What's your feeling on Conspiracy Theories?
(*no judging, no name-calling *)
Like....
Area 51 houses alien technology.
The government has a weather control machine.
Lizard people walk among us/sit in power.
The Illuminati exists.
Not saying I subscribe to any of those, just giving examples.
Without going into super detail, why do you believe in your theory? Or conversely, why don't you (again, no super huge detail needed).
I'll go first:
Talking the other day with someone about the super fast advancement of computer technology. It has always felt (to me) that there had to be some kind of "outside" influence or knowledge that enabled humanity to go from tube tech to chip tech in such a short amount of time.
ENIAC was a 50 ton tube computer finished in 1946...the first computer.....then to go to the first computer chip in 1959....whilst in between that time the Roswell crash happened....just seems like a pretty big leap, as I said. And in top of that, the pace at which technology has moved since then feels...astounding.
Perhaps it isn't, though. Something worth investigating would be the advancement in different techs (in years) in a society after the discovery of some primary kind of tech. Like...computers and chips. Or cell phones after the first phone (nearly 130 years!). As I said....woulod be curious to see if our tech age/advancements is in line with other ages advancements/pace.
As Zognob said, it's a word that encompasses so many things that general discussions on the topic have little meaning.
But regarding your question about the development of early computers, the gap between big tubes (these glass-contained transistors) and micro-chip (solid state transistors) as we see today was filled by semiconductors. The theoretical groundwork predates computer by a lot. Some people actually thought about doing solid state transistors way before the first ones were produces (and way before roswell). I don't know much about the topic myself, but this is something that is easy to research. There are dozens of books that explain the advancement of computer technology, and on each step of the way you have publicly available patents and scientific articles that show how the progress was made. It's not like one day a guy from the military showed up with a super advanced stuff no-one understood anything about.
Well sure, but do you have any idea how prejudiced society is against lizardfolk? Just cause they ain't human doesn't mean they don't have a valid opinion about tax reform. Kindly check your privilege
The Illuminati exists.
Well who else would have made Oswald's magic bullet?
One thing that's interesting is to read the history of MK Ultra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra It's usually an article of faith that "conspiracies wouldn't work because someone would blab". Yet despite the scope of the experimentation, that one stayed hidden for over 20 years. Let's all be grateful it didn't work.....right?
I also think that, if anything, the information-saturated society we live in would make it easier to keep a hypothetical conspiracy hidden. If I linked you to a Youtube video or blog presenting ironclad evidence of UFO's or covert superweapon testing, or vampires living among us.....the actual evidence wouldn't actually matter, the vast majority would assume it was a fake, a lone kook rambling on--or maybe viral marketing for a new movie. Heck, put me in charge of covering up UFO abductions, and I'd recruit a dozen or so easily mockable "I'm not saying it was aliens but it was aliens" guys to muddy the waters.
So probably nothing to them--but it's always worth remembering that the only conspiracies you hear about, by definition, are the failures.
Elemental wrote: I also think that, if anything, the information-saturated society we live in would make it easier to keep a hypothetical conspiracy hidden. If I linked you to a Youtube video or blog presenting ironclad evidence of UFO's or covert superweapon testing, or vampires living among us.....the actual evidence wouldn't actually matter, the vast majority would assume it was a fake, a lone kook rambling on--or maybe viral marketing for a new movie. Heck, put me in charge of covering up UFO abductions, and I'd recruit a dozen or so easily mockable "I'm not saying it was aliens but it was aliens" guys to muddy the waters.
But at the same time, things like "flat earth theory" are gaining momentum. Some people really want to believe they're being lied to.
And with information saturation, it's very easy to only read things that reassure your views. You just watched a video about a specific conspiration theory on youtube? Guess what, youtube is recommanding 10 similar videos (and none that say otherwise), making it easy to convince yourself this is a sensible point of view that many share.
Elemental wrote: If I linked you to a Youtube video or blog presenting ironclad evidence of UFO's or covert superweapon testing, or vampires living among us.....the actual evidence wouldn't actually matter, the vast majority would assume it was a fake, a lone kook rambling on--or maybe viral marketing for a new movie.
Unless you share it on Facebook, and make it nice and vague on any actual verifiable details, at which point people will be passing it on before they've even finished reading the title.
"OMG, Facebook is taking down pictures of the flag covered in army badges because the lizard people are actually Libertarian Muslim Lesbians who faked the moon landing, put LSD in McDonalds Fries and want to stop children from saying 'Happy Birthday!' in school! I have to warn my friends and family!"
The majority are simply products of a paranoid mind, and occasionally Snake Oil Salesmen.
Those ones are easy to debunk, as they have significant logical holes to take them apart with.
Consider the 9/11 'truthers'.
They really solely on repetition of interpretation of shonky footage, and an assertion 'steel doesn't melt'.
But one need barely scratch the surface to see they're full of it. The Steel doesn't have to melt, just lose some of it's structural integrity. The weight of the floors (pretty much suspended from a central column) then does the rest. And as they start to collapse, gravity and momentum take over, causing further floors to follow suit. That creates a pressure wave preceding the collapse, blowing out windows (and further damaging structural integrity).
Now, was there some kind of prior warning the attack was coming? Who knows. There's actual genuine evidence that's what happened at Pearl Harbour - and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen to break the USA's then isolationist stance. He basically saw what was happening in Europe, and knew the US had to pick a side sooner or later.
Then there's proper nonsense like Chemtrails, and the frankly dangerous peddling of Anti-Vaccination mis-information. That then leads on to cretins like David Wolfe and Gwyneth Paltrow, who actively seek to turn people away from proven medicine to their (expensive) flim-flammery.
Zognob Gorgoff wrote: Conspiracy theory’s is to broad a topic to blanket anyone as a believer or nonbeliever imo.
Not sure what you mean by believer or nonbeliever...? Not sure how blanketing would be happening?
I mean...like...believing in alien life in the universe in some form is not a conspiracy theory...for example.the
Not sure how you do not understanding my stance - you used the words conspiracy and believe in your first post. So I’m not going to say I believe or disbelieve in conspiracy theory - it’s just a non term. Lizard people, governments testing chemicals, faked moon landing, flat earth, false flag attacks, fake news, geo engineering. Can we really compare these kinds of things/talk about them under one header. I think not.
Conspiracy Theories are where people turn when they can no longer contend with the trevails of modern experience. Real life is too daunting, so they turn to Conspiracy Theories and other mumbo-jumbo in a deluded effort to find stability in a chaotic system.
That being said, I think it is really fun to read and learn about them. It is like ghosts and crypto-creatures. Sure, they do not exist but it is a lot more fun to believe they can!
The funny thing about conspiracy theories is that they seem to have little in common, and yet those who subscribe to one often buy the whole package. I think they appeal to a certain kind of person.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Then there's proper nonsense like Chemtrails, and the frankly dangerous peddling of Anti-Vaccination mis-information. That then leads on to cretins like David Wolfe and Gwyneth Paltrow, who actively seek to turn people away from proven medicine to their (expensive) flim-flammery.
I can actually understand (NOT sympathise with) the medical ones. Reading about some of the stuff that was considered legitimate and unquestionable medicine in the past is pretty hair-raising. While I think it's rubbish, I can understand why people prefer blaming vaccines for making your kids autistic to the older view that it was the fault of mothers for being emotionally distant (heck, I've read a book written by a doctor in 2012 that's still blaming the parents).
Now, was there some kind of prior warning the attack was coming? Who knows. There's actual genuine evidence that's what happened at Pearl Harbour - and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen to break the USA's then isolationist stance. He basically saw what was happening in Europe, and knew the US had to pick a side sooner or later.
Well this actually is a myth/conspiracy most historians don't really give much credibility. The US knew that war with Japan was likely coming, but did not know about the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor. What 'evidence' there is is circumstancial at best.
You know what the worst part about this myth is? The Europe angle Pearl Harbor did nothing for the isolationist stance (as in so far it existed) towards Europe because Roosevelt never declared war on Germany. Hitler declared war on the US. So the European angle behind letting Pearl Harbor 'happen' is one of the most basic mistakes when looking at historical facts.
Most conspiracy theories are utter horse/bull-manure but just on the vast number of them out there a handful at least must be true, the only problem would be figuring out which ones. The Pearl Harbour conspiracy theory is usually pretty easy to debunk, just the premise alone that the US Navy would deliberately allow a hostile power to attack and sink its most powerful symbols of naval power (Remember this is pre- Coral Sea, Midway, etc, Taranto is largely unknown and Battleships are still seen as the benchmark of Naval power) just to green-light a declaration of war is ridiculous when you consider that the Japanese attack alone would be in effect a declaration of war, even if the US was alerted, prepared and managed to ambush the attacking force.
I've wasted quite a bit of time browsing conspiracy theory sites, usually I find it quite fun even if what I'm reading is obviously nonsense. I think one of the better Pearl Harbour conspiracy theories I can recall reading was by someone claiming that there was no way with 1941 technology the Japanese fleet could have sailed undetected close enough to launch the attack, the conclusion the author made was that the Japanese must therefore have launched the attack from a secret moon base.
I've fairly recently got into watching Ancient Aliens which has made it over here to the UK, again pretty entertaining if you take it with a massive dose of salt. But a part of me finds it kind of depressing how much genuine human achievement is dismissed by the show as only explainable by extra-terrestrial influences (Yes, I know that guy became a meme for quite a while, I didn't realise though until I started watching the show quite how close to reality that was!)
Most conspiracy theories and theorists ultimately boil down to a lack of sufficient knowledge to understand what they're actually looking at and an unwillingness to accept alternative, more rational explanations. A good example IMO is the one MDG gave earlier regarding the World Trade Centre and the melting point of steel beams.
simonr1978 wrote: I've wasted quite a bit of time browsing conspiracy theory sites, usually I find it quite fun even if what I'm reading is obviously nonsense. I think one of the better Pearl Harbour conspiracy theories I can recall reading was by someone claiming that there was no way with 1941 technology the Japanese fleet could have sailed undetected close enough to launch the attack, the conclusion the author made was that the Japanese must therefore have launched the attack from a secret moon base.
Conspiracy theories are like alcoholic drinks. Most of us are fine with some exposure, but some of us, for some reason, can't get enough and ruin our relationships over it.
I should point out that I consider myself a Fortean.
That is, I'm a willing disbeliever. If you claim Ghosts, I'll examine the evidence to rule it out. But I am prepared to be in a position where 'well, you know, that is starting to look like the only explanation'.
I've a particular interest in Cryptids. Whilst many are just bogeymen, you'd be surprised at the species that were once considered Cryptid - such as the Mountain Gorilla (no, really!)
And as science continues to discover entirely new species, I think the Fortean mind is the right way forward in that field. Whilst one would imagine some would be kind of easily spotted (the alleged dinosaur in the Amazon which blocks the river with its bulk, the name of which currently escapes me), others, such as the Adjule are far more within the realms of possibility.
simonr1978 wrote: I've wasted quite a bit of time browsing conspiracy theory sites, usually I find it quite fun even if what I'm reading is obviously nonsense. I think one of the better Pearl Harbour conspiracy theories I can recall reading was by someone claiming that there was no way with 1941 technology the Japanese fleet could have sailed undetected close enough to launch the attack, the conclusion the author made was that the Japanese must therefore have launched the attack from a secret moon base.
What an idiot. Everyone knows they and the Nazis came from the Hollow Earth.
Not all conspiracy theories are the same. Some (basically everything including supernatural or unscientific elements) are obvious bogus, but many others fall well withing the realm of possibility. "Lizard people" and "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" fall in the first category, but "Boris Nemtsov was murdered on orders of Putin" would be in the second.
feeder wrote: Conspiracy theories are like alcoholic drinks. Most of us are fine with some exposure, but some of us, for some reason, can't get enough and ruin our relationships over it.
Its always fun and interesting right up until someone takes it way too seriously and ruins it for everyone.
its also always fun and awkward to watch drunk people get silly. or horrific if they take it too far and other people get hurt.
What an idiot. Everyone knows they and the Nazis came from the Hollow Earth.
Led by Hitler riding a dinosaur, of course.
Not all conspiracy theories are the same. Some (basically everything including supernatural or unscientific elements) are obvious bogus, but many others fall well withing the realm of possibility. "Lizard people" and "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" fall in the first category, but "Boris Nemtsov was murdered on orders of Putin" would be in the second.
Agreed. There are historical examples too, the Gleiwitz Incident probably counts. Going further back I'd guess the sinking of the Mary Rose could count too as it's been suggested that she was really sunk by French cannon fire and the real cause was covered up since it was too politically embarrassing to have Henry the VIII's flagship sunk by enemy gunfire. Once you stray into David Icke or Flat Earther territory though... It's hard to tell in some cases whether some of those are genuine beliefs or just outright trolling, in a lot of cases I almost hope for the latter.
I worked with a guy who got heavily into the whole Conspiracy theory/Illuminati/New World Order stuff and as a result of his "research" he went first vegetarian, then vegan (Nothing wrong with that, if that's how you want to live), by the last time I saw him just before he went back to Bulgaria he'd become convinced that all the nutrition he needed was water and sunlight. This was apparently because the idea you needed food was just what they wanted you to think... Don't know what happened to him since, but I can't imagine that it ended well sadly.
The real danger is in the conspiracy theories that can't be separated from reality by anyone less than an expert. Take for example, Docherty and Macgregor's 'Hidden History':-
Lovingly crafted with a multitude of persuasive looking footnotes and a good grasp of context; this appears to be a perfect primer to someone looking to prove that evil armaments barons, upper class monsters, and bankers planned and caused the First World War. It points out lots of wonderful facts and figures, and is really quite convincing.
That is, unless you actually happen to be an academic specialising in the subject and can pluck every single reference in it off your bookshelf. In which case, you're aware of how limited and clueless so many of the 'sources' from the time actually were, the mound of archival evidence which disagrees with it, and the bits which have been shaped and twisted out of context. Then it appears for the Frankenstein of a conspiracy theory it actually is.
But to your average punter, angling for seemingly reliable sources to confirm your views about rich Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/whatever running the world? It's an absolute gem.
Ketara wrote: The real danger is in the conspiracy theories that can't be separated from reality by anyone less than an expert. Take for example, Docherty and Macgregor's 'Hidden History':-
Lovingly crafted with a multitude of persuasive looking footnotes and a good grasp of context; this appears to be a perfect primer to someone looking to prove that evil armaments barons, upper class monsters, and bankers planned and caused the First World War. It points out lots of wonderful facts and figures, and is really quite convincing.
That is, unless you actually happen to be an academic specialising in the subject and can pluck every single reference in it off your bookshelf. In which case, you're aware of how limited and clueless so many of the 'sources' from the time actually were, the mound of archival evidence which disagrees with it, and the bits which have been shaped and twisted out of context. Then it appears for the Frankenstein of a conspiracy theory it actually is.
But to your average punter, angling for seemingly reliable sources to confirm your views about rich Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/whatever running the world? It's an absolute gem.
Yeah, history has quite a few 'convincing' books like that. For WW2 there are a few big ones like Icebreaker and Hitler's Willing Executioners that were absolutely destroyed by the academic community. Yet both had quite a big public following, especially the last book in Germany. People didn't know enough about it to know it was bad, but its exactly what they wanted to hear. There are more books like that, some providing a Marxist view of history that is pretty good, but obviously biased, to books about the Vietnam War that have political color that people would not notice without already having in depth knowledge.
In that sense popular history is full of half truths and omissions.
My thought/experience with people who ardently follow the more ridiculous theories is that there's a heavy element of narcissism to it. And maybe that's why conspiracy theories can be addicting - because they reassure the believer "you're special, you have THE TRUTH, you have this hidden knowledge everyone else doesn't".
There's nothing wrong with popular history necessarily; you can get some very good and very accurate ones.
I've found that the dedicated amateur has often spent half their lives picking at one particular topic; and consequently knows more than someone who spent a few years researching it. There's an absolute wealth of knowledge locked away in the brains of the layperson who publishes that one book they always meant to write. Often they miss odds and sods, but it's through a lack of training or knowledge of context; not any deliberate malice. Such authors usually immediately hold up their hands if challenged on such a point; because they're aware of their own limitations.
Meanwhile, any sufficiently skilled writer can usually do sufficient justice to a topic to be effectively indistinguishable from a professional historian. Often you find that such works rely entirely on professional work for source material to begin with; making them reasonably reliable in their contents. But these books are often commissioned by another source, or chosen for a more general love of the topic (Max Hastings for example), and whilst rarely original, aren't out to subvert or preach, but to tell a story as best as they can.
The problem is when all these things combine, and a sufficiently skilled writer/researcher deliberately sets out with an agenda on a topic that they spend years looking at due to a personal obsession. The book I referenced above has been put together by two men who have spent literally decades scrabbling around trying to find any and all evidence to support their finished conclusion. That's what makes it so persuasive to the layperson. To them, it reads well, sources well, and looks every bit as legitimate as something turned out by David Stevenson.
That is what makes it so very dangerous. Whilst the metaphorical dragon of David Irving was decisively slain by Richard Evans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd), few other such works receive equivalent scrutiny and debunking. The damage your average lizard person theory promulgates is really nothing compared to the power of a sufficiently popular skilled historical writer with an axe to grind.
