Crop Circles

[Anthony G Williams]

Originally Posted by JunkMonkey

Almost every single unexplained event that has occurred could be attributable to a small pink elephant called Geraldo.

What an amazing coincidence! I've suspected that for a long time...

[J Riff]

Now you're talking.
Aliens moving rocks for people is not on the menu, never was.
Disinformation. SB posts some great ones. The little saucer pops out and shoots down the missile. It looks pretty good, but I know it's fake, and not from analyzing it.
Those guys are on TV, they can't tell the truth, and I remember that vid being done, it is a deliberate hoax. Still, it does tend to get people used to the concept of UFOs as a possible reality, as do crop circles.
Last point - anybody stop to think how bloody insidiously poisonously dangerous aliens could be? Just because you saw it in a movie doesn't mean it isn't true, or something weirder is. I would tend to worry about that part of the UFO issue, if anything. Otherwise, why bother at all with silly UFOlogy, SF is much more interesting and variegated.
Meanwhile, the highest level of security ever imposed on any subject remains in position, worldwide. I really hate that. Get us out of here, Scotty!

[Moonbat]

Almost every single unexplained event that has occurred could be attributable to a small pink elephant called Geraldo.

Hmmm, as terrestrial elephants are large and grey could it be said that Geraldo is an alien.

[HareBrain]

Originally Posted by JunkMonkey

Why? Why would they have taken more than seven people? If you had ever worked on any physical job for any length of time I doubt if you would have said that. Go to work on building sites for a few years and just see how much work a human being can do in a couple of hours when they put their mind to it. (Preferably a small scale local builders without lots of machinery to do all the work.) Just look at the canal network in the UK, and all the railway lines and dams the Victorian built - made for the most part by men with hand tools. By comparison, flattening a field of defenceless barley is a doddle.

Well, doubt away, but I did do physical work for a few years (conservation/forestry), and I did say that. But I wasn't talking about the amount of physical work so much as the accuracy of those complex designs and the degree of surveying and mapping out, all done at night. I'm sure we're all glad the Victorian surveyors didn't do all their work in twenty minutes before getting started on the railway network.

I don't doubt (unless someone comes up with convincing evidence otherwise) that people were responsible for crop circles (or indeed the railway network) but I'd be surprised if less than seven people could make those designs, to that accuracy, in the dark, in a few hours. But whether it was three or ten I guess doesn't really matter: Anthony provided a good enough reason why Skeptical's seven-person "conspiracy failure" assumption wouldn't apply, which was the only point I was making.

[RJM Corbet]

Yes I don't think the 'conspiracy of 7' is too convincing applied to 'the mob'. C'mon skeptical, haven't you followed 'The Soprano's'?

But demands for evidence can also stretch science too far, as it's doing with 'string theory' -- the strings are just too tiny, but the mathematics is sound. Some events have to be accepted 'beyond reasonable doubt' or 'in all probability' -- as sometimes that's the best evidence we're ever going to get?

EDIT: Riff, when you're talking about crop-circles, you can't talk about a cover-up at the same time. The whole thing about them is that they're immune to cover-up, which may be one thing that works in their favour, if it's true that the stalks are (sometimes) strangely bent and that there are oddities in the soil. But these are both things that science can examine ...

[Anthony G Williams]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

But demands for 'evidence' can also stretch science too far, as it's doing with 'string theory' -- the 'strings' are just too tiny, but the mathematics is sound. Some events have to be accepted 'beyond reasonable doubt' or 'in all probability' -- as sometimes that's the best 'evidence' we're ever going to get?

Yes, that's true, but we still have to look at the nature of the evidence.

If a theory is consistent with the mathematics, then it's worth taking seriously. If it is consistent with the mathematics and is the only theory which accounts for observed phenomena, then it's worth adopting as the principal theory, for the time being, until stronger contradictory evidence comes along.

There's a lot of activity going on in cosmology and astrophysics at the moment which is consistent with the mathematics (so I'm assured by mathematicians - I wouldn't be able to judge) but which does not appear to account for all observed phenomena. So it's a pretty open field with all sorts of rival theories battling it out. No doubt the number of theories will be gradually whittled down as the CERN LHC gets up to speed and other discoveries are made.

Coming back to crop circles, there is just one theory for their formation which is consistent with the evidence and complies with known science. That is, that people have made them for fun. Furthermore, this is testable because people have demonstrated their ability to make such circles on demand. Any other "theories" are based on wild suppositions about aliens for which there is no verified evidence at all. So it's a bit of a no-brainer really; a very easy cut for Occam's razor.

[Dave]

I'm getting tired of some of this nonsense.

Originally Posted by J Riff

Go to the NASA board if you want a real argument, or a UFO board. I speak in here because, bion, it's more fun than the NASA geeks, who are forced to grind their teeth a lot. In here, we have open minds and SF concepts galore, so that if 'disclosure' happens, everyone should be able to deal with it to some degree.

J Riff, the only reason you are here is because your threads on the other boards have been closed. And unless you provide some proof of the wild and outrageous things you keep promoting as facts, I'll close down these too.

Originally Posted by J Riff

They may check into his past, but often not. He is not lying or hallucinating, and there is no motive for such.

