Facebook: A New Nazi-like Regime?

When Adolf Hitler began his mesmerization of the German peoples, he sucked them into his perverse “theology” that proposed Germans were an exclusive element of human society by his charismatic “charm” and ideology that his “political party” was an all-inclusive membership party for his defined super race.

If one wasn’t a Nazi Party member, one was an outsider.

Even brilliant persons, scientists [Werner von Braun], composers, film-makers [Leni Riefenstahl], and writers [Ezra Pound], and philosophers [Martin Heidegger] became enamored of Nazism.

Facebook’s attraction of “brilliant persons” and thinkers may be seen by scouring the Facebook membership rolls. I won’t note the many one-time UFO aficionados, many of them notable in the UFO community, who are avid members of Facebook, attracted to Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a world-wide society, under the influence of his internet creation. 

Is there the intrinsic evil in Facebook that underlay Nazism? 

Certainly not. But the mass [Facebook] membership, of ignorant human beings, is similar in essence to what made up the Nazi party and those who came under its sway: the German people as a virtual whole, going along with nazi policies and practices, unthinking and obeisant to the machinations of its founder and leader(s).

This is worrisome to some of us, certainly to me. 

Facebook is intellectually and politically innocuous at the moment, but in a few years?

RR

Death but not Transfiguration?

Yes, I saw the Anomalist listing about Paul Kimball’s Facebook note on the passing of Errol Bruce-Knapp, who has received honorariums from those who knew him.

I had several inter-connections with Errol during my days frequenting his UFO UpDates.

He contacted me and apologized for inserting a posting from long-time UFO maiden Wendy Connors that stated I was king of the gay community in Fort Wayne Indiana.

Errol said the comment slipped by him, which I found strange as he ran UpDates like Mussolini ran Italy during WWII.

(By the way, I’m not king or prince of anything, let alone the supposed gay community in my media community. I only know one gay fellow in that town and it’s a TV meteorologist who outed himself when he married his partner.)

I had another few calls with Errol; one about Bruce Maccabee, whom Errol thought was an operative for the U.S. Navy, bent on discounting some aspects of UFOs., and a few calls about one of Errol’s promoted friends who showed up in a strange online place and which we asked him [Errol] about.

He [Errol] was always solicitous and gentlemanly with me, but he did run UpDates with an iron hand, letting the UFO old-guard have free rein but tempering newbies who challenged the UFO status quo.

While UFO UpDates has passed into oblivion, thankfully and some of his Strange Days Indeed radiocasts and poscasts too, Errol’s graciousness and toughness lives on. May he rest in peace.

RR

Slovenly “research” by the easily distracted (in ufology)

Kevin Randle called for suggestions recently in the ongoing attempt to decipher the so-called Ramey memo, seen in the Roswell newspaper photos.

I had hoped that some would pursue the matter seriously, including David Rudiak who has been beating that “dead horse” for years.

(I even provided a New Yorker piece replete with ideas for deciphering such things.)

But it seems that Mr. Rudiak and other Roswellians (those in the UFO community fascinated by Roswell to the virtual exclusion of anything else UFO-related) are again distracted by elements that do not pertain directly to the content of the memo: Who took the Ramey photos is the current backwash at Kevin blog.

This is true and has been for most of the period of flying saucer/UFO discourse and interest over the years: ufologists go from one UFO story to another like bees looking for nectar that will satiate their curiosity.

No one, except for Jacques Vallee and a few other notables, sticks with a matter for any period of time that might help resolve the enigma that haunts them (and the rest of us).

Mr. Rudiak spends inordinate amounts of time “elucidating” his Roswell hypotheses and collected data, followed by a few Roswell fanatics who love to bring forward, ad infinitum, ad eternum, ad nauseum, the Roswell information they’ve accumulated over the years.

They are desperate to show expertise in something, and Roswell if the pig they’re exploiting.

