pubbie, that skeptical article is quite bad, the guy really didn't put much effort in it.
Wikipedia's article on crop circles does a better job, actually. It cites the observable traces of "genuine" circles and how a team from MIT reproduced them succesfully with conventional (but difficult) means. The Wikipedia article at least addresses the observed anomalities in crops, and the conclusion is less partial.
Quote:I highly doubt you watched past the first 2 minutes.
I didn't watch the whole thing at first, I did now, and it doesn't hurt.
For starters I posted links here to an interesting phenomenon and didn't ask anybody to believe. Neither did I say that I believed aliens are behind it. I wrote "a proportion of circles are man made", but that's more alluding to the fact that there are so called "genuine" circles with observable anomalities in them which havenot proven to be man made (save for that MIT experiment, AFAIK). Of course I would like to believe not all circles are of human origin, as this makes it far more interesting.. but that's my choice to believe what I want!
Neither did I personally attack anybody on their "open mindedness". Why has it become an issue I don't know.
When I said I like to "to stretch my mind" in my crop circle post, I use an expression of mine, which means I like to really mess up with my own beliefs and doubts and truths by getting deep into the rabbit hole of information and disinformation that is the internets, and have fun juggling between the so called "facts" or "fictions". I read both sides of the fence, despite what you seem to think, though I freely admit I no longer spend equal time reading the "debunking" articles seeing as 99% of them dismiss "pseudo-science" too easily and without doing their research. The very "pseudo-science" term is a derogatory to anything that's not yet explained. Just like "conspiracy theories" has become a derogatory and a useful tactic to dismiss any questioning of the status quo.
Go deep enough in this rabbit hole and you come out with a different view... you may even be scared at some point. I remember feeling scared sometime ago, it's funny... you realize that the world DOES go on, even if somehow all that you believed in or all that you trusted ended up being something else, or wrong altogether. It's a strange feeling.
And so I started to wonder what the importance of "truth" is and how it impacts on a *practical* level on my life. And what is truth anyway, and how can you tell these days? The only truth that matters is the one that directly impacts my life and my actions. I have often obsessed about this idea of truth... what will happen to me if I was wrong? Noooo.. Well nothing happens. If I am an aviation pilot, I read all the books and do all the training and those are my truths, and if I have an interest in crop circles next to that, that doesn't affect how I fly a plane.
I dislike this video because it's missing the point, and I maintain that it's based on stereotypes. That video would have you believe that an interest in pseudo-sciences and new age stuff is "sabotaging your capacity for learning". To the contrary I feel that an interest in the unexplained, and the so called "conspiracy theories" is indicative of a person asking questions and looking for answers.
