▲ 48 points
back
44 comments
They really should put "Oxford language professor argues... " in the title.
I'm okay with overly bold theories so long they have some merits, which I mean have some supporting evidence... this has nothing, which makes the quality of this theory right there with unpublished science fiction ideas.
It feels like to me he's ready to publish more books on the topic.
It's easy to ridicule this, but I wish we would be more open towards "crazy" ideas in general. I believe that every person has something to teach me and contribute to the world, and if I have any strong preconceptions in my interaction with them that severely limits my power to benefit.
On the flip side, being open towards "crazy" ideas opens you to DDoS attacks from legitimate lunatics, in the form of you having to spend mental energy analyzing and responding to them.
but appeal to popularity/authority is not the proper way to validate a hypothesis no matter what
What does “proper” mean? Because it’s certainly the only practical way to validate most hypotheses. Sure, I could spend a couple of decades independently evaluating the effectiveness and safety of the flu vaccine, but in the meantime I’m going to have to decide whether to wear my seat belt and whether these apples I bought are safe to eat and how often to water my plants and so many more things. Appeal to authority is necessarily the way most people validate most hypotheses they depend on.
Nor is appealing to the absence of popularity/authority.
Step 1 of the scientific method is a plausible hypothesis.
Many 'crazy' ideas are supported by at least some evidence that is rational and grounded in reality. I doubt such evidence exists for this claim.
Oddly specific claims also:
"Dr Chi believes that there are four types of aliens: small; tall and bold; aliens with scales and snake eyes; and finally, insect-like aliens. The latter of these seems to be the highest in the hierarchy, he said, and gives orders to the lower ranks."
Hmm.
Small: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Sectoid_(XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown)
Tall and bold: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Muton_(XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown)
Scales and snake eyes: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Thin_Man
Insect-like: https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/Chryssalid
Coincidence?
Could be some advanced trolling going on here.
Perhaps Dr. Chi fell asleep listening to "Enterprise" episodes about the Xindi?
Half Life 3 confirmed.
Honestly, if someone were to look at at all the science and evidence objectively it would be scientifically unsound to conclude that intelligent life doesn't exist elsewhere in our own universe or even outside it.
Explain, please. The only justifications for life elsewhere to exist that I am aware of are statistical, not evidential.
Humans have historically had an inherent bias in thinking that we as a species and everything around us is somehow special, only to later discover that it was never true all along. For example, for a long time we've thought that we are the only species that have intelligence, language, emotions, morality, culture, ability to use tools, etc. Also see tribalism, racism, nationalism, geocentrism, or the fact that a significant number of people until a few years ago (when we finally were able to get evidence) didn't think that there were many planets in the universe (i.e. our solar system was special). Or perhaps they thought that our planet was particularly unique in the universe due to having its orbit in the habitable zone. I'm sure most people thought that our sun was special too (they didn't think think that stars were suns), until a few centuries ago. I wonder if there is a name for this bias (I bet there is but I can't recall ATM).
That doesn't really address his question.
>The only justifications for life elsewhere to exist that I am aware of are statistical, not evidential
Everything you just said pretty much sums up to "we were wrong before!", which still isn't empirical evidence. Besides, just because there's probably alien life somewhere in the universe doesn't mean there's alien life on earth right now, given how vast space is.
We know there is life in the universe (on our planet), there is empirical proof of that.
So the question now is whether there is also life on other planets. If you don't think there is life on other planets then you must think our planet is somehow special / extraordinary among all others. However, given the cosmological principle, then the more planets there is, the harder it must be to justify that our planet is special. The fact that there is an unthinkably huge number of planets in the universe seems to make that extremely unlikely.
The GP dismisses statistical arguments in favor of empirical evidence, but much of what we accept about physics or the universe is the result of statistical processes. Since our universe is stochastic, strictly speaking we never really know anything for certain, we just deem something is accepted as true when it reaches an arbitrary statistical threshold.
Also, just because you don't sense something directly it doesn't mean that you can't infer that it exists based on statistical arguments alone. For example, when estimating the number of species on Earth, there is no evidence that there are more species than the ones we already discovered, but we infer there are because we are discovering new species all the time, which means it's extremely unlikely we have discovered them all already.
The cosmological principle itself is a statistical argument more than anything... there is no proof that Earth isn't at the center of the (entire) universe, but almost nobody thinks that nowadays.
Note that in this thread we are only discussing whether there is life somewhere else in the universe, not whether there's alien life on earth right now, which obviously is harder to justify.
I see the fallacy in the parent comment just a little differently. It suffers from the "can't prove a negative" problem.
The comment never argued in favor of life elsewhere, and certainly not in any concrete form. It only said that we can't conclude that it doesn't exist. There is only an emotional suggestion that it does exist.
So it just boils down to an unhelpfully weak statement. Virtually all scientific minded people agree with the statement. The suspiciousness (like with religion) is placing such a weak statement about the general proposition in the middle of a discussion about a specific proposition (reptiles, interbreeding, etc.), and that doesn't make much sense on closer inspection. Why bring the straw-man up THEN if not suggesting a stronger form of belief?
