Everyday anomalies

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Magical Realist, Mar 20, 2023.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Your pathetic threats only end up getting you ignored here, not only by me but by other posters as well. Why do you think so many of your posts go unanswered here? Nobody wants to have a conversation with a bullying and rule-citing pedant. Just something for you as well as Dave to think about.
     
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    You're just inventing a reason for again refusing to respond to the substance of my previous post.

    Who do you think you're fooling, here?
     
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  5. foghorn Valued Senior Member

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    If this is faked, then I find it astonishing how this dog can remember his lines and timing.
     
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  7. foghorn Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing, it just goes on for another 431 pages (8,600 posts). Been here got the t-shirt.
     
  8. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't need an excuse to not respond to you. You give me plenty of reasons just in how you treat me. I'm your red-headed stepchild you keep chained in the attic.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2023
  9. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well there we go. Videos prove things are real.
    Welcome to SciFo!
     
  10. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    That's your generalization not mine. I said these 2 videos prove the bubble suspension phenomenon is real, and lacking any evidence of fakery, they do just that.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2023
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    They don't "prove" it. They may suggest it. Of course, if you don't look for any evidence of fakery you won't find it either.

    I'm more surprised that we are at the point of wondering about the behavior of bubbles.
     
  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    It does seem insignificant. But even the most tightly-woven sweater can unravel from a single loose thread.

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    Last edited: Mar 24, 2023
  13. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I thought the videos were cute if anything...

    However, I could also make a video and just give it a silly name:

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    Last edited: Mar 24, 2023
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Uh excuuuse me! Remember just a moment ago when you promised us that many of our "posts go unanswered here" And that "Nobody wants to have a conversation with a bullying and rule-citing pedant. Just something for you as well as Dave to think about."

    Don't just tease us with that and then take it away!

    I'm just having a conversation with other people - people who want to have a discussion. Now ignore this and move along!
     
  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't promise anything. I just stated a fact that you may want to consider. How you conduct yourself here has consequences whether intentional or not.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2023
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well it sure doesn't seem to stop you from hanging on my every word...
     
  17. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    It's worthwhile to me to correct your habitual attempts to distort my meanings.
     
  18. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Many things have explanations, but are the 'explanations' just speculative shots in the dark?

    As I've said repeatedly, I'm inclined to perceive everything that happens as mysterious and only imperfectly explained, if explained at all.

    Right. Or for that matter, the question of what science is and what it is doing when it (supposedly and with lots of fanfare) explains something. What are 'explanations'? What is being accomplished when somebody 'explains' something? How is whatever it is being done?

    Or what is the relationship between 'evidence', 'truth' and 'reality'? What's up with 'belief' and 'knowledge'? We hear a lot about those kind of things here on this board, and I think that we all intuit that they are vitally connected to each other somehow. But can anyone really 'explain' their relationship?

    Or linguistic meaning and reference. I say 'dog' and it's a sound I make with my mouth. Or I write 'dog' and it's some ink squiggles on a piece of paper. And there's that furry animal over there wagging its tail. So how does the sound (a Frenchman or a Spaniard would make different sounds) or the squiggles (same) connect to the actual physical animal?

    Those kind of as-yet unanswered questions (which have immediate implications (what is 'implication'?) in all of our thinking) are the primary 'everyday anomalies' to my way of thinking: Voids, gaps, holes, lacunas. They can be multiplied endlessly simply by asking 'Why?' to anything that initially seems obvious to us. It appears that when we get down to it, we don't really fully understand (what is 'understand'?) very much of anything. (And that will have implications down below.)

    I guess that kind of 'anomaly' occurs when something violates our expectations. The soap bubble to you, UFO's or cryptids (in the unknown animal species sense) to our so-called "skeptics". Something happening that seems to violate (A) what we expect to happen or (B) falls outside our beliefs about what can happen. In other words, an (A) anomaly violates our expectations but nevertheless can be assumed to be entirely consistent with our broader "understanding" of "reality". The (B) anomaly would seem to violate our more fundamental metaphysical beliefs about what is and isn't "fundamentally real".

    I think that anomalies in the first (A) sense obviously can and often do happen. What we expect to happen often isn't what actually happens. (Just ask any engineer.) This needn't suggest anything about whether these sort of anomalies (unexpected events) can be "scientifically explained" (whatever that means) or whether they contradict anything more fundamental.

    Anomalies in the much stronger (B) sense may or may not happen. Seen one way, some "skeptics" reaction to them just seems to reduce to 'If X is impossible, then X doesn't happen in reality' (which looks like it might be circular depending on how the words are defined). But the initial premise (X is impossible) would be a strong metaphysical belief that will be hard to justify.

    People try to escape that problem by reinterpreting (B) probabilistically. So science describes what has been perceived in the past to happen, so by induction we can expect the future to behave the same way. Hence something that violates the perceived order of nature (prior experience identified with the beliefs of science) will arguably be improbable by its nature. It won't exactly be impossible, so the possibility of it happening remains. But it will be so unlikely that it can safely be dismissed in favor of explanations that seem more probable. (It's Hume's argument against belief in miracles, repurposed.)