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ScarletRose wrote: My thought/experience with people who ardently follow the more ridiculous theories is that there's a heavy element of narcissism to it. And maybe that's why conspiracy theories can be addicting - because they reassure the believer "you're special, you have THE TRUTH, you have this hidden knowledge everyone else doesn't".
There's a lot to that analysis. It also goes for politics, religion, and everything else more generally however. People like to feel special and in the right.
TheMeanDM wrote: Not necessarily a conspiracy theory (though maybe someone out there thinks it is).....
What of the "Mandela effect"? Any thoughts on that collective group think phenomenon?
I love the Mandela effect, and it's implications as we move to digital media. Previously, it would have been difficult for something really significant to be changed- after all, you'd have to destroy hundreds of thousands of hardcopy records. But now- alter the digital records, and there's no trace of what you've done except far below the surface, or in the screenshots of a few folks. Steven Colbert's wikiality experiment changed only the information on current elephant populations- but what if you went back and changed data that wouldn't matter to anyone until you used it- say, alter the population data for some European birds, then modify current data and point to a historical trend precipitating another round of bird flu. Boom! You secure huge contracts to rapidly develop vaccines, or sell bird repelling gewgaws before the science is disproved.
Or fabricate one or two successful initiatives in minor towns, or countries that no longer exist. Point to it to prove policy.
Just read a page or two of that- then imagine a corporation or government deciding to alter their image and succeeding. All too plausible. And that's my favorite conspiracy theory.
Most of the big conspiracy theories are easy to disprove, like faking the moon landings. That being said I do believe there are a number of more mundane conspiracies designed to indoctrinate society.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also of note, I love when a conspiracy nut believes two totally contradicting theories are both true. A really funny one that popped up years ago was that the US invaded Iraq to lower oil prices. Over time that theory changed to "we invaded to raise oil prices for the petroleum companies". I literally had friends (not to mention dozen of celebrities) flip flop back and forth between these two theories as gas prices fluctuated.
Wasn't there a conspiracy to use a routine Egyptian rites for the dead in hieroglyphs as a representation of a new found bible book to create a new religion? Back when only two people (France and England) could translate it thanks to the just recently discovered rosetta stone. Egyptian hieroglyphics were all the rage back then.
Also is Nibiru still a thing? Entertaining read and make for a good Sci fi plot.
In all seriousness the truth, in my opinion, is that as fantastically wild as conspiracy theories can get I find reality can come up with much weirder.
I should hope we're rewriting history these days; it would be somewhat pointless to just stick to writing things that have already been (often badly) written.
What possible reason would the Police have to not follow up, especially given conspiracy theorists claim it’s so obvious.
First hurdle. Flat on its face.
You're doing this all wrong. I have almost a quarter of a century invested in this. I'm not interested in your facts. I just know she did it. That's all there is to it.
One of my "favourites" is the guy who's got that thing that makes it so you have trouble remembering and distinguishing faces and is losing his mind over how most every celebrity and politician is posing as other celebrities and politicians.
What possible reason would the Police have to not follow up, especially given conspiracy theorists claim it’s so obvious.
First hurdle. Flat on its face.
You're doing this all wrong. I have almost a quarter of a century invested in this. I'm not interested in your facts. I just know she did it. That's all there is to it.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
notprop wrote: A bettter question is why do so many conspiracies originate in the US?
Is the US more ‘awoke’ or more full of crazies?
Who is stopping us from knowing? 8)
Well, we do have a larger population than most. Also a historical distrust of Governments. Also, talking about government conspiracies in some countries used to be enough to get thrown in a gulag.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
I expect that the USA and USSR/Russia have the most about them because they are similar in a few ways - both have large populations which are very spread out with leaving many places isolated, a history of treating minorities badly (both improved over time remember) and both had idealistic governments who are based on the ideal of the greater good (from opposite politics) but are both willing to comprimise the ideals so long as its not widely known.
I do have an idea on the faked moon landings and why it has hung around so long - NASA did (of course!) get to the moon and planned to film it - going so far as to put light up flags on the sides of the lander (common thing spotted in photos). BUT they were not sure that the recording would be good enough for broadcast on earth, so they quietly make a set so they can record there for TV probably doing a few photo shoots to make sure it looks right. It isnt used in the end as the Moon footage is good enough but some idea they were willing to fake it does get out. Its even possible a few of the set shots got in the public domain and are the ones the conspiracy nuts are always on about. It was never a conspiracy to fake the moon landings, just a backup to make better images for the public.
I am probably wrong but hey stranger things have happened.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
Ketara wrote: I should hope we're rewriting history these days; it would be somewhat pointless to just stick to writing things that have already been (often badly) written.
I can only agree with Ketara here. I don't see anything wrong with re-assessing, re-examining and if necessary re-writing history. If new information comes to light or just a fresh interpretation presents itself, why not take another look? It might upset some people or contradict widely accepted views, but is that necessarily a bad thing (Provided it's done properly, of course)?
I do a lot of work with Federal Labs in the US right now, looking at commercial uses of technology emerging from their programs. It's given me some perspective on the origin and meaning of conspiracy theories.
Aside from cryptozoology, I generally believe conspiracy theories are the result of observation without explanation. When people observe something that they can't easily identify, they explore possible reasons for what they saw. In some cases, they ask questions which would be hard for someone to answer, and the lack of a response itself becomes part of what is being observed.
Imagine if you saw a bright light streaking across the sky during the day at an impossible speed. The news doesn't report anything about a meteorite or anything to that effect. But it definitely happened, multiple people observed it. A call goes into the local Air Force base, who state there were no exercises going on at that time. This is despite the fact they have radar capable of tracking the movement of objects in the area.
What was it? Some people leave that topic where it is, others continue asking questions. It helps if there's video or some other tangible proof something happened. The lack of response from the Air Force is questioned, the lack of coverage in the media makes it seem like this is being ignored. Someone very inquisitive makes a statement about what it could have been, and someone else becomes aware of that statement. All kinds of rationalizations for what happens follows.
In other words, conspiracy theories are kind of like a social disease. The substance of the theory is mostly about the reactions of other people (i.e. the cover up) and has less and less to do with what actually occurred. The claims at the center of the theory - i.e. I saw a UFO - could be empirically true, but the conjecture around maintaining the conspiracy becomes the focus.
The Internet makes it worse. People have a poor grasp on risk and often see a threat in that which is unknown. It's this principle that makes conspiracy theories so persistent, and the fact they can be shared so widely and with little cost makes it harder to sort out the truth to any of them.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
Actually, that's all correct.
No, it's not. Not at all.
Well its a bit of a tough one, because its a bit of both. Migration was encouraged up until 1830 but because US settlers openly misbehaved and went against Mexican law migration was stopped, so not all immigrants after 1830 came in legally. As for indepemdence, that is always a bit of a semantics topic, the trouble is that the time between Texas declaring independence and joining the US is so short that it was an illegal annexation as Mexico hadn't recognized the independence yet. Its certainly a stretch to argue, but people could. Current day though? That would be an illegal annexation.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
Actually, that's all correct.
No, it's not. Not at all.
Well its a bit of a though one, because its a bit of both. Migration was encouraged up until 1830 but because US settlers openly misbehaved and went against Mexican law migration was stopped, so not all immigrants after 1830 came in legally. As for indepemdence, that is always a bit of a semantics topic, the trouble is that the time between Texas declaring independence and joining the US is so short that it was an illegal annexation as Mexico hadn't recognized the independence yet. Its certainly a stretch to argue, but people could. Current day though? That would be an illegal annexation.
If Mexico didn't want to loose Texas it shouldn't have had a Dictator with the legal authority to sign treaties agree to it. It's also a bit of a stretch to say that Texas secession wasn't legal when Mexico itself had just done the same thing with Spain. Mexicans as a whole were pretty unhappy with Mexico. The Texas rebellion was the fifth or sixth "independence from Mexico" secession movement that was fought in the last 15 years.
Also, Texas was recognized as an independent nation by the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Yucatan.
From first hand experience I can see that new history books for children aren't just getting history wrong, they are flat out rewriting history.
Source?
Well, as I said first-hand, that would be me.
I got a look at a current history book from the local highschool and happened to land on a section of history covering 1800 to 1850 North American history. According to this book Americans moving into the current Texas territory (at the time Mexico) were basically unwelcomed illegal immigrants. In reality Mexico actively advertised and invited Americans to move in so they could have a population to tax to pay off their debts from a war of Independence from Spain. Also in the book, Texas never gained independence from Mexico, and when they became a US state it was the US illegally annexing Mexican land.
Actually, that's all correct.
No, it's not. Not at all.
Well its a bit of a though one, because its a bit of both. Migration was encouraged up until 1830 but because US settlers openly misbehaved and went against Mexican law migration was stopped, so not all immigrants after 1830 came in legally. As for indepemdence, that is always a bit of a semantics topic, the trouble is that the time between Texas declaring independence and joining the US is so short that it was an illegal annexation as Mexico hadn't recognized the independence yet. Its certainly a stretch to argue, but people could. Current day though? That would be an illegal annexation.
If Mexico didn't want to loose Texas it shouldn't have had a Dictator with the legal authority to sign treaties agree to it. It's also a bit of a stretch to say that Texas secession wasn't legal when Mexico itself had just done the same thing with Spain. Mexicans as a whole were pretty unhappy with Mexico. The Texas rebellion was the fifth or sixth "independence from Mexico" secession movement that was fought in the last 15 years.
Well fact is that the Mexican government didn't ratify the treaty. As for secession and independence wars, they are always messy. The quick way in which Texas joined the US is pretty exceptional. Without clear rules its hard to say legal/illegal at that point in history. Nowadays it would almost clearly be illegal, but back then its a much more gray area. From the Mexican perspective it is too. Of course it isn't from a US perspective. A bit more nuance in writing can explain that.
International recognition only goes so far, as its subject to manipulation and power games.
Ketara wrote: I should hope we're rewriting history these days; it would be somewhat pointless to just stick to writing things that have already been (often badly) written.
I can only agree with Ketara here. I don't see anything wrong with re-assessing, re-examining and if necessary re-writing history. If new information comes to light or just a fresh interpretation presents itself, why not take another look? It might upset some people or contradict widely accepted views, but is that necessarily a bad thing (Provided it's done properly, of course)?
Any educated historian can tell you history is in a constant state of being rewritten otherwise there'd be no point to it. Every new paper, study, and book is a revision of previous works. It's not like historians are paid to write "yes Washington did not cut down a Cherry tree" 5000+ times. Historians are still "scientists." You either break new ground, propose new ideas, or refine existing theory or you can kiss your academic career goodbye.
Also to be blunt; a history book calling the US a douchebag for how it handled relations with Mexico isn't new. Historians have thought the US was pretty douchy with how it handled Mexico in the 19th century for ages. Even America itself thought it was pretty douchy at the time
notprop wrote: A bettter question is why do so many conspiracies originate in the US?
Is the US more ‘awoke’ or more full of crazies?
I dunno, man. Some stuff is kind of fun, like cryptozoology. But then you have some of the more recent politically motivated stuff. Those sorts of conspiracy theorists make me simultaneously sad and angry: Sad that I live in a country with people who actually believe in stuff like "crisis actors", and angry that platforms to spread their dumb as rocks craziness have become more influential. It's depressing and infuriating.
Ketara wrote: I should hope we're rewriting history these days; it would be somewhat pointless to just stick to writing things that have already been (often badly) written.
I can only agree with Ketara here. I don't see anything wrong with re-assessing, re-examining and if necessary re-writing history. If new information comes to light or just a fresh interpretation presents itself, why not take another look? It might upset some people or contradict widely accepted views, but is that necessarily a bad thing (Provided it's done properly, of course)?
Any educated historian can tell you history is in a constant state of being rewritten otherwise there'd be no point to it. Every new paper, study, and book is a revision of previous works. It's not like historians are paid to write "yes Washington did not cut down a Cherry tree" 5000+ times. Historians are still "scientists." You either break new ground, propose new ideas, or refine existing theory or you can kiss your academic career goodbye.
Also to be blunt; a history book calling the US a douchebag for how it handled relations with Mexico isn't new. Historians have thought the US was pretty douchy with how it handled Mexico in the 19th century for ages. Even America itself thought it was pretty douchy at the time
Historians are scientists? News to me... Historians mostly just rehash the same old stuff over and over again. We should just give all of the funding to an actual science like archaeology instead. Archaeology actually brings us new developments and knowledge. With more money we could do so much more! Of course I am totally not speaking out of self-interest here.
But speaking of conspiracy theories, historians and archaeology, in the Netherlands there used to be a "historian" named Albert Delahaye who claimed that the entire early Dutch history (up until the late Middle Ages) basically had never happened but that all recorded events of that period actually happened in northern France and that the Dutch government 'stole' that history. Basically, the whole of Dutch history is a big conspiracy by the Dutch government to justify the Netherlands' existence as a nation. Any evidence to the contrary was dismissed with "all archaeologists and historians are in on it and work for the government to keep it up". It is pretty crazy. Luckily nobody but himself and his family ever believed in it. I guess the only reason his writings got any sort of notability is because people like to laugh at it.
And I guess that is the best explanation I can come up with for some of the weirder conspiracy theories (lizardmen anyone?) out there. Some people simply are crazy and do not have normally functioning brains, leading to insane ideas.
I can’t find it right now, but there was a wonderful XKCD comic that summarised this beautifully; essentially if you are looking for evidence to support your theory, you are doing science wrong. You look for evidence and then draw conclusions. It might support your theory, or it might not; but it shouldn’t change the evidence. Conspiracy theorists, a lot of media and the general public and, sadly, quite a lot of scientists forget this.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Aye, you should be looking to falsify your hypothesis, not prove it.
Well, you should be conducting experiments and, for the more theoretical problems, testing the maths so that they are answering a well defined question about the theory or hypothesis you are seeking to test. You don't set up to falsify your own hypothesis, it is just that any experiment which is worthwhile in testing your hypothesis must have the possibility of disproving the assumptions made to form your hypothesis and have proper controls so you are only testing the parts you intend to test.
So, you want to test Boyle's law, which states that the pressure of an ideal gas at fixed temperature and quantity is inversely proportional to its volume.
So, you'd get your fixed amount of a gas which approximates an ideal gas, pick a temperature to hold it at and pick the minimum and maximum volumes you want to use. These are crucial steps. If you pick too low a temperature then your gas will not be approximating an ideal gas as the potential energy between particles will not be so small compared to the particles kinetic energy that it can be disregarded (ideal gas has no forces between particles except during particle collisions which are perfectly elastic). If your volume is too low for the amount of gas, then the spaces between your gas particles are too small which means that the interparticle forces are greater (leading back into the kinetic vs potential issue) and the size of the particles relative to the space they occupy is larger (ideal gas assumes particles are points with no volume).
If you don't constrain all of those variables correctly then you will end up not testing Boyle's Law as you have failed to satisfy the criteria for which it applies, which makes your results worthless. The issue with conspiracy theory "science" is that they never isolate the specific principles they wish to test, or at least never do so correctly. So their experiments never actually test what they say it tested and so when they get a result which is contrary to the established scientific consensus, it can be safely disregarded. But when called out on this they will often resort to the argument that mainstream science is falsifying their results by removing the data which doesn't fit etc. (for examples, see climate change deniers), even when they then turn around and hold up legitimately falsified "research" to support their argument (anti-vacciners and the Wakefield study which resulted in him losing his medical license, it was that bad).
Thing is, there are conspiracies in the broadest sense. That is, people conspire to do all kinds of stuff, like run criminal enterprises or overthrow governments or whatever. So in a general sense it is impossible to deny that there are theories about conspiracies, of which some are true. For instance, there was a lingering conspiracy that the Brazilian military coup was backed by the US, and the US sent a naval detachment to support the coup should it need it. Decades later under FOI this was verified, the US sent a fleet to supply the coup with military supplies should it be needed. That kind of conspiracy happens.
But in popular parlance the term conspiracy theory refers to something else, something a lot more fantastical. Either fantastical technology like mind control rays or weather control machines, or fantastical events like alien landings, or fantastically complex and exciting stories about famous and infamous people working together in highly complex, secretive organisations full of secret objectives.
Those sorts of conspiracy theories are basically all crap. Faced with a world of complex, confusing and ultimately tedious reality where the answer to the question 'why' almost never has a good answer, of course some people are going to invent incredible stories to explain it all. That's what humans do, we tell stories to make sense of things.
So yeah, humans do conspire. But are conspiracies in control of any of the great forces of history or nature? No, they are not, and people who like to pretend they are are just fooling themselves.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: There's actual genuine evidence that's what happened at Pearl Harbour - and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen to break the USA's then isolationist stance. He basically saw what was happening in Europe, and knew the US had to pick a side sooner or later.
No. That theory is absolute gak, peddled by liars and lunatics.
We can go through every single bit of detail and debunk it, but the conversation will end long before we get through each one (that's the dynamic these conspiracies rely on), so instead I'll just give you two summary points.
