Dream of the Open Channel: The so-called Extraterrestrial Hypothesis http://disownedsky.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-so-called-extraterrestrial.html "The dream is to find the open channel." --- Richard Feynman A blog using the scientific search for intelligent life on other worlds as a mental lens to ask every sort of interesting question. Home The Wow! Signal Podcast Creative Commons Friday, September 7, 2012 About The Blogger The so-called Extraterrestrial Hypothesis Paul Carr I suffer from a low curiosity Dr. Susan Blackmore is a little weird and very smart. She received the first ever British PhD in threshold. I am a space systems engineer, blogger, parapsychology, and believed in Tarot reading, out of body experiences, and psychic powers. podcaster and a skeptical She was sure she could prove the existence of psychic abilities to even the most die-hard but open-minded investigator. Especially skeptics by amassing methodologically bulletproof evidence from a wide variety of experiments in interested in space, astronomy, and the search clairvoyance and precognition, i.e. psi. At the time, the whole field of parapsychology felt they for intelligent ETs. Although most of my G+ were on the verge of breaking through to mainstream acceptance. posts are science or space related, I also spout off on music from time, totally unqualified After a grueling series of consistently negative results, Blackmore began to be troubled by the though I am. definition of psi. Psi was defined as whatever is causing psi experimental results to deviate from pure chance. That is what psi isn't, but what is it? Strengthening the methodologies made the Trying to keep my middle-aged body in shape signal drop down into the noise. After repeated failures and not being able to define what to and a bit safer by learning Krav Maga. Train at Pure Performance Martial Arts in Rockville, really test for, Blackmore soured on the very concept of psi and turned her research focus on to Maryland. other things. My CV When it comes to UFOs, there is a shopworn old meme lying around frequently known as the Blogging at disownedsky.blogspot.com Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH for short). It still attracts both derision and True Belief. The ETH Podcast information at wowsignalpodcast.com can be summed up simply as: some fraction (usually quoted at around 10%) of UFO reports are info on investigations at aerial- the result of something intelligently controlled that is not from Earth. phenomenon.org Follow me on Twitter @PaulDCarr Do you see the problem? It's analogous to the negative definition of psi. By asserting that some UFOs - the otherwise hard to explain ones - are craft from outer space, we are really just stating I am not a member of any political tribe . what they are not - they are not ours. But what ARE they? A good hypothesis tells us where to View my complete profile look, and what information we can use to test the hypothesis. The so-called ETH does not do that. It's not a hypothesis! Search This Blog Since aliens are very likely queerer than we can imagine , an alien spacecraft could be anything, and we would very likely not be able to perceive or describe it completely or accurately. I won't address here the problem of the Recommended Blogs sparse, uneven quality of UFO data, or the thorny question of what phenomena to include, but even if we had terrifically good data, we still have a closer listen no bonafide hypothesis to test it against. "Not from here" doesn't fit the bill, Maxwell August Croy and Sean McCann and at this point, we don't know where to turn. What happens in practice is ~ I Uninvited Guests 5 hours ago that each of us invents our own private mental model of a single human-like Richard Hall alien race and wonder why UFOs don't behave that way. Best Price $0.01 Next Big Future or Buy New $13.46 Concession Offered, Taiwan Group to Is there hope for the old ETH? Not as such, but I believe it will have better End Protest of China Trade Pact 6 hours ago successors. I do hope for really high quality hypotheses about the nature and behavior of alien intelligent life that we can really use. The study of alien life, Privacy Information Centauri Dreams especially intelligent life, is pre-paradigmatic right now and starved of hard data. We're going to A Tantalizing Exomoon Possibility need lots more information, and not much of it will be about UFOs (although I hope I am wrong). 12 hours ago The new emerging science of astrobiology will probably tell us much more about the constraints PaleBlueBlog on development of intelligent species than any of our deeply flawed perceptions and memories of The Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon things we are unlikely to understand at all. 2 days ago BLOG PICTURE SCIENCE Nearly all hypotheses we develop about alien intelligences are likely to be wrong. Wrong, but the Big Picture Science – Since Sliced Bread work of proving them wrong will lead us places we can't see at all right now. 3 days ago funkyscience.net Saturday, April 5th, David will judge national finals of FameLab, the science This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . communication competition in DC. Click me for ticket info and webcast info 6 days ago Posted by Paul Carr at 6:04 PM Crowlspace 1 of 4 4/11/2014 12:36 AM Dream of the Open Channel: The so-called Extraterrestrial Hypothesis http://disownedsky.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-so-called-extraterrestrial.html Labels: aliens , astrobiology , evidence , extraterrestrial , fallacies , hypothesis , parapsychology , Psi , queer , Susan Helium Planet? Blackmore , UFO 1 week ago The Wow! Signal Podcast Season 2 Episode 1 - The Golden Age of Newer Post Home Older Post Exoplanets 3 weeks ago Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Stephen's Website Ripples from the start of time 3 weeks ago Future Planetary Exploration 2015 Planetary Science Proposed Budget – Steady as she goes and then big changes 3 weeks ago Show All Google+ Followers Followers Join this site with Google Friend Connect Members (9) Already a member? Sign in From Amazon Amazon.com Straight Ahead Soul Paul Carr New $11.24 Best $4.58 Standard Domain Paul Carr New $8.91 Best $8.91 We'll Always Have The Flamingo Paul Carr New Musically Yours-- Remembering Joe Henderson Paul Carr New $11.12 Best $6.98 The Shallows Nicholas Carr, Pau... New $26.95 Best $15.58 Privacy Information Blog Archive January (1) December (2) October (1) July (1) June (1) 2 of 4 4/11/2014 12:36 AM Dream of the Open Channel: The so-called Extraterrestrial Hypothesis http://disownedsky.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-so-called-extraterrestrial.html March (1) February (2) January (4) November (7) October (4) September (9) There was an error in this gadget Popular Posts The Jaws of Darkness "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a ... Where I am on the Drake Equation at the end of 2013 I'm sure you are all familiar with the Drake Equation. 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Related at Amazon 3 of 4 4/11/2014 12:36 AM Dream of the Open Channel: The so-called Extraterrestrial Hypothesis http://disownedsky.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-so-called-extraterrestrial.html 4 of 4 4/11/2014 12:36 AM The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) (The Examiner, 05-19-2009) - ... http://wiki.ufohqs.com/index.php?title=The_Extraterrestrial_Hypothesis... 1 of 5 4/11/2014 12:37 AM The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) (The Examiner, 05-19-2009) - ... http://wiki.ufohqs.com/index.php?title=The_Extraterrestrial_Hypothesis... 2 of 5 4/11/2014 12:37 AM The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) (The Examiner, 05-19-2009) - ... http://wiki.ufohqs.com/index.php?title=The_Extraterrestrial_Hypothesis..