Mach Effect progress

[ScottL]

Your definitions are not accurate and I fear you're confusing healthy skepticism with faith.

something like moon landing deniers. That´s unhealthy skepticism. Even hard to call skepticism, because at the same time they are skeptics about the moon landings, they have to believe in government conspiracies, stupid russian scientists who never noticed the things they noticed, etc

oh, and evolution deniers too, many of whom call themselves "skeptics"

There is a point where it is no longer skepticism, but purely faith as faith is the only idea that requires no evidence.

[AcesHigh]

Your definitions are not accurate and I fear you're confusing healthy skepticism with faith.

something like moon landing deniers. That´s unhealthy skepticism. Even hard to call skepticism, because at the same time they are skeptics about the moon landings, they have to believe in government conspiracies, stupid russian scientists who never noticed the things they noticed, etc

oh, and evolution deniers too, many of whom call themselves "skeptics"

There is a point where it is no longer skepticism, but purely faith as faith is the only idea that requires no evidence.

perfectly put.

[GIThruster]

What happens when you've critical thought about a claim and have come to the conclusion that the claim is unlikely in your opinion. Are you then a skeptic?

No. If you think critically about something and come to a "general preponderance of the evidence" decision I would call that a critical thinking decision. I think though you muddy the waters when you start to wave around religious terms like "faith". What we're here talking about are unreflective opinions. For example, Aces knows nothing about the vid posted but he's ready to say it's probably an ice particle. That's a knee jerk response indicative of a young adolescent who always needs to have an answer for entirely emotional reasons. Far better to say "we don't know if the object was struck by something we can't see" and or "we don't know how far away it was, how fast it's moving", etc. We could fill a page with what we don't know, but the skeptic is already onboard to debunk. He's having premature ejaculation of his ignorance on others, and if he's really a skeptic, he'll fight to defend that ejaculate regardless of what findings might come along.

Skeptics are unreflective people who hold these very strong opinions about things like UFO's despite they have never invested themselves in considering the evidence. The evidence is not necessary to people like Aces. He's already made up his mind and it doesn't matter what evidence there is.

[AcesHigh]

What happens when you've critical thought about a claim and have come to the conclusion that the claim is unlikely in your opinion. Are you then a skeptic?

No. If you think critically about something and come to a "general preponderance of the evidence" decision I would call that a critical thinking decision. I think though you muddy the waters when you start to wave around religious terms like "faith". What we're here talking about are unreflective opinions. For example, Aces knows nothing about the vid posted but he's ready to say it's probably an ice particle. That's a knee jerk response indicative of a young adolescent who always needs to have an answer for entirely emotional reasons. Far better to say "we don't know if the object was struck by something we can't see" and or "we don't know how far away it was, how fast it's moving", etc. We could fill a page with what we don't know, but the skeptic is already onboard to debunk. He's having premature ejaculation of his ignorance on others, and if he's really a skeptic, he'll fight to defend that ejaculate regardless of what findings might come along.

you dont get tired of the nonsense uh? Again, where is your questioning about Diogenes thinking its something "controlled" and evidence of UFO?

its funny how you attack someone who says its probably an ice particle, but forgets to attack any jumping to conclusion something its an alien craft. Its bordering on the ridiculous.

I know very well who is the adolescent here who needs to have an answer for entirely emotional reasons. And the answer is always "UFO".

[GIThruster]

. . .where is your questioning about Diogenes thinking its something "controlled" and evidence of UFO?

Diogenes didn't say that. What Diogenes said was "it appears that an object moving through the missile's flight path moved out of the way just prior to the missile going through that region of space. . .If there is another explanation for what occurred in this video I have not heard it."

and he is reporting correctly. It DOES appear that something that was moving across the screen moved out of the path of the missile that blasts through. He hasn't committed to a position. He's just stating the facts. Even though I would have a dozen questions to start, I have to admit, it does appear the thing changed direction to get out of the way of the oncoming missile. That's the APPEARANCE of the thing.

[Betruger]

Or the video was sped up. And/or overlaid. Either of these is effectively as much/little of a stretch as any other semi-plausible "fringe" hypothesis.

None of the above is anywhere near enough a sure correlate to ME sci & tech, to defensibly be in this ME news & discussion thread.

[Skipjack]

Geeze, this is just going into the ridiculous! I am out of this threat.

[GIThruster]

I don't personally think discussing specific UPO events in detail belongs here either, but I do still hold the position that given we observe warp craft in our skies, that warp craft must be possible, and that M-E physics is our best hope to ever develop a warp craft of our own.

If the children didn't get their panties all in a twist I'm sure this point would have been done several pages back.

[Skipjack]

My problem is that people observe (or think they observe) something that they can (at the time) not explain and then jump to conclusions. You cite observations that are _very_ vague and then jump to the conclusion of aliens. And then you say, well if they are aliens, then they must be using warpdrives. If they are warpdrives, they must be based on Mach thrusters...
Its like Carl Sagans classical example of the early theories about Venus.
Observers noted that they cant see any surface features on venus and concluded that there must be clouds. They then thought that if there are clouds, there gotta be oceans, or maybe giant swamps like on the earth during the time of the dinosaurs... and then the first illustrations of dinosaurs on venus appeared.
Observation: I cant see a thing!
Conclusion: Dinosaurs!

