"Is it possible that America has been technologically leap-frogged by Russia or China? Or, as many people wondered after the videos were first published by the New York Times in December, might they be evidence of some alien civilization?
Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.
I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data.
Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making." Mellon
*********
"Christopher K. 'Chris' Mellon (born October 2, 1957), was the former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and later for Security and Information Operations. He is also a writer and businessman. He is a member of the Mellon Family, and the son of Karl N. Mellon, the great-grandson of Gulf Oil co-founder William Larimer Mellon.
Christopher Mellon is a descendant of Thomas Mellon, founder of Mellon Bank. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Colby College in 1980. He earned his master's degree from Yale University in International Relations, with a concentration in finance and management in 1984." wiki
————
This Mellon is clearly not a lightweight. His concern with government inability to deal with phenomena that the SJs of the world have not had their noses rubbed in is noteworthy pl
james
In MBTI terms SJs are the kind of people who make the trains run on time. You are not one. pl
Very intriguing, indeed. “Mysterious object seen streaking over the Atlantic Ocean by US Navy jet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=wxVRg7LLaQA
Now I am really puzzled. From my first reading of this post it seemed to say that various US military intelligence groups had been collecting information that suggested if it had all been properly analyzed in some coordinated way then the US should have already known about all of those different missile systems Putin revealed last week. Is the Mellon heir talking about UFOs? Not UFOs made by Russia and China, but those from some alien civilization?
I was never involved in UFO research, but I do know quite a bit about related phenomena (related if you’re in the camp of someone like Jacques Valle) such as psi, remote viewing, out of body experiences, NDEs, mediumship and telekinesis.
IMO, all this stuff has proven to be real beyond a shadow of doubt. If you’d seen what I have, you’d probably come to the same conclusion; practical and reliable in terms of serious real world application? Not so much in most cases, but real all the same.
Several problems present in the research alone, generally. One is that these topics attract a lot of charlatans,or honest, but delusional people and then over-eager believers that do not properly evaluate evidence and experiment results. It is very challenging, given resource restraints, to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Second, given how ubiquitous the issues involved in problem #1 are, there is a stigma attached to anyone who takes the study seriously. No one wants that stigma. It’s a career killer.
Third, this stuff is scary to a lot of people. It threatens to undermine the model of reality that has been developed and that has served our material needs so well since the enlightenment. What does one do with the information? How would one shape policy? How would one maintain control of society in light of a vastly expanded knowledge of the universe? There are also meaningful impacts at a personal level that involve paradigm shifting ramifications. Most people do not like to have their worlds rocked that heavily. It’s human nature. So much easier to dismiss it all as silliness.
Now, regarding UFOs – the challenges to study are increased beyond the other phenomena b/c you can’t test it in a lab environment. You can’t summon UFOs to appear for a study, let alone a controlled study. There are a host of variables in any chance encounter that preclude a scientific approach that can reach a definitive conclusion. Until one of these things is captured (assuming there is anything to capture) and studied in an open peer review atmosphere, we will have to rely on conjecture. Also, just because you capture one, doesn’t mean that you understand *all* related phenomena. To properly study, you would need to capture a sufficient sample. That said, if you did obtain even one of extraterrestrial origin, then the door would be opened permanently for the new paradigm.
That isn’t the only problem. At least with UFO’s you can see them, hence then be able to pronounce them as unidentified, ie., as part of the set of known unknowns (you know whats coming next..).
If Mellon is saying that the known unknowns are a gap in the plan, then the unknown unknowns are going to be an additional gap which he could have but did not discuss.
In government, 22mill is not even large enough to be rounding error.
In your own retirement account it is significant, unless you are Bill Gates in which case it is rounding error.
I used to read about these kinds of things. Since the US government and perhaps other governments refuse to give proper open-minded consideration into what this all could be, it has been left to private people and organizations to piece together what they can. Their books and papers have all been dismissed by the Official Keepers of the Conventional Wisdom. Even though some of the authors have been thoroughly respectable people.
Ivan T. Sanderson, for example, was a naturalist and a collector who lead several collecting expeditions here and there for the British Museum. He also led field studies of disease vectors in the Caribbean and Central America areas. He also gathered field intelligence of possible German activity and sent reports about it back to Britain. He writes that he included reports of 2-3 foot diameter metallic or glowing spheres coming from or going into the water until he was ordered to stop reporting about the spheres.
Years later he wrote a book about underwater-based intelligences which he strongly felt very probably existed. He appeared to think they were not necessarily “extra-terrestrials” but better viewed as “parallel-terrestrials” or perhaps “parallel aquaticals”. Here is a book he wrote about that.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22408.Invisible_Residents
He wrote another book more focused on the strictly aerial and “near space” aspect of this called “Unvited Visitors”. All I can find is this poor-quality Amazon referrence to a copy they have.
https://www.amazon.com/Uninvited-Visitors-Biologist-Looks-UFOs/dp/B000HFPUQ2/ref=la_B001HMM8GO_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520795554&sr=1-2
Would look domestically first. Bezos sells $1B/yr in stock to pay for his space program and its’ progress would seem sedate compared to SpaceX. If a covert nuclear propulsion or anti-proton production program was possible, I’d at least have a cover story.
Bill Gates has heavily invested in a couple of nuke projects (Terrapower), one involving small reactors.
How much money would it take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb
james
INTP as is my wife. pl
Colonel.
Dan Meyer OIG Executive Director of Intelligence Committee was escorted out of the building at the end of last year, and formally fired at the end of February this year in a power struggle going on within the OIG.
Dan Meyer, director of civilian reprisal investigations with the Office of the Inspector General’s job was that of protecting whistleblowers in perilous territory — the Pentagon’s intelligence and counterintelligence communities, and the murky world of TS “black” programs.
Meyer and his team focused on helping federal employees in the intelligence and counterintelligence fields, especially those whose security clearances were alleged to have been revoked or changed due to their whistle-blowing. He also has handled cases of whistleblowers having their security clearance and access threatened for revealing procurement fraud.
Last week Senators Grassley and Wyden fired off a March 6 letter asking DNI Dan Coats to preserve all related data regarding the Meyer dismissal.
