Despite the fact that tmac had pointed out something obvious and said that accusing NASA of lying is a pointless conspiricay (Prove it if you think it’s actually happening), and to prove the statement he relies on as fact, that as in the movies, the government would hide aliens once they found them.

I’d accuse you of being HMMMM, but I don’t have proof, but I’ll imply it: You’re either HMMMM, or a rude and stupid person who responded to a post without thinking. I think that’s a reasonable dichotomy.
(Also, going to (JREF I would assume) to find a person’s real name, and use it to address them is a pathetic implied threat. Grow some balls and use your name if you want to call out others.

Say I have a slice of pizza on my desk. I go down the noisy stairs to get a drink. When I get back, it is gone. I have two options: My youngest brother who was upstairs ate it, or my brother downstairs got upstairs without making a sound and ate it, and snuck down (Barring some explanation involving say, aliens, but they can be excluded by Occam’s Razor as Unlikely).
I look at the two options: My brother sneaking up the stairs is unlikely, and it assumes he is capable of doing so, and did so.
While no such assumption requires that the younger brother ate it. Therefore, it is most likely the younger brother who ate it. If I go to him, and find out that my other brother did sneak up the stairs, then suddenly my assumption was proved correct, and both explanations are equally valid.

Occam’s Razor simply excludes unwarranted assumptions: If those assumptions are correct, then an Unlikely solution becomes the correct one. It is logical to work from the most likely solution to the least likely solution. And if you still can’t understand Occam’s Razor, then let me put it in simpler terms:
Occam’s Razor=Heuristic (Educated Guessing) tool for determining likely theories, and potentially ordering them.
Occam’s Razor=/= and has never been equal to a law of logic. It’s a tool for finding what we should analyze, not for saying what is true.

What about the mirror riddled with anomalies thats advertised in theoretical phys. ?. What about the social anomalies, where is the proletariat ?. What about the political anomalies, this strange alliance between leadership and the syndrome of Down ( in our country we have this thing called Geert Wilders ). How do we join the order of things, anyway ?.

Uit de belaagde landen
Greetz Vincent Voll.

…sounds like someone got their feelings hurt…waaa….waaa…waaa…somebodyshould get tmac57(Tracy McGraddy?!?) some tissues, cuz he’s upset…

Case in point: I find Dean Radin’s work on anomalous interactions beteen humans and machines deeply impressive, and Radin seems like a thoughtful, scientifically-minded fellow–yet the skeptical community has treated him like something of a crackpot (when they choose to acknowledge him at all), and the critical studies I’ve read of his work have not only seemed unconvincing, but have struck me as a slippery, defensive upholding of the status quo.

Similarly, I’ve seen skeptical attacks on researchers who stand to profit from their promotion of anomalous phenomena (UFOs, Bigfoot, etc.), and that’s a perfectly legitimate criticism; yet that sword cuts both ways, i.e., if someone makes their living debunking anomalous phenomenon (say, the publisher or editor of a skeptical magazine), why should we trust their judgment of the evidence to be any less biased for reasons of profit? After all, if they were to start publishing articles favorable to these things, they’d be out of a job. What’s good for the goose…

- Don’t ignore simple human error before concluding there is a conspiracy.

- NASA would have a huge incentive to go public with information about possible alien artifacts on Mars. Think what that would do for their budget, and for public support for more Mars missions.

- You ask for a reason why they would tell the truth (and I just gave you one), but you have not provided a reason why they would lie.

In that very little can be proved impossible, the better, truer judgment would be rating the probability that scientific skepticism and scientific method are illusory, mere mental pitfalls. I would rate that probability at virtually nil.

I say this bevause it works. It’s testable and one can arrive at an objective conclusion. One might cogitate an application of a theory for unpowered human flight that may or may not be total hogwash, a perfect example of a ‘mental pitfall’, but if the model works and the human-piloted hang glider goes aloft and remains there, safely returning to earth, all according to plan, that’s a pretty good endorsement of the science that went into it. Of course, we have literally millions upon millions of these full endorsements.

To be correct, any hypothesis stating that skepticism and science are illusory, a mental pitfall of humans fooling themselves, also has to explain why it nonetheless works.