1) Surprise attacks happen. They're really common in history. They frequently work because military intel is trying to piece together an unknown situation in real time, with observations made from a diverse range of sources. Things which appear to be essential clues after the attack benefit from knowing the attack was coming, and knowing all the other clues. But to one person, oblivious to all the other available clues that are developing, and working on the assumption that they are at peace, well to them a set of objects on the radar will be assumed to be returning bombers, or a bird flight. They won't pass it up. It won't be assembled with the other range of clues. So surprise attacks happen. Pearl Harbour is not some unique event, never happened before event that requires some incredible conspiracy to explain it.
2) There was no need for the US to be poorly prepared for an attack by sea in order for the attack to wake America and rally its people for war. "We were attacked and fought a bloody and effective defense" is just as good as a rallying call as "we were attacked and were soundly beaten".
Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
Ketara wrote: The real danger is in the conspiracy theories that can't be separated from reality by anyone less than an expert. Take for example, Docherty and Macgregor's 'Hidden History':-
It's true that some conspiracy theories can only be picked apart by people with real knowledge of the subject, but I don't think those theories are more dangerous. For those theories to be the most dangerous we would need to believe that a large share of the potential audience for conspiracy theories find individual theories interesting but then read the text with a critical eye and ultimately find it lacking, so that cases like Hidden History sneak through and become popular because they deceive the critical eye of the general reader.
Truth is that there is no critical eye being passed over this stuff. People want to believe, so they don't question the stuff that supports the theory, but then they question or deny any thing that threatens the theory. Look at something as stupid as Pizzagate, that isn't believed because of convincing evidence that takes an expert review to debunk. It is believed because it presents and an exciting theory that helps people believe stuff they already wanted to believe.
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notprop wrote: A bettter question is why do so many conspiracies originate in the US?
Is the US more ‘awoke’ or more full of crazies?
Same reason most TV shows originate in the US. They're the dominant cultural force.
Other places produce whackjob conspiracies, because that's just a human thing. But some guy in the boonies of Iran theorising that Jews are behind the war in Syria doesn't really get in to the dominant media streams, certainly not the media streams that dakka members are most likely to see.
notprop wrote: A bettter question is why do so many conspiracies originate in the US?
Is the US more ‘awoke’ or more full of crazies?
Same reason most TV shows originate in the US. They're the dominant cultural force.
Other places produce whackjob conspiracies, because that's just a human thing. But some guy in the boonies of Iran theorising that Jews are behind the war in Syria doesn't really get in to the dominant media streams, certainly not the media streams that dakka members are most likely to see.
And many people like to link to this theories and say "look how dumb Americans are", which gives them more exposure.
There's also the fact that many people understand English. If an American posts some conspiracy theory somewhere, I can read it. If it's a German guy, writing in German, I can't.
ProwlerPC wrote: Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
To be fair to the Americans here, nobody expected the Japanese to launch a surprise attack without a prior declaration of war (Not without reason, IIRC it was only down to a diplomatic FUBAR that the attack went in before the declaration rather than the other way around) and the attack itself was pretty unprecedented at the time, Taranto might have demonstrated the potential for such an attack but realistically that was a pin-prick compared to Pearl Harbour.
Pearl Harbour, pretty much as with every Allied defeat in the early days of the war in the Pacific was the result of overconfidence and/or arrogance mixed with a degree of incompetence. There's no shadowy conspiracy to be seen there.
ProwlerPC wrote: Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
To be fair to the Americans here, nobody expected the Japanese to launch a surprise attack without a prior declaration of war (Not without reason, IIRC it was only down to a diplomatic FUBAR that the attack went in before the declaration rather than the other way around) and the attack itself was pretty unprecedented at the time, Taranto might have demonstrated the potential for such an attack but realistically that was a pin-prick compared to Pearl Harbour.
Pearl Harbour, pretty much as with every Allied defeat in the early days of the war in the Pacific was the result of overconfidence and/or arrogance mixed with a degree of incompetence. There's no shadowy conspiracy to be seen there.
Being caught with your pants down isn't amateurish, its the story of WW2 France, the Soviet Union, the US' the UK and a host of smaller countries all faced setbacks that especially the first two should have seen coming from miles away.
As for Pearl Harbor. The effectiveness of the attack has been vastly overestimated in the public perception. Not wanting to devalue the thousands of lives lost of course, but otherwise the damage was superficial only. No real strategic targets of importance were hit that were indeed actually present such as naval facilities and oil storage depots. The Japanese focus on sinking battleships in a shallow port was the best outcome as most were easily refloated.
Most Allied defeats were frequently down to small forces being quickly outnumbered by a Japanese opponent with superior material in those days. The only real incompetent loss was Singapore to an extent. Defeats in the Phillipines, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands were as good as inevitable with the force deposition at the start of the conflict. Incompetence played a part, but being competent wouldn't have turned it around.
As for Pearl Harbor. The effectiveness of the attack has been vastly overestimated in the public perception. Not wanting to devalue the thousands of lives lost of course, but otherwise the damage was superficial only. No real strategic targets of importance were hit that were indeed actually present such as naval facilities and oil storage depots. The Japanese focus on sinking battleships in a shallow port was the best outcome as most were easily refloated.
I'm not sure who the comment was by, but I can recall someone I read stating that the most important result of Pearl Harbour was that it changed the Pacific fleet from a 20 knot navy into a 30 knot navy since the loss of the slower Battleships meant the Carriers that made up the fleet in the aftermath and fought the early important battles could sail that much faster.
Most Allied defeats were frequently down to small forces being quickly outnumbered by a Japanese opponent with superior material in those days. The only real incompetent loss was Singapore to an extent. Defeats in the Phillipines, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands were as good as inevitable with the force deposition at the start of the conflict. Incompetence played a part, but being competent wouldn't have turned it around.
I'd add at least the first battle of the Java Sea and the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse. Allied forces were handled badly either as a consequence of being a mixed multi-national force at Java or through an assumption of superiority in the case of Force Z and were lost as a result. Whether it was incompetence or arrogance I guess could be up for debate, but the end result was a lot of allied ships were sunk for pretty trivial Japanese losses.
IIRC Force Z was lost because of a miscommunication between the RAF and the RN where the RN interpreted a message as "no air cover available, anywhere" when it was intended to be "no air cover available beyond point X".
Most Allied defeats were frequently down to small forces being quickly outnumbered by a Japanese opponent with superior material in those days. The only real incompetent loss was Singapore to an extent. Defeats in the Phillipines, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands were as good as inevitable with the force deposition at the start of the conflict. Incompetence played a part, but being competent wouldn't have turned it around.
I'd add at least the first battle of the Java Sea and the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse. Allied forces were handled badly either as a consequence of being a mixed multi-national force at Java or through an assumption of superiority in the case of Force Z and were lost as a result. Whether it was incompetence or arrogance I guess could be up for debate, but the end result was a lot of allied ships were sunk for pretty trivial Japanese losses.
Yes this is true, incompetence cost a lot of ships. But realistically the allies didn't have the forces in place to stop a determined push in early 1942 in East Asia. As it stands the Japanese took some risks and it paid off, but with the amount of naval assets available as well aircraft, it was really just a matter of time, as none of the ABDA countries were really in any position to quickly reinforce the theater.
It didn't help that significant Allied assets were also lost for an already lost cause like almost all Dutch troops in the Dutch East Indies that were left in isolated positions to save face in defending the colonies.
As for Pearl Harbor. The effectiveness of the attack has been vastly overestimated in the public perception. Not wanting to devalue the thousands of lives lost of course, but otherwise the damage was superficial only. No real strategic targets of importance were hit that were indeed actually present such as naval facilities and oil storage depots. The Japanese focus on sinking battleships in a shallow port was the best outcome as most were easily refloated.
I'm not sure who the comment was by, but I can recall someone I read stating that the most important result of Pearl Harbour was that it changed the Pacific fleet from a 20 knot navy into a 30 knot navy since the loss of the slower Battleships meant the Carriers that made up the fleet in the aftermath and fought the early important battles could sail that much faster.
.
Actually, we really didn't loose all that much at Pearl Harbor. We only lost two capital ships, permanently that is. All capital ships other than the Oklahoma and Arizona were salvaged, some needed less than a month to repair, all the rest were back in action in mid 1942.
ProwlerPC wrote: Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
To be fair to the Americans here, nobody expected the Japanese to launch a surprise attack without a prior declaration of war (Not without reason, IIRC it was only down to a diplomatic FUBAR that the attack went in before the declaration rather than the other way around) and the attack itself was pretty unprecedented at the time, Taranto might have demonstrated the potential for such an attack but realistically that was a pin-prick compared to Pearl Harbour.
Pearl Harbour, pretty much as with every Allied defeat in the early days of the war in the Pacific was the result of overconfidence and/or arrogance mixed with a degree of incompetence. There's no shadowy conspiracy to be seen there.
The Empire of Japan actually did the most basic feth up anyone can manage; they bungled their time zones. Instead of their declaration of war arriving moments before the Pearl Harbor attack was executed (still kind of sleazy sure but not as sleazy as an undeclared attack I guess) their declaration wound up arriving after the attack by a big margin.
As for Pearl Harbor. The effectiveness of the attack has been vastly overestimated in the public perception. Not wanting to devalue the thousands of lives lost of course, but otherwise the damage was superficial only. No real strategic targets of importance were hit that were indeed actually present such as naval facilities and oil storage depots. The Japanese focus on sinking battleships in a shallow port was the best outcome as most were easily refloated.
I'm not sure who the comment was by, but I can recall someone I read stating that the most important result of Pearl Harbour was that it changed the Pacific fleet from a 20 knot navy into a 30 knot navy since the loss of the slower Battleships meant the Carriers that made up the fleet in the aftermath and fought the early important battles could sail that much faster.
.
Actually, we really didn't loose all that much at Pearl Harbor. We only lost two capital ships, permanently that is. All capital ships other than the Oklahoma and Arizona were salvaged, some needed less than a month to repair, all the rest were back in action in mid 1942.
The big advantage of Pearl Harbor was that it left the Japanese fleet free to range the Pacific for months before the US could reasonably mobilize its own. Or at least that was the intended goal. With Pearl Harbor as shallow as it is not even Japan thought that the US wouldn't manage to salvage most if not all of the ships damages and return them to combat ready status, but that takes time and with the Pacific so big knocking out the fleet at Pearl for any period of time is potentially a strategic deathblow. Unfortunately for Japan we didn't lose any carriers in the attack, and we not only managed to fight while getting out fleet back but Wake Island was a bloody embarrassment for Japan's military and we held on to Midway, which only encouraged a country that was already galvanized by the attack to keep fighting.
Arguably the Battle of Midway sealed the course of the war, as no matter what Japan did they'd never recover the loss of four carriers and never be able to stop the US Navy from rolling over the Pacific however it damn well pleased. Ironically the course of events they set into motion at Pearl Harbor lead the United States to achieving Japan's original strategic goal; render the opposing navy unable to achieve an crushing victory.
ProwlerPC wrote: Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
To be fair to the Americans here, nobody expected the Japanese to launch a surprise attack without a prior declaration of war (Not without reason, IIRC it was only down to a diplomatic FUBAR that the attack went in before the declaration rather than the other way around) and the attack itself was pretty unprecedented at the time, Taranto might have demonstrated the potential for such an attack but realistically that was a pin-prick compared to Pearl Harbour.
Pearl Harbour, pretty much as with every Allied defeat in the early days of the war in the Pacific was the result of overconfidence and/or arrogance mixed with a degree of incompetence. There's no shadowy conspiracy to be seen there.
The Empire of Japan actually did the most basic feth up anyone can manage; they bungled their time zones. Instead of their declaration of war arriving moments before the Pearl Harbor attack was executed (still kind of sleazy sure but not as sleazy as an undeclared attack I guess) their declaration wound up arriving after the attack by a big margin.
Pretty sure it was due to the message being so highly classified that the Japanese ambassador had to decipher it himself rather than having his staff do it for him, which meant it took forever because he wasn't used to deciphering stuff on his own. I'll see if I can find where I read that, it's somewhere in my pile of books.
That does sound familiar now that you mention it. Unless I'm mistaken though the message also contained instructions about when to deliver the declaration of war, and the time given was off by an hour.
Actually, we really didn't loose all that much at Pearl Harbor. We only lost two capital ships, permanently that is. All capital ships other than the Oklahoma and Arizona were salvaged, some needed less than a month to repair, all the rest were back in action in mid 1942.
Whilst it's true that only two capital ships were permanently lost and that Oklahoma was hardly a first line fighting vessel by that time anyway, it did temporarily effectively remove Battleships as a class from the US order of battle in the Pacific meaning that at Coral Sea or Midway for example where the heaviest US surface warships that weren't Carriers were Cruisers, the US Navy was able to make about 10 knots greater speed than if the task forces as a whole had to sail at Battleship speed. To be completely honest, I'm not really 100% sure just how much difference that speed made, but there's a good chance that if she'd had to travel at Battleship speed rather than Cruiser speed then Yorktown may well have missed Midway and with the absence of her air group the battle may have had a different result. Or it may not.
This is an interesting thread and actually something I have talked about with the RL friends lately. Which lead me to a crazy realization about one of them.
He thinks that chem trails are a bonkers insane idea but the government is putting fluoride in our water to mind control us.
It was one of those "my friend may be insane" moments.
Dreadwinter wrote: This is an interesting thread and actually something I have talked about with the RL friends lately. Which lead me to a crazy realization about one of them.
He thinks that chem trails are a bonkers insane idea but the government is putting fluoride in our water to mind control us.
It was one of those "my friend may be insane" moments.
Here's the thing. Chemtrails aren't mindcontrol chemicals. But they are burning oil products. Part of one of a thousand things killing us with cancer.
One of my favorites is that AIDS is a CIA invented disease concocted to target Africans. A shockingly large number of African Americans actually buy that one.
cuda1179 wrote: One of my favorites is that AIDS is a CIA invented disease concocted to target Africans. A shockingly large number of African Americans actually buy that one.
Reminds me of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Pretty much everyone in the West who isn't a neo-nazi fethwit knows now that its a forgery, but it's got a lot of acceptance in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding countries and is even commonly trumpeted as a "must read" in entertainment media. It's even brought up casually in text books like we might find a passing reference to Mark Twain.
In general I think belief in conspiracies has a not at all unrelated relationship to how convenient said conspiracy is for other beliefs someone hold.
I mean, that's obviously out of the number that clicked an opinion on it one way or the other, and not representative of society as a whole, but it's unnerving to see stuff like that.
ProwlerPC wrote: Being caught with its pants down 2 years into world War is a bit amateurish yeah but I certainly believe it more then some theory that it was allowed to happen. Why credit malicious intent when incompetence fits so much nicer.
But the point is that it isn't amateurish to be caught with your pants down during peacetime. It is near impossible to maintain a constant state of war readiness.
It isn't evil political malice in Washington, but it also isn't military incompetence. Instead it's just one of those things - militaries can get surprised from time to time. It happens. Obviously militaries should do what they can to make sure it doesn't happen, but they'll never be perfect.
fresus wrote: And many people like to link to this theories and say "look how dumb Americans are", which gives them more exposure.
Good point, it reinforces the stereotype so is much more likely to be spread by people looking for a laugh.
simonr1978 wrote: To be fair to the Americans here, nobody expected the Japanese to launch a surprise attack without a prior declaration of war
The Japanese did the exact same thing to start the Russo-Japanese war, sending a declaration of war so that technically war was declared before the attack started, but where the time frame was so tight that the enemy had no chance to ready their forces before the attack came.
For what its worth, Japanese allies at that time, like the British, celebrated the ingenious Japanese attack. Then when Pearl Harbour came around the Japanese attack suddenly became immoral.
Pearl Harbour, pretty much as with every Allied defeat in the early days of the war in the Pacific was the result of overconfidence and/or arrogance mixed with a degree of incompetence. There's no shadowy conspiracy to be seen there.
I agree it wasn't a conspiracy, but I don't think we need to go as far as saying it must be incompetence or arrogance either. Militaries can't be operated on constant states of readiness.
cuda1179 wrote: One of my favorites is that AIDS is a CIA invented disease concocted to target Africans. A shockingly large number of African Americans actually buy that one.
There is actually a conspiracy there, funnily enough. The KGB spread the claim that the US created AIDS, in a program called Operation Infektion. The claims were embraced in various parts of the world, including among African Americans in the US.
In the early 90s Russia was unable to cope with its own AIDS epidemic, and called on support from the rest of the world. The US gave aid on condition Russia admitted it invented the Infektion claims out of thin air as an attack on America. They did, but the lies were already out there, and are still believed by a lot of people today.
- The CIA was probably involved in the JFK assassination - JFK was likely to curb their abuses of power, and we all know what shadowy, out-of-control organizations do when their alleged "Commander In Chief" is going to remove some of their powers.
- The US Government probably knew something about 9/11 before it happened, but thanks to poor communication didn't do anything about it. Whether this is because it stood to benefit from an endless war on terror that allows it to curtail its citizens rights, or simply incompetence, is honestly irrelevant at this point. Bush didn't do 9/11, but there's probably some knowledge that an attack was going to happen in the intelligence community.
