The Disclosure Project

[W3bbo]

I read The Register a lot, and the past few days they were discussing the whole SETI thing going on, earlier today they posted a piece of (surprisingly legible) hatemail from someone involved in The Disclosure Project.

I understand a lot of Astronomers are skeptical of the whole "Aliens! UFOs! Conspiracies!" thing, but their site lists 400 or so officials who stood forward at the 2001 press conference thing.

I haven't engaged any critical thinking yet, I can't help but want to believe that they may be right.

What do the astronomers here think?

[astromark]

You will need to explain a little more please.?
This looks interesting.

[Ken G]

I can't speak for the other astronomers, but to me, it certainly sounds like a load of hooey. It's pretty comical really, that SETI, an organization whose sole purpose is to detect signals from intelligent life, would detect such signals and then decide to suppress this result. It is a conspiracy theory gone amuck. Then they claim that the signals are being "jammed" by "some other organization", no doubt... dum dum da dum... the government. OK, that's standard conspiracy-theory baloney. But they are taking it to a new level to assert that SETI has somehow joined a conspiracy to undermine SETI's entire reason for existing! It reminds me of my own joking conspiracy theory, that conspiracy theorists are actually on the government payroll to try and bury real conspiracies in a tangled pile of fake conspiracies to sow confusion. Now, had Greer claimed SETI was sitting on a big find while they tried to verify it further before going public, that would have piqued my interest a bit more even though I wouldn't tend to believe anything he says at all, but as it is the whole thing is just obvious conspiracy-theory bunk taken to a new level of imagination.

[astromark]

I have no idea why people grab hold of this sort of nonsense and assume any of it is real. To answer your question as Ken G has, No SETI would not hide or other wise distort what they are doing or have found. The very scientific principal that drives most astronomers is the same as that which motivates most of us. A unquenchable thirst for the truth. One other point here is all so to note that people love to talk. Some body would talk. They have not. so this is rubbish.

[Ken G]

And if one of them did choose to "blow the whistle", why on Earth would they go to Greer, someone they hate and who has no credibility at all among educated people? Anyone who would believe this would make a very lousy police detective. I can see it now, "Colombo" would conclude that the butler did it because aliens came down and programmed his mind to commit the crime. That'll stand up in court.

[jlhredshift]

I don't know about everybody else, but I have spent most of my life looking up and have not seen anything unexplainably extrordinary. I think that psycologically these people "need" something smarter than man.

[Ken G]

I think they hunger to be "in the know", but it's too much work to really do it.

[jlhredshift]

I think they hunger to be "in the know", but it's too much work to really do it.

amen

[eburacum45]

I don't know of any astronomers who are among the people involved in the Disclosure project; please correct me if I am wrong. There are a lot of military personnel, one astronaut (Edgar Mitchell, who I think I am right in saying has never seen a UFO himself) and a certain Donna Hare, who seems to have been a complete fantasist.
Here is Jim Oberg on this forum talking about MS Hare
http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.ph...52&postcount=6

Many of the other witnesses are of the same ilk; people who are predisposed to believe in the extraterrestrial hypothesis and just happen to be in the military. Some of the accounts I have managed to read are laughable. I am certainly not disposed to pay money to Dr Greer to read any more.

[Ken G]

It sounds to me like they are just using all the usual tricks. Like even calling it the "Disclosure Project" makes it sound like there's something to disclose in the first place! As soon as people buy off on that subtle bait-and-switch, then it's a simple matter to get them to say, "yeah, why not disclose... what are you hiding anyway?". We can all get behind the sentiment of full disclosure, the problem is, how do you answer such a "project" when there's nothing to disclose? It'd be like if I started the "Cure Spontaneous Human Combustion Project", hey, who'd be against curing that, sounds just awful.

[Fortis]

It'd be like if I started the "Cure Spontaneous Human Combustion Project", hey, who'd be against curing that, sounds just awful.

I saw that done on South Park (The font of all knowedge, or is that Times New Roman...) You've just got to make sure that you don't enhance global warming in the process...

[astromark]

I understand your jesting ( jousting ) but, there are people that do not. Do we have to cater to the lowest common denominator. No but, yes.

The writers of south park have dealt with some interesting issues in very unconventional ways. Even Homer Simpson has an interesting view of reality.

The very notion that information is being distorted or suppressed is wrong. It might be more fruitful to sagest that misinformation is being spread with malicious intent. There are people who need to be told the facts very carefully and slowly. And they still get it wrong.