Here’s bio info on Meyer:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_P._Meyer
I hung out with Ivan Sanderson for a week after I got out of the Army back in the ’70’s. He was in western New Jersey IIRC on rural land where he used to have a small zoo, but abandoned that after it had been flooded out and burned out a couple times.
He formed the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU), of which I was a member, in 1967. The archives of that group are apparently under the control of this fellow: https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2011/03/society-for-investigation-of.html
Sanderson’s mostly known for his very deeply researched study on Bigfoot and other crypto-zoological entities.
Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life: The Story Of Sub-Humans On Five Continents From The Early Ice Age Until Today
https://www.amazon.com/Abominable-Snowmen-Legend-Sub-Humans-Continents/dp/1931882584
It’s worth reading because it shows that it’s not just the Yeti in Tibet and Bigfoot in Oregon, it’s literally everywhere and in every time.
Where the problem comes in is that John Keel also discovered that these subhuman species were frequently encountered in areas where there are a lot of UFO sightings. This complicates the issue by suggesting that Bigfoot and his cousins are as much fragments of some alternate reality as UFOs appear to be.
INFP here.
The problem with the military investigating UFOs is that they have zero imagination. They tend to view the phenomenon as a series of discrete incidents and apply an either/or assumption that they are either real physical phenomena or don’t exist at all. As John Keel demonstrated in his research, this gets you no where at all and hasn’t since the military started investigations in the late 1940’s.
One exception might be the Office of Naval Intelligence, which has been involved in UFO research in UFO research in the past under some interesting circumstances. Look up Morris K. Jessup and the Allende letters:
The Allende Letters And the VARO Edition of the Case For the UFO
https://www.amazon.com/Allende-Letters-VARO-Case-UFO/dp/1892062410
Here’s a recap of that story:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980424203956/www.brotherblue.org/brethren/allende.htm
I had an interesting experience when I was stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, back in the late ’60’s. I had noticed the mysterious individual Carlos Allende had an address in one of the books. On a lark, I wrote that address and asked some pointed questions. The letter came back marked undeliverable at that address. So I forgot about it.
Some time later I get a letter allegedly from this Carlos Allende. I forwarded that to John Keel, who I was corresponding with at the time. The question was how whoever was posing as Allende know I had written him when the letter had been returned by the Post Office. Of course, it’s possible that Allende actually did reside there and the Post Office had delivered it and he had opened and read it before returning it to the Post Office as “undeliverable” as part of his “schtick”.
But it’s an example of the sort of thing that occurs in UFO research that the military isn’t actually comfortable in dealing with.
I also note that the CIA convened a scientific panel back in the 1950’s chaired by Howard P. Robertson, a physicist, a CIA consultant, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group. See the Wikipedia entry here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Panel
That basically went nowhere, as well.
Then there was the famous Condon Repot back in the ’70’s which was basically a debunking effort led by a physicist named Edward Condon. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee
That went no where as well, although two members – David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins – issued a “dissenting report” entitled “UFO’s? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong”, World Publishing, 1968, which is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Where-Condon-committee-wrong/dp/B00005X1J1
So official government investigations of the phenomena are and have been mired in problems due to damaging career concerns and lack of imagination in forming a comprehensive examination of the issue from first principles.
John Keel’s approach was journalistic – investigate everything from scratch – and proved much more productive – although the results were even more baffling than whether UFOs were “alien spacecraft.”
What’s needed is an investigation that mixes scientific, law enforcement, and intelligence gathering methods with a deep knowledge of human psychology, brain science, and sociology. Population centers that have a high rate of UFO phenomena should be picked to investigate in toto like Keel used to do – literally go door-to-door asking people for their experiences, then compare them for similarities and with other locales.
Specific locations reported to be repetitively and frequently visited by UFOs should have persistent investigations, i.e., “watches” set up to detect and record the phenomena when it appears over time. UFO researchers know any number of areas in the US where UFOs can be seen virtually any time over a period of a week if one is willing to stay up all night looking. Why no one has spent that time recording events is beyond me, other than the inconvenience and some expense. Keel did it and he was by no means rich.
Eric Newhill,
Glad to see you bringing up remote viewing and such. You made some very good points about psychic phenomena, UFOs and human nature. When I first delved into remote viewing, I approached it with some apprehension. SWMBO shared the same apprehensions. Even though I studied the phenomenon for quite some time before I tried it myself, it was a jump into the unknown. BTW, I proved to myself that it works. Perhaps these UFOs are some wild blend of technological and psychic magic. At least, it would be magic to us.
When I was still in grammar school, I read William Seabrook’s “Jungle Ways.” It was his account of his travels through French West Africa in 1930. He wrote of how he tried to make sense of the cannibals, shamans and seemingly topsy turvy social mores he came across. He came to the realization that the universe is full of things that can’t be explained or understood. Wild things. Mysterious things. Even scary things. That concept excited me. I pity the SJ types who do not dare contemplate that something might exist outside their neatly preconceived world views. Their timidity is to so limiting. They prefer to mark their charts with warnings of “Here be dragons” rather than venture forth and look for those dragons.
I’ve taken the Meyers-Briggs test several times. I test out as borderline INFP-INFJ.
TTG
How about explaining Myers-Briggs to Fatima Macademia? Please. i haven’t the patience. Not surprised you are an NF. the J part is probably just adaptation to the Army. I am an extreme INTP but very adapted to deal with SJs and A type personalities. pl
richardstevenhack
TTG and I have “zero imagination?” pl
Jeannie Catherine and james
NTs like me admire NFs. We can’t be what you are and feel badly about it. pl
How many of our satelites are pointed up rather than down? Couldn’t we open source evalution of much of what is being collected? Who else is putting things in space for data collection and just what are they looking for? BTW I tested as an INTJ. I’ve probably mellowed as I’ve aged though.
I was trying to place what these reported objects behave like, and realized the nearest analog is the 3rd-person “God’s eye” POV from a 3D video game or simulation. They seem to have little interaction with physics such as drag or gravity, accelerate instantaneously, hover, fly formation, etc. Imagine the camera in a simulation had a form, that’s pretty much how it would act.
I’m not drawing any conclusions, just throwing it out there.