The Ramey memo has been set aside, or so it seems, as the minions, who started to make it a matter of concentration, have been dissuaded by a need to show-off their Roswell acumen rather than pursuing the decipherment seriously as a real researcher does when one has a problem to resolve.

I just received (from Daedalus Books) Einstein’s Genius Club: The True Story of a Group of Scientists Who Changed the World [by Burton Feldman, Arcade Publishing, NY, 2007/2011].

The book tells readers how real scientists and researchers attack problems that arouse their inquisitiveness.

The Ramey memo people don’t even come close.

And Mr. Rudiak should be ashamed of his laggardly approach to the matter and Kevin Randle with him, for offering Roswell asides that take Kevin’s followers away from the topic to worthless matters that are regurgitated over and over again at Kevin's blog.

Shame on the both of them and the commenters who are too stupid to see how easily they are led astray by a need to vent ego and UFO swill.

RR

Delusions: Self and Otherwise

This 1979 book from my shelves addresses many of the points or, rather, non-points, made here in comments recently.

Contents include:

Reality exists outside of us

Science is objective

Nothing but…

The myth of mind control

The lying truths of psychiatry

The chapter “Reality exists outside of us?” [Page 144 ff. by Sir Alan Cottrell] says this:

“ … it would appear that the concept of an independent reality ‘out there’ has been discredited … The central conclusion  is that if reality has any meaning at all, it is in the context of the observer and the observation itself.” [Page 158]

My point, with this book, is that what we’re debating in this place (and elsewhere) have many possibilities. No topic is definitive, to the point of conclusiveness.

If someone thinks they have the answer(s) to things, they don’t.

UFO skeptics don’t have the answers, and UFO believers don’t either.

UFOs, among lots of other things, are wide open to explanation and rumination.

What troubles me is the facile, superficial argumentation that rears its head in comments here.

Gilles Fernandez, Lance Moody, Zoam Chomsky don’t have the answers, but neither do David Rudiak, Tony Bragalia, Dominick, et al.

Further, most named here are ill-read, maybe not about UFOs but about almost everything else.

Their “discussions” here are limited by their liberal arts and general academic illiteracy.

Ufology – sorry Gilles, and Zoam and David – needs an intellectual overhaul.

Paul Kimball and Joel Crook would agree I think.

The rubric “ufology” like the categorical UFO sobriquet is fraught with baggage that dolts have assumed in order to belong to the rampant discussion(s) of UFOs on the internet, not just here but everywhere.

I suggest that those wishing to make points in this arena do so with cited material and footnoted asides that come from material outside the internet swill.

After all, we’re not animals….or are we?

RR 

Ufology: A lack of dignity and class

One problem for the UFO phenomenon is that it is parented by a, generally, sleazy bunch of overseers.

In my objection to science, I didn’t note that its practitioners, scruffy as they may be, function with an academic decorum, generally, making their pronouncements, as crazy as they may be, acceptable to laymen and women, the media – the great unwashed even.

In UFO circles, we get such things as this: “Who Forted?” – A punny site, maybe full of great material (I’ve never sought it out because of its obtuse title) but one that sacrifices dignity and good taste for a catchy sobriquet.

Yet that’s the least of ufology’s problems. The core residents of the UFO community are crass and ill-educated, not just scummy-looking but scummy sounding and without logic or intellectual abilities.

The late Richard Hall, bless his soul, ranted about the lack of intelligence proffered by those who saturated the now-dead UFO UpDates. He was right, of course.

The mean-spirited and vulgar stance of some UpDate insiders drove off those with a touch of sophistication and reserve.

Why is the British/PBS show Downton Abbey so popular, even among the proletariat?

It smacks of a refined society that we in America, and especially among UFO aficionados, have long ago abandoned,

Add to that the psychotic ravings we get for comments here – not posted by the way – and we see examples of how society and civilization itself has sunk into a miasma of degraded and sometimes pathological behavior.

UFOs, as a phenomenon, has an uphill climb all by itself, to get acceptance by moderate and sensible persons who might have a chance at unraveling the obnoxious mystery.

