My intention was not to rustle you my man. It was more a commentary on a certain type of mind, as it's a deficiency to be dogmatic in anything. That's why I said it the way I did.
What would I be deficient in, just wanting people to take the "paranormal" seriously when warranted? 95% of reports are misidentified, wrong, or some other prosaic thing. The very fact that such an overwhelming majority is not worth investigation has now caused our better minds and the systems they "believe" to dismiss the minority.
It's not worth it in more than that sense, too: The system that you would trust to investigate these topics is fed by mostly outside funding, which is also run by smart people. Those smart people would much rather bet on some topic that is likely to pay off, than a fringe topic that has unknown or unlikely payoffs in the future.
My apologies if I took offense where you didn't intend any then.
To discuss this a little more calmly, here is my point of view about what you said. I don't feel that I'm dogmatic, because I'd happily change my mind IF a level of proof were ever obtained that I'm comfortable with. But if that never happens, is it me being unwilling to open my mind to possibilities, or is it other people being too willing to accept them? Why am I the one in the wrong here?
We all hate analogies, I know, but pick literally any other situation where extraordinary claims are made. Let's say I've got a friend that has cancer, and he decides he's not going to do any treatment or anything, he's just going to leave it in God's hands. I tell him to drink cinnamilk, so to humor me he does. Somehow, he's cured and there is no trace of the cancer anywhere.
Now, we have a variety of possibilities here.
1) God really did cure him.
2) Cinnamilk cured him.
3) He never actually had cancer, it was a misdiagnosis.
Or 3a) he made it up to get sympathy/donations from people.
4) Somehow his body cured it by itself.
5) He lied and actually did get treatment, he just never told anyone
There are obviously infinite more possibilities, like a friendly alien passed by and cured him in secret, etc. but let's assume those are the main options.
If I claim that cinnamilk cured him, would you believe me? Why, or why not? For the purposes of this experiment, we have absolutely zero way of knowing how he was cured, we just know that he doesn't have cancer now.
Now what if I said I were a doctor? Would that suddenly lend credibility to my cinnamilk claim? If so, why? I didn't prove anything, you just gave what I said more weight because I'm a doctor. Maybe I also whack it to anime pillows too...but I'm a doctor, so it's ok! You see? Someone's job doesn't always make them more credible. Just like being a Rear Admiral or Colonel doesn't automatically give you more credibility about unknown drone-like objects, etc. (Not a jab at Julian, just an obvious example posted above, which I haven't watched at all yet because work.)
This is how I view pretty much everything in this thread. I don't know the truth behind any of it, not for certain. I can speculate, and I can weigh what I think is most likely, but no, I can't know that aliens aren't behind everything. But if I want you to believe that cinnamilk can cure cancer, I would expect that I'd need to give you something more than because I said so.
I know no one is going to spend the time to go look, but I've reiterated these points probably dozens of times over the course of this thread, most of the time to nothing more than MFF just laughing about how he triggered me and made me write another novel. I haven't changed since page one, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to change. It just means that no one has given me something worth changing for. You guys are believing the doctor that said cinnamilk cured cancer despite there being nothing more than a result and him saying so. I'm not going to believe it until that doctor does it many, many more times, with legitimate proof, not just a picture of a "CURED!" diagnosis.