- I am not a lizard person.
- Roswell was a weather balloon, I haven't seen anything that gives me reason to believe otherwise.
Here's a historical one:
- Stalin mostly opposed the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, instead giving aid to the fascists. Why? My reason is tentatively that he opposed the anarcho-syndicalist views of the CNT-FAI, and was afraid that the economic success of Catalonia would cause a schism within the Soviet Union. Better to fund the fascists and crush the anarchists than allow a competing left-wing ideology to rise to power. That some of the token aid he gave to the Republicans would be lost was just collateral damage, as were the Stalinists that were present in the Spanish Republic.
I actually buy into Roswell. I could totally see the confiscation of a mysterious crashed object and military cover up. I could also see how some bizarre leaps and bounds in random technologies happened at that time. I'm sure most are coincidence, but too much is conveniently timed.
I don't think the moon landing was faked.
I don't think that 9/11 was an inside job.
I could believe that FDR let Pearl Harbor happen, but as of right now I don't.
I think far more UFO sightings are legitimate than most people are willing to give credit to.
I'm a firm believer in extraterrestrial life, and of ghosts/paranormal activity.
I jokingly used to say all the time that I believed Randy Rhoads faked his death so he could play classical music without the pressure of his rock lifestyle. Definitely not a believer of that.
cuda1179 wrote: One of my favorites is that AIDS is a CIA invented disease concocted to target Africans. A shockingly large number of African Americans actually buy that one.
There was a popular theory that AIDS was first contracted by humans because of the polio vaccine, in Congo. It's mostly based on the fact that the disease first appeared around the places and times a new vaccine was being tested, and there was actually some scientific debate on the subject.
HIV initially comes from monkeys that inhabit the area. And the new polio vaccine was produced by using live monkeys as incubators. The correct way to do it was to use a different species of monkeys than the one that normally carries the virus, and obviously to make sure that they're healthy. But some people accused the scientists in charge to cut cost and use local, possibly contaminated monkeys to produce the polio vaccine, which could potentially create a vaccine that gives HIV.
So you have a theory that explains a mechanism by which HIV could come from a vaccine (one created by the colonialist Belgium to give to the local population), and is actually very believable. The biology works out, and the only evil wrongdoing is a guy doing a sloppy job to save a few bucks. I think it's still considered a very unlikely theory (if I remember correctly, they found some old vaccine and tested them, none of them have HIV in them), but I get my information from a documentary I saw a few years back.
Anyway, from this stuff some people obviously said that HIV definitely comes from the polio vaccine, and some powerful agency/secret society pulled the strings because they wanted the Africans dead.
It's a typical example of a good conspiration theory: the basic stuff is something plausible, even debated by experts, and is very hard to prove definitely. You just need to change a few things and perspective (like obviously the 60 years old samples didn't disappear because stuff gets lost/thrown away after decades of not being used, but because someone wanted the proofs gone) to convince yourself that it's all a big plot.
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Just Tony wrote: I think far more UFO sightings are legitimate than most people are willing to give credit to.
I'm a firm believer in extraterrestrial life, and of ghosts/paranormal activity.
But UFO sighting per capita is about 300 times higher in the US than in the rest of the world. With a huge spike on July 4th.
So either aliens really like the US, so much that they like to show up on the national day, or people see what they want to see, in which case culture is very important and you can explain the insane variations from one country to another.
There's some fascinating articles linking the alleged sighting of UFOs, and historical accounts of Fairies etc.
I mean, they're not claiming to be scientific about, just comparative. And when you scratch that surface, there are quite a lot of similarities!
One thing that gets my goat, every time? When people find an artefact of the ancient world, and leap to a conclusion.
For instance, engravings, reliefs and paintings showing the apparent ruler physically larger than their subjects. ZOMG! Evidence of Giants confirmed! Bad West Science, Y U KEEP FRUM US?. Or. Y'know. It's artistic license at work, and the larger stature is reflective of better diet = bigger bods alongside 'you can tell he's in charge because I painted him bigger, innit'.
Any obvious or rational explanation is slung out the window by these nutters.
cuda1179 wrote: One of my favorites is that AIDS is a CIA invented disease concocted to target Africans. A shockingly large number of African Americans actually buy that one.
Considering stuff like the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, can you blame them?
I just wish they'd put more effort into their arguments than 'Bible' and 'NASA CGI, because NASA is an anagram of Satan, and it's run by Jesuits. Or possibly illuminati. Or was it Jews this week? I'll check the log book'.
Basically any conspiracy theory that requires a globe spanning web of political intrigue and not a single mistake being made is clearly going to be bunkum. Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form? Regardless of party, do they really, honestly, strike you as being able to manipulate world wide events? Or are they still simply blundering about in the gloom, the way Governments always have?
I just wish they'd put more effort into their arguments than 'Bible' and 'NASA CGI, because NASA is an anagram of Satan, and it's run by Jesuits. Or possibly illuminati. Or was it Jews this week? I'll check the log book'.
Basically any conspiracy theory that requires a globe spanning web of political intrigue and not a single mistake being made is clearly going to be bunkum. Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form? Regardless of party, do they really, honestly, strike you as being able to manipulate world wide events? Or are they still simply blundering about in the gloom, the way Governments always have?
Flat Earth is really the weakest conspiracy theory ever, because even if you believe NASA and the Illuminati are lying to you and faking everything, you can prove the earth is round with just a stick in your yard (on a sunny day). There's a reason it's been know for thousands of years, and I don't think NASA was posting fake pictures of the Earth at the time…
There is actually a conspiracy there, funnily enough. The KGB spread the claim that the US created AIDS, in a program called Operation Infektion. The claims were embraced in various parts of the world, including among African Americans in the US.
In the early 90s Russia was unable to cope with its own AIDS epidemic, and called on support from the rest of the world. The US gave aid on condition Russia admitted it invented the Infektion claims out of thin air as an attack on America. They did, but the lies were already out there, and are still believed by a lot of people today.
State media in Russia has returned to occasionally bringing up the claim. Back around when the whole Ukraine debacle was just getting started the English version of Russia Today hosted an hour long segment with a guy who wrote an entire book about how the CIA and America invented AIDs to kill black people and gays.
The most annoying conspiracy is the one where the government is silencing evidence of its involvement in 9/11 by using its mind-control chemtrails against anyone who speaks out about it, thus depriving me of the fun of ritually slaughtering the gullible in debate. I mean, we have a conspiracy theory thread here and not a single person has offered themselves up as a sacrifice posted in support of the conspiracy!
I think far more UFO sightings are legitimate than most people are willing to give credit to..
By 'legitimate' you mean 'aliens'?
Because technically a 'legitimate' UFO sighting is any that includes an object that is unidentified. That's the very definition of what a 'UFO' is. People have just conflated it to mean 'Alien Spaceship' in their minds. I've confused a lot of people over the years by pointing out that UFOs are real, but that doesn't mean that they're aliens spaceships... The two are so intrinsically linked by popular culture that a lot of people have forgotten the actual meaning of the word. Once you identify it as an alien spaceship, it's no longer a UFO...
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form?
Another one I find quite interesting that I think may have cropped up on here in another thread before is the Titanic/Olympic conspiracy. Proponents suggest that prior to the infamous maiden voyage Titanic was swapped with her almost identical older sister RMS Olympic which had been damaged previously by a collision with HMS Hawke and deliberately sacrificed by White Star as an insurance scam. It hasn't helped that a lot of "Titanic" pictures published around the time are of Olympic instead since there were so few genuine pictures of Titanic taken before she sailed and (I'm guessing here) newspaper editors at the time probably didn't think many people would notice or care since the two were almost indistinguishable. Whilst IIRC for most this one was pretty soundly put to bed by physical evidence recovered from the wreck which could have only come from Titanic there are still die hard proponents who are willing to ignore evidence to the contrary in order to propagate their chosen pet theory.
That's pretty indicative of a fair number of conspiracy theory fans in my experience though, presented with conflicting evidence they have a kind of fingers-in-the-ears "But I still believe!" attitude regardless.
You're doing this all wrong. I have almost a quarter of a century invested in this. I'm not interested in your facts. I just know she did it. That's all there is to it.
Not sure if my sarcasm detector is on the fritz, but are you being serious here? I'd be genuinely interesting in hearing your thinking behind this although to be completely honest I'm not sure I'd be convinced.
I agree it wasn't a conspiracy, but I don't think we need to go as far as saying it must be incompetence or arrogance either. Militaries can't be operated on constant states of readiness.
There was a definite arrogance on the part of western militaries about the superiority of western over Asian troops and technology, conflicting views such as those experiences reported by Chennault's American Volunteer Group were largely ignored. As for Pearl Harbour in particular, there were warnings on the day which coupled with a Japan which had been generally pretty aggressive and expansionist for a number of years probably ought to have not been ignored and at least warranted a closer examination and a higher alert state. When you're effectively ignoring multiple suspect contacts I don't think it's unfair to suggest incompetence was at least a factor and ultimately both Kimmel and Short saw their careers effectively ended because of the attack. Of course it still wouldn't have prevented the attack, but it might not have been quite so damaging, but then hindsight is always perfect.
I think far more UFO sightings are legitimate than most people are willing to give credit to..
By 'legitimate' you mean 'aliens'?
Because technically a 'legitimate' UFO sighting is any that includes an object that is unidentified. That's the very definition of what a 'UFO' is. People have just conflated it to mean 'Alien Spaceship' in their minds. I've confused a lot of people over the years by pointing out that UFOs are real, but that doesn't mean that they're aliens spaceships... The two are so intrinsically linked by popular culture that a lot of people have forgotten the actual meaning of the word. Once you identify it as an alien spaceship, it's no longer a UFO...
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form?
That's just what they want you to think...
You can't fake that level of incompetence
And mighty good, and correct, point about UFOs. If I see a plane in the sky at night, at first it's just a single light I can clearly notice. At that point, it is very much a UFO. Soon as I've looked at it long enough, or it comes closer, I'll usually see the wing and tail lights blinking. At that point, it's identified.
Verviedi wrote: - The CIA was probably involved in the JFK assassination - JFK was likely to curb their abuses of power, and we all know what shadowy, out-of-control organizations do when their alleged "Commander In Chief" is going to remove some of their powers.
There is one small problem. The FBI found no evidence of anyone contacting Oswald for over a week before the shooting. I have a hard time believing a government agency WOULD set this up and then leave the shooter unattended for a full week. Especially the paranoid type of agency that would assassinate a president for the reasons you cite.
A few years ago, while I was in the park, one of the local characters started talking about The Black Pope of the Jesuits, and how he had turned into a reptoid, right there in front of him.
He went on in this vein for a little while, and then wandered off.
The person that I was talking to, a good Catholic boy, looked at me and said 'You know, that doesn't mean that a reptoid wouldn't make a good Jesuit.'
Which, if you know any Jesuits, is a fair point...
The Auld Grump - I was educated by Jesuits....
*EDIT* The 'Black Pope' is a common slang term for the Superior General of the Jesuit Order. When I was a wee tyke, the Superior General was worthy of being a Bond Villain - golden gloves, ambidextrous fencer, fluent in many, many languages... and had survived a nuclear bomb. He even had a goatee.
insaniak wrote: Because technically a 'legitimate' UFO sighting is any that includes an object that is unidentified. That's the very definition of what a 'UFO' is. People have just conflated it to mean 'Alien Spaceship' in their minds. I've confused a lot of people over the years by pointing out that UFOs are real, but that doesn't mean that they're aliens spaceships... The two are so intrinsically linked by popular culture that a lot of people have forgotten the actual meaning of the word. Once you identify it as an alien spaceship, it's no longer a UFO...
There are no UFOs because we know they're aliens so there's only IFOs.
simonr1978 wrote: There was a definite arrogance on the part of western militaries about the superiority of western over Asian troops and technology, conflicting views such as those experiences reported by Chennault's American Volunteer Group were largely ignored. As for Pearl Harbour in particular, there were warnings on the day which coupled with a Japan which had been generally pretty aggressive and expansionist for a number of years probably ought to have not been ignored and at least warranted a closer examination and a higher alert state. When you're effectively ignoring multiple suspect contacts I don't think it's unfair to suggest incompetence was at least a factor and ultimately both Kimmel and Short saw their careers effectively ended because of the attack. Of course it still wouldn't have prevented the attack, but it might not have been quite so damaging, but then hindsight is always perfect.
There was definitely an arrogance about superiority over the Japanese military.
However, the multiple suspect contacts is exactly what I'm talking about. A dozen strange things happening, seen collectively and with the hindsight knowledge of what actually happened... well yeah it's obvious. But all those bits of information aren't seen together. They're seen in isolation, with no knowledge of the other bits of information. The officer hearing reports of engagement with a Jap sub doesn't know there's also been a report of a significant activity on the radar, and so is much more likely to interpret the info with his default assumption that nothing is happening. The same is true for the officer receiving reports of activity on the radar, he doesn't know about the other bits of evidence so he's more likely to interpret it in the context of his default assumption that nothing is happening. Because each bit of information is at first assessed with no knowledge of the other bits, it is likely to be written off and not sent up the chain to where a higher up could see all the bits of information in combination.
It probably sounds like I'm trying to defend the officers involved, that isn't what I intend. Obviously Japanese planes reached Pearl Harbour with no warning, so these guys screwed up. My argument is more that screw ups like this happen all the time. Look at 9/11, there was a wealth of clues that put together and viewed with hindsight make the impending attack predictable, but like Pearl Harbour the default assumptions were wrong, so this info wasn't ever put all together in one place, and the attack wasn't predicted. It isn't a conspiracy or an inexplicable failure of duty, it's just a reality of how information systems work.
Mrs. Esterhouse wrote: I honestly and truly believe Richard Gere puts gerbils in his butt.
Wait, that's a conspiracy theory? I just thought that was a given. Kind of like how Tom Cruise keeps young men in speedos locked up in a cage behind his home.
By UFOs, I meant that I wholeheartedly believe that more of the reported/photographed/whatever UFO sightings are extraterrestrial in origin than are given credit for. Even if it's one that is indeed extraterrestrial in origin, that's more than they give it credit for.
In my mind it is simply arrogance to think we are the only intelligent life in this cosmos.
Just Tony wrote: In my mind it is simply arrogance to think we are the only intelligent life in this cosmos.
There is a world of difference between believing there is other intelligent life in the universe, and believing they have travelled to Earth, not to engage with us but just to fly about the sky doing impossible aeronautic stunts.
Not saying you're right or wrong about UFOs, just saying you're mischaracterizing the skeptical position.
There was definitely an arrogance about superiority over the Japanese military.
However, the multiple suspect contacts is exactly what I'm talking about. A dozen strange things happening, seen collectively and with the hindsight knowledge of what actually happened... well yeah it's obvious. But all those bits of information aren't seen together. They're seen in isolation, with no knowledge of the other bits of information. The officer hearing reports of engagement with a Jap sub doesn't know there's also been a report of a significant activity on the radar, and so is much more likely to interpret the info with his default assumption that nothing is happening. The same is true for the officer receiving reports of activity on the radar, he doesn't know about the other bits of evidence so he's more likely to interpret it in the context of his default assumption that nothing is happening. Because each bit of information is at first assessed with no knowledge of the other bits, it is likely to be written off and not sent up the chain to where a higher up could see all the bits of information in combination.
It probably sounds like I'm trying to defend the officers involved, that isn't what I intend. Obviously Japanese planes reached Pearl Harbour with no warning, so these guys screwed up. My argument is more that screw ups like this happen all the time. Look at 9/11, there was a wealth of clues that put together and viewed with hindsight make the impending attack predictable, but like Pearl Harbour the default assumptions were wrong, so this info wasn't ever put all together in one place, and the attack wasn't predicted. It isn't a conspiracy or an inexplicable failure of duty, it's just a reality of how information systems work.
It's this kind of systemic failure to join up the dots at the time which I was meaning when I referred to incompetence. The incompetence of the system as a whole that failed to recognise the warning signs on the day and didn't have the checks and overviews in place to make sure that someone senior was seeing the bigger picture here rather than necessarily the individual (Usually fairly junior) members of it that made errors. Kimmel and Short were in command during this and both were ultimately saw their careers end because of it, whether that was necessarily fair of not is another matter. I understand that I'm benefiting from nearly 80 years worth of hindsight now, but considering the global situation at the time I would have thought that the major US naval base in the Pacific should have paid a bit closer attention to the warnings on the day, that a fairly junior officer was in a position to disregard the radar reports rather than pass that information up the chain, that the default assumption was "They're probably ours, it's probably nothing to worry to about" for example IMO represents incompetence as an individual and an organisation.
As I indicated earlier, it still wouldn't have stopped the attack and it probably would have still been very damaging to the US Pacific fleet, but it might not have been quite so badly hit. However, I am willing to accept that I am looking at this with full hindsight and maybe these kind of occurances were not uncommon at the time, either way though (And desperately trying to refer back to the original topic), I just don't see the conspiracy there either.