Take into account that moderate and sensible persons have to skirt or overcome the dregs of humanity to get at UFO material and evidence, the chore becomes Sisyphean.

I try to maintain a modicum of sanity by associating with the likes of a Paul Kimball, or those Brits with their inherent reserve (Nick Redfern, Nick Pope, and David Clarke), or a Cullan Hudson.

And say what you will about Kevin Randle, he has never, to my knowledge, been vulgar or undignified at his blog or in person, a rarity for a man who’s been around the UFO block.

So, while I’m hanging in there with this blog, for a mite longer, I’ll be even less tolerant of goofy comments and attempted broadsides from a few psychopaths who still linger nearby.

But, as for ufology, I see it as a catch-all for all that is degraded in humanity – a place where the unaccepted members of society congregate to spew their vile, disgustingly stupid asides, and therefore will eschew the term as best as I can, because ufology as a word and a practice is demeaning to what man was meant to be.

RR 

UFOs and the Rabble

The problem with the UFO phenomenon is “ufology” – the pseudo-science that the great unwashed, the rabble, has adopted as their sobriquet.

One constantly reads (or hears) that UFO conjecture, or hypotheses, need “peer review,” a phrase taken from academia or science but never accepted as a practice by UFO mavens or researchers.

After all, who in “ufology” is qualified to pass judgment on the poncifs of their fellow ultrafidians? [Explanation: who in the UFO world is qualified to determine if ufological nonsense has validity or not?]

Take the re-constituted Roswell Dream Team for instance. Does the one lone objective partner – Chris Rutkowski – have enough clout – mental and otherwise – to thwart the faith-obsessed mind-sets of his team colleagues; that is, can Mr. Rutkowski stem the belief fervor of Dream Team members when their faith in the ET hypothesis takes hold based upon very circumscribed evidence?

And then we have the UFO skeptics, who bring to the UFO table all kinds of ruminations that have the gloss of serious scrutiny but, when examined carefully, only has the patina of objectivity and academic acumen.

(The evidence for cavalier skepticism is made manifest by the lack of academic or scientific credentials by those claiming to be skeptics: they are self-anointed.)

But the essential problem is not the Dream Team or skeptical cliques. It’s the sycophancy of the rabble. That UFO throng weighs in with predilections based upon facile psychological or sociological elements that border upon insanities of various kinds.

Take a look at the comments that abound at various UFO venues: UFO UpDates, Rense, Above Top Secret, and even here, among many others.

The ruminations are patently aberrant.

This has been the case with UFOs since 1947, when the phenomenon reared its head and became a fringe fascination for people themselves on the fringe (of society) or mental competency.

UFOs should have been studied, as Jacques Vallee suggested and tepidly acted upon with his “Invisible College” idea, taken from the Rosicrucians or Robert Boyle’s Royal Society of London clique.

A small, qualified group of credentialed persons, from various academic disciplines should have banded together to study UFOs from the outset.

This didn’t happen at the overt level, and that explains the ongoing belief that MJ-12 may have legitimately existed or still exists: MJ-12 fits with the sensible idea of an Invisible College.

But any idea of a qualified band of UFO devotees getting together now is muffled by the onslaught of the rabble and the rabble’s use of the internet to intercede with ignorance in the matter of the phenomenon.

The vociferous clamor of the UFO underbelly drowns out or dissipates rational discourse.

We even experience that here, although we strive mightily to curb the waywardness of illogic and utter banality of thought that comes our way as comments on our topics.

UFOs, as a phenomenon, has been lost by the gargantuan storm of idiocies that have inundated the subject and continue apace now that the internet has opened the door to every asinine quidnunc who thinks what they have to offer is gold of the gods.

Can we, and a few other UFO bailiwicks, continue to ruminate within this maelstrom or cacophony of nonsense? Should we?

Paul Kimball and other sensate individuals have chosen not to. We like their withdrawal from the blatant UFO scene. And see it as a way out of the madhouse.

