On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 9:27:59 PM UTC-6, [email protected] wrote: > > > > On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 1:29:38 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >> >> On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 8:18:12 PM UTC-6, John Clark wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Crackpot conspiracy can never EVER be put to bed, they were not created >>> by logic so logic can not destroy them. >>> >>> John K Clark >>> >> >> Conspiracy ideas have a strange life of their own. People to this day >> still entertain ideas about grassy knolls and inside jobs with the JFK >> assassination. 9/11 conspiracy ideas are not as present these days, but >> still alive and well. These things only diminish over time if they cease to >> be relevant to most people. It is related to the reason religions have a >> great longevity. >> > > *If you look deeper, you will see some of what underlies the 911 > conspiracy. CNN was videotaping when the second impact occurred, on Tower 1 > IIRC. The video clearly shows a flash of white light at the moment of > impact. Some people claim it's evidence of an incendiary device onboard, > and thus a conspiracy. How would you explain it? I can, without a > conspiracy. My point here is not to glibly dismiss conspirators as > crackpots. There are often rational thoughts and analysis underlying most > conspiracies. AG * > > The argument over Sagan is interesting. I was at a meeting where he >> attended, though I had no close contact with him. I don't think he gave >> much quarter to the idea of UFOs and space aliens. He even said they >> appeared to be an aspect of inner space or the mind rather than outer >> space. >> > > *I've sometimes entertained the idea that Sagan strongly disbelieved in > alien visitations primarily because he was never personally contacted. > Surely if they were in contact with humans, wouldn't he be the first to be > contacted? AG * > >> >> LC >> >
Sagan was not terrible given to these ideas. Sagan continued to make the statement that extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence. I am not sure this was just personal. I too have never had a UFO type of experience. I would not consider that as the strongest of negative evidence or evidence of absence. It is more anecdotal, just as most claims for UFOs are anecdotal. Sagan’s statement though is motivated I think by the seemingly extreme claim that some ETI spotted Earth from some considerable distance and managed to actually reach Earth. This is a very extreme set of circumstances; far more extreme than scenarios involving psychological inferences. The prospect of ETIs visiting Earth are not the same as most scientific hypotheses involving repeatable experiments. The only way it might be is if there are many thousands of ET bearing planets in this galaxy, and so far this seems to be not the case. There is little evidence of large scale ET based engineering out there and we have Fermi’s famous so called paradox. Outside of anecdotal and obscure accounts there is no evidence of ET visitations to Earth. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