When I was doing biology assignments and watching insect colonies, I didn't shake their "hands". We're the ants/beehive/whatever here. We're a curiosity, nothing more. Once we figure out how to travel in space fast enough to start reaching other solar systems in a viable amount of time, THEN they'll either shake our hands or subjugate us. The former if you're me, the latter if you're Stephen Hawking
simonr1978 wrote: It's this kind of systemic failure to join up the dots at the time which I was meaning when I referred to incompetence. The incompetence of the system as a whole that failed to recognise the warning signs on the day and didn't have the checks and overviews in place to make sure that someone senior was seeing the bigger picture here rather than necessarily the individual (Usually fairly junior) members of it that made errors. Kimmel and Short were in command during this and both were ultimately saw their careers end because of it, whether that was necessarily fair of not is another matter.
Honestly probably the biggest mistake was from Roosevelt, in placing the whole of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbour as an empty bit of posturing, and making it vulnerable to attack. Presidents tend not to sack themselves though
I understand that I'm benefiting from nearly 80 years worth of hindsight now, but considering the global situation at the time I would have thought that the major US naval base in the Pacific should have paid a bit closer attention to the warnings on the day, that a fairly junior officer was in a position to disregard the radar reports rather than pass that information up the chain, that the default assumption was "They're probably ours, it's probably nothing to worry to about" for example IMO represents incompetence as an individual and an organisation.
As I indicated earlier, it still wouldn't have stopped the attack and it probably would have still been very damaging to the US Pacific fleet, but it might not have been quite so badly hit. However, I am willing to accept that I am looking at this with full hindsight and maybe these kind of occurances were not uncommon at the time, either way though (And desperately trying to refer back to the original topic), I just don't see the conspiracy there either.
Cool. Just to clarify I'm not saying there wasn't a lot of mistakes made, or that individuals who made bad calls shouldn't be criticised. I'm just saying these kinds of mistakes aren't really out of the ordinary, even today. Even with our much more sophisticated information gathering today these kinds of things still happen, because having all the information doesn't help you when that information is filtered through assumptions that are wrong.
Interpreting data in real time, with no knowledge of any big surprises that might be just around the corner is a tough gig, and when you get it wrong then subsequent reviews will be able to assemble all the available clues, review them with hindsight knowledge, and it will end up making your mistakes look far worse than they really were. That's all I'm saying.
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Just Tony wrote: When I was doing biology assignments and watching insect colonies, I didn't shake their "hands". We're the ants/beehive/whatever here. We're a curiosity, nothing more. Once we figure out how to travel in space fast enough to start reaching other solar systems in a viable amount of time, THEN they'll either shake our hands or subjugate us. The former if you're me, the latter if you're Stephen Hawking
Dude, I said I wasn't engaging in whether there are UFOs. I was just pointing out that your summation of people who think they aren't UFOs was wrong - it isn't that they don't believe there could be any other life in the galaxy, it's that they believe that if there is other life then it probably isn't flying all the way to Earth just to wobble about in the sky then zoom off.
Whether your assumption is right or there's I'm not going to engage in, because it's all so speculative. I was just explaining your summation of the other side wasn't fair.
Person 1 hears about people who saw things in the sky they couldn't identify.
Person 1 then says "obviously it has to be extraterrestrial guys who come visit us"
Person 2 says "well, I don't really see the evidence"
Person 1 replies "You're a fool if you don't believe in aliens"
The fact that it's not completely impossible that UFOs are actually ET spaceship doesn't mean it's actually the case.
And I don't think that every instance of something unidentifiable is alien in origin. I'm well aware that every nation has top secret aircraft that get tested constantly. Hell, think about the B2 Spirit for example. One of those flying ANYWHERE within view of human beings before the press release would have set off every possible ET theory. We know that there were at least a few B2 sightings that were reported and had to be dismissed as something else entirely.
I totally get that.
However, I don't rule the possibility of any of the sightings being ET, even ONE is more than most would consider. We've scientists who tell us how improbable it is that there would be ETs show up. Scientists also told us the coelacanth was extinct.
A popular argument against most theories is that Trump would have tweeted about them by now.
But from my understanding about classification levels and security clearances, “need to know” still trumps clearance levels. Even if POTUS has clearance, if he doesn’t need to know, he doesn’t get to know. Basically the argument made in Independence Day I think.
notprop wrote: A bettter question is why do so many conspiracies originate in the US?
Is the US more ‘awoke’ or more full of crazies?
Same reason most TV shows originate in the US. They're the dominant cultural force.
Other places produce whackjob conspiracies, because that's just a human thing. But some guy in the boonies of Iran theorising that Jews are behind the war in Syria doesn't really get in to the dominant media streams, certainly not the media streams that dakka members are most likely to see.
There's another element to the US, aside from being the dominant cultural force. Due to the nature of our existence, with things like the 1st Amendment, we've also put out an astonishing number of religious cults. Some of those have even become quite popular. In their own way, many of these are conspiracy theories on their own (but I'll refrain from that rabbit hole, on the basis of keeping the thread open).
On some of the ones already mentioned:
Usually, when I've encountered a 9/11 Truther, I'm able to shut them down, if not change their mind by pointing out things like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or the Zimbardo Experiment and the like. If knowledge of Tuskegee got out, or even something as short lived/small as Zimbardo, what makes you think that the Gov't. could keep as many secrets as would be required by as many people as would be required to pull it off?
@Iron_Captain. . . no, historians are not scientists. LoH used quotes as a means of saying that when we're doing history, we are trying to use scientific means/rules to establish our point. As in, we must have evidence to back up what we are saying in order for it to be accepted as truth.
Verviedi wrote: - The CIA was probably involved in the JFK assassination - JFK was likely to curb their abuses of power, and we all know what shadowy, out-of-control organizations do when their alleged "Commander In Chief" is going to remove some of their powers.
There is one small problem. The FBI found no evidence of anyone contacting Oswald for over a week before the shooting. I have a hard time believing a government agency WOULD set this up and then leave the shooter unattended for a full week. Especially the paranoid type of agency that would assassinate a president for the reasons you cite.
Clearly, the CIA were just that good at covering their tracks back then
Ensis Ferrae wrote: @Iron_Captain. . . no, historians are not scientists. LoH used quotes as a means of saying that when we're doing history, we are trying to use scientific means/rules to establish our point. As in, we must have evidence to back up what we are saying in order for it to be accepted as truth.
I.E. History is the application of the scientific method to past events to explain the human story.
In terms of academia, just like any scientist a Historian has to publish or die. No Historian gets into the field to repeat what has already been said.
Two Commercial Pilots Had a Close Encounter With a Possible UFO Over Arizona.
Spoiler:
The Federal Aviation Administration has released radio traffic from two commercial pilots, including the pilot of an American Airlines flight, who reported an unidentified flying object over southern Arizona last month.
One pilot, who was flying a Learjet for Phoenix Air Group on Feb. 24, reported seeing a possible UFO pass his plane.
“Was anybody, uh, above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?” the pilot said, according to an audio recording released by the FAA and obtained by KPNX-TV.
“Negative,” the air traffic controller replied.
“Okay,” the pilot responded. “Something did.”
“Maybe a UFO,” the air traffic controller joked, prompting the Learjet pilot to laugh.
The air traffic controller then radioed American Airlines Flight 1095, which was nearby, to ask the pilot to report if anything passed over the plane “here in the next 15 miles.” The object was reportedly flying at about 37,000 feet.
The Learjet pilot chimed in to say, “I don’t know what it was, it wasn’t an airplane but it was — the path was going in the opposite direction.”
The American Airlines pilot then radioed the air traffic controller about a minute later to report a strange sighting.
“Yeah, something just passed over us, like a — I don’t know what it was,” he said. “But it was at least two, three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us.”
Asked if he could tell if the object was moving or just hovering, the pilot said he couldn’t really tell.
“It was just really beaming light or could have had a big reflection and was several thousand feet above us going opposite direction,” he said.
Lynn Lunsford, a spokesperson for the FAA, told the Phoenix New Times the air traffic controller was not able to confirm that another aircraft was flying in the same area, but suggested that the object could have come from elsewhere.
“We have a close working relationship with a number of agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons,” Lunsford said.
Makes you kind of wonder what it may have been....
Just Tony wrote: We've scientists who tell us how improbable it is that there would be ETs show up. Scientists also told us the coelacanth was extinct.
Those two aren't the same at all. With the coelacanth there was no theory that it must be extinct, merely a lack of observations of living ones. Finding one wasn't going to overturn any major fields of science. And so, when there turned out to be some of them living in an extremely inaccessible region, the reaction was "great, new data to work with". With aliens you're talking about completely overturning large elements of physics involving things like FTL travel, thermodynamics, etc. You have to bypass all of the known problems with interstellar travel: the massive energy requirements, the easily observable heat output of the spacecraft, and the long duration of travel. You have to special-case every encounter where they're detectable for no apparent reason, then promptly disappear. And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Now, is it theoretically possible? I suppose, but the burden of proof is incredibly high and it's a last-resort theory.
Peregrine wrote: And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.
It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.
Peregrine wrote: And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.
It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.
There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.
All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.
Peregrine wrote: And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.
It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.
There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.
All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
Peregrine wrote: And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.
It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.
There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.
All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.
Aye. Every test.....that we're familiar with and have thought of and been able to test. It may well be that there are ways of manipulating or bypassing the speed of light that aren't yet evident.
Empiricism is both the strength and hard restriction of scientific method. Look into Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shifts, you'll see what I mean.
There is always a possibility that there's something everybody missed, or that everything we've seen is only a special case of a larger theory, a larger theory that would offer the possibility than FLT travel.
But at the end of the day, a guy sees a shiny spot in the sky, doesn't know what it is, and for some reason the most obvious answer to him is one that contradicts everything we know and measure.
I could say that all the UFOs are actually little fairies that emit light when they mischievously fly in the sky. I have as much proof of it as people who say that UFOs are alien coming from places thousands of light years away, but at least my hypothesis doesn't break any know theory, so it's actually more likely.
Except that people claim to have encounters with aliens and their crafts to this day while no one encounters fairies any more. Whether or not you believe those people, they still provide far more context for one explanation than another, even if the simplest (and most widely believed) explanations have nothing to do with aliens or fairies.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And that's not mentioning the notion that aliens need not be using FTL to visit us, or the theories that they are coming from parallel universes or even up/downtime.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Except that people claim to have encounters with aliens and their crafts to this day while no one encounters fairies any more. Whether or not you believe those people, they still provide far more context for one explanation than another, even if the simplest (and most widely believed) explanations have nothing to do with aliens or fairies.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And that's not mentioning the notion that aliens need not be using FTL to visit us, or the theories that they are coming from parallel universes or even up/downtime.
Generally they're left in the realm of fantasy and ghost stories but unlike most bigfoot, alien or loch ness monster sightings, it seems most of those who see fairies tend to not even try to seek publicity- just telling the story to friends and interested acquaintances.
How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
godardc wrote: How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?
But... I am not saying it is aliens, but if it is aliens then I am sure that cows must be exactly the reason they come to Earth. Their culture is probably completely different from ours. Maybe the cow is some kind of amazing, extraordinary creature in their culture. Or maybe they can see things in cows or interact with cows in ways that we can't. Or maybe they just like milk as well
godardc wrote: How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?
But... I am not saying it is aliens, but if it is aliens then I am sure that cows must be exactly the reason they come to Earth. Their culture is probably completely different from ours. Maybe the cow is some kind of amazing, extraordinary creature in their culture. Or maybe they can see things in cows or interact with cows in ways that we can't. Or maybe they just like milk as well
Indeed, people tend to jump to crazy conclusions as soon as they don't understand something rather than just admiting that they don't know !
Peregrine wrote: And these aren't trivial things we're talking about, our modern understanding of physics can't be that badly wrong because so many observations have been made to confirm it and so much engineering work has been done based on it without failing to work.
Modern science doesn't necessarily have to be wrong for some alien species to be ignoring the laws of physics as we comprehend them. That is to say, we may have empirically tested the existence of certain rules; but that doesn't rule out some undiscovered method of suspending or countering those rules. For example, we can detect gravity from a coin being thrown and falling to the ground, but can currently overrule gravity by exerting a stronger force (magnetism), or alter its effects by messing around in vaccuum chambers and suchlike.
It could well be that there are methods of bypassing the rules around the speed of light and suchlike that we're simply unaware of. It is well and good to say that something is impossible with our current understanding of affairs; but it should always be acknowledged that that understanding is really quite incomplete.
There is no getting around the fact that the speed of light is the absolute speed limit of the universe. It doesn't matter how technologically advanced you are, Maxwell's equations don't care, special relativity doesn't care, general relativity doesn't care.
All of these have been found to be accurate in every test, even around the most extreme phenomena in the whole universe, black holes.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.
But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.
But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.
No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
That is a meaningless definition under relativity, where it is equally acceptable to say your ship is stationary and the universe is moving around you as it is to say the universe is stationary and your ship is moving around in it.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.
But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.
No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Which is impossible. A vacuum has nothing in it, therefore nothing to get in the way of light, therefore nothing to slow it down. You cannot get less than nothing when it comes to an amount of stuff.
Not to mention that if you change that speed limit of light in a vacuum, you change the fundamental equations of electromagnetism. So, you would alter the electric and magnetic fields of everything in the universe.
godardc wrote: How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?
UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.
That is a meaningless definition under relativity, where it is equally acceptable to say your ship is stationary and the universe is moving around you as it is to say the universe is stationary and your ship is moving around in it.
But if the speed of light can be manipulated, then so can the speed limit.
No, you aren't in 3rd dimensional space at all. If walking down the street I come upon the door and step through it. This leads to another door a mile down the road. I've only moved through the door, not walked the mile, thus going faster than my fastest running speed.
Well, yes. You can make light travel slower by having it pass through a material with a relative permeability that isn't equal to 1. So the maximum speed for travelling through matter is less than the maximum speed of travelling through a vacuum and will be different for different types of matter.
But none of that helps you try and travel faster than light through any particular medium.
No, but if you can make light travel faster than it does through a vacuum then you could also travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Which is impossible. A vacuum has nothing in it, therefore nothing to get in the way of light, therefore nothing to slow it down. You cannot get less than nothing when it comes to an amount of stuff.
Not to mention that if you change that speed limit of light in a vacuum, you change the fundamental equations of electromagnetism. So, you would alter the electric and magnetic fields of everything in the universe.
godardc wrote: How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?
UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.
There are UFOs all the time. Actual aliens is something else entirely. While anything is possible, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
My opinion of a conspiracy theory comes down to one thing.
Sometimes progress depends on making an 'insane' proposal, and then honestly looking for evidence to prove or disprove it. If you can prove it, it's no longer insane. Take the theory of continental drift, for example. The idea that the surface of the earth moves around continuously was considered completely wacko! And yet, evidence was found to support the theory, and eventually GPS satellite data proved it once and for all.
An insane proposal becomes a conspiracy theory when your evidence to prove it boils down to 'I can't show you proof because there's this huge conspiracy to hide the truth!'
That people still manage to convince themselves that the conspiracy theory is somehow correct despite a complete lack of evidence just convinces me that humanity is, at heart, completely gullible.
The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.
Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.
feeder wrote: The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.
Unless you plan to come back and tell people about what you find...
d-usa wrote: Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
feeder wrote:The absolute speed limit being the speed of light isn't an issue if they have figured out how to manipulate time. If you can change your experience of time, then taking a million years to get somewhere doesn't matter.
d-usa wrote:Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.
Space and time are both relative.
The faster you go, the slower time passes, and the shorter the distances are.
Let's assume there is a planet that is 1,000 light years away from earth (when the distance is measured by someone who is on the surface of the earth), and you want to go there. If you go there in a rocket that goes at a high speed, pretty close to the speed of light, then in that rocket, which moves very fast, the planet doesn't appear to be 1,000 light years anymore, but appears to be closer. And time in your rocket doesn't go as fast as time on the earth.
There is a speed at which this planet would appear to be only 1 light year away, and you would get there in roughly a year (when the time is measured by a clock inside your rocket). Someone who stayed on the earth would however measure your travel time to be of roughly 1,000 LY. And there is no limit to how much you can shorten distances/slow down time (the closer you get to the speed of light, the stronger the effect). You could theoretically get anywhere in the universe in a time as short as you want (again, when the time is measured by you). But as someone pointed out, by the time you come back (which could be infinitely short for you), people on your home planet will be much older. That's actually the famous twin paradox from Langevin.
But there's also a problem with measuring things that are far away, as we effectively see the past. When someone on a planet a million light years away looks at the earth, he sees what the earth was like a million years ago (it's the time the light took to reach him). So if you look at a distant planet, and wait until something specific happens before going there, by the time you reach it a lot of time passed on that planet.
So all the assumptions that Aliens waited until there were people on earth, or until said people reached a certain development, before coming here are actually making an assumption on how far these Aliens can come from. And that's actually not far away, which is very unlikely.
d-usa wrote: Isn't the main idea behind FTL travel that you might be able to manipulate space rather than time. It doesn't matter how far something is away, if you can manipulate the distance rather than travel it.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
Breaking the speed of sound (or any other arbitrary speed below the speed of light) is a technological barrier. Breaking the speed of light is a theoretical one, so they're vastly different.