[Betruger]

I don't personally think discussing specific UPO events in detail belongs here either, but I do still hold the position that given we observe warp craft in our skies, that warp craft must be possible, and that M-E physics is our best hope to ever develop a warp craft of our own.

If the children didn't get their panties all in a twist I'm sure this point would have been done several pages back.

The assertion that "warp" "must" be the explanation for unidentified(-and-therefore-not-understood) objects, is also not compelling

My problem is that people observe (or think they observe) something that they can (at the time) not explain and then jump to conclusions. You cite observations that are _very_ vague and then jump to the conclusion of aliens. And then you say, well if they are aliens, then they must be using warpdrives. If they are warpdrives, they must be based on Mach thrusters...

Ayuh

[GIThruster]

My problem is that people observe (or think they observe) something that they can (at the time) not explain and then jump to conclusions.

That happens all the time. Aces just did this. he saw a grainy vid and decided it must be ice particles, with no information concerning the speed, distance or size of the object in question.

Now lets talk about the cases where people did NOT jump to any conclusions. take the case of Ray Bowyer flying over the English Channel in 2007. He sighted a pair of craft he estimated to be a mile long and watched them for 15 minutes. All the passengers in his plane likewise saw these objects, as did the pilot of a second aircraft 25 miles away and as did radar. As per usual, the craft departed with an almost instantaneous acceleration that cannot be explained by known modes of transport.

See it really doesn't matter how many generalities you can cast about and how much character assassination you provide. The evidence is clear to anyone who is open to view it. So let me ask, out of all the detractors found here: Aces, Skippy, Jded, polyill, Betruger--how many of you have ever done anything resembling a serious investigation of the evidence? How many of you have read even a single book on the subject? And in light of the obvious answer, let me ask you, Skippy, just who is it that is jumping to conclusions?

[paulmarch]

My problem is that people observe (or think they observe) something that they can (at the time) not explain and then jump to conclusions.

That happens all the time. Aces just did this. he saw a grainy vid and decided it must be ice particles, with no information concerning the speed, distance or size of the object in question.

Now lets talk about the cases where people did NOT jump to any conclusions. take the case of Ray Bowyer flying over the English Channel in 2007. He sighted a pair of craft he estimated to be a mile long and watched them for 15 minutes. All the passengers in his plane likewise saw these objects, as did the pilot of a second aircraft 25 miles away and as did radar. As per usual, the craft departed with an almost instantaneous acceleration that cannot be explained by known modes of transport.

See it really doesn't matter how many generalities you can cast about and how much character assassination you provide. The evidence is clear to anyone who is open to view it. So let me ask, out of all the detractors found here: Aces, Skippy, Jded, polyill, Betruger--how many of you have ever done anything resembling a serious investigation of the evidence? How many of you have read even a single book on the subject? And in light of the obvious answer, let me ask you, Skippy, just who is it that is jumping to conclusions?

Ron:

Just to update you on the requirements for initiating a 10m OD warp field, Sonny White's latest paper and presentation at the following NASA server shows that we don't need a Jupiter load of inertially exotic mass to initiate it as Alcubbierre’s original metric first indicated. If we are willing to make the toroidal warp field thickness thicker than a few microns and increase it to say a meter, the exotic inertial mass requirement goes down by the same orders of magnitude. And if you are really brave, having the warp field generator oscillate the warp field at high-frequencies (GHz) this feature will decrease the required exotic matter requirements down to levels measured in just a few metric tons of exotic inertial mass dependent on the required effective transport velocity of the warp bubble, i.e. 10c 100c, etc. And it appears that is a feat that one or more groups of folks have already figured out how to do and have demonstrated in our skies, no matter what their origins may be...

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 016932.pdf

Best,

[Betruger]

I'm not jumping to any conclusions except from your record of behavior in what's supposed to be proper dialog on this here forum. Here and at NSF. Or maybe you can show me where I asserted anything beyond the above grainy vid.

Take the F-in general UFO talk out of this ME thread.

"Must" be warp drive... Dixit some puny homo sapiens that's never been off this planet, talking like he knows the System of the Universe like the back of his hand. It "must" be that one thing like it "must" be any other thing we don't even have an inkling of yet.

We don't even have a definitive demonstration of ME-like propulsion yet (levitate a teapot into a conference and make it circle a scale model of Saturn), and you're insisting some non-mundane phenomena you haven't witnessed yourself to satisfy empirical minimums is somehow undoubtedly ME-propelled.

[GIThruster]

Thanks Paul. I'll have at tomorrow. Looks interesting.

[Betruger]

Even if ME is "real" and we end up using it, where is the evidence that these ETs are using ME and not some other propulsion formula that's consistent with the (for argument's sake) demonstrated performance?

You are making leaps and bounds to support your pet favorite. Your faith in ME trumps your skeptical integrity.