INTP here too, with a touch or learned NF because of OAI. Observe, Analyze, Imitate. It helps trying to ‘feel’ as the persons imitated do.
Adrestia
My NT wife asks why? Are we not the true Chosen? pl
Interesting to see what some personalities are here. I would have thought some of you were extroverts like me. I’am a ENTJ or was when I took the test years ago.. wonder if personalities change over time.
As for UFO, I saw one, so call me a kook. At least it looked unlike any aircraft in the 50’s when I was a teenager. It appeared over the sound behind our beach house late afternoon, early evening when we all out on the boat dock. Hovering about a 100 feet above the water, silver sort of oblong disk…was there and then in a split second it wasn’t…just gone. Every one out in the yard saw it, adults and us children. My cousins and I still mention it to each other now and then. The adults speculated it might be some
experimental aircraft but no one followed up on determining what exactly it was. I don’t think they really thought it was a new experimental aircraft, I think they just preferred to ignore it and not ask questions at the closest AF base so as not to be thought nutty.
All,
maybe a bit off topic, but not that far –
what ever came of the telepathy experiments US has conducted with a person in the first nuclear submarine, Nautilus? I vaguely remember a physics professor talking about it in 1960s.
I also refer to the story of Swedenborg and his vision of Stockholm fire from a distance of hundreds of miles.
So which bloodline do we humans subscribe to?
Anunnaki, or Pleadian?
You seem to have some based on this blog. And since I read TTG’s post on remote viewing, I must assume he does as well – as long as it doesn’t involve Russian hacking. 🙂
I tend to regard remote viewing as mostly crap by con artists (how many “remote viewers” did the CIA REALLY have working for them? Apparently hundreds based on everyone claiming to have been one.).
However, I have my own theories about how so-called “psychic powers” might work. I call it “the biological Internet”. I merely assume that living beings are connected in some way by a known or unknown physical energy (call it “The Force” if you’re into Star Wars) which enable communication between those entities. It implies that the cells of the body store information in some manner which can then be transmitted and received over this energy in much the same manner as the physical Internet works – with other living beings serving as “routers” and “switches” routing “packets” of information which can then be assembled, partly or completely, by the receiving body and tapped into by the brain and then entered into consciousness.
This would “explain” a whole host of alleged abilities from telepathy to clairvoyance (which is the same as “remote viewing” which is just another buzzword) to even reincarnation memories, precognition and “astral travel”. It could even explain curses and so-called “magic powers.” It would at least give a sound theory that could be investigated by experiment.
Whether the “energy” involved is somewhere on the EM spectrum or quantum in nature could at least be theorized and experiments designed to detect it. That would put things on a more sound footing than just trying to make people guess cards in an unemotional lab environment which is clearly not conducive to results.
Most of these phenomena seem to depend on emotional involvement; guessing cards isn’t going to stimulate it. One of the more interesting Russian experiments I read about involved a mother rabbit on a Russian submarine at sea with her litter back on shore. Every time the researchers agitated the litter, the mother reacted with agitation. There was no known form of communication that could explain the behavior, which implies an unknown form.
Presumably the communication occurs on an unconscious level and only emerges into (modern) consciousness under conditions of emotional stress. Earlier humans might have had more connection to it due the environmental conditions of human evolution.
Anyone who has looked into “occult training” at all knows that “magic powers” entail invoking extreme emotional tension and concentration, usually by rituals of some sort. Once some sort of theory of the mechanism involved is derived, this implies such abilities could be trained. Once trained, the trained subjects could be used to explore the limits of the mechanism.
I doubt this will ever happen because almost no one has either the imagination or the guts to suggest such research due to career damage that usually ensues. Frankly most people, especially scientists, are scared to death of the knowledge expansion and consequences that could occur if such things were proven to be feasible. Better to let them lie as “old wives tales” and hoaxes.
Fatima Manoubia,
“what is MBTI and INTP?”
MBTI is short for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It is a short multiple choice questionnaire used to identify personality type. It is based on Carl Jung’s psychological theories of how one experiences one’s environment. INTP is one personality type indicated by the Myers-Briggs test. It stands for Introversion (I), Intuition (N), Thinking (T), Perception (P). There are various description of what these personality types means that you should read for yourself.
http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/home.htm?bhcp=1
https://www.mbtionline.com
i think by now the information colleted WRT UFO and US military encounter are a vast library , which no one in the govt seem to know what to so with it. For example this old 1950s case of US military planes with multiple witnesses abroad who saw a circle of lights at sea level and suddenly the light rise up to the plane’s altitude , a disc bigger than the plane pacing it for some time.
the crew landed and debriefed on the sighting , during which the interviewers showed the plane’s crew multiple photos of objects to compare. I assume the ones tasked to data collections have collected plenty of data on sightings , it boggles me why it never released to public and kept as secret.
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/bethune51.htm
It is an adaptation of the ancient and common theory of 4 human types, but based on ideas of C. G. Jung. GOOGLE it.
https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
Abbreviations such as INTP are part of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, MBTI.
At the link above you can learn your personality type.
Intellectuals are NT, which means “intuitive and thinking.” NTs are open to shocking ideas.
People with the SJ traits might be described as “bureaucratic,” although the site above describes them as “sentinels.” SJs are not open to shocking ideas.
“this stuff is scary to a lot of people.”
I recommend the writings of Dean Radin regarding the psi taboo.
Also, useful academic papers can be accessed at:
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm
I am INTJ and I don’t accept the UFO narrative any more than I accepted the 9/11 event narrative after Mohamed Atta’s passport was found in the ashes of the World Trade Center.
CNN, WaPo, and NYT have recent articles on the UFO video promoted by Luis Elizondo, an ex Pentagon UFO official. Luis Elizondo is affiliated with
To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. One of the founders of To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science is Dr. Hal Puthoff, OT (Operating Thetan) Level III with the Church of Scientology.
I don’t have time to connect the dots, but a deep dive into the characters behind the UFO promotion might cast doubt on the credibility and/or motive of the sources, not to mention the physics involved.
Here they are…The TTS Academy Team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuuIZhP3xFI&index=1&list=PLHZwH5WvwnFeSca5ws41G84zNCJLAqAh-
What does your intuition tell you about this operation?