Why should people lie? What motive might they have? That's a little rich considering what you claim in previous posts in this thread, but I'll answer that anyway. They are attention-seeking and they crave publicity and look-at-me-mama-I'm-on-top-of-the world notoriety.

Why else would someone do this:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1...1#.TgjdA2GkOSo

or this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2994946.ece

or this:
http://books.usatoday.com/book/mark-...r-suit/r172688

Of course people lie, and we even enjoy it up to a point. “A world without lies would be a terrible world[...] A world without lies would be a world without fiction,” said Ricky Gervais at the premiere of The Invention of Lying.

[skeptical]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

Yes I don't think the 'conspiracy of 7' is too convincing applied to 'the mob'. C'mon skeptical, haven't you followed 'The Soprano's'?

I should explain about the "magic number" seven.

It is an average. It was estimated by researchers working on historical conspiracies. It refers to the number of people in a conspiracy before the odds of betrayal reach 50%.

Of course, this is wildly variable. You could get a conspiracy of 2 which is immediately betrayed, or another of 20 which remains tight. However, when someone talks of hundreds of conspirators keeping a secret, you know immediately it is bulldust.

[Metryq]

The Sopranos was also fiction. It proves nothing. However, I recall plenty of characters getting rubbed out for betraying.

[J Riff]

I have never once had a thread closed, here or on the NASA board... or anywhere worth mentioning. The NASA board, in fact, put up a great show, very intellectual, then announced that my personal issues were 'beyond the scope of the board.' Fine, we knew that.
I left there deliberately, and went back only this week. Tons of conspiracy/UFO/Mars threads are closed, so someone has been acting up, but taint me.
I truly, sincerely and humbly do not give a bleep who believes what.
My advice to you all would be to believe astronaut Cooper. He has an official identity, and without that apparently this discussion cannot procede.
Beautiful setup, absolutely bulletproof, like going through a vegetable chopper.
Only people without official identities do the really dangerous stuff.
Therefore the truth can never be proven. Neat.
Obviously, you would start there in any such operation, correct?
You tell me how to beat it. Dave, you have the goods, you know the truth, but have no physical proof. Can ypou possibly get it out? Will they come after you?
That's why this subject gets closed in various places - it is a truly heavyweight issue, a monster.
I've had enough, but have to add that this place fares better than the official types, who tend to lack imagination.
THE END.

I'm in here because I'm a SF writer, that's the most fun I have these days, so for me this UFO issue is dead, I'm not losing sleep or SF over it. I'm lurking on the NASA board again so, like the giant spider on Phobos, who is a fine, absolutely terrific alien being.

[Dave]

Just Google "J Riff Conspiracy".

[mosaix]

J Riff, I'm almost given up on threads like these - I get frustrated with belief systems of all kinds. At the risk of going off topic (and I wouldn't mind in the least if a mod wanted to delete this post) could I ask a question?

Have you ever been presented with a conspiracy theory that you didn't believe? And, if so, why?

[J Riff]

Hee hee. Well, the program is over and here's my final word on the subject: Alien contact, which did occur, is the greatest thing that has ever happened!

Ghosts? Other dimensions. Those are things that we aren't able to understand, I don't know if anyone can. I have no information along those lines whatsoever.
The physical realm is going to be easy, for advanced beings.
Like everyone always knew, it becomes a spiritual quest with apparently no limitations. Are human brains even able to encompass such?
The big questions remain. Aliens are not able to answer the question of God any more than we are.

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by mosaix

J Riff, I'm almost given up on threads like these - I get frustrated with belief systems of all kinds. At the risk of going off topic (and I wouldn't mind in the least if a mod wanted to delete this post) could I ask a question?

Have you ever been presented with a conspiracy theory that you didn't believe? And, if so, why?

Sorry mosaix, but does that mean you only believe what has been been proved by experiment, or by deduction?

Those are two different things?

The greatest scientists on earth 'believe' (by deduction) that 96% of the universe is dark matter/energy which would account for the extra gravity in the universe, so they can't see it or measure it in any way except that something must be there, to make the equations balance.

And yet the 'physics model' rejects 'string theory' as a 'philosophy' because it can't be proved by physical experiment, simply because the apparatus to measure it does not exist, although the Large Hadron Collider might help string-theory gain some credibility with 'real' physics.

So even physics is not that different from being a religion, when you think about it.

Biology and chemistry can work by direct experiment, but even biology has to make assumptions about 'life'.

So you can't always demand direct physical proof of everything ...

[Dave]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

Sorry mosaix, but does that mean you only believe what has been been proved by experiment, or by deduction?

Those are two different things?

They certainly are, they are the difference between a theory and a hypothesis.

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

...they can't see it or measure it in any way except that something must be there, to make the equations balance.

The equation has been tested in other ways, and proven, but yes, direct physical proof is still demanded.

That has nothing to do with Crop Circles. If you have an equation that proves that aliens made crop circles can you produce it please?

As for deduction, you appear to be deducing in a reverse-Sherlock Holmes manner: You have already eliminated the improbable (students and young farmers) and so you must believe the impossible that remains (aliens.)