ファブリス Wrote:Oh I'm sure that's what the president said.

I guess you're referring to President Sarkozy? Or perhaps Li Baodong, the President of the UN Security Council in March?

(you don't need to respond ... just trying to be fair...) :-)

Crop circles and all the designs are VERY impressive and I think they are great pieces of art. I don't really care for the "alien communication" idea but I think that I would love to learn how to make one.

I am not against the idea of there being aliens but I highly doubt if they travelled millions of miles to just to doodle on our crops. And that is if they even found us -- which is like finding a needle in a field of hay stacks -- I think they would come out a bit more openly if they were friendly. Hostile is a completely different ball game. >

@Fabrice - Oh, no problem. Tone doesn't always come across properly here, and I could've put more context around my link to make it neutral/tangential. And my second comment wasn't directed at you, in case that wasn't clear. It was inspired by other comments and meant to be a kind of general condemnation of attacking every mention of things like crop circles. And I'm not just saying that because you're The Man! ;p Also, to me the example that this forum has a cool administrator is that the admin could get so vexed with commenters and not ban them, etc. It sounds perfectly reasonable that Fabrice's style would be the norm, but it's not, I think, mostly admins remain detached or if they interact, getting dissed (or imagining they are) results in the hammer being laid down.

@gyuujuice - I agree, crop circles are quite lovely and fascinating, in my mind. I would love to believe that the first ones were made by aliens, though, and that subsequently, that humans who have made them have actually been mathematically insulting the alien mothers and have started a slow motion interstellar war with Earth that is only just now beginning to take shape.

keys84 Wrote:You don't have to be a nut to believe, as said I was a sceptic when I was a teen and now accept its probably black budget stuff

I have no idea what you're trying to say. How exactly would cutting crops in a complex pattern be 'black budget stuff'?

Or are you just talking about the tunnels?--in which case I don't understand how the anecdote relates to crop circles.

If you watch videos or read books as an occasional form of entertainment, there is not much harm in that. Just don't contribute any money to these people if possible. The authors are trying to deceive and play off the naive nature of a segment of the population. The government can't even cover up a president getting a blowjob in the White House. The idea they are capable of hiding something this big is kind of ridiculous.

I don't know, in situations like these I always use something similar to Hume's argument from "On Miracles."

Basically, with any given event, you need to look at the probability of it happening. And then you need to look at the evidence of the event, and then conclude whether or not it justifies belief in the event.

Now, Hume's argument is basically that when it comes to miracles, the evidence can never be enough to justify belief in the miracle, because in order to be a miracle something would have to contradict all of human experience--for example, something like Jesus rising from the dead. The understanding of human physiology is so great, and our experience of how corpses act is so thorough, that we know that it's exceedingly unlikely for someone to rise from the dead. We also know that people often lie, and people can deceive themselves easily. Therefor, it's more likely that an account of someone rising from the dead is the result of lying or people deceiving themselves. We see that lying and confusion happen constantly, so it's rather likely. A person rising from the dead we never see, so it is not likely at all. We just weigh the likelihood of each, and conclude that lying and confusion is the most likely cause of this belief. Jesus didn't rise from the dead, people either were confused or lied.

Doesn't the same thing apply here? You say you think 80% of crop circles are probably made by humans, and we've caught people making crop circles and stuff like that. Isn't it more likely that 100% of them are made from humans, than that 80% of them are made by humans and 20% are made by the military/aliens. It seems to me likely that some second rate scientist (if it's even a scientist at all) could be wrong about how hard it is to make a crop circle. The alternative is that the military is conducting some sort of secret test in which parts of some fields are heated to hundreds of degrees, yet only specific parts of the fields in complex patterns, and that the fields don't catch fire. Why the hell do the military tests need to be done above farms anyway? This seems horribly unlikely. So the obvious answer seems to be that 100% of crop circles are made by humans or some other similar simple explanation.

fuaburisu Wrote:I honestly have never heard about that, even though I thought I had read on a lot of psychology topics.

I take it you didn't have an older brother

Actually, humor is a way I use often trying to make a point with friends when I know logic alone will be ineffective. I often debate religion and that subject matter can get heated quickly. Also, just stating an opinion is kind of boring and easily forgotten, but teasing in a clever way forces the other person to have to consider things on multiple levels.

Admin: Doh, sorry clicked "Edit" instead of "Quote". Restored your post from Google cache.

[ファブリス]

bodhisamaya Wrote:I take it you didn't have an older brother

Nope. I had two step-brothers who were younger than me. I spent much time plotting evil schemes to have them do things they weren't supposed to do. I was all very creative but my step parents didn't seem to agree. :p