Therefore, considering the element of time, the game’s evolution would be observable in corresponding changes in the object’s behavior, enabling some conclusions to be drawn about the game. Note that the ‘game’ comparison would enable the game to be either a natural phenomena associated with some intelligent entity or be technology based.
“There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making”
Is it possible that the one who keep the UFO data catalogs not in pentagon but in other govt body ? is it possible this govt body only share their data sparingly ?
Ingo Swann , the father (along with Pat Price) of Remote Viewing in SRI , claimed that he was offered a deal ($1000 a day) to work with some people to remote view the moon. These ‘people’ consist of 3 people and they took him blindfolded in a car then helicopter ride and then go underground via lift to unknown facility.
while it sound like a bad spy movie , the data ingo gathered from the moon remote viewing are used by these people as confirmation that there’s some anomalies on the moon.
the details of the encounters can be read at Ingo’s book “Penetration”
Colonel.
INTJ here, ditto for both my wife and my father. It might be both entertaining and enlightening to find out how many of your readers are what. I suspect you might find rather a lot of us are INTJs.
Du
Fred,
Many satellites look at the moon or the sun (for calibration purposes, but not with an imager, and those that look out with imagers have extremely fine fields of view – space is too vast not to focus. Not the tool for spotting visitors.
Now through LEO, we have good radar coverage, if for nothing else than mapping space junk. Here, a ship would be hard put not to be spotted unless it has a very small radar profile. Since we already can reduce radar profiles enormously, a more advanced society’s ship likely would have no radar signature (unless it wanted to).
I think it is far more likely that the “UFOs” are new Russian weapon systems and not alien spaceships.
Putin announced that Russia developed “a small-scale heavy duty nuclear energy unit”. When they use this unit to propel a cruise missile or an unmanned vessel, they could achieve flying specs so spectacular that observers might think they are seeing an UFO – especially in terms of maneuverability, speed and range. I do not know what parts of the nuclear propulsion system would be visible from the outside, but it is very likely that it would not resemble any jet-engine-based system, adding to the puzzlement of the observer and leading him to the UFO conclusion.
Southfront had some videos and articles about these new Russian systems recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB6tsnMGJMg
https://southfront.org/saker-newly-revealed-russian-weapons-systems-political-implications/
Dubhaltach
IMO, many here are NTs of the various types; INTP. INTJ, ENTJ, ENTP pl
james
Astrology is superstition. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is not superstition. It is an old but reliable classification of human personality varieties by indicated preference. I have found it to be predictive of how individual humans function and quite reliable. Look it up pl
Catherine,
Many ambassadors are ENTJs. r/JMH (INTF)
Correction:
Catherine,
Many ambassadors are ENTJs. r/JMH (INFP)
All
Due to the analytical nature of this blog, and pl’s MTBI type, it is hardly surprising to find we are probably not very representative of the population at large. I need this blog, and others with specialist knowledge, to answer my questions about how the world/universe functions. Without the internet I could not gain the information I need for understanding. Having a conversation with the people life puts in my path is generally impossible, if the topic is the subject matter of these blogs, as they know next to nothing and have little interest.
JJackson (INTP-A)
Dub,
Over the years I’ve taken the test several times; usually at corporate team building functions. I always come out as INTJ even though I don’t fully agree with that. The test is at least reliable.
Mellon’s theme is that UFO sightings and the possibility of advanced adversary ISR platforms are both being ignored by perceived disjointed collection and analysis.
This is not logical. Counter-ISR would be (guessing here) a sub rosa role of JFCC-ISR, they being the centre of role expertise. Tactically, adversary ISR could be designed to mimic ‘UFO’ behavior to encourage discrediting of data and create psychological barriers to processing. Unidentified adversary ISR platforms themselves are technically ‘UFO’s’ in any case – all you need is lack of national markings and unfamiliar dimensions.
I suggest that far from collection and reporting etc being disjointed and stovepiped as Mellon suggests, the above factors have long since been identified and any data re aeronautical anomalies anywhere would be rapidly sucked up to feed a counter-ISR information requirement.
Another way of looking at it is this – a 40′ TicTac flys around a CSG, gets recorded on a F18 HUD camera, then disappears into the ocean, but gets forgotten about as just one of those X-files things ? Uh-ah 🙂 No.
Similarly, would we not also expect land and sea anomaly collection programs run by the relevant experts ?
Richard, yes I think the spirit world and UFO’s can both be safely left out of one’s CV, although as you say, some level of acceptance, eg., by simplification as old wive’s tales, can be afforded to the former.
I grew up in a haunted house. We shared the place with a fairly low energy, wall tapping and occasionally kinetic beastie whom we accepted and ignored. None of us made any attempts to find out more due to the uncertainty of what we might find in the same sense that we did not provoke the numerous venomous snakes that passed by.
We just normalised the lot as being a part of living in a very old Australian bush house.
I doubt that would have been the case had we encountered any ‘UFO’s’ which bore the possibility of some advanced intelligence !
I am INTJ, my husband is ESFP. We are opposites, but it works for us.
Eric Newhill – Your comment reminded me of something I read in the New Scientist long ago. Amazingly it’s still on the internet. 28th October 1982, rather more than half way down if the link doesn’t get straight to it –
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k5gNPz8j_HYC&pg=PA249&lpg=PA249&dq=Causative+formation&source=bl&ots=ovQdNiLXVJ&sig=23MqZ6VAyw21mSSGkhW6pIt4ulc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD4P6co-fZAhXjJMAKHRb1DrEQ6AEIZDAG#v=onepage&q=Causative%20formation&f=false
Causative formation – as I understand it the idea that once something has happened that increases the likelihood of it happening again – doesn’t seem to have got much traction since.
Sheldrake rapidly became regarded as too fringe to matter. I think this article illustrates the general view –
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/morphic-paranormal-science-sheldrake
He went on to do tests on animals – dogs becoming animated the moment their masters got into a taxi to go home – and I think he was a scrupulous enough experimenter to document that accurately. I don’t know whether he did enough experiments to rule out chance.
In real life causative formation works every time of course. Once I’ve made a mistake it’s uncanny how easy I find it to make the same mistake again.
