The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and the null hypothesis

Having to disprove a null-hypothesis is indicative of how little evidence one has towards the actual hypothesis.

MarsIsRed

neoholographic
NEWSFALSH!!

SCIENCE REACHES CONCLUSIONS ALL THE TIME BASED ON THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE!

Correct. But in this instance there is insufficient evidence to draw any conclusions.

I'm well aware that there are some interesting cases out there. But I happy to leave it at "insufficient data, therefore I don't know". You go from insufficient data to "must be aliens". You're not following the 'evidence', but taking a blind leap of faith.

What??

You have to be joking!

There have been U.F.O. sightings, trace evidence, radar reports, abduction cases and trace evidence cases over the years. There's mountains of evidence in order to reach a conclusion. Blind Debunkers act like you can't use your brain when looking over these issues.

AGAIN, WERE BUILDING A HYPOTHESIS.

It's just silly to suggest there isn't enough evidence to build a hypothesis. There's more evidence for U.F.O.'s than there is for Parallel universes or Brane universes.

Have you ever seen a parallel universe? Have you ever seen a picture or video of one? Have you ever seen any trace evidence of a parallel universe?

Again, this is just saying, don't use your brain.

reply to post by neoholographic

According to your logic Scientist could never come to conclusions and build hypothesis based on things like black holes, parallel universes, branes, extra dimensions and more.

Not true. Not all hypotheses are falsifiable and a hypothesis does not have to be falsifiable.

"Some UFOs are controlled by extraterrestrials" is a perfectly fine, non-falsifiable hypothesis. No more, no less.

So is "Some UFOs are not controlled by extraterrestrials."

So is "Some rainbows are created by unicorns."

So is "There are parallel universes."

All are hypotheses. None are falsifiable.

Blue Shift
Why do you feel it necessary to reach a "conclusion?" What needs to be decided and settled in such a hurry? If a bomb was going off and I needed to clip either a red wire or a blue wire to stop it, then I would need to reach a conclusion. Otherwise, I can relax and wait for more information to show up. If it does, great. If not, oh well. I can't know everything.

Yes. There is nothing wrong with simply saying "I don't know". Sure, if you want to know, then attempt to gather more evidence. However, if there is a lack of evidence to gather, "I don't know" is perfectly valid.

I've never seen any UFO evidence that specifically points toward an extraterrestrial explanation. Even supposed alien beings talking directly to abductees/contactees. That's just hearsay. And "It couldn't possibly be anything from Earth" is not evidence, its an assumption.

I agree.

Again, this falls under the idea that the phrase "I don't know [period; full stop]" is somehow a dirt word that people don't want to use. Too often, people feel the need to add something after the "I don't know", such as "I don't know an explanation for what that light in the sky was, so that means it is alien"

reply to post by Phage


Again, you have no point.

You're now agreeing with what I said.

Saying some U.F.O.'s are controlled by extraterrestrials is a valid scientific hypothesis.

Just like String theory, parallel universes, Braneworlds, Hawking radiation and more.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


What you said about Edgar Mitchell was a lie.

In this interview he talks about talking to an intelligence officer at the Joints Chiefs of Staff that he can't name.

You said:

By the way, Edgar Mitchell himself has said on many occasions that his belief in ETs has nothing to do with any secret documents he may have seen during his time as an astronaut. He says his belief is based on publicly available documents and reports that we all know about. Edgar Mitchell is basically a guy who believes in alien visitation who was also an astronaut. His former job did not provide him with insider secret documents about aliens.

He clearly talks about people he can't name that has confirmed his conclusion.

Let me see you walk into the Joint Chiefs of Staff and talk to an Intelligence Officer about Aliens.

reply to post by neoholographic

Again, you have no point.

My point is that your hypothesis, "some UFOs are controlled by ET", is not falsifiable.

Saying some U.F.O.'s are controlled by extraterrestrials is a valid scientific hypothesis.

Sure. Now all you need is evidence which can be scientifically validated.

neoholographic
There's mountains of evidence in order to reach a conclusion.

Show me. Don't tell me about it. Don't link to someone else telling me about it. Show me directly. You can't, because it doesn't exist.