Very few things are as fundamental as the speed of light in Physics. Saying you can break it is like saying you can create energy out of nothing, or decrease entropy. These things are so fundamental that every time someone measured them to be wrong, that person pretty much always assumed that there was something wrong with their measurement (something missing, or just an error), which has always been verified.
Just Tony wrote: That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
They're entirely different things. The speed of sound was a point where a variety of problems presented an engineering challenge. We'd already sent a lot of things at speeds far greater than the speed of sound, like bullets for instance, just never a plane.
Whereas the speed of light isn't an engineering challenge, it is a hard rule of the physical rules controlling our existence. No matter how clever you build your ship, no matter how much energy you can muster to propel it, you will never go past the speed of light. To get around this you don't just need to improve existing tech, you need to invent an entirely new form of travel, a way of moving from one place to another that we don't even have a clear concept of on paper yet.
Whether we one day build that other form of travel I don't know. But I can you that developing it is absolutely nothing at all like getting a plane past the speed of sound.
What I find quite interesting at the moment is that you have literally the biggest fodder for conspiracy theories ever, with an investigation into collusion between aspects of the White House and Russia and the prospect that the country is being influenced/coerced by a foreign power, and the quarters from which the theories usually spring is completely ignoring it.
I just wish they'd put more effort into their arguments than 'Bible' and 'NASA CGI, because NASA is an anagram of Satan, and it's run by Jesuits. Or possibly illuminati. Or was it Jews this week? I'll check the log book'.
Basically any conspiracy theory that requires a globe spanning web of political intrigue and not a single mistake being made is clearly going to be bunkum. Look at our respective Governments, folks. Do they look at all competent in any way, shape or form? Regardless of party, do they really, honestly, strike you as being able to manipulate world wide events? Or are they still simply blundering about in the gloom, the way Governments always have?
I think this is probably the biggest counter-argument to any large-scale conspiracy theory. The Nixon government couldn't bug a hotel room without getting busted, they certainly wouldn't have been able to orchestrate hundreds of thousands of people to fake the moon landings, or co-ordinate the actions of Bin Laden to help bring about a mass geo-political expansion into the middle east.
godardc wrote: How do we explain the UFOs encounter with militaries airforces, I mean, sometimes they even shooted at them (at least 1). Do you think the pilots and radars got it wrong ?
But then how do we explain that UFOs come on Earth, and...basically do nothing but probe cows ?
We don't explain them. We can't. That is why they are unidentified objects. The pilots and radars probably are not wrong. They actually encountered an unidentified phenomenon. But saying those must come from outer space is just a crazy conclusion. It violates the scientific method. Just because we do not know what these phenomena are, doesn't mean they come from outer space or are aliens. We should always test the most simple hypothesis first. If there is no need to insert aliens into it, then don't. For all we know it could just be an as of yet not understood natural phenomenon.
And that is the problem with mythical/legendary stuff like aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie and ghosts. People jump to fantastic conclusions without considering more mundane, boring explanations. I am not sure if these things qualify as conspiracy theories though. Where is the conspiracy?
UFOs usually qualify as Conspiracy Theories because of the theories that the truth is being somehow suppressed, either by shadowy government agencies, secret-societies or extra-terrestrials themselves, or a combination of them. Ghosts and Cryptozoology don't fit this pattern since the only alleged conspiracies there are usually that mainstream science just refuses to acknowledge them since they contradict the establishment line.
When it comes to Cryptozoology, I think it's more that your Standard or Garden Variety biologist has better things to do in terms of identifying new species than traipse around looking solely for proof of a mythological one.
I mean, if Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch was actually proven to exist, it doesn't undermine conventional animal family trees etc. It'd just be studied, identified and slotted in.
And one only has to look to Australia and Madagascar to see how species can develop into highly unusual forms given sufficient isolation.
Just Tony wrote: That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
They're entirely different things. The speed of sound was a point where a variety of problems presented an engineering challenge. We'd already sent a lot of things at speeds far greater than the speed of sound, like bullets for instance, just never a plane.
Whereas the speed of light isn't an engineering challenge, it is a hard rule of the physical rules controlling our existence. No matter how clever you build your ship, no matter how much energy you can muster to propel it, you will never go past the speed of light. To get around this you don't just need to improve existing tech, you need to invent an entirely new form of travel, a way of moving from one place to another that we don't even have a clear concept of on paper yet.
Whether we one day build that other form of travel I don't know. But I can you that developing it is absolutely nothing at all like getting a plane past the speed of sound.
What I'm saying is that we are in our infancy with understanding the plausibility of photodynamics. Think about magnets for a second. At one time we knew that lodestone stuck to iron. That's it. Now, since we've advanced, not only do we know WHY that happens, we can measure magnetic fields, and even PRODUCE magnetic fields. My argument is that our current understanding of the speed of light and any possibility of exceeding it is as backwater as pre-electricity humans and magnetism. We already have a device that is breaking Newtonian law that NASA is supposed to be testing in zero gravity (blanking on the name of the drive, but it's the one with the weird copper cone...) so we're nowhere NEAR the complete understanding of that part of physics to say "never".
I'm not ignorant of our understanding of it. I challenge that we've hit the limit of our understanding of it, AND of all the ways to work around it. All those ways have been mentioned in here already, and I don't need to retread those (wormholes, spacefold, etc.) to prove my point. How long have lasers existed? We've not even mastered THAT technology, or have a COMPLETE understanding of it. We're close, mind you, but not a COMPLETE understanding.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As someone utterly ignorant of the physics behind why we can't exceed the speed of light, I think Just Tony has an interesting point.
I'm a complete layman to this with nothing more advanced than GCSE Physics, but my understanding based on what has been explained to me is that whilst in very basic theory all you'd have to do is point a spaceship at an area of empty space and just keep accelerating, the faster it's going the more energy would be required to accelerate it further up to the point that it'd take more energy than could ever be available in total to push it over the light barrier.
(Having said all that, I now sit back and wait for someone better qualified (Which means practically anyone ) to tell me I've got that completely wrong!)
simonr1978 wrote: I'm a complete layman to this with nothing more advanced than GCSE Physics, but my understanding based on what has been explained to me is that whilst in very basic theory all you'd have to do is point a spaceship at an area of empty space and just keep accelerating, the faster it's going the more energy would be required to accelerate it further up to the point that it'd take more energy than could ever be available in total to push it over the light barrier.
Not just more energy than exists in total, literally infinite energy. It's not a question of "we can't find enough fuel" that could be solved by more efficient engines or whatever, it is impossible to accelerate to the speed of light.
simonr1978 wrote: I'm a complete layman to this with nothing more advanced than GCSE Physics, but my understanding based on what has been explained to me is that whilst in very basic theory all you'd have to do is point a spaceship at an area of empty space and just keep accelerating, the faster it's going the more energy would be required to accelerate it further up to the point that it'd take more energy than could ever be available in total to push it over the light barrier.
Not just more energy than exists in total, literally infinite energy.
I nearly put that but wasn't 100% confident, thanks Peregrine.
Just Tony wrote: That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
That is not a valid comparison at all. The speed of sound was a barrier for manned aircraft, not a hard barrier in general. A simple rifle bullet could exceed the speed of sound easily, and there was no question about that. The barrier factor was in two parts: propeller-driven aircraft can not get enough power to go that fast (the prop tips start breaking the sound barrier and suffer crippling efficiency losses), and that current structural designs were not able to sustain the aerodynamic forces. Controls locked up and required more than human strength to operate, and catastrophic structural failure followed soon after. Everyone knew that the barrier would likely be broken at some point, once the engineering challenges were overcome, Yeager (flying a plane developed by a well-funded research program) just got there first.
The speed of light, on the other hand, is an absolute limit. It requires infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, no matter how you design your spacecraft. This is a consequence of relativity, and the governing equations have been well proven by observation and theory. It's possible that we're wrong about everything, but it's incredibly unlikely and any alternative theory would somehow have to explain our observations that currently follow the equations for relativity. There's just no credible reason to suspect that we're wrong on this.
Just Tony wrote: That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
That is not a valid comparison at all. The speed of sound was a barrier for manned aircraft, not a hard barrier in general. A simple rifle bullet could exceed the speed of sound easily, and there was no question about that. The barrier factor was in two parts: propeller-driven aircraft can not get enough power to go that fast (the prop tips start breaking the sound barrier and suffer crippling efficiency losses), and that current structural designs were not able to sustain the aerodynamic forces. Controls locked up and required more than human strength to operate, and catastrophic structural failure followed soon after. Everyone knew that the barrier would likely be broken at some point, once the engineering challenges were overcome, Yeager (flying a plane developed by a well-funded research program) just got there first.
The speed of light, on the other hand, is an absolute limit. It requires infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, no matter how you design your spacecraft. This is a consequence of relativity, and the governing equations have been well proven by observation and theory. It's possible that we're wrong about everything, but it's incredibly unlikely and any alternative theory would somehow have to explain our observations that currently follow the equations for relativity. There's just no credible reason to suspect that we're wrong on this.
Not yet. The great thing about science is that we keep discovering new things, so our current understanding of physics and the speed of light will undoubtedly develop further. As of our current understanding, the speed of light is a hard barrier. Traveling at the speed of light is impossible, going faster even more. But who knows what new theories will be developed in the next 50-100 years, let alone the next 1000? Maybe, some day in the far future we might even find a way to actually travel at light speed. But if such a day ever comes, it is still a long, long way into the future.
Just Tony wrote: That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Some people can't get past the speed of light as the hard stop. I'm not old enough to remember when the speed of sound was the unattainable speed, but I've read and watched enough on it to realize that the consensus was wrong the second Chuck Yeager broke that barrier.
That is not a valid comparison at all. The speed of sound was a barrier for manned aircraft, not a hard barrier in general. A simple rifle bullet could exceed the speed of sound easily, and there was no question about that. The barrier factor was in two parts: propeller-driven aircraft can not get enough power to go that fast (the prop tips start breaking the sound barrier and suffer crippling efficiency losses), and that current structural designs were not able to sustain the aerodynamic forces. Controls locked up and required more than human strength to operate, and catastrophic structural failure followed soon after. Everyone knew that the barrier would likely be broken at some point, once the engineering challenges were overcome, Yeager (flying a plane developed by a well-funded research program) just got there first.
The speed of light, on the other hand, is an absolute limit. It requires infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, no matter how you design your spacecraft. This is a consequence of relativity, and the governing equations have been well proven by observation and theory. It's possible that we're wrong about everything, but it's incredibly unlikely and any alternative theory would somehow have to explain our observations that currently follow the equations for relativity. There's just no credible reason to suspect that we're wrong on this.
Not yet. The great thing about science is that we keep discovering new things, so our current understanding of physics and the speed of light will undoubtedly develop further. As of our current understanding, the speed of light is a hard barrier. Traveling at the speed of light is impossible, going faster even more. But who knows what new theories will be developed in the next 50-100 years, let alone the next 1000? Maybe, some day in the far future we might even find a way to actually travel at light speed. But if such a day ever comes, it is still a long, long way into the future.
Any new theory has to account for the observations validated by previous theories. If the speed of light is not a universal absolute, special relativity doesn't work and nor does [i]causality[i] itself.
If you can travel faster than light then you can observe an event happening, then travel to that event and arrive prior to the event occurring and prevent it from ever happening from the reference frame of a different observer. This violates one of special relativity's fundamental and testable foundations, that all reference frames are equally valid and the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.
If you can travel faster than light then you can observe an event happening, then travel to that event and arrive prior to the event occurring and prevent it from ever happening from the reference frame of a different observer. This violates one of special relativity's fundamental and testable foundations, that all reference frames are equally valid and the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.
I may be being dim here but can you explain this to me in an "Idiot's Guide" way? The closer you can get to a kind of "See Spot run" level of understanding for my benefit the better.
If you have seen an event happening then being able to travel faster than the speed of light surely wouldn't mean you could effectively travel upstream and arrive back in time because you're starting from a point already after that light has reached your position. I can see how it would enable you to outpace that light and prevent someone further away from seeing that event, but I can't grasp how that would inherently allow to backwards time travel to a point before it occurred.
Pacific wrote: What I find quite interesting at the moment is that you have literally the biggest fodder for conspiracy theories ever, with an investigation into collusion between aspects of the White House and Russia and the prospect that the country is being influenced/coerced by a foreign power, and the quarters from which the theories usually spring is completely ignoring it.
Exactly.
I've had a conversation exactly like this with my sister. She's been a conspiracy nut for years, JFK was her gateway drug, but she's dabbled in all kinds of stuff, not cryptozoology but all the various government conspiracy stuff. So she's argued some 9/11 truther nonsense, and more recently pizzagate and Seth Rich stuff. And yet, she absolutely rejects any notion of Trump/Russia, she rejects the one conspiracy theory that's been taken seriously by people in positions to know if something should be taken seriously. The one that's produced indictments and guilty pleas is the one she doesn't give the time of day. If she's pressed on the issue, she'll start on some stuff about the deep state and the whole thing being a Clinton set up, somehow, it's really weird.
It's given me a bit more insight in to what is actually going with conspiracy believers. Not enough to, you know, make a coherent explanation for what's happening, or suggest a method for bringing people out of this crazy or anything useful like that, but still I understand a little more after seeing that part of my sister's approach. Thing is, I think as well as a natural tendency to believe an exciting story, and a desire to be part of select group who are in the know about the world's secrets, there's also a strong counter-cultural factor at play. That last one explains why conspiracy nuts would reject the one conspiracy that the FBI takes seriously. It also explains why the conspiracy nuts tends to broadly shift against the flow of politics, why it tends to have a drift left or right in opposition to who's in power at that point in time.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just Tony wrote: What I'm saying is that we are in our infancy with understanding the plausibility of photodynamics. Think about magnets for a second. At one time we knew that lodestone stuck to iron. That's it. Now, since we've advanced, not only do we know WHY that happens, we can measure magnetic fields, and even PRODUCE magnetic fields. My argument is that our current understanding of the speed of light and any possibility of exceeding it is as backwater as pre-electricity humans and magnetism. We already have a device that is breaking Newtonian law that NASA is supposed to be testing in zero gravity (blanking on the name of the drive, but it's the one with the weird copper cone...) so we're nowhere NEAR the complete understanding of that part of physics to say "never".
Sure, never say never. But also appreciate this is an idea way beyond anything we've ever managed before. We didn't know why magnets worked, but we could observe it happening. Another common comparison is to manned flight which some had thought impossible, but we had seen stuff fly - we might not have known if we could achieve the engineering capability needed for flight, but we knew flight was possible. The same is true for your example of breaking the sound barrier - we had seen plenty of stuff move faster than the speed of sound, we just didn't know if we could get a manned plane to do it.
In comparison, literally nothing we have ever observed has ever been capable of exceeding the speed of light. We do not have even a proposed mechanism that could make it happen.
That doesn't mean we are destined to never figure out a way to do it or bypass it, but we should we appreciative of it being a challenge way beyond anything else we've ever attempted.
Pacific wrote: What I find quite interesting at the moment is that you have literally the biggest fodder for conspiracy theories ever, with an investigation into collusion between aspects of the White House and Russia and the prospect that the country is being influenced/coerced by a foreign power, and the quarters from which the theories usually spring is completely ignoring it.
Exactly.
I've had a conversation exactly like this with my sister. She's been a conspiracy nut for years, JFK was her gateway drug, but she's dabbled in all kinds of stuff, not cryptozoology but all the various government conspiracy stuff. So she's argued some 9/11 truther nonsense, and more recently pizzagate and Seth Rich stuff. And yet, she absolutely rejects any notion of Trump/Russia, she rejects the one conspiracy theory that's been taken seriously by people in positions to know if something should be taken seriously. The one that's produced indictments and guilty pleas is the one she doesn't give the time of day. If she's pressed on the issue, she'll start on some stuff about the deep state and the whole thing being a Clinton set up, somehow, it's really weird.
It's given me a bit more insight in to what is actually going with conspiracy believers. Not enough to, you know, make a coherent explanation for what's happening, or suggest a method for bringing people out of this crazy or anything useful like that, but still I understand a little more after seeing that part of my sister's approach. Thing is, I think as well as a natural tendency to believe an exciting story, and a desire to be part of select group who are in the know about the world's secrets, there's also a strong counter-cultural factor at play. That last one explains why conspiracy nuts would reject the one conspiracy that the FBI takes seriously. It also explains why the conspiracy nuts tends to broadly shift against the flow of politics, why it tends to have a drift left or right in opposition to who's in power at that point in time.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just Tony wrote: What I'm saying is that we are in our infancy with understanding the plausibility of photodynamics. Think about magnets for a second. At one time we knew that lodestone stuck to iron. That's it. Now, since we've advanced, not only do we know WHY that happens, we can measure magnetic fields, and even PRODUCE magnetic fields. My argument is that our current understanding of the speed of light and any possibility of exceeding it is as backwater as pre-electricity humans and magnetism. We already have a device that is breaking Newtonian law that NASA is supposed to be testing in zero gravity (blanking on the name of the drive, but it's the one with the weird copper cone...) so we're nowhere NEAR the complete understanding of that part of physics to say "never".