Richard,
One problem with the idea that UFOs are advanced Russian aircraft is that the recent sightings bear striking resemblance to sightings going back many decades. There is much to suggest that this is all a continuation of an old phenomenon.
JW-
Agreed. Hard to say anything without more data, which is Mellon’s point.
All,
Seems many of us have had brushes with the unexplainable. Science discounts a lot of this because it can not be reliably tested. I think that if/when high-fidelity recordings of a person’s consciousness become reality, we may be in for a shock.
richardstevenhack,
(reply to comment 14)
Your description of having spent some time with Ivan Sanderson when he was living in western New Jersey reminded me of his having written about that, I think in a book called North America: The Continent We Live On. It was one of many mainstream books he wrote and I think I might read it again after all this time.
https://www.questia.com/library/533878/the-continent-we-live-on
I also stumbled across a Tribute To Ivan T Sanderson site. It lists all the books the tribute-giver knows him to have written, of which I have read only a few. I did not realize he had written so many books. It also describes how he was able to type fast enough to keep up with all the books growing in his mind.
http://richardgrigonis.com/Ch11%20Kookbooks%20and%20Finale.html
you might find this science article of interest in reply to#28:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180301094822.htm
I’ll only be shocked if the first people to record my consciousness aren’t the NSA.
I tend to think MBTI is really a summary of how people think and make judgments (the questions are all about people’s “thinking” style, and as far as I know, the methodology simply sums up these answers.) Maybe not something that’s really written in permanent ink, but a useful proxy for making sense of how people respond to new information and events.
I don’t know what to think about UFOs and such. The bottom line, to me, is always that the universe is more complicated than we think it is and it has ways of surprising us by doing something unexpected. Maybe these UFO’s are advanced thingamajjiggies launched by foreign powers. Maybe they are something natural. Who knows? Perhaps they are worth further investigation…but it seems to me a sign of a closed mind to dismiss them out of hand. (I’m borderline INFP and INTP, for what it’s worth–used to be slightly on the T side, now slighly on the F side.)
A Myers Briggs description anybody can grasp: http://personalitygrowth.com/myers-briggs-mbti-dog-edition/
I’m an INTP, slight IN, strong TP.
EO,
I am familiar with Sheldrake’s work. He can delve a little too far into pure speculation at times, but I think that at other times he is quite “scientific”.
The Guardian article quotes Susan Blackmore. Blackmore is one of several professional skeptics. They make a career out of bashing any science that demonstrates the reality of the “paranormal”. They are self-appointed protectors of the current materialist paradigm. They typically are not very honest in the statements they make; often distorting the facts or just plain lying. Often they have been forced to admit that they haven’t even really read the material that they seek to “debunk”. The “amazing” Randi is another member of that club. There are others. Ray Hyman is amongst them as well. His critique of the Stargate project contained several noteworthy inaccuracies. He has repeated these over the years. The people that create and update Wiki articles are also fairly rabid and hyperactive about defending materialism and employ the tactics of the professional skeptics. I suspect they may be the same people. They think it makes them look smart or something.
That is a question I wanted to ask about the MBTI. Is being positioned in one of those 16 cubby holes more likely to be indicative of an Angleton or a Hanson, a Gehlen, or a Pollard?
Is there a cubby there that is more likely to indicate a good Operative or a good Analyst?
charles
In my experience and opinion the NT types are generally the best material for making both analysts and field collectors. The SJ types often lack the intuition needed for good intelligence people. Nevertheless, unsuitable people often reach the top of these agencies because they are focused on the politics of ambition. pl
Pat, I did the MBTI test and got a “Mediator INFP-A”…
https://www.16personalities.com/infp-personality
What do you think?
P.S: Why do not you publish at least my gratitude to those who tried to explain me the issue?
What was what you did not liked so as to delete even the music? That story in China? Common, man, I was joking, of course….
Although maybe you just let me post all the weekned to then delete all as a vengeance
Barbara Ann-
Yeah, them or Google. I’m even less keen on the latter of those options.
Space based holograms produced by high powered lasers.no propulsion and moves around quickly like a torch light on a wall versus a musk rocket that actually carries things into space
IDBI
So, the navy is faking it? pl
fatima manoubia
it was fun, an old man’s simple pleasure. you told me I was a childish old man. Keep on writing. pl
No the holograms are for training purposes instead of towing targets.like combat pistol shooting alley using holograms.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Av1t28UHe0U
Col, according to this the owl is the INTP’s spirit animal. An animal you seem to identify with.
http://personalitygrowth.com/myers-briggs-mbti-spirit-animals/
Haha… however I prefer the zombie apocalypse version of INFJ… it fits me better 😉 http://personalitygrowth.com/each-myers-briggs-mbti-type-in-a-zombie-apocalypse/
About 5 years or so I took the MBTI for the 2nd time and discovered I am now an INFJ. I was an ENFP in my early 30’s when I first took the test. Apparently my becoming a realist is echoed in my revised MBTI designation.
Colonel,
what’s your experience, if any, with ISTP or other SP types in military / intelligence?
Another INTP here — this Committee seems to have an uncommonly high number of us. A good thing, in my view, especially since we are so used to being overwhelmingly outnumbered.
swamp yankee
I long ago came to realize that NTs generally are a social minority, in many ways a oppressed minority. SST is clearly a haven for NTs. I have several times tried the experiment of isolating a group of NTs for a discussion of some particular subject. The same thing happens every time. There is a short period of sniffing at each other for type identification. This is somewhat like a breed group of dogs at a show. They do the same thing. Most strikingly Australian Cattle Dogs, an exceptionally smart breed, look around at each other gradually realizing that they are all the same ugly mutts. Then the social interaction speeds up. In human NTs the same thing occurs after some conversation. Then the group begins to define the terms necessary for discussion of the subject. They always do that. When that is done the discussion cycles around the group with the talk becoming more and more “telegraphic,” with unnecessary words and steps cut out by mutual understanding. In an NT pure group the discussion becomes nearly unintelligible to other MBTI groups. BTW the difference between men and women in this process is negligible so long as they are all NTs. The other three main groups perform very differently in type pure discussions each having its own particular style. pl
I wish I could find another reference I found interesting, about telepathic communication at a considerable distance between Australian aborigines. But I suspect you’ll be up on all that in any case.