You seem to think that people who think like me are somehow against the notion of alien visitation, which couldn't be further from the truth - it would be singularly the most interesting day in human history. There's simply no evidence, beyond hearsay, to back up the claim.

neoholographic
Have you ever seen a parallel universe? Have you ever seen a picture or video of one? Have you ever seen any trace evidence of a parallel universe?

That's why I'm also (in this case deeply) sceptical of these notions. Should data present itself one way or the other, I'm totally open to changing my opinion.

reply to post by Phage


Of course it can just like we can find out as technology advances if parallel universes, hawking radiation, extra dimension or string theory is true.

That doesn't make the theories in the above mention areas not science just like the ET hypothesis is science.

So basically you were obfuscating just to agree with my point that the ET hypothesis is a valid scientific hypothesis???

I think that denying the possibility that some UFO's are controlled by extraterrestrials is quite ignorant. How can anyone think they possess a knowledge so advanced that they can answer such questions by dismissing the possibility? Even someone who doesn't believe in aliens, or in aliens visiting earth, should at the very least acknowledge the possibility. It just seems like common sense to me to be honest. Even the scientific majority agree that there is life on other planets, and most believe there are likely to be civilizations much more advanced than ours, so it stands to reason that if such a civilization exists, they could be visiting earth.

Aliens have not been proven to exist, or no UFO's have been proven to be ET, although there is great circumstantial evidence for this possibility. But it has not been proven that they do not exist, which means that nobody can dismiss the possibility, unless they're biased.

reply to post by neoholographic

Saying some U.F.O.'s are controlled by extraterrestrials is a valid scientific hypothesis.

Just like String theory, parallel universes, Braneworlds, Hawking radiation and more.

There are differences between scientific hypothesis and scientific theory.

"Some ufo's are piloted by extraterrestrials" has yet to undergo any testing and is not falsifiable, therefor leaving it in a pile of mere guesses.

One more thing... can anybody tell me why so many alleged UFO's are saucer shaped? That's always confused me.

MarsIsRed
Show me. Don't tell me about it. Don't link to someone else telling me about it. Show me directly. You can't, because it doesn't exist.

You do realize that YOU have set it up such that no evidence will meet your "criteria" for whatever fantasy "evidence" you require. So...in that sense; no the evidence does not exist.

No evidence will be the evidence you want; you will just HAVE to work with what is available. AND, what is available, once collected, categorized, and databased, will prove ET, without fail.

The question is; do YOU have what it takes to process the available evidence?

neoholographic
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

What you said about Edgar Mitchell was a lie.

First of all, don't call me a liar.

neoholographic
In this interview he talks about talking to an intelligence officer at the Joints Chiefs of Staff that he can't name.

snip

He clearly talks about people he can't name that has confirmed his conclusion.

Let me see you walk into the Joint Chiefs of Staff and talk to an Intelligence Officer about Aliens.

Fine. He was just a person who believed in alien visitation who also happened to be an astronaut...THEN he says he confirmed it with an unnamed source. That still really isn't "proof" to me. It's just hearsay at this point.

Here's what Mitchell said:
(1). He never confirmed what the Roswell Aliens looked like, because the people he talked to didn't tell him. However, there is "lore" about what they looked like, and the people he talked to said it was an alien craft that crashed.

However, it is possible that these people who lived around Roswell and the lower-level military people in that area were told a cover story about an alien crash, because the idea of aliens was more benign one at the time, and that cover story may have seemed more benign to the governmnet PTB than the real story possibly being covered up (a real story that may have nothing to do with aliens).

(2). Mitchell said he went to an intelligence officer who worked for the joint chiefs and asked to confirm a story that the Government knew that the Roswell crash was an alien craft. He says this officer looked into it, and told him he was right (although that in itself is a little vague -- I'd like to know EXACTLY what question was asked), but the intelligence officer said he could not get a hold of the information. My first question is that if the intelligence officer could not get a hold of the information, how did he confirm Mitchell's inquiry?

Perhaps someday we will hear more details about this conversation, and then that may amount to "proof" or something approaching proof, but until then, it is simply "evidence" (and hearsay) and not "proof" .

