There Is No Proof Good Enough

Originally posted by Lost_Mind
Until there is a globally agreed upon court of law or scientific consensus as to what is and isnt evidence or proof in this field, something that a majority of persons observing or experiencing these events can agree upon (which I cant see happening), neither really mean anything. At this point in time they are merely buzzwords being tossed around without thought or meaning for the most part. That is why I keep my "evidence" and "proof" very close to the vest and very personal.

Yes but this presents another problem that I have come to know, that science is a popularity contest. Take global warming, for example. Half the scientists think it's caused by man, the other half don't(just a speaking point, lets not spend time arguing about this). But it seems that people on certain sides of different arguements get treated differently.

So, these ideas will stay on the fringe most likely until extraterestrial study becomes mainstream, or at least much more popular in the scientific community.

This, growingly seems more like a paradox to me. Scientists "on the fence" want at the very least, good evidence(if not proof) of extraterestrials before they spend their lives investigating them. Yet, without investigating, this proof will never come.

Originally posted by schuyler

For myself, I don't want to be a skeptic , but I keep getting forced into the skeptical corner whereupon I get treated as per the above. Time after time someone decides to 'fool the community' and launches one of these stories. If people did not regularly do this, I think you would find a lot of skeptics willing to accept stories at face value before doubting them. Alas, we have this hoax climate to deal with. It's too bad.

There is nothing wrong with skepticism, but I agree that it's not defining. Skepticism is just a methodology for filtering out error, lies and nonsense, and doesn't directly point to the truth. Unfortunately, as you point out, the environment is MOSTLY error, lies and nonsense. I think we'd all much rather NOT be dealing with that. The really galling thing is that the errors are overwhelmingly blatant, the lies are baldfaced, and the nonsense is unsubtle. It SHOULD be easy.

Nevertheless, all you need to do is make up an ill-conceived first-person science fiction story without a single verifiable fact, leave off the disclaimer, and post it on ATS to get hordes of people very excited.

The education systems all over have failed miserably, but especially in the U.S.

Originally posted by disownedsky
Nevertheless, all you need to do is make up an ill-conceived first-person science fiction story without a single verifiable fact, leave off the disclaimer, and post it on ATS to get hordes of people very excited.

I don't know if people are exicited or frustrated by these. Personally, I don't generally participate in such threads. Unless, and thats a big UNLESS, there is some type of proof to go along with the original post. With cell phone popularity where it is, it's hard to say you saw something without snapping a photo or video of it, heck even a voice recording on the phone could work. These threads almost always get the big HOAX labels, even though they may seem interesting they usually end up nowhere.