As I think you’ve intuited, I tend to shy away from the subject. I think the reason one shies away from such subjects is that one tries to keep the target small.
Some time ago I was talking to a Naval Officer who mentioned, as something that was obvious, that the Russians were getting frisky in the Black Sea. That’s understated English service-speak for saying that the Russians were being aggressive. I intimated that we might be getting a little frisky ourselves if Russian ships were romping around the Isle of Wight as if they owned the place. That is, it was maybe possible to suggest that the Russians might feel that they were responding to aggressive actions on our part rather than being aggressive themselves.
These days such a suggestion can put you straight into the nutter category, no question, for I’d say most people who take an interest in such matters. You’re challenging unchallengeable orthodoxy and are therefore by definition suspect. So that, with many people, is a difficult subject to tackle.
More recently I was talking to an undergraduate who had followed events in the ME with some attention. He believed that both in Libya and in Syria Western actions were motivated solely by R2P considerations. As I attempted to put forward the view that that might not be the case I could see the undergraduate’s view of me changing. I’d started off looking to him like a reasonably intelligent adult. As soon as I questioned the R2P explanation I became in his eyes just another conspiracy theorist. So there’s another subject that’s a difficult one to tackle.
People like you, and I hope me if I’m not fooling myself, who try to keep an open mind and just want to see where the evidence leads, are not as common as they were. In the modern intellectual climate most have become trigger happy in their judgements. Mention that Israeli influence on American foreign policy might not always be beneficial and for very many that puts you immediately amongst the rabid anti-semites and thus automatically invalidates any such argument. Another difficult one to tackle. Particularly among the young, free-ranging discussion has been replaced by automatic sorting by stereotype, and if there’s a hint of a wrong stereotype that can be found or even attributed, then discussion becomes impracticable.
This shift in the intellectual climate has become very noticeable. There are subjects of less immediate importance that are also now difficult. Back in the 80’s, when the Sheldrake material was published, we were all very easy with Sheldrake’s thesis. It looked unusual and probably wrong but so what? Might be wrong, might be right, let’s see if he makes anything of it.
Now we’re not easy with it. It challenges orthodoxy, and who knows what ideological overtones it might carry? So we fall automatically into our camps. It is incumbent on us to be fiercely hostile to such suggestions as Sheldrake’s, or to be uncritically partisan. For most it’s the first.
Don’t dare to have a look at what Sheldrake is saying, let alone find it interesting. Dump his thesis straight into the area 51 stereotype and woe betide anyone who thinks different.
You’ll know that there are a whole host of subjects that we used to be easy discussing that can no longer be discussed for fear of automatic ideological stereotyping. Are we being cowardly in steering clear of such subjects?
I don’t think so. We don’t find the soldier cowardly when he digs himself a foxhole. He’s just being realistic. He’s keeping the target small. In the current ideological climate, when all the forces of PR and political pressure are so strong and so strongly directed against those who question the current orthodoxy, we can’t just stroll around in the open any more like we used to. We can’t just pick up any old subject we fancy and subject it to relaxed scrutiny, free of any fear that in doing so we are thought to be committing ourselves to this or that ideological position. We live in a more constricted world, a world in which venemous enmity has replaced the old free-ranging discussion, and to function in such a world we’d better dig ourselves a foxhole.
One does want to function in today’s world. I want to be able to argue that our current economic orthodoxy is suicidal, that the current Russophobia is dumb, that we shouldn’t do what we are doing in the ME. If, to be able to do that in my small circle with any hope of effectiveness, I have to steer clear of many other subjects that one used not to have to steer clear of, then that’s the price. Better to be in the foxhole than to walk away from the fight entirely.
kxd
I see that you are in the UK. I don’t know if there is a great difference from the American population. In the US, 50% of the population are the SP type. These are performance people, focused on activity, especially group activity like sports either personally performed or watched. This group is little concerned with abstractions and often just gives them lip service in order to obtain tolerance from the other groups. everything tends to become a “party” for SPs, to include the kind of discussion mentioned above involving NTs. The social interaction is more important for S:Ps than the matter under discussion. If a report is required of the group mutually contradictory statements may be included therein because the SPs are just going through the motions required. In the US Army the solders are 50% SPs, mirroring the composition of the population as a whole. Among successful officers at the War College selectee level they are far outnumbered by the SJs but are a larger percentage than the NTs. The fourth group, NFs, are an almost negligibly small group and are usually ethnic minorities like Latinos who are culturally conditioned to deep empathy. In the intelligence business SP are not inclined toward contemplative activity but would be well suited to jobs like counter-intelligence investigators on the street or imagery interpreters. pl
IDBI
1. Is there any basis for your assertion that these are man made laser generated targets? 2. would the Navy pilots not know if they were? pl
IDBI,
Any explanation of the phenomena must take into account that similar sightings were taking place in the 40s and 50s. The laser tech that you speak of was not invented back then. Now it is possible (in the purely technical definition of the word “possible”) that someone is using a laser today to create a hoax, but that does not explain the full range of the phenomena as recorded over the decades.
As I said up thread, with this kind of subject matter it is always possible, indeed not uncommon, to have both hoaxes and real things happening, even from the same actor/observer.
EO,
Well said. I know what you’re talking about.
I do not accept anyone framing the boundaries of what is foundational to a discussion. I find that those who seek to do so are either stupid or, more usually, to be engaged in a power play designed to keep someone in charge as the arbiter of reality and, thus, in political control. If you really want to solve a perceived problem or simply to understand reality, then the fundamentals must be examined openly and honestly. Assumptions much be examined and questioned and discarded if found to not match up with what is known. Exceptions don’t make rules, they break rules; reveal rules to be mere tendencies at best.
Due to that attitude combined with taking my job as an analyst/problem solver seriously, I used to frequently find myself in trouble at work; always at odds with the more bureaucratic mindsets that had wormed their way into managerial fiefdoms. That was in govt and in not-for-profit companies. Fortunately, someone that worked in the for-profit world recognized my abilities and struggles and recruited me to do exactly what I had been trying to do. He also mentored and protected me from the diminished, but still existent, bureaucrats in the for profit world. Thus, finally appreciated, left alone to do what needs to be done and financially rewarded I found my happy niche; in which I continue today. They give me a mission involving getting answers and participating in policy development and turn me lose. If I run into blockers I have some big guns backing me up. Love it.