In fact, the entire ET visitation hypothesis is based only on evidence. Like I said before, even theories that have had "proofs" attributed to them have been found to be incorrect, so I don't really see the scientific method definition of the word "proof" to mean that something is actually a fact. There are very few theories that are considered "fact".

The ET hypothesis has a long way to go before it is considered a fact. Maybe someday we will have the hard, solid evidence of alien visitation. Right now we do not.

reply to post by neoholographic

Of course it can just like we can find out as technology advances if parallel universes, hawking radiation, extra dimension or string theory is true

Falsification is your topic. You are not talking about falsification. None of those are falsifiable. None can be shown to not exist. Some of the math used to show they may exist may be incorrect (and therefore falsifiable) but the non-existence of these things cannot be proven.

So basically you were obfuscating just to agree with my point that the ET hypothesis is a valid scientific hypothesis???

I was obfuscating nothing. I was pointing out that your claim that it is falsifiable is not true.

Unicorns creating rainbows is a valid hypothesis and just as falsifiable as the others. Not falsifiable.

reply to post by mrtoidclover

Unidentified flying objects do not exist in the sense of what people believe to be spacecraft controlled by extraterrestrials which do not exist either in the sense of how the word extraterrestrial is defined as a being not of planet Earth.

They do, I refute your claim that we can 100% identify anything that flies above our heads (even more if at the same time it is capable of swimming too).

The second one is more comp0lex, you say that they aren't also spacecraft, well that one I will give it to you since so far as I know not one report of any credibility can be found about finding one object in interplanetary space but there have been reported observation of UFOs on the Moon, Mars and even some crazy stuff around the sun (note also that these are all locations that humans have been monitoring more attentively) and so the unknowns are more common.

As for extraterrestrial I agree, the best we can say is that any culture capable of constructing some of the necessary devices (to replicate observations and reports) aren't from the general human society. But that they are from Earth is also a bit difficult to accept for me (even harder that they are from another solar system), that would have required something more consistent and noticeable that even the ancients aliens uninformed speculators have came up with...

reply to post by neoholographic


The time for this argument was over half a century ago, before Roswell, etc., when scientists sat around and had nothing more than theories to discuss about ETs--if they had any. And those theories were limited because even those scientists were limited to (perhaps) religious beliefs, the belief that Man was unique, a happy accident in nature, and that there was no evidence out there of other planets around other stars, let alone of life.

In the decades since, we have various types of physical evidence that can stand up in court isn't good enough to make the case for ETs as far as the US government's opinion on the matter is concerned. Yet, isn't it strange that a single instrument in space is sending back data that is convincing enough for EVERYBODY that there are billions of earth-like planets out there, and water too, and that allows us to discuss at length about life on some of them?

What a joke this whole business of denying or arguing for UFOs amounts to these days. Actually, the big joke is that I see countless threads such as this on ATS arguing for the existence of ETs, but they offer tidy, theoretical arguments still devoid of any data that virtually would prove the case. I had originally assumed that such threads were the onslaught of young naive minds not having done a smidgen of research into the history of UFOs but wanting to pretend to be very careful and scientific with their threads. But such threads are like looking at a barograph to decide if it is going to rain when it is pouring outside the window.

It always comes down to the same practical suggestion that I provide to you pure theorists. --I deem you that because you cannot be considered scientific in your approach. It is all a head game, not a shred of solid scientific evidence for your case! (The Kepler caper certainly doesn't do it!) For arguments such as yours to exist, you must totally and absolutely ignore all physical data as a mass and never, never, consider even for a second the remotest possibility that abduction stories such as my own and many others are genuine to the best of our ability to communicate.

Yet, overall, I see your position, and this thread as part of the natural progression as scientifically minded people try to come to terms with the inevitable, to convince themselves that the larger truth of ETs is the likely answer. You must understand, it if was not for what scientists has taught us to believe and what they believe themselves, the ETs would have landed a long time ago. It is Science itself, with the big "S" that is the stumbling block, and the funny joke of it is not the physical sciences that deny ETs, as it is the minds of scientists.

reply to post by Panic2k11


There was no claim that

we can 100% identify anything that flies above our heads

.

sorry -- double post