After dumping a "bowing out without comment" into the thread, Lionel has instead decided to belatedly pinch a false dichotomy off. Still, I suppose engaging in logical fallacies is preferable to their usual outright dishonesty. Maybe next year they may yet rise to rank of "poster of a comment worth reading", it's important to have aspirations. Luckily I'm on the ignore list of the usual suspects so I'm 100% safe from blowback for that comment, which some might say was inflammatory. Lionel will just have to gnash their teeth when they furtively 'unhide' the post to check out my latest pearls of wisdom.
Luckily, I'm ignore too. So my quoting you here will not expose you to their killer-rebuttals.
Anyway, unlike Lionel's morose assessment earlier, this thread has been an enjoyable ride all year. Conspiracists turn up, they squirm under scrutiny, they get flustered and leave, vowing never to return (until later that day). Guys, if you'd just try honesty as a policy, you'd get a lot more out of life. Endlessly scrutinising your own posting history so you don't contradict yourself is going to make anything a chore. And special shoutout to Bobber, Thanks - don't outright lie about things your interlocuters have posted! It's all there for everyone to read, you silly goose! It's tough to be a kid on the internet, but you'll learn.
If I contradict myself, it is either because I was unsure of my original position, or I have learned something. 'Learning something' is surely nothing to fear and should be embraced. Alas, it does not seem to work this way with belief systems. Any deviance is something to fear, especially if it is foundational, as the whole belief structure in liable to collapse.
In summary, I'd like to thank Alan_X for engaging seriously with the inanity so nobody else had to, and of course my good pal Jiminy 'Jilikers' Cricket for picking up the slack when I wasn't available to disabuse fools of their foolishness. Not that they ever listened! Too many others to thank, but I think an award for all of us is in order for managing to retain a sense of reality, even when half the world seems to be giving up on it.
I have stated - a couple of times, I think - that Alan_X must have the patience of saint. His dissections of the 'evidence' presented should be devastating, and is for any rational reader. Whereas, I neither have the detailed knowledge of the subject, nor the patience to tackle it in such detail.
Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to step back and consider that they need to turn 'finding evidence in support their beliefs' on its head. They are being grifted; they are exploited. I've written this several times: it is a belief system, even a cult. The test would be for them to question any of their foundational beliefs in a 'friendly setting' and see how the other inductees react. The Guardian article I linked a few weeks ago details the likely reaction:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/04/escape-from-the-rabbit-hole-the-conspiracy-theorist-who-abandoned-his-dangerous-beliefsI enjoyed your limited run of short stories a few pages back. Maybe if the cultists return next year, it will inspire you to pen a second series. But some do not understand that ridicule of ridiculous claims is a valid reaction.
So let's all come together, sing kumbaya and hope that 2024 sees undisputable proof of UFOs, aliens and whatnot. Our resident space cadets could do with a win after this year's slings and arrows.
The thing is, I doubt any of us here would be unhappy to discover irrefutable evidence for alien life (unless they are malevolent and local). But there is not even tantalising evidence for any alien life anywhere. Whereas, believers are in love with the idea of intelligent alien life. If the universe is of infinite size, then logic dictates there must be infinate amount of alien life and even an infinite number of intelligent civilisations out there (but this does not mean they are cosmically local and detectable). If the universe is finite, and since we do not know enough about abiogenesis, we cannot even create reasonable estimates of probability for alien life. And that's about all we can say about the existence of (intelligent) alien life. But perhaps the believers grew up with Star Trek (or Star Wars, etc.) and failed to understand in their formative years that these are works of fiction. If, however, they formed these unshakeable beliefs in adulthood, that's cultic in my book.
Unfortunately, for some, whenever presented with something which is not immediately explainable to them through ordinary phenomena, they will jump to 'alien'. And when the ordinary phenomena is explained to them (by Alan), it is too late - their belief system has already absorbed it. And woe betide if ever something occurs which has everyone scratching their heads, because then, this will be proof positive of 'aliens' rather than something which is purely unexplained.
I hope Lionel and the others return. But is it really too much to ask that they step back from their ready-formed conclusions and examine the 'evidence' dispassionately and rationally!? (Yeah, it is probably is asking too much).