Needless to say, UFOs threaten the bureaucrats’ power. UFOs change the fundamentals for both the govt and for the scientists who seek to be the high priests of the modern era. They would have to say, “We are small and we don’t know much”.
EO#51, a good friend of mine gave me a book by enfant terrible in biology, Rupert Sheldrake. This friend is not a nut, far from it, but a highly abstract thinker. For his doctoral thesis in linguistics on pattern recognition they needed a third expert opinion by a prof in Mathematics.
Sheldrake is no doubt an interesting dissenter. The small book I read and then passed on to never get back was more about the enormous self-healing-power and self-adaptation patterns in nature, apparently possessed by animals. Would we created airplanes if their were no birds?
*****
But why does Rupert Sheldrake come to mind in this context? And not e.g. Parapsychology? IMHO people that train their perception can feel like clairvoyants occasionally. 😉
EO
It’s not quite in UFO territory, but this discussion reminds me of the ground-effect vehicles the Soviets developed in the Cold War. One such behemoth dubbed ‘The Caspian Sea Monster’ could apparently travel at 270kts just a few meters above the sea. I see the Ruskies are considering reintroducing the idea for the arctic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/06/ekranoplan_returns/
In Hawaii, the big island, I had two friends that took me to where they witnessed a “space ship” of some sort, not too big. It apparently took a good look at them and kind of flying scaucered itself away. They were young and very credible in their account.
I attributed this to some kind of drone created by US-military, as Hawaii has lots of military.
Perhaps a leap frog is taking place and the militaries of the world are keeping mum about it?
Thanx for post.
jpb
Neither do many other people accept it, myself included. My impression is that the UFO stuff has been disseminated by our rulers over the decades in order to better keep the unwashed distracted, wasting precious energy uselessly, allowing them to rule less impeded. To serve the same ends as did myth, superstition, fairytale, ritual etc in the ‘old days.’ Do people seriously believe that Julius Caesar took the reading of entrails or flights of birds in earnest? No, he did not, but understood the efficacy of such things for manipulating the credulous.
One notion (based mostly on anecdotal evidence, since I only know MBTI of a few people that I worked with) that I’ve had is that SJ types tend to take the “models” and “theories” of the given truth and fit the data to those assumptions: so, for example, ideas like “rationality” or “left-right political ideologies” are not only big deal, but they are building blocks of “the truth.” They are very good at “measurements,” but tend to be a bit uncreative and not very adaptive when things are very murky and/or changing. NT people, on the other hand, don’t take the models and theories too seriously: they are just abstractions and summaries of “what we (think) we know,” which, as things change, can change, sometimes dramatically. But NT people, at times, can be a headache and a pain in the a** to work with since they might be questioning the widely shared assumptions that are “obvious” to many people: what do you mean, “is X really X? Of course X is X. Isn’t that obvious?” Always wondered if this is a sort of “engineer” vs. “scientist” mentality (Engineers don’t question the “laws of science,” but extrapolate from them on the assumption that they are right, and this is usually justified. Questioning the “laws” of science is at the heart of what scientists do and they “discover” things on rare occasions the “laws” of science fail.) I imagine that people can an do change their MBTI over time, but far slowly than what they think and believe–after all, when people say they change their mind, it’s almost always what they think, not “how” they think.
I often wondered if the “social science” types who delve in policymaking are mostly SJ types (i.e whose mentality is not suited for actual “science”), who don’t question their theories like real scientists do/should, who are usually too mired in the abstract universe to think about things like policymkaing.
Always wondered if this is a sort of “engineer” vs. “scientist” mentality (Engineers don’t question the “laws of science,”
Irony alert: Tao, I may have gotten into the trap of some type of disinformation based on my MBTI/interests basics at one point in time on the web.
As I recall the former engineer turned artist (I know another one of this type), anyway the artist’s present on the web basic credo was the engineer’s rules work in spite of all. And apparently worked since someone came up with them well enough.
I find the history of science highly interesting. … Not enough enough time though apart from the occasional glimpse. Undisciplined reader and all. 😉
What about string theory?
http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=47
Well, it has long been theorized by some UFO buffs that Roswell was a real spaceship, and that the US took the technology and developed some advanced aircraft from it.
For instance, the triangular shaped UFOs that have hovered at very low altitudes over some US cities are speculated to be advanced US aircraft under test (not withstanding that US military aircraft aren’t allowed below 1,000 feet over populated areas as I understand it. I have, however, seen C-130’s below that altitude in certain places.)
However, the fact that we can go back to WWII for “foo fighters” which are essentially identical to UFOs as well as Scandinavia in the 1920’s for “mystery aircraft” as well as go back to the late 1800’s where “mystery airships” were the phenomena of choice indicates that this speculation is highly unlikely.
This is a phenomena which changes with the times. Its appearance depends on the technological capability of the age in which it appears.
TTG,
“Perhaps these UFOs are some wild blend of technological and psychic magic”
I like that. You know what’s faster than the speed of light? The speed of thought. Galaxies could be traversed in an instant.
What an interesting discussion! Since we’ve drifted off the topics of weapons about which I know nothing useful, into for example UFOs and mind-reading, I’ll share my perspective on those two latter subjects.
In general, when something weird is alleged, I tend to wonder “how could it work?” and that might lead to an idea for followup in some way.
UFOs, or rather, specifically, flying saucers: Playing with a frisbee shows that a rotating disk aircraft is feasible in principle. Pilot dizziness might not be a problem with a robot, or an organism with no circulatory fluids, or via remote control. Can we make it? Over to the engineers!
Mind reading: Those Rhine experiments, people in separate rooms, seemed a bit foolish if one is looking for something new. Don’t put obstacles in way of finding a new phenomenon. Instead, try for most favourable circumstances, get the phenomenon reliably replicatable, and then can try changing one or another of the circumstances, to understand better.