RR 

A must-read Book for UFO mavens and especially the few who visit Kevin Randle’s blog

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.

Here’s the blurb from the cover of Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s book, “Inevitable Illusions; How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds” [John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY, 1994]:

Everyone knows that optical illusions trick us because of the way we see. Now scientists have discovered hat cognitive illusions, a set of biases deeply embedded in the human mind, distort the way we think.

In Inevitable Illusions cognitive researcher Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini…opens the doors onto the newly charted realm of the cognitive unconscious to reveal the full range of illusions, showing how they inhibit our ability to reason, no matter what our educational background or IQ.

The problem(s) with “ufological thought” -- an oxymoron surely – is blatantly on display in many internet places where UFOs are the topic: UFO UpDates is one such place.

But a capsule site for erroneous thinking is Kevin Randle’s blog, A Different Perspective.

Mr. Randle isn’t the problem; he opens his blog to all comers (mostly) giving free reign to an admittedly few UFO hobbyists: ET advocates, exemplified by David Rudiak (who is a member of Mr. Randle’s Roswellian Dream Team), skeptics, represented by Lance Moody, Christopher Allen, and Gilles Fernandez, along with assorted nobodies.

Mr. Randle’s visitors continue to get immersed in the minutiae of the 1947 Roswell incident, hacking away at the tale, ad infinitum, ad eternum, and ad nauseum,

A scrutiny of the back-and forths, beclouded by Mr. Rudiak’s extensive displays of Roswell detritus, shows that the thinking behind the commentary is flawed, in ways that Piattelli-Palmarini examples in his book (pictured above).

The over-riding premise of “cognitive illusions” is footnoted by quasi-magical thought, the psychology of typicality, and heuristic “mental tunnels” which create bias. [Page 19 ff.]

Chapter Six of the book, The Fallacy of Near Certainty, provides references to capital and systematic mistakes with its naive forms of extrapolation. [Page 111 ff.]

The patina of Mr. Rudiak’s droning presentations highlight what Piattelli-Palmarini is driving at:

In the world of probability one cannot, even where the reliability is very close to 100 percent (or absolute certainty) – such as 95 percent – extrapolate. [ibid]

The specifics of “overconfidence” outlined, beginning on Page 116, derive from a 1977 paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology [Fischoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein] where persons “certain of their subjects” thought they were 100 percent correct, and rated their probability of being wrong as one in a thousand, in ten thousand, or even in a million. [Page 117].

Mr. Rudiak presents his views with that kind of overconfidence.

That Mr. Rudiak knows his subject matter, Roswell, better than most, is obvious.

That skeptics (Moody, CDA, Fernandez) goad him into lavishing his knowledge on Randle’s readers creates an argumentative scenario which diminishes the basics of the Roswell incident and UFOs in general.

Roswell, no matter how one perceives it, tells us nothing about UFOs as they exist today. Or what their import is from past observations.

The details that Mr. Rudiak generously provides and Mr. Randle encourages are not debunked by the skeptical group. They engage, also, in many of the cognitive flaws that Piattelli-Palmarini outlines, such as not knowing or using Bayes’ Law when attempting to refute Mr. Rudiak or employ a “tunnel of pessimism” [Page 139 ff.]

Piattelli-Palmarini gives several examples that, for me, show how the skeptics ruin their argumentation: Externally modulable and Subjectively incorrigible (where telling [Mr. Rudiak] that he is…inclined to commit certain errors does not immediately lead him to cease doing so. [Page 140]

UFO aficionados are inclined to be belligerent and illogical.

That’s the endemic nature of the UFO topic.

UFO UpDates provides the caustic examples of belligerency and illogic.

Mr. Randle’s blog isn’t as compassing, but it gives an outline of how far and how low the UFO phenomenon has driven academic civility.

Perhaps some of Mr. Randle’s habitués will seek out the book mentioned here and mend their ways.

(I doubt any will do that. They are victims of their own cognitive illusions.)

RR