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Tisias ago

You are totally insane. Stop posting. The internet is not a safe place for you. Talk to people in the real world. Get help.

Mageza ago

I looked at your history. Seems like you have a history of insulting people. Don't you have better things to do if you spend so much time in the real world?

Tisias ago

EDIT: Sorry, didn't realize you were OP.

Have you considered what you're saying?

Consider what this would sound like if shared in the clear light of day.

If you are looking for confirmation, you will find it on the internet, but you can get lost too. Consider all the sincere racists who have found a safe haven here.

Mageza ago

"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, and nations, it is the rule." - Nietzsche

I could be wrong, sure. But I actually know I'm not insane. The reason is because the evidence is right there for everyone to see. It's not really my fault that your everyday normie refuses to look :) The internet is a safe haven for free thinkers, whereas real life can be quite hostile to anyone who thinks or believes differently. Yes, it also attracts crazy people and racists, but that comes with the territory. Those people exist in real life too. Ever seen a Trump rally?

Tisias ago

You could be wrong?

Have you considered the ontological commitments and epistemic poverty of the idea you offered in the title line?

Just lobbying for one conceit is a hell of a job, but you've offered a conspiracy theory which conjectures at collusion between two different conspiracy theories. It's like moving from speculating that there might be "real vampires" to speculating the "Jimmy Hoffa is a alive and has unionized werewolves."

Mageza ago

Why have two conspiracies when you could have one? Ockham's razor :) If you have reason to believe in two separate conspiracy theories, for different reasons, obviously we only live in one world (that's my ontological commitment), so if they're both true, they're both true in this single world. If there are two massive, massive secrets, is it that much of a stretch that those secrets would be related in some way? In fact it would be more of an epistemic leap to posit that they both exist, but are not related at all.

I'm only including conspiracies I have reason to believe independently here. I don't include werewolves or vampires because I've never personally seen evidence convincing me they're real. But if, say, I did have evidence for vampires, perhaps I would connect them to Satanists. Obviously both are related to the occult, so there could be some connection.

Tisias ago

Occam's Razor isn't dumping every nutty hypothesis into one theory, but I think you already grasp that.

Ontological commitments include causal mechanisms (how did the aliens get here? how does the world generally work? does this account square with other causal accounts of how stuff happens?), properties of the universe (a world with both anthropoid aliens and angels requires evolution to favor "Star Trek" aliens and angels require a massive metaphysical background of god, demons, heaven, hell, etc ), arrangements of stuff in the universe (e.g., we would need to live in a world where alien life is here TODAY - RIGHT NOW).

Also, we have to multiply probabilities. The odds of a coin coming up heads is 1/2 the odds of a coin coming up heads twice is 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 - that is, the probability gets LOWER as we pack more speculative features into it. Take one conspiracy that has dubious odds of being true. Multiply that by the odds of another dubious theory and the original looks strikingly sane in comparison.

Mageza ago

Is it really that hard to believe that aliens are already here? I make no assumptions about what they are like (each assumption, like their being anthropoid, would diminish the likelihood of the claim). But if you look at the Drake equation, it is highly likely that alien civilizations exist, just due to the sheer number of stars and galaxies. The only mystery is why they haven't contacted us (Fermi paradox). And the simplest explanation of that is they don't contact us because they're already here, and don't want their presence known.

So actually if you want to argue against the hypothesis that aliens are already here, you're going to run into probability issues. If aliens exist - as in all probability they do - why wouldn't they be here already? If they exist, and have had millions/billions of years to develop advanced technology, what is to prevent them from visiting earth? Indeed, how likely is it that they haven't visited earth many times already in the past?

Combining hypotheses can lead to increased explanatory power. The essence of creative thought is making connections where none existed before - and creativity is required to generate to hypotheses. That doesn't make them true, of course, but IF it is true, then it could lead to paradigm shift where the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place that didn't fit before with two separate, unconnected hypotheses.