    The smarter "skeptics" seem to favor this more probabilistic version, and I don't think that they are wrong. It's a good argument in my opinion. The problem I see is assigning the prior probability, the likelihood that what we humans today imagine to be the "order of nature" will hold inviolate into the future. I'm not convinced that any of us have any way of knowing that. It's more of an intuition.

    So what should we do?

    I agree with the "skeptics" that we should favor explanatory accounts that are consistent with prior experience. With "the order of nature" (as it is perceived to be right now) and with "science" (whatever that is). That means that it's (arguably) more reasonable to initially favor "mundane" explanations.

    But equally, this argument acknowledges that we can't reasonably exclude the possibility that something new and unexpected is happening, something that violates "the order of nature" (as currently understood). So the issue becomes one of weighting the probabilities.

    Is the prior probability of anomalous occurances really so low that any report of one can/should be dismissed with a reflexive sneer, with dismissal ("woo!") and with insults ("troll!")? Or is the likelihood high enough that reports should be received with a curious mind, open to the possibility of learning something new?

    After all, if we can use induction (itself problematic) to justify setting a high prior probability for our faith in what we currently imagine to be the order of nature, we can also use induction to set it low (the "pessimistic induction" that notes that all past science has been incomplete if not totally false from the perspective of later science. Is today's science any different?).

    So to finally address your bubbles, I don't know what is happening there. That being said, I'm inclined to favor a mundane explanation that's consistent with physics as currently understood. I don't know what that explanation would be, but it's where I would look first. But not with a mind closed to other possibilities.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2023
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  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    For AI, that's the symbol ground problem or challenge. Wherein the world has been converted to language or digital units rather than what humans originally experienced as images, sounds, tactile sensations, etc.

    Much like a picture-less dictionary, wherein the words can only circularly refer to each other for their meanings. The objects of that lexical domain have no contact with their phenomenal counterparts and happenings, or the experienced representations that the brain dabbles in. (In a sense, the brain itself only receives abstract information from its environment, yet somehow turns those into private manifestations that can't be externally witnessed in neural tissue or directly detected as being the case.)

    I go with the banal solutions most of the time, by default, since it's a no-lose or little face to lose situation. And I subscribe to the notion that simulated habitats of the future (those that are strictly regulated and not dream-like fantasy romps) will always feature natural or mundane explanations even when something extraneous truly did intrude upon their rigidly governed systems.

    "Miracles" and "cryptic messages" from beyond will either be converted slash edited into the causal flow of the events or be open to interpretation as coincidences. Or else those will not be allowed unless a non-extraordinary solution is possible that the non-targeted inhabitants can conceive of and provide on their own. Purely chance "glitches in the Matrix" will either be revised away in both personal and objective memories, or likewise economically rely upon the skeptical denizens outputting conventional theses.

    Not just two, but multiple generative adversarial network approaches will enable a digital form of solipsism (collective solipsism actually) to be possible. So that an entire world does not have to be literally maintained when "no one is observing" (the amount of resources required for the former wouldn't be available anyway). The GANs' combative critiques of each other in terms of conforming to laws of the applicable universe, along with reliance upon statistical probability, will ensure that an inhabitant's perceptions through time are inter-consistent. and a global memory storing each person's past (who is not a superficial prop) will maintain the overall coherence of their combined, experienced happenings.
    _
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2023
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  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    We are the beings whose being is always in question. In the long run, nothing is settled and nothing is set in stone. We perch on the edge of an infinite frontier of unknownness and undecideability. Language grants us this stark inside view of Being--of an in-itselfness and a presence that estranges us so that everything is in question. Nothing is guaranteed, and nothing is certain. Every experience opens us up to the ongoing possibilities of an infinite horizon.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2023
  21. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "explanation"--- An act of explaining; a meaning or interpretation assigned," late 14c., explanacioun, from Latin explanationem (nominative explanatio) "an explanation, interpretation," noun of action from past-participle stem of explanare "to make plain or clear, explain," literally "make level, flatten," from ex "out" (see ex-) + planus "flat" (from PIE root *pele- (2) "flat; to spread").--- https://www.etymonline.com/word/explanation#etymonline_v_14090

    Explanation seems rooted in the idea of leveling or flattening out. We seek a perspective on a matter that reduces it something mediocre and mundane and so inconsequential. We thus blind ourselves to its original mystery and paradoxicality. There is a sudden relieving rush of certainty and of "knowing" where before there was only unsettling curiosity and fascination.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2023
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    While seemingly fine in itself, a problem for that argument in the context of this thread is that UFO's and cryptids (in the as-yet unknown animal species sense) don't appear to violate the order of nature or contradict science as it's currently understood. So even if we are determined to assign assertions consistent with the history of "scientific inquiry" a higher initial probability than assertions that contradict that understanding (as we arguably should), that situation doesn't seem to even be applicable in many of these controversies.
     
  23. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Uh, I don't think it's been an active choice for disbelief but like skepticism.

    I more interested in CERN and the like.
     

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