longer in charge of it? God help us all, huh?

I'm willing to listen, and — believe it or not — you could convince me with decent evidence. After all, I happen to think that extraterrestrial intelligence is a frequent occurrence in a universe of ten thousand million million million stars.

But when you resort to threats, vitriol and scorn, I think you've lost more than the argument. You've lost your cred.

You lost your cred with MILLIONS of people that night on Larry King. I witnessed what you and Nye tried to pull over on King and on the people.

You guys were told point blank by multiple trained EXPERT witnesses (people we Americans trust our nation's security with, people who themselves WANTED to deny the UFO explanation) that what happened on that base that night was IMPOSSIBLE based on classical cynic science. That the only possible explanation was that something intelligent and directed had buzzed that base that night.

You claim there is no evidence. Yet you weave and dodge and dismiss photo evidence all the time, you clowns. Do you dismiss photo evidence when it shows the planet Saturn in a photo? No, huh? Because you have no problem believing in the EXISTENCE of Saturn. So you then declare that the photos must be official NASA photos before you will believe them. Yet when you clowns are presented with ample photo evidence indicating evidence of life on Mars, for instance as in the tree or coral like structures visible in hundreds of photographs of the Southern hemisphere of Mars, you then move the goalposts forward and even NASA photos are no longer good enough for you.

So you are PREJUDICED AGAINST the possibility of aliens and UFOs and extraterrestrial life in general, despite your protestations. It could not possibly exist, so it does NOT. Certainly not in your version of the universe.

The JIG IS UP. Be prepared to increasingly face the wrath of people who comprehend this 'game' (and it IS a game) and who have finally followed enough smoking guns to develop a credible aggregation of circumstantial, photographic, and testimonial 'evidence'.

Really. Go slink away into the shadows and finally admit you are a whore for the government disinfo campaign rather than the impartial, objective scientist you portray on teevee.

Salutations,

Silly Shostak

[A long time reader asked for this to be reposted after it was “Suspended” by Blogger.com (Google) for a ToS violation. --Staff]