"There's an old saying; just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you. I have my own variation: just because you're insane that doesn't mean that things aren't slipping in unnoticed through dimensional gateways..." ~ Christopher Knowles (h/t to The Daily Grail for quote.)



Saturday, November 12, 2011

New JREF Thread: "Time to junk the term "UFO"? "

New thread showcasing the skeptic penchant for getting tweaky over semantics; this time it's a call to arms regarding UFOs: Time to junk the term "UFO"? OP "Gawdzilla" writes:
I propose we use the NYIO instead of UFO. "Not Yet Identified Objects" is more accurate, I believe. We could also use IBIASFO?
NYIO? How do you pronounce that anyway? Parsing something skeptics and debunkers don't believe in anyway -- like the elevenity-million Bigfoot threads they have over there -- is an amusing mystery. To be fair, there have been the occasional calls to change UFO to something else (like UAP: unidentified aerial phenomena) by some UFO researchers. That too seems silly to me for a lot of reasons but we're talking about skeptoids so I'll move on.

Whether that thing in the sky is called a UFO, "NYIO", UAP, or whatever, it's still something unknown. Sweet baby basil Jesus, it's a UFO, get over it. If it turns out to be a blimp, Venus or military craft, fine. Until then, it remains a mystery. Interpretations, one being the assumption that "It has to be alien since we don't have that technology" will continue whether the UFO is now called a UAP or "NYIO" or whatever sporty combination of letters you want to throw together.

There's the disingenuous dishonest meme put out by skeptibunnies that "UFO means "alien spaceship" and the two ideas are interchangeable. This skeptic guerrilla tactic is repeated in the current thread. It's true that some, as I pointed out, believe that we don't have the technology for some of what's seen up there, and so, it has to be aliens. But not all believe that. And here's what's being missed by most all skeptics, as well as some within UFOlogy: some of those high tech and strange almost eerie UFOs may not be alien, which means they're ours. Human made. If so, that is still extremely intriguing and brings up many important questions. For example:
  • Which governments are involved? Is it just ours, or in partnership with others?
  • If so, why?
  • Who's paying for this? What's the taxpayer (that'd be us) role in this?
  • What's the purpose of this object?
  • How does the object affect the environment?
  • What's it doing, if anything, to us?
  • We see these objects and oftentimes, never see them again. Why?
  • Why are triangles still being seen, after all these decades? Wouldn't the time frame for figuring out the usefulness of the technology, and putting it into action, have passed long ago?
  • Are there rogue or shadow government agencies responsible? If so, that opens up an entirely new set of questions, including ones about accountability.
  • What of the partnership between government factions and private industry?
  • Authorities remain mum on these objects, yet the affects of the UFOs impact the citizenry. What other affects of the UFOs on citizens are there, and what are the agencies responsible doing with that data?
OP Gawdzilla and other posters use terms like "lunatics," "nuts," "people of the woo persuasion," "nutters," "Believers" (with a capital B), "creduloids," and "idiots" referring to those outside the cult of entrenched skepticism and anyone who holds the idea of ETs or EBEs as quite likely. To be expected, of course -- I'm not surprised.

3 comments:

Kandinsky said...

I remember Gawdzilla from ATS years back; he asked the same question then too. I thought he was hhmmmmmokay, but flogged the 'skeptic' thing a little too abrasively for most. I mean, who likes being accused of believing in 'space aliens' after being satisfied that some incidents remain unidentified?

I'm impressed by the mildness of most posts on the 1st page and how reasonable some are - particularly EHockling.

Another guy's suggestion of 'unidentified visual sighting' hasn't been thought through. 'Visual sighting?' Are there any sightings that aren't visual? What next? 'Tasty flavours?' or 'Aural sounds?'

UFO is here to stay no matter how many times self-claimed 'skeptics' seek to conflate the term with 'space aliens.' Of course, it's also here to stay no matter how many times others claim UFO = spaceship. :)

Bruce Duensing said...

I think the stereotyping of a binary catalog that divides the skeptic from the believer discounts the overlap that exists between the two.
It is a psuedo proposition that creates more entropy than understanding. It seems simplistic, childlike..I could lie about this and say yes, you are right, but then what? All this is cultural noise.

<b>Alfred Lehmberg</b> said...

From:
http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2006/12/apocalypto-revealed.html

"On the subject of this "avoidance" (some might say "denial") alluded to, it is similarly performed when some of these aforementioned pundits prefer a "UAP" to a "UFO", for example. The "UAP," another noise distracting from signal, illustrates a case in point.

"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" for "Unidentified Flying Object" is at root a coward's concept surreptitiously and fallaciously allowing for human 'singularity' in the vast universe... and ufological "plausible deniability..." in one swell foop!


Solid *objects* trump ephemeral *Phenomena*, you see? ...Can't have that!

Consider, a "UAP" is something that does not have to physically be there at all, in the first place, and if there in the second? Well, it can be written off easily as ball-lightning and sleep paralysis with all the other birds, bursts, bolides, boosters, and balloons! Hands washed!

A UFO, on the other hand, suggests something may actually be there (the *other*!), and _that_ idea must be discarded, with its acronym, as intellectually *scary*... aberrant and abhorrent, out of hand!

As a consequence of this strange cognitive dissonance too reluctant to allow for more than _one_ frog in a pretty vast pond? These already mentioned pundits faux-propitiously proclaim their strained hubris and, in an unbrave scientistic (sic) wallow, become irrelevant self-sustaining paradigms enthralled by their own insentience, prosecuting same in abstruse extremis... to our destruction. Chew that. LOL!