Posthuman Blues

The Great UFO Debate (by Seth Shostak)

Here we go with more porous UFO-bashing by everyone's favorite ontologically inflexible SETI guru . . .

"Sure, rather few researchers have themselves gone into the field to sift through the stories, the videos, and the odd photos that comprise the evidence for alien presence. But they don't have to. This complaint is akin to telling movie critics that films would be better if only they would pitch in and get behind the camera. But critics can compose excellent and accurate evaluations of a movie without being participants in the business of making films."

There is simply so much wrong in this essay that it fairly staggers the mind. (I find it particularly comical that Shostak's idea of ufological "research" is primly "sifting" through various "stories" rather than active investigation.) Reading Shostak's shopworn, anal ideas about the UFO inquiry is intellectually equivalent to plunging down Lewis Carroll's magic rabbit hole, where things like deductive thinking and healthy speculation cease to exist, replaced by legions of straw men, gutless pseudo-logic and fervent denial that reality might be other than that dictated by the ruling paradigm.

In this case, Shostak freely shows his absolute unwillingness -- and apparent inability -- to think like one of the aliens he claims to understand so well. Not that that's anything new.