747400, on 22 October 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:
I'm merely trying to apply the same standards of criticalness to Rational explanations as are rigidly applied to wild speculations. There are a lot of questions regarding this explanation that leave a lot of questions unanswered, and I'm afraid that the idea of secret aircraft flying about that no one has ever heard anything of since, or that pilots may have gone scooting about all over the United States on unauthorised excursions in extremely expnesive prototype aircraft, leaving no record of their doing so, is does not seem to supply a satisfactory explanation to me. And where did those other eight aircraft come from?
Can a question leave a question unanswered? Anyway, you know what I mean.
I don't see anything wrong with applying the same standards of scrutiny to all speculations regarding this phenomena at all. In fact, I encourage it completely. And you are just as entitled to an opinion about any given idea as anyone else.
I believe that I've clearly qualified my mention of similarities between flying wing designs of the day and the good Mr. Arnold's sighting as just an interesting observation. To extend this into a realm of hypothesis would require a bit more detail I think, but that doesn't dissuade me from considering the idea from a purely speculative standpoint. It seems to me that such ideas can be the very spark needed in order to lead to more substantial answers, even if the initial thought wasn't necessarily the correct one.
I'm just a bit surprised by how opposed you seem to be when speculations involving things closer to earth are even mentioned, like plasma and aircraft for example. It doesn't seem to me that you are applying this standard equally across the board, at least not from a visible sense. You may have similar reservations about ET conclusions, but just don't voice them as often?
747400, on 22 October 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:
Anyway, what are these wild speculations to which you infer?
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "wild speculations" so much as your affinity for the value of speculative thought. You've certainly made many statements over time which indicate that you value speculations quite strongly. As an example, here are a few which I tracked down by an advanced search where "speculate" is the word and you are the poster...
747400, on 02 July 2011 - 08:41 AM, said:
We're going to have to be willing to explore sci fi and fantasy ideas in order to make any sense of any of these subjects, don't you see? You're never going to find out anything about extraterrestrial life, or about any mysteries, if we just insist on restricting ourselves to "what we know to be possible". Really, we know very, very little, and we're never going to expand what we do know if we just stick to that attitude. In short, we're going to have to be willing to consider "fantasies" - we're going to have to be willing to speculate - if we're going to make any progress in investigating any phenomenomena. We're just restricting ourselves so much that we might not be able to see something that's literally under our nose if we just insist on only considering "what we know to be true".
747400, on 22 August 2012 - 06:57 AM, said:
people never seem to understand that when talking with advanced technology, you're going to have to (gasps in horror) speculate about things that the Hard Nosed might dismiss as the mere stuff of fantasy, do they? If we're talking about technology far in advance of ours, then obviously we're going to have to consider things that we might think are just the stuff of Fantasy. We would never make any progress at all if we just stuck in the mud of insisting that only what we know to be possible is possible.
747400, on 20 September 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein.. all of whom were willing to look beyond what we knew already, and what the accepted paradigm was, and make a leap that everyone else dismissed as wild speculation, based on what their researches had led them to. I don't know why you seem to be hung up on this idea that i've ever tried to insist that anything is fact, beyond the fact that sticking to what we know and not being willing to speculate will never make any progress.
747400, on 22 September 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:
yes, it is psychye's whole point, and I'm completely mystified why he and others seem angered and/or annoyed by it, because, as I keep trying to say but people either don't, or deliberately choose not to, understand, we're never going to make any progress if we Stick to What we Know. That, surely, has been proved time and time again throughout history. Of course it's an "imaginary solution", (and i can hear your nose curling in a sneer as you type it (how can you hear a nose curling? it's a talent I have)), but heavens, that's what we need, rather than just repetitively saying over and over again "well, it can't be proved", or "there's no evidence", and folding one's arms huffily. heavens above, i'm not trying to insist that it's a theory that everyone should accept, I wouldn't even call it an Hypothesis, it's just an idea which I think is interesting. Some people seem to have a problem with that, but, as I said before, i can only feel sorry for them. Please try to understand this; I'm not trying to insist that everyone should accept these speculations as a new scientific paradigm, but on the other hand i do get Shirty (© psyche) when people insist dogmatically that we must not Speculate and we must Stick to What we Know. That seems, if I may say, a little arrogant.
Some of these seem to be pretty emphatic defenses of speculative thought in general. Wouldn't you agree?
In my opinion ET isn't the only possible
unknown we should consider when examining these cases. We should also consider
unknown knowns, meaning that if the observed phenomena closely resembles something that we can recognize (like aircraft for example) we shouldn't toss this possibility out the window just because we can't find the specific airplane(s) and pilot(s) who may have been responsible.
As a case in point, just because we have nothing on paper that says those 9 YB-35 aircraft in the photograph had been flown, it doesn't necessarily mean that they hadn't been. Don't forget that we are talking about the very same government, military, and intelligence agencies which UFOlogy is more than willing to point out as
secretive when trying to sell us on the idea that they are hiding some kind of ET visitation reality. How much easier would it be to hide documentation related to 9 YB-35 (or some other kind of flying wing) taking a test flight? I'd say that it would be far easier to hide something like that than hiding a hypothetical alien visitation reality. There is also good reason to entertain the possibility that just such an exercise could have easily been performed as a sort of psychological experiment to determine just how the general public might react to something like that.
Does that truly seem extravagantly far fetched to you? Moreso than extraterrestrial visitors?
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