D.J D.'s List: Foo research

• and FOIA requests by John Greenewald, Jr. of The Black Vault

• Money? You think Google AdSense is going to make me rich? LOL. You're dreaming, and ignorant.

• hypothesis
• hypothesis
• valid hypothesis.
• a valid hypothesis

  • nulla valid conjecture with a hypothesis to test the conjecture. -- 2013-01-05
    So the graph should be changed to include:
    Misidentifiaction, Invalid Hypothesis / Conjecture, Valid Conjecture -- 2013-01-05
    Then the line coming out is "new info and/or valid hypothesis." The hypothesis is a two fold object: position/test. Conjecture is always just one thing: position. -- 2013-01-05
    
• the one time

  • one of two times

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• • This whole article illustrates why a UFO app would need to bring in all data and then present it to the widest number of experts possible. Material science couldn't say what it was. Atmospheric science couldn't give an answer. Physics had nothing to say. However an engineer did. This shows to get the best number of hypotheses requires expanding to the largest group possible.
• “Before you say something is out of this world, make sure it isn’t of this world.”

  • This is much better than "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

• If alien craft in our skies exist, then we can't expect them to be anything we think they Should be.

• they are non-universal and can therefore be  distinguished from the rest of sensory reality,

  • This is a really interesting wording. It may be why we have such a strong difficulty with 0. Since 0 is basically indistinguishable in the sense that I can have 9 + 0 = 9. The 0 is implicit or intrinsic, giving it a universal quality.
• and the second describes nothing that is either  subjective, like human consciousness, or objective but rare and  unpredictable…e.g. ghosts, UFOs and yetis, of which jokes are made  but which may, given the number of individual witnesses reporting  them, correspond to real phenomena. 

  • Really he should word this as "consensus reality."

  • NOTE: I can solve problem two by having the transient app use crowd-sourcing technologies. The first is something altogether different and worth thinking about.
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  • • In fact, if we regard the scientific method as a theory about the nature and acquisition of scientific knowledge (and we can), it is not a theory of knowledge in general. It is only a theory of things accessible to the senses. Worse yet, it is a theory only of sensible things that have two further attributes: they are non-universal and can therefore be distinguished from the rest of sensory reality, and they can be seen by multiple observers who are able to “replicate” each other’s observations under like conditions.
• the scientific method does not permit the investigation of  abstract mathematical principles

  • Not entirely true, countable objects are testable because they're isomorphic with discrete physical objects.
• But  what if we now introduce a distinction between levels of  proof?  For example,  what if we define a metalanguage as a language used to talk  about, analyze or prove things regarding statements in a lower-level  object language, and call the base level of Gödel’s  formula the "object" level and the higher (proof) level  the "metalanguage" level?   Now we have one of two things: a statement that can be  metalinguistically proven to be linguistically unprovable, and thus  recognized as a theorem conveying valuable information about the  limitations of the object language, or a statement that cannot be  metalinguistically proven to be linguistically unprovable,  which, though uninformative, is at least no paradox.   Voilà: self-reference without paradox!   It turns out that "this formula is unprovable" can  be translated into a generic example of an undecidable mathematical  truth.  Because the  associated reasoning involves a metalanguage of mathematics, it is  called “metamathematical”.

  • I'm also realizing that "selfaware mathematical structures" (tegmark's idea) are mathematical structures that can define this metalanguage. This is a key to unlocking consciousness.

  • This gets to my thoughts on using 0 as a way to change contexts from quantizing a term versus quantizing the equation.

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• • Kind of nutzo, but the guy does appear to have a rather good grasp of money markets. He's made several accurate predictions about when and how and why the 2008 economic collapse occurred (as early as 2003).

• Before we can accept your claim for testing, we require 3 notarized affidavits from 3 persons who have witnessed this phenomenon and can offer no rational explanation for it. These 3 individuals must be “professionals”, such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, government workers, therapists, psychologists, etc.

  • This really should be a requirement for testability or at least considering something to be serious.

• soft-censorship

  • Excellent wording for the common sneering attitudes towards the subject.

• This is real neat! Now we can understand crop circles!

• • At about 5:50 it starts discussing that math is purely abstract. That it's asking questions and seeing "how" things come together. Not so much about the result. This is something that could be applied to the study of foo research. Actually it's the very heart of what it represents.

• How much can you learn about humans from watching cars on a highway?

  • What's amusing though is we can learn quite a bit about the vehicle, we can postulate there's intelligence moving the vehicle. This is a really good way at starting to gain an insight as to how to get at the "inside information."

  • The chances of learning anything about the "occupants" of unknown sights is very likely an impossibility. Excellent quote.

• One of the featured presenters at last year's FFP conference, Nobel laureate Doug Osheroff, suggested in his talk that we should not be deterred by finding something other than what we expect, and that we should welcome such events as opportunities to learn something new or exciting. Furthermore; he said that we must actively seek new knowledge in areas of the scientific landscape that are not already well-explored, if we hope to make advancements in the sciences.

  • This would be perfect for a NAS / NSF proposal schtick.

• • It should also be explained that the "position" stage is also a tentative explanation. The thing is people conflate a tentative explanation with an authorative conclusive truthful identification.
• a process to identify an unidentified aerial sighting.

  • This should now read,
    "one of the specific stages in the *process* to identify an unidentified aerial sighting."
• • "Position" is just a tentative "identification."
• That makes it an issue that could have serious repercussions in a wartime situation.

  • The Durant report cited Foo Fighters as a reason why UFOs don't pose a security concern. However this is taking a particular interpretation of "threat." They interpret threat to mean the objects perform the catalyst for war. Another type of threat is action performed based on bad data, confusion, fear, and therefore causing reckless behavior. Moreover even if past actions don't indicate aggressive dangerous actions (which I contest on the basis of testimony by the likes of Hastings, Meiwald, Salas, etc.). I would say that past actions can be for the express purpose of building intel to then perform an attack. Any foreign interlopers who we haven't expressly communicated with can't by virtue of our not knowing about them be considered peaceable by past actions alone, without careful consideration of those actions.
• The report does not say there are no unusual aerial phenomena, it says that the Condon study of UFOs had not yielded any scientific knowledge. This is a true statement.

  • Would you agree to study something requires first identifying something worth studying? If there are instances of "true unknowns" being observed does that not then constitute ""useful scientific knowledge" in the sense that it then opens up new investigation?
• The Condon report does not say that nothing can be gained by the study of UFOs.
  

  • I could say, "People on ATS don't think that nothing can be gained by your commentary." Do you see how this is a negative statement? How invoking this statement already presumes a negative conclusion? You drip bias.

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• So what we have in ufology today is the maintaining of a high number of UFO sighting reports, but a decrease on information content of the cases.