Oxford Professor argues invisible aliens are interbreeding with humans
oxfordstudent.com
oxfordstudent.com
I'm okay with overly bold theories so long they have some merits, which I mean have some supporting evidence... this has nothing, which makes the quality of this theory right there with unpublished science fiction ideas.
It feels like to me he's ready to publish more books on the topic.
Step 1 of the scientific method is a plausible hypothesis.
"Dr Chi believes that there are four types of aliens: small; tall and bold; aliens with scales and snake eyes; and finally, insect-like aliens. The latter of these seems to be the highest in the hierarchy, he said, and gives orders to the lower ranks."
Small: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Sectoid_(XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown)
Tall and bold: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Muton_(XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown)
Scales and snake eyes: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Thin_Man
Insect-like: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Chryssalid
Coincidence?
The comment never argued in favor of life elsewhere, and certainly not in any concrete form. It only said that we can't conclude that it doesn't exist. There is only an emotional suggestion that it does exist.
So it just boils down to an unhelpfully weak statement. Virtually all scientific minded people agree with the statement. The suspiciousness (like with religion) is placing such a weak statement about the general proposition in the middle of a discussion about a specific proposition (reptiles, interbreeding, etc.), and that doesn't make much sense on closer inspection. Why bring the straw-man up THEN if not suggesting a stronger form of belief?
Reptiles? Who said anything about that? If we're just refuting David Icke here, than yes, he's a crackpot and should just be ignored. Seriously, that guy is a lunatic at best and a scam artist at worst. Probably some combination of the two.
>The only justifications for life elsewhere to exist that I am aware of are statistical, not evidential
Everything you just said pretty much sums up to "we were wrong before!", which still isn't empirical evidence. Besides, just because there's probably alien life somewhere in the universe doesn't mean there's alien life on earth right now, given how vast space is.
So the question now is whether there is also life on other planets. If you don't think there is life on other planets then you must think our planet is somehow special / extraordinary among all others. However, given the cosmological principle, then the more planets there is, the harder it must be to justify that our planet is special. The fact that there is an unthinkably huge number of planets in the universe seems to make that extremely unlikely.
The GP dismisses statistical arguments in favor of empirical evidence, but much of what we accept about physics or the universe is the result of statistical processes. Since our universe is stochastic, strictly speaking we never really know anything for certain, we just deem something is accepted as true when it reaches an arbitrary statistical threshold.
Also, just because you don't sense something directly it doesn't mean that you can't infer that it exists based on statistical arguments alone. For example, when estimating the number of species on Earth, there is no evidence that there are more species than the ones we already discovered, but we infer there are because we are discovering new species all the time, which means it's extremely unlikely we have discovered them all already.
The cosmological principle itself is a statistical argument more than anything... there is no proof that Earth isn't at the center of the (entire) universe, but almost nobody thinks that nowadays.
Note that in this thread we are only discussing whether there is life somewhere else in the universe, not whether there's alien life on earth right now, which obviously is harder to justify.
While this is probably some misapplied statistical analysis, I hope the worst consequence is a harsh rejection based on methodology. Free research will and should probably also lead to crazy ideas once in a while.
The status system in academia is pretty strong. This guy will face judgement among his peers.
It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles, but I think when it's not something directly to do with the things you're teaching it's generally just thought of as a harmless idiosyncrasy.
It's not just academia, either. I've known a few somewhat prominent people who believed in some off-the-wall things.
When I worked in television, I knew a top-ten market anchor who didn't believe in dinosaurs. Not in the way a creationist doesn't, because she wasn't religious. She simply didn't believe they ever existed.
At a top-five market station there was an anchor who believed drinking his own urine made him healthier. He was a medic during the Vietnam war and said he started doing it then.
The same station had a manager in the newsroom who believed that Jesus, the Bible, and everything associated with it was a fabrication because there is no recorded history before the invention of the printing press in the 1400's. If you ask him about Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, he insists that they're all made up.
At another top-ten market station my boss (a high-level manager) believed that those yellow sodium lamps are used along freeways because it helps police see black people better in the dark. She learned it from her boss (an even higher-level manager) who believed the reason that highways are built in elevated circles around cities is so that if the city needs to be evacuated, the police can stand along the highway and shoot black people as they're trying to flee.
When I think about these things I wonder if certain professions attract whackjobs.
Then I wonder if I have any deeply-held beliefs that I don't realize qualify me for a rubber room.
In that case, it seems like a private project. Crazy ideas or not, I'd be happy if that guy doesn't get sanctioned harshly for this.
> In April 2018, Dr Chi approached The Oxford Union to propose a > debate on the subject. The proposal was not accepted.
There is a concerning growth of subjects that can no longer be discussed or debated within Western campuses.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say refusing to hold debates on subjects similar to this isn't a recent trend. There's definitely a growing trend of refusing to debate certain subjects (of the right wing politics variety), but this isn't yet.
> debates on subjects similar to this isn't a recent trend.
It happens more than you think, you just don't hear about it. I don't think it's a particularly recent trend for conspiracy theories though, as you say.
> There's definitely a growing trend of refusing to debate
> certain subjects (of the right wing politics variety), but
> this isn't yet.
I understand what you're saying and agree, but I wouldn't attribute all of these topics to right-wing politics. There's also some weird acceptance that labeling something "right-wing" means it's okay to ignore or berate, which means there are topics that simply cannot be discussed despite a discussion being needed.
My point was that the number of subjects that can be debated appears to be on a decline in general, although as you say many of them are politically charged. I think it's really quite sad when Universities can no longer be places where ideas dual it out and get tested.
("small; tall and bold; aliens with scales and snake eyes; and finally, insect-like aliens.")
NB: I do not find his conjecture remotely convincing.
Fair point on chemical pollutants.
Perhaps you could have written it more clearly. Try to avoid short comments. Something like:
fake alternative comment> The author proposes that the increase of the abduction cases [1] is caused because the aliens[2] are concern about climate change. I think that an alternative explanation is that is the increased climate change stresses & temperature swings impacting human mood disorders (the same way it correlates with increased violence) and this cause the increase in the report of false[3] alien abductions."
My notes:
[1] Is there an increase of the report of the "abductions"?
[2] If they live here and are somewhat related to the normal animals, are they alien?
[3] false/fake/??? I'm not sure about the best word here.
[4] I didn't like how you used the "Occam’s Razor", so I made the editorial decision to avoid it in the fake comment.
I hope that my alternative is a good representations of your ideas, and I hope it's more clear that it propose an alternative explanation of parts of the article.