Brains work electrically, I guess, or at least EEGs indicate its partly so. Putting heads side by side might work best for thought transference. Does that mix in other possibilities — smells, other chemicals, subvocals, micro tremors…? Sure. Even body language. Hey … learn to read first, and use every assist one can in becoming a good reader. Hug lots of people maybe.
Back to lurking. Cheers!
Did the test – I am also INTP.
Ken Roberts,
( reply to comment 87)
Are you proposing . . . brainio waves?
Eric,
It seems to me everybody is counting space travel impossible unless it is fast enough for us to go somewhere and return in one lifetime. It may well be easier to create a self-sustaining environment in space ships than it is to create one one on, say, Mars. If Einstein was correct and we are being visited they are living in space ships, and anyone who wishes to travel the stars must do so as well.
The main obstacle may be our need for instant gratification, or gratification within a personal lifespan.
I just see things differently.thats my basis.when you watched the video you followed the target.i on the other hand flew the jet.the closest i got in real life was a c172 cessena.slow as a donkey.i would go to the air shows and watch the jets and dream about flying them.the power and speed.just imagine flying over the syrian desert and suddeny you spot a tank.you lock on and fire a missile.only thing is the heat signature is a burning tire and when you pass overhead what you see is some burning rubber.whoever controls space controls the continents.as to the navy pilots question.i knew a airforce pilot who would instruct civilians on the side.we would be flying along at 80 knots and he would cup his hands over the mic and talk to the tower pretending to be a mirage pilot on approach.no radar where i flew just a tower and sure enough the guy in the tower would be watching out for a jet.
Leander – Why Sheldrake?
Well, do you ever listen to Radio 4? Try the “Today” programme, say between nine and ten your time. It’s a real piece of work these days – I have it on the car radio and it’s all fashionable and often virulent sneering at anything that doesn’t precisely fit the narrowest band of received opinion. That is, when they’re not on about about Russia, when you get a good solid dose of two minute hate except that it lasts longer. Ferrets in a sack isn’t in it. Almost makes the NYT look civilised.
How on earth, I think before I reach for the off-button, did dear old Auntie BBC come to this? That sedate and irreproachably boring matron ending up sitting on the floor howling and picking straws out of her hair? Come to think of it, how did we end up like this?
Long ago, so long ago that the crazies hadn’t even made it to the BBC’s basement, I had permission from the Rector to practice on a creaky old church organ in a village not too far from where I lived. I used to go over late at night. At first it was, for a young boy, a little, well, spooky. Sleeping crusaders, quiet enough when seen in broad daylight, didn’t look so harmless when glimpsed in fitful shadows thrown by the organ light. The belfry steps down which the bell ringers prosaically clumped in their heavy boots at start of Matins – those who didn’t slope off to the pub when they’d done their stint – looked somehow ominous now.
Can’t have this foolishness, I thought briskly, can’t concentrate. So I turned the light out and played in the dark for that session, on the principle that irrational fears are best confronted head on. It worked. The shadows never distracted me again.
What I didn’t reckon on was the villagers – the picture postcard cottages housed real villagers in those distant times, not white flight Londoners seeking rural bliss. I heard later that some had walked past the darkened church and had had a real fright when ghostly organ music started up of itself. Some refused to believe it wasn’t supernatural even when it was explained. You’re talking of people who asserted they’d seen men on horseback riding across a nearby bridge. But across an older bridge, before it had been metalled and the surface raised, so you never saw the horses’ hooves. That’s to be found in tourist guides all over England these days, but once there were people who’d really seen such things. Particularly when the bridge was near a pub. An organ mysteriously playing itself was child’s play to that.
Since then me and the para-normal have never had what you might call a good relationship. In fact, as a trusting product of the school lab bench and the severely rational physics lessons, one was always deeply sceptical. There’s invariably a rational explanation. Just got to find it.
Later, Sheldrake. Very much a lab bench man but taking seriously propositions that until then had been ludicrous. Caused quite a stir. Not so much whether his conclusions were valid or not, but that he’d proposed them at all.
So that’s the man I remembered when this subject came up, and led me to compare the relaxed, open way we discussed such things – all things really – only thirty five years ago, with the hysteria-laden atmosphere of today. It’s been quite a journey, don’t you think?
para-normal have never had what you might call a good relationship
Well, dear. Only touched the subject myself on wider excursions around a paper on Surrealism/Automatic Writing. … (babbling alert) Ok in a nutshell, found some related matters via an university catalog in a then still existing institute. Never looked back more seriously. Maybe since the head of the institute I then met, repeated exactly the same sentence he had written many decades ago on the issue? Kind of a two-liner. … But yes, as I remember it, basically they were looking for rational explanations.
But yes, INTP too. Funny, somewhat my friend, basically unhirable in the then present linguistic context, it feels in hindsight. Too early? Initially pondered about studying at the Jung Institute in Zurich. But then moved on into the larger field of the treatment of brain damages.
It feels in hindsight Sheldrake left a popular trace. Judging from German media. Self-healing powers? Although, maybe that’s the only one that ever got me interested in biology? And there are a lot other biologists the work of which I am not aware of?
******
Never forget an aged church organist in a church around here. I like them empty and in daylight. Odd? But then I visited grave yards at night. Ok, not always, in London I had one that offered the same aged restfulness an empty church offers. I would never have noticed his fine irony via music and thus his mastership, hadn’t I encountered him in an otherwise empty space. Obviously he was aware of someone entering. …
thanks for the feedback, you are a good writer. I do wonder a bit if American vs English feels a little less familiar to me by now. … gotta check.
LeaNder,
Speaking of String Theory, have you read Lee Smolin’s work, especially “The Trouble with Physics?” I’ve been under the impression that string theory has generated a lot of controversy and unease among the physicists, precisely because it is beyond what is “testable.” You can’t tell how “wrong” the theory is, and without being able to probe its limits, it’s not science any more, but metaphysics. This is a dangerous attitude in any field, I think: somebody always has to dig at the underlying assumptions and must always question them, in any field, I think. We make up theories to cover for the fact that we don’t know everything. If we mistake the theories for everything that we don’t really know (i.e. because “someone” came up with them well enough), that’s an invitation for trouble, if you ask me.
thanks for the reply sir!