Sure, never say never. But also appreciate this is an idea way beyond anything we've ever managed before. We didn't know why magnets worked, but we could observe it happening. Another common comparison is to manned flight which some had thought impossible, but we had seen stuff fly - we might not have known if we could achieve the engineering capability needed for flight, but we knew flight was possible. The same is true for your example of breaking the sound barrier - we had seen plenty of stuff move faster than the speed of sound, we just didn't know if we could get a manned plane to do it.
In comparison, literally nothing we have ever observed has ever been capable of exceeding the speed of light. We do not have even a proposed mechanism that could make it happen.
That doesn't mean we are destined to never figure out a way to do it or bypass it, but we should we appreciative of it being a challenge way beyond anything else we've ever attempted.
The crux of this that I want to point out is OUR understanding. OUR. The conspiracy theory (maybe, maybe not) of extraterrestrial life visiting the planet (repeatedly, some would say) depends on how those extraterrestrials can understand and manipulate FTL travel. Not us. The reason so many people dismiss the idea is the pure ego of the human race. We couldn't possibly accept that somewhere in the universe there's someone better than us.
Just Tony wrote: The crux of this that I want to point out is OUR understanding. OUR. The conspiracy theory (maybe, maybe not) of extraterrestrial life visiting the planet (repeatedly, some would say) depends on how those extraterrestrials can understand and manipulate FTL travel. Not us. The reason so many people dismiss the idea is the pure ego of the human race. We couldn't possibly accept that somewhere in the universe there's someone better than us.
Having a bigger brain doesn't change the basic laws of the universe. There isn't a point of cleverness where gravity just stops being a thing. It's the same for the speed of light. No matter how clever we might imagine an alien creature to be, the speed of light remains a hard, universal constant.
The issue is fundamentally nothing to do with any level of cleverness. It is about the speed of light being a universal constant.
Now we can make up fun ideas about wormholes and warp drives and other stuff, or dream of an alien species that thought of some other way to get around this idea and maybe one of those ideas might end up being true.
But what we can't do is say 'oh humans in the past overcome engineering challenges that were thought impossible, therefore we should expect that it is also possible to overcome the basic laws of the galaxy'. They're just not the same thing.
Pretty much the only way that its possible to exceed the speed of light without violating the laws of physics is to "cheat" by bending space in some fashion(Star Trek Warp Drives), or moving into another dimension through one hole and out another hole back into this dimension(wormholes, 40k Warp Travel, Star Wars Hyperdrives). Such that from your perspective you don't exceed the speed of light, and thus need infinite energy, yet from the perspective of the rest of the universe you appear to be exceeding the speed of light.
I don't think aliens have visited this planet, i don't think Aliens exist period. But if and when humans do develop "FTL" technology, it will be one of the above methods. We'll learn to bend space or travel to adjacent dimensions to side-step vast distances, because any other method as far as we know is impossible for traveling between stars in a timely fashion.
Alien conspiracy theories most likely arose from civilians seeing military prototypes being tested and not understanding what they were. Then the government possibly engaged in feeding the conspiracy theories a little to act as a smoke screen for the actual projects that were witnessed.
When it comes to aliens (and with no intention to berate or belittle fellow posters), I've always felt it supremely arrogant to believe we're the only intelligent life in the galaxy, let alone the universe.
Now. Are they visiting earth? Probably not. Will we ever come across each other? Well, possibly. But not for a long time I'd imagine.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to aliens (and with no intention to berate or belittle fellow posters), I've always felt it supremely arrogant to believe we're the only intelligent life in the galaxy, let alone the universe.
Now. Are they visiting earth? Probably not. Will we ever come across each other? Well, possibly. But not for a long time I'd imagine.
It's not arrogance, it statistics. The Universe is so large the odds of there being no other life (intelligent or otherwise) is so extraordinarily low, that the concept of us being alone is utterly absurd. Now visiting Earth? Unlikely and to be frank, if aliens had that sort of technology, why would they even bother coming down here? We'd probably be more like a neat scientific observation. Something to be looked at, but never interacted with.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to aliens (and with no intention to berate or belittle fellow posters), I've always felt it supremely arrogant to believe we're the only intelligent life in the galaxy, let alone the universe.
Now. Are they visiting earth? Probably not. Will we ever come across each other? Well, possibly. But not for a long time I'd imagine.
It's not arrogance, it statistics. The Universe is so large the odds of there being no other life (intelligent or otherwise) is so extraordinarily low, that the concept of us being alone is utterly absurd. Now visiting Earth? Unlikely and to be frank, if aliens had that sort of technology, why would they even bother coming down here? We'd probably be more like a neat scientific observation. Something to be looked at, but never interacted with.
Well, we can apply a little human spirit to that....
If we have the technology and found relatively primitive life, what would our natural curiosity dictate?
And remember, our innate curiosity and wanderlust is a major factor in how we came even this far. We didn't just explore our world (many migratory species do this), but sought to understand how it works. The rest comes from that.
If we have the technology and found relatively primitive life, what would our natural curiosity dictate?
Put them in a zoo! Exploit their world for minerals! Cheap labour!
Breed them for meat. That's humanity's main interaction with animals.
Nah. Our first and most important connection to animals was when we began domesticating wolves into dogs. Still exploitation, but much more subtle and mutually beneficial than meat farms.
Playing by the odds, not only would there be alien life in our galaxy, but there should be some millions or billions of years older than life on Earth. Intelligent life with a million year head start over us might have very different ideas about the desirability of FTL travel, what is interesting about Earth (if anything), and how to satisfy their curiosity. Who can even imagine what ideologies might come into play or the economics of interstellar cattle mutilation or sapient abduction tourism?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to aliens (and with no intention to berate or belittle fellow posters), I've always felt it supremely arrogant to believe we're the only intelligent life in the galaxy, let alone the universe.
Now. Are they visiting earth? Probably not. Will we ever come across each other? Well, possibly. But not for a long time I'd imagine.
It's not arrogance, it statistics. The Universe is so large the odds of there being no other life (intelligent or otherwise) is so extraordinarily low, that the concept of us being alone is utterly absurd. Now visiting Earth? Unlikely and to be frank, if aliens had that sort of technology, why would they even bother coming down here? We'd probably be more like a neat scientific observation. Something to be looked at, but never interacted with.
I had an interesting thought on the Fermi paradox the other day; our assumption on detecting alien civilisations is based on them using high power wide band broadcasts, but barely a century into having that technology we’re already abandoning it in favour of localised low power networks and narrow band directional transmissions, as there far more efficient and flexible (e.g. streaming instead of broadcasts). Which suggests that the time for which an advanced civilisation is detectable could be incredibly short.
If you can travel faster than light then you can observe an event happening, then travel to that event and arrive prior to the event occurring and prevent it from ever happening from the reference frame of a different observer. This violates one of special relativity's fundamental and testable foundations, that all reference frames are equally valid and the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.
I may be being dim here but can you explain this to me in an "Idiot's Guide" way? The closer you can get to a kind of "See Spot run" level of understanding for my benefit the better.
If you have seen an event happening then being able to travel faster than the speed of light surely wouldn't mean you could effectively travel upstream and arrive back in time because you're starting from a point already after that light has reached your position. I can see how it would enable you to outpace that light and prevent someone further away from seeing that event, but I can't grasp how that would inherently allow to backwards time travel to a point before it occurred.
I'll stick this in a spoiler so I don't subject people to special relativity unless they want to be
Spoiler:
It comes down to how distance in spacetime is measured. Special Relativity showed us that the distance we travel through space depends on the reference frame of an observer and that the same goes for time. However the distance we travel through combined spacetime is the same for all observers. Spacetime distance is what is called an invariant, which means that no matter the frame of reference it will always be the same.
Distance in Minkowski spacetime (so we're ignoring general relativity effects) is calculated using the equation (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (x)^2 - (y)^2 - (z)^2 where the s^2 represents spacetime distance, c is an arbitrary universal constant velocity which allows us to have a value for time in the same units as space, t is the observed time of travel, and x, y and z are the observed spacial travel. So different observers can measure different values of t, x, y and z but when they put them into that equation, they will all get the same value of s. We should also look at spacetime diagrams and the
Now, we know that distance travelled in space is equal to velocity (v) multiplied by time (t), so we can replace the spacial distances with vt. We can also pick a reference frame where all the motion is in one direction, eliminating the other two spacial components.
So now we have (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (vt)^2. Lets say that our spaceship can travel at twice the speed of our arbitrary universal velocity (v=2c). this gives us (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (2ct)^2. Lets expand out those brackets, resulting in s^2 = (ct)^2 - 4(ct)^2 = -3(ct)^2. Oh dear, our spacetime distance is negative. This means we have moved backwards in spacetime from our starting point from the reference frame of every observer. This means we have moved into our own past. If we wanted we could travel far enough and kill our own grandfather before we were born, which is clearly a violation of causality (the cause of an event must happen before the effect, in the kill your own grandfather scenario we can have the effect, grandfather killed by grandchild, happen before the cause, grandson is born and develops time machine). So this arbitrary velocity we picked must also be a cosmic speed limit in order to prevent time travel to the past, which creates paradoxes.
For another example, we start on earth in a rocket which travels at less than our arbitrary velocity. Our friend pushes a big red button and launches us on our way to the space station Chronos orbiting Alpha Centauri. When we get there we write a note and hand it over to a delivery service which puts it on a rocket which travels faster than our cosmic speed limit. As that ship is travelling backwards in spacetime, it can reach earth before we left and hand over our note to our friend, who reads it and doesn't push the big red button.
At this point we haven't specified that the arbitrary velocity we've been using is the speed of light, but that literally falls out on its own if we create a simple experiment to get some numbers and then compare the results to the outcome of the light clock thought experiment.
So lets do that. We're sitting on a train travelling at velocity v in the x direction, as observed by our friend sitting on a hill. We sit on this train for a time t, as measured by our watch, before getting off. From our reference frame of inside the train, we can perfectly validly say that we aren't moving, the rest of the universe is. So in our reference frame the spacial distance is zero and the time was t, so our spacetime distance is s^2 = (ct)^2.
Our friend on the hill thinks that he's stationary and the train is moving and he times our journey with his watch, giving our journey time of T. So his measurement of our spacetime distance is s^2 = (cT)^2 - (vT)^2. As spacetime distance is invariant these two measurements must be equal to each other. Setting them equal and doing some rearranging nets us T = ct / sqrt(c^2 - v^2) which we can further tinker with to get T = t / sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2).
Let's say y = 1/sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2), giving us a nice and pretty T = yt. This came directly out of spacetime distance with an arbitrary value for c.
At this point lets switch over to our Einstein light clock thought experiment. In this example we have a clock that operates by bouncing a photon vertically between two plates.. We are again sitting on our train, travelling at velocity v, but this time we're timing our journey using our cool light clock. Our friend is again sitting on his hill, and he is also looking at the light clock.
Einstein's special relativity came from two postulates, the first being that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames and the second being that there is no universal at-rest reference frame from which you can measure all motion relative to. The first comes from Maxwells field equations which, when combining the electric and magnetic field equations, produced an equation for an electromagnetic wave with a velocity independent of motion of reference frame, i.e light. The latter disallows a means of measuring absolute motion (i.e being able to say you are moving without having to specify what you are moving relative to) and was supported by the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment when they failed to detect the luminiferous aether, which would have been a universal reference frame.
From our point of view on the train, the photon just goes up and down. Like how when you're on a moving (but not accelerating) vehicle, if you throw an object up into the air it comes straight back down into your hand rather than ending up hitting the back wall. From the point of view of our friend, however, the light is not travelling straight up and down, but rather at an angle as it has to hit the plate which has moved slightly from when it left the other plate, as seen here: So, from the point of view of our friend, the clock is taking longer for each tick compared to your measurements as the light is having to travel further but cannot travel faster to compensate as the speed of light is constant. Doing some pythagoras and rearranging, you once again end up with the time measured by your friend (T) being equal to the time measured by you on the train (t) multiplied by our factor y, but this time the c in that factor is not arbitrary but has to be the speed of light.
Now, at this point some people try to argue against the light clock experiment by saying it can't be used as the light clock is a fabrication just to make the maths easier. So now we're going to have you sit be a very intelligent chameleon with knowledge of special relativity and have one eye on the light clock and one eye on a normal clock. If the discrepancies in the two observed times are due to the unreal nature of the light clock, then the times measured by the light clock and the normal clock should be different. But they won't be. Time dilation (which is what this thought experiment leads us to) has been observed in countless particle accelerator experiments.
So, since we reached the same solution from both the Minkowski spacetime equation and the light clock thought experiment, it is very fair to assume that the arbitrary velocity c we used in the Minkowski equation must be the speed of light and therefore if we were to travel faster than light we'd end up travelling into the past.
Phew, nice bit of relativity recap for me, was fun. Hopefully it went some way to answering your question.
If we have the technology and found relatively primitive life, what would our natural curiosity dictate?
Put them in a zoo! Exploit their world for minerals! Cheap labour!
Breed them for meat. That's humanity's main interaction with animals.
Nah. Our first and most important connection to animals was when we began domesticating wolves into dogs. Still exploitation, but much more subtle and mutually beneficial than meat farms.
In the US, a very dog-friendly country, there are about 90 million dogs, but about 9 billion chicken are slaughtered each year. On a global scale, dogs (and other pets) are a tiny fraction of animals raised by humans.
If you are only interested in quantity and not quality of the relationship. Humans interact as minimally as possible for consumption purposes with chickens. Humans interact with dogs in a multitude of ways for a myriad reasons. In the context of "why would aliens interact with humans", clearly "to eat them" is the least likely or interesting answer.
I'll stick this in a spoiler so I don't subject people to special relativity unless they want to be
Spoiler:
It comes down to how distance in spacetime is measured. Special Relativity showed us that the distance we travel through space depends on the reference frame of an observer and that the same goes for time. However the distance we travel through combined spacetime is the same for all observers. Spacetime distance is what is called an invariant, which means that no matter the frame of reference it will always be the same.
Distance in Minkowski spacetime (so we're ignoring general relativity effects) is calculated using the equation (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (x)^2 - (y)^2 - (z)^2 where the s^2 represents spacetime distance, c is an arbitrary universal constant velocity which allows us to have a value for time in the same units as space, t is the observed time of travel, and x, y and z are the observed spacial travel. So different observers can measure different values of t, x, y and z but when they put them into that equation, they will all get the same value of s.
We should also look at spacetime diagrams and the
Now, we know that distance travelled in space is equal to velocity (v) multiplied by time (t), so we can replace the spacial distances with vt. We can also pick a reference frame where all the motion is in one direction, eliminating the other two spacial components.
So now we have (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (vt)^2. Lets say that our spaceship can travel at twice the speed of our arbitrary universal velocity (v=2c). this gives us (s)^2 = (ct)^2 - (2ct)^2. Lets expand out those brackets, resulting in s^2 = (ct)^2 - 4(ct)^2 = -3(ct)^2. Oh dear, our spacetime distance is negative. This means we have moved backwards in spacetime from our starting point from the reference frame of every observer. This means we have moved into our own past. If we wanted we could travel far enough and kill our own grandfather before we were born, which is clearly a violation of causality (the cause of an event must happen before the effect, in the kill your own grandfather scenario we can have the effect, grandfather killed by grandchild, happen before the cause, grandson is born and develops time machine). So this arbitrary velocity we picked must also be a cosmic speed limit in order to prevent time travel to the past, which creates paradoxes.
For another example, we start on earth in a rocket which travels at less than our arbitrary velocity. Our friend pushes a big red button and launches us on our way to the space station Chronos orbiting Alpha Centauri. When we get there we write a note and hand it over to a delivery service which puts it on a rocket which travels faster than our cosmic speed limit. As that ship is travelling backwards in spacetime, it can reach earth before we left and hand over our note to our friend, who reads it and doesn't push the big red button.
At this point we haven't specified that the arbitrary velocity we've been using is the speed of light, but that literally falls out on its own if we create a simple experiment to get some numbers and then compare the results to the outcome of the light clock thought experiment.
So lets do that. We're sitting on a train travelling at velocity v in the x direction, as observed by our friend sitting on a hill. We sit on this train for a time t, as measured by our watch, before getting off. From our reference frame of inside the train, we can perfectly validly say that we aren't moving, the rest of the universe is. So in our reference frame the spacial distance is zero and the time was t, so our spacetime distance is s^2 = (ct)^2.
Our friend on the hill thinks that he's stationary and the train is moving and he times our journey with his watch, giving our journey time of T. So his measurement of our spacetime distance is s^2 = (cT)^2 - (vT)^2. As spacetime distance is invariant these two measurements must be equal to each other. Setting them equal and doing some rearranging nets us T = ct / sqrt(c^2 - v^2) which we can further tinker with to get T = t / sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2).
Let's say y = 1/sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2), giving us a nice and pretty T = yt. This came directly out of spacetime distance with an arbitrary value for c.
At this point lets switch over to our Einstein light clock thought experiment. In this example we have a clock that operates by bouncing a photon vertically between two plates.. We are again sitting on our train, travelling at velocity v, but this time we're timing our journey using our cool light clock. Our friend is again sitting on his hill, and he is also looking at the light clock.