Tisias ago

It is easy enough to believe that there is alien life out there in the vastness of space. It is difficult to believe that aliens are here, in our solar system, at our planet. It's not just that the physical evidence is lacking, but the sheer amount of space out there. Our most likely form of contact would a signal of some sort, an event we are still waiting for at various listening posts (radio telescopes). To actually travel to our little world, there is a VAST expanse of space that must be traversed. It takes light, more than 4 years to get Earth from the nearest star. At the rate Voyager 1 is traveling, it would take 70,000 years. It's not a Sunday drive. The only way to make such travel plausible is to add a science fiction supposition allowing faster-than-light flight.

As for the Drake equation, it proves nothing. It is a mathematical measure of one's personal guesses of the likelihood of various events. It's a fun exercise, but not a proof. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_drake_equation.png

The Fermi Paradox is not a literal paradox. We do not know what the probability is of an alien civilization being within a radio contact distance of Earth, because the Drake Equation is a Rorshach test. Radio waves (our ears on the sky listen to radio waves) decay in power exponentially, so if we did get a radio transmission from an alien civilization, it would need to be relatively local. We're not in a position to expect to get radio transmissions from any point in our galaxy, let alone the universe.

The lack of radio contact is NOT proof that they are probably hiding from us. This is like saying that failing to find scientific proof of Bigfoot is positive evidence of how good he is at hiding from us.

Let's note that we're not discussing whether aliens have EVER visited Earth (say, half a million years ago), but whether they are here TODAY, and moreover that they are conspiring with Satanic pedos (which is laughably stupid, on face).

For what it's worth, I think your less likely crazy and more likely a troll. In a way, I'd like to join in with you as I used to enjoy listening to Art Bell credulously listen to any bullshit his guests would shovel his way. And yet, as much as it is fun to tell campfire tales, we have a duty to tell the truth and not to mislead the ignorant and the vulnerable. Ideas have consequences.

Mageza ago

I'm not a troll, I genuinely believe there is a strong possibility that aliens are already here. Haven't heard of Art Bell. But I think it was a lot of the UFO videos on that guy's youtube channel that really made me re-evaluate my stance on UFOs. There's too much there that I can't explain scientifically.

I believe we have a duty to report on what the evidence indicates, no more no less. No, there is no proof of aliens or an alien-Satanic pedo connection. But I think if you look at the evidence with an open mind, there is something there. I don't think you should go running down the street pronouncing that the aliens are here. But I believe it is rational to further investigate the connection, that is all. The attitude you're taking towards aliens is rather like the attitude most people take towards Pizzagate: it is on the face of it too ridiculous, I'm not going to investigate further with an open mind because it cannot possibly be true. That's fine, in the absence of hard proof I wouldn't expect you to believe. However, I think there is a role for people who are genuinely curious about pursuing a connection further to see where it leads, and they don't have to be ridiculed as insane or a troll by people who don't really think there's anything there. People like me give UFO research a good name because I'm careful and scientific. We need more people like that doing it and less people who are totally disconnected from reality.

You can choose how seriously you want to take the Drake equation. Like you said, it is fuzzy and we don't know the probabilities explicitly. However, I think at the very least it makes believing in aliens out there pretty reasonable and easy to believe like you said.

Now, we've only had advanced technology for what, a couple hundred years? There could be civilizations out there that have had advanced tech for thousands or millions of years. Why would we assume they communicate using radio signal, our primitive technology? That's like an Ewok expecting Darth Vader to wield a slingshot. Same goes for our science. We've only been developing physics scientifically for a couple hundred years. Already, things that were deemed impossible turned out to be very true. Why would we expect that our knowledge of physics is basically all there is? That's rather like the people at the end of the 19th century who really believed that science had already discovered all there is to know.

Again, I'm not talking about proof here. I'm talking about investigation based on reasonable suspicion. Which is the same attitude I take towards pizzagate in general.