Einstein's special relativity came from two postulates, the first being that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames and the second being that there is no universal at-rest reference frame from which you can measure all motion relative to. The first comes from Maxwells field equations which, when combining the electric and magnetic field equations, produced an equation for an electromagnetic wave with a velocity independent of motion of reference frame, i.e light. The latter disallows a means of measuring absolute motion (i.e being able to say you are moving without having to specify what you are moving relative to) and was supported by the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment when they failed to detect the luminiferous aether, which would have been a universal reference frame.
From our point of view on the train, the photon just goes up and down. Like how when you're on a moving (but not accelerating) vehicle, if you throw an object up into the air it comes straight back down into your hand rather than ending up hitting the back wall. From the point of view of our friend, however, the light is not travelling straight up and down, but rather at an angle as it has to hit the plate which has moved slightly from when it left the other plate, as seen here:
So, from the point of view of our friend, the clock is taking longer for each tick compared to your measurements as the light is having to travel further but cannot travel faster to compensate as the speed of light is constant.
Doing some pythagoras and rearranging, you once again end up with the time measured by your friend (T) being equal to the time measured by you on the train (t) multiplied by our factor y, but this time the c in that factor is not arbitrary but has to be the speed of light.
Now, at this point some people try to argue against the light clock experiment by saying it can't be used as the light clock is a fabrication just to make the maths easier. So now we're going to have you sit be a very intelligent chameleon with knowledge of special relativity and have one eye on the light clock and one eye on a normal clock. If the discrepancies in the two observed times are due to the unreal nature of the light clock, then the times measured by the light clock and the normal clock should be different. But they won't be. Time dilation (which is what this thought experiment leads us to) has been observed in countless particle accelerator experiments.
So, since we reached the same solution from both the Minkowski spacetime equation and the light clock thought experiment, it is very fair to assume that the arbitrary velocity c we used in the Minkowski equation must be the speed of light and therefore if we were to travel faster than light we'd end up travelling into the past.
Phew, nice bit of relativity recap for me, was fun. Hopefully it went some way to answering your question.
Thanks for the time you spent on that, it's helped a bit. The mathematics involved I'll admit is a bit beyond me but I'm more than happy to trust you on that!
Supreme UFO Commander Brart: Okay guys, this is our thirty second exercise in this forgotten backwater, so I hope everyone knows what to do.
General Assembly: *Affirmative murmer*
Grazt: Hee hee hee!
Brart: Nargle, you're on Cattle Mutilation duty again.
Nargle: Cattle mutilation? Again? Can't somebody else do it this time?
Brart: No one else on this team has your experience in Cattle Mutilation.
Nargle: That's because no one else ever gets stuck with Cattle Mutilation!
Brart: Be that as it may, you're still the one with the experience, so the job falls to you.
Brart: Next, Grazt...
Grazt: Hee hee hee!
Brart: Grazt, you are officially off Anal Probe duty.
Grazt: Off?! But
Brart: Grazt, we do not need more paternity issues over 'accidentally' impregnating these Earthlings.
Grazt: There's no proof it was me! The Earthling could have been inseminated by one of its own kind!
Brart: Grazt... Human males do not normally get pregnant.
Grazt: Oh.
Brart: Barney...
Barney: Yo!
Brart: Barney, you are in charge of making sure there are plenty of weather balloons and St. Elmo's fire in the area.
Barney: Baaaalllloooons! Brart: Yes Barney, balloons. They're all yours.
Brart: Now, everyone, let's move out!
If we have the technology and found relatively primitive life, what would our natural curiosity dictate?
And remember, our innate curiosity and wanderlust is a major factor in how we came even this far. We didn't just explore our world (many migratory species do this), but sought to understand how it works. The rest comes from that.
Yeah, I find the argument that alien species would leave us alone out of disinterest extremely unconvincing. While we can't assume other species would be the same as us, at the same time we are the only intelligent species we know of and we're defined by our curiosity, particularly of other life. Hell, we speculate endlessly about the mere possibility of meeting alien life, if we ever find it we're very unlikely to just leave it alone. As such, while we can't assume other species will be as curious as us, assuming the exact opposite seems particularly wrong headed.
The reason I find reported alien sightings particularly unconvincing is that from an alien point of view they make absolutely no sense. First we have to accept the aliens travel this far but don't actually want to talk to us, this is an assumption but not an implausible one, so we'll work with it. But if the aliens just want to observe us, you'd think they'd do that as best they could without being seen by us. At which point we have to note that according to the theory behind ufos, the alien's method for observing us involves flying down to a height where they are visible to the human eye and then buzzing around doing impossible aerodynamics with all their ship lights turned on. It's fething stupid, to be perfectly honest. It requires us to believe that aliens can travel faster than the speed of light but have nothing to match our satellite imaging.
One aspect of UFO's rarely mentioned is that over time the appearance of possible 'alien craft' has changed in accordance with mankind's level of technological sophistication. In the 19th century UFO's appeared as slow moving and balloon-like. Later, hovering saucers became prevalent, and later still triangles and other shapes that moved at higher and higher speeds became the norm.
Why would aliens change their appearance for our sake?
Aliens just don't understand our way of life, so they ignore us...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."
Sebster, I think you are assuming all the aliens would be of uniform purpose, capability and, for lack of a better word, professionalism. Why assume they are the opposite of humanity in that regard?
amanita wrote: One aspect of UFO's rarely mentioned is that over time the appearance of possible 'alien craft' has changed in accordance with mankind's level of technological sophistication. In the 19th century UFO's appeared as slow moving and balloon-like. Later, hovering saucers became prevalent, and later still triangles and other shapes that moved at higher and higher speeds became the norm.
Why would aliens change their appearance for our sake?
That's simply not true. Cigar shaped craft, disks and balls of light have been recorded all through the history of UFO sightings. If you look at ancient accounts of objects in the sky, you see similar varieties of shapes. However, people have always recorded events in accord with their understanding of the universe. Shields in the sky? Airships? Hovering saucers? Soundless triangles? It seems like people rationalize what they see using what they already know, and popular culture fixates on the particular shape of craft most interesting or easily grasped at the time. Whether these are alien ships or mundane weather phenomena, they have always defied one simple description.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sebster, I think you are assuming all the aliens would be of uniform purpose, capability and, for lack of a better word, professionalism. Why assume they are the opposite of humanity in that regard?
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Yeah, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if our first contact with alien life is with a Teaser.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sebster, I think you are assuming all the aliens would be of uniform purpose, capability and, for lack of a better word, professionalism. Why assume they are the opposite of humanity in that regard?
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Yeah, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if our first contact with alien life is with a Teaser.
this is by far the most convincing argument in favor of aliens having visited earth to me
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sebster, I think you are assuming all the aliens would be of uniform purpose, capability and, for lack of a better word, professionalism. Why assume they are the opposite of humanity in that regard?
I'm not assuming anything of the sort. I am assuming that a species that was capable of interstellar travel that wanted to observe humanity without detection would have the ability to do it from a distance well beyond human detection, certainly well beyond human visual range. That they wouldn't need to fly in to the atmosphere and then zip about doing impossible tricks while they had their lights turned on.
This one is local to me, and keeps popping up on my FB:
Gateshead Council
We are aware that certain individuals are frightening local people with false stories about the street lights in Gateshead – despite the fact we, and others, have told them repeatedly that their allegations are entirely false.
For your reassurance, we’d like to set the record straight.
• Gateshead Council DOES NOT use 5G technology in any of its street lights, or in any other capacity. It has never done so.
• The street lights in Gateshead will not give you cancer.
• The street lights will not induce miscarriages in pregnant women, or cause insomnia, or nosebleeds, and they are not killing all the birds and insects.
• Gateshead Council is NOT carrying out secret government trials in 5G technology via our street lights.
We don’t know how these conspiracy stories start, but we are happy to report that this is exactly what these are. These tales are completely untrue and you should ignore them.
Please be assured that there is no scientific basis or credible evidence for any of these scare stories about street lights causing cancer and other illnesses. We’ve taken advice from Public Health England who reviewed guidance issued by the World Health Organisation, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation and others, and they have confirmed that there is no risk.
We ask you to share this information with your friends and neighbours as we understand that some residents have been badly frightened by these tales, and the more people who understand that they are completely false, the better.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sebster, I think you are assuming all the aliens would be of uniform purpose, capability and, for lack of a better word, professionalism. Why assume they are the opposite of humanity in that regard?
I'm not assuming anything of the sort. I am assuming that a species that was capable of interstellar travel that wanted to observe humanity without detection would have the ability to do it from a distance well beyond human detection, certainly well beyond human visual range. That they wouldn't need to fly in to the atmosphere and then zip about doing impossible tricks while they had their lights turned on.
You just assumed they wanted to observe humanity without detection. That's your assumption. Maybe not all of them care about avoiding detection. Perhaps they are gauging humanity's reactions to specific levels of detectable interference. Perhaps they like playing mind games. Perhaps some of them are just bad at their jobs or have grown apathetic. If they do have the ability to alter or remove memories, perhaps that has bred a certain overconfidence or contempt for the painstaking details necessary for absolute stealth. Some believers report seeing inter factional conflict among the aliens, so there may even be an element of sabotage across parties. It's like Maskirovka times a million.
And if they are performing medical experiments, they can't do all their research from orbit.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: You just assumed they wanted to observe humanity without detection. That's your assumption. Maybe not all of them care about avoiding detection. Perhaps they are gauging humanity's reactions to specific levels of detectable interference. Perhaps they like playing mind games. Perhaps some of them are just bad at their jobs or have grown apathetic. If they do have the ability to alter or remove memories, perhaps that has bred a certain overconfidence or contempt for the painstaking details necessary for absolute stealth. Some believers report seeing inter factional conflict among the aliens, so there may even be an element of sabotage across parties. It's like Maskirovka times a million.
And if they are performing medical experiments, they can't do all their research from orbit.
Yeah, so maybe the aliens don't want to make contact, but do want to make their presence suspected to a small number of humans by flying about the sky doing weird stuff.
I mean sure, if you want to claim that's a plausible option, run with it.
There's a difference between not wanting to make direct contact and meticulously covering all of your tracks. I'm pretty sure the polar bears who get tagged know humans exist even though no one has contacted them and researchers try to minimalize any disturbance.
There is a unnamed world conspiracy to decrease the number of people. The visible part is called "Ecologists". Their goal is not the preservation of nature, but the destruction of people. This is a very influential group that controls almost all world governments with help of globalism and use dominance of the US state, which is controlled by them after the 1960s. According to their plan, Africa was to be destroyed by viruses, wars and famine. Ebola and AIDS are artificially created weapons against people. However, the plan did not work and the population still grows though it is sick, it is fighting and is undernourished. They want to plunge Arabs into chaos, so that they themselves destroy their states and then deprive them of water, electricity and other things. Europe is destroyed demographically and culturally. To make the management of the world more centralized, it is also planned to economically destroy Europe (especially the western part). For this, crowds of "refugees" were introduced there. These "refugees" are healthy young men, some of whom have combat experience. They are fighters of the future civil war in Europe, which will break its economic independence. As it was after the second world. Even the US according to their plan will be destroyed. And the process is already underway. This confuses me and I can not say "it's the Americans that destroy the world." Conspirators do not have human morals, or they are not people at all.
That is such laughable garbage that anybody who believes it should be sectioned for their own good as they demonstrate a complete detachment with reality.
Freakazoitt wrote: There is a unnamed world conspiracy to decrease the number of people. The visible part is called "Ecologists". Their goal is not the preservation of nature, but the destruction of people. This is a very influential group that controls almost all world governments with help of globalism and use dominance of the US state, which is controlled by them after the 1960s. According to their plan, Africa was to be destroyed by viruses, wars and famine. Ebola and AIDS are artificially created weapons against people. However, the plan did not work and the population still grows though it is sick, it is fighting and is undernourished. They want to plunge Arabs into chaos, so that they themselves destroy their states and then deprive them of water, electricity and other things. Europe is destroyed demographically and culturally. To make the management of the world more centralized, it is also planned to economically destroy Europe (especially the western part). For this, crowds of "refugees" were introduced there. These "refugees" are healthy young men, some of whom have combat experience. They are fighters of the future civil war in Europe, which will break its economic independence. As it was after the second world. Even the US according to their plan will be destroyed. And the process is already underway. This confuses me and I can not say "it's the Americans that destroy the world." Conspirators do not have human morals, or they are not people at all.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There's a difference between not wanting to make direct contact and meticulously covering all of your tracks. I'm pretty sure the polar bears who get tagged know humans exist even though no one has contacted them and researchers try to minimalize any disturbance.
Sure, and in that sense the abductions become, if not believable then at least coherent as a story. But we're talking about strange objects in the sky whizzing about doing stuff that's obviously impossible for human planes, while the lights are turned on. I mean, you don't have to reach the point of 'meticulously covering all your tracks' to just turn the lights off.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There's a difference between not wanting to make direct contact and meticulously covering all of your tracks. I'm pretty sure the polar bears who get tagged know humans exist even though no one has contacted them and researchers try to minimalize any disturbance.
Sure, and in that sense the abductions become, if not believable then at least coherent as a story. But we're talking about strange objects in the sky whizzing about doing stuff that's obviously impossible for human planes, while the lights are turned on. I mean, you don't have to reach the point of 'meticulously covering all your tracks' to just turn the lights off.
It would be pretty funny if most of those were examples of a natural phenomenon and then 2% were alien craft stealthily disguising themselves as that natural phenomenon.
Considering there are accounts of what human observers believed to be a skirmish between factions of UFOs, it's not unreasonable to wonder if all of them even give a crap if humans see them. Perhaps the abductors are not riding around with the flashing lights crew.
The tagged polar bear might wonder why the guys drilling for ice samples aren't behaving the same way the polar bear researchers do.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: It would be pretty funny if most of those were examples of a natural phenomenon and then 2% were alien craft stealthily disguising themselves as that natural phenomenon.
The aliens have assumed we're smart enough to have figured out the natural phenomena behind those, and think we'll assume their alien spaceships are that same phenomena. But our scientific ignorance means we're on to those aliens. That's actually pretty good
Huge difference between believing the moon is a hologram and simply believing that people in power will do bad things or let bad things happen for money/control.
I heard once that CIA invented the term as a derogatory, while this may not be true, it certainly works as one seeing as how people use it to conflate ridiculous claims with plausible ones.
Darling wrote: Huge difference between believing the moon is a hologram and simply believing that people in power will do bad things or let bad things happen for money/control.
I heard once that CIA invented the term as a derogatory, while this may not be true, it certainly works as one seeing as how people use it to conflate ridiculous claims with plausible ones.
I have heard that too, but I wonder if the "CIA invented the term conspiracy theory" is itself a conspiracy theory!
Also, the difference between 'ridiculous' and 'plausible' is subjective and will depend on who you are talking to.
The problem with conspiracy theories is that they general psychologically unhealthy thought patterns and can result in increased paranoia and eventually to pretty antisocial behaviour. I think the widescale propagation of conspiracy theories does real harm to society to be honest.
Edit: My mother is pretty bad for this, sadly. It doesn't help that through chance in her life, she's actually seen some actual conspiracies happen - one was the locking up of her aunt in a laundry back in Ireland back in the day, and another was your run of the mill local corruption over land. She's incredibly suspicious of authority due to this.
Darling wrote: Huge difference between believing the moon is a hologram and simply believing that people in power will do bad things or let bad things happen for money/control.
I heard once that CIA invented the term as a derogatory, while this may not be true, it certainly works as one seeing as how people use it to conflate ridiculous claims with plausible ones.
I have heard that too, but I wonder if the "CIA invented the term conspiracy theory" is itself a conspiracy theory!
Also, the difference between 'ridiculous' and 'plausible' is subjective and will depend on who you are talking to.
Ah well there you have it. Still though, the word is definitely used as a derogatory in modern times.
"general psychologically unhealthy thought patterns and can result in increased paranoia and eventually to pretty antisocial behavior."
I'm not so sure about this though, I'd be interested to see a study. Seems to me like the video game issue IE Do games make people violent or were they violent before the game came along. In other words, are we talking about a bad influence objectively/a bad influence in its specific application (one game(Conspiracy Theory) vs. another) or certain people shouldn't be participating because of pre-existing mental conditions?
Sort-of-a-kinda-thing.
The Flat-Earthers apparently believe that the reason no one falls off the edge of the world is because of the 'Pac-Man effect'. In short, the world is a virtual reality with a wraparound screen.
Vulcan wrote: The Flat-Earthers apparently believe that the reason no one falls off the edge of the world is because of the 'Pac-Man effect'. In short, the world is a virtual reality with a wraparound screen.
Sure, whatever gets you through the day...
So, is the earth flat or are we in a virtual simulation? I am so confused right now.
Vulcan wrote: The Flat-Earthers apparently believe that the reason no one falls off the edge of the world is because of the 'Pac-Man effect'. In short, the world is a virtual reality with a wraparound screen.
Sure, whatever gets you through the day...
And to achieve that effect, the computer simulators found the easiest way was to build their virtual simulation as a globe.
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