> n the middle of a discussion about a specific proposition (reptiles, interbreeding, etc.)
Reptiles? Who said anything about that? If we're just refuting David Icke here, than yes, he's a crackpot and should just be ignored. Seriously, that guy is a lunatic at best and a scam artist at worst. Probably some combination of the two.
It's an involved topic. More than I can just briefly summarize, but what's the scientific argument against it?
I agree and think it is better to have some crazy and unconventional ideas than to restrain free research.
While this is probably some misapplied statistical analysis, I hope the worst consequence is a harsh rejection based on methodology. Free research will and should probably also lead to crazy ideas once in a while.
The status system in academia is pretty strong. This guy will face judgement among his peers.
Apt quotation: "Do Not Be So Open-Minded That Your Brains Fall Out" [1]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidences.
Sounds like he watched the movie They Live too many times:
My partner's director of studies at Cambridge believed in ghosts and once played a tape recording purporting to contain a recording of one (random static) in a supervision.
It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles, but I think when it's not something directly to do with the things you're teaching it's generally just thought of as a harmless idiosyncrasy.
It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles
It's not just academia, either. I've known a few somewhat prominent people who believed in some off-the-wall things.
When I worked in television, I knew a top-ten market anchor who didn't believe in dinosaurs. Not in the way a creationist doesn't, because she wasn't religious. She simply didn't believe they ever existed.
At a top-five market station there was an anchor who believed drinking his own urine made him healthier. He was a medic during the Vietnam war and said he started doing it then.
The same station had a manager in the newsroom who believed that Jesus, the Bible, and everything associated with it was a fabrication because there is no recorded history before the invention of the printing press in the 1400's. If you ask him about Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, he insists that they're all made up.
At another top-ten market station my boss (a high-level manager) believed that those yellow sodium lamps are used along freeways because it helps police see black people better in the dark. She learned it from her boss (an even higher-level manager) who believed the reason that highways are built in elevated circles around cities is so that if the city needs to be evacuated, the police can stand along the highway and shoot black people as they're trying to flee.
When I think about these things I wonder if certain professions attract whackjobs.
Then I wonder if I have any deeply-held beliefs that I don't realize qualify me for a rubber room.
Looks like he teaches language courses: https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/people/young-hae-chi
Seems like this alien theory is not related to his official research work.
In that case, it seems like a private project. Crazy ideas or not, I'd be happy if that guy doesn't get sanctioned harshly for this.
I think it's good that out-there ideas can be debated within a University and that there is an opportunity for well educated people to debate the subject. The opposite of this is that he is relegated to the dark corners of the web and these ideas go unchallenged, or challenged only by trolls who only further strengthen his beliefs. I would much rather an open, public debate where the foundations of his beliefs are shaken and it can be seen by all the flaws in his ideas.
> In April 2018, Dr Chi approached The Oxford Union to propose a > debate on the subject. The proposal was not accepted.
There is a concerning growth of subjects that can no longer be discussed or debated within Western campuses.
>There is a concerning growth of subjects that can no longer be discussed or debated within Western campuses.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say refusing to hold debates on subjects similar to this isn't a recent trend. There's definitely a growing trend of refusing to debate certain subjects (of the right wing politics variety), but this isn't yet.
> I'm going to go out on a limb and say refusing to hold
> debates on subjects similar to this isn't a recent trend.
It happens more than you think, you just don't hear about it. I don't think it's a particularly recent trend for conspiracy theories though, as you say.
> There's definitely a growing trend of refusing to debate
> certain subjects (of the right wing politics variety), but
> this isn't yet.
I understand what you're saying and agree, but I wouldn't attribute all of these topics to right-wing politics. There's also some weird acceptance that labeling something "right-wing" means it's okay to ignore or berate, which means there are topics that simply cannot be discussed despite a discussion being needed.
My point was that the number of subjects that can be debated appears to be on a decline in general, although as you say many of them are politically charged. I think it's really quite sad when Universities can no longer be places where ideas dual it out and get tested.
If the aliens are invisible, how does he know what they look like?
("small; tall and bold; aliens with scales and snake eyes; and finally, insect-like aliens.")
No doubt this language instructor will soon be providing us with the extraordinary evidence needed to establish his extraordinary claim.
The human-alien hybrid thing is straight out of The X-Files. If he is correct, life imitates art.
NB: I do not find his conjecture remotely convincing.
He's right -- they're called ideas.
As Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
And tenure shall set you free!
He is an instructor, that's a non-academic position and does not have tenure. Not having tenure may set him free from Oxford.
Where can I find an alien female to breed with her?
Occam’s Razor dictates that the correlation is due to increased climate change stresses & temperature swings impacting human mood disorders (the same way it correlates with increased violence)
Could someone explain the down-votes? My hypothesis isn’t great but surely it’s better than aliens interbreeding with humans etc etc?
I didn't downvote it, but I guess it was downvoted because it looks like a joke. (Something like "This man is nut, climate change deniers are nut, let's make a joke about them all".) It looks like a joke specially if someone has not read the article and is only reacting to the title. (Note: I have read the article, I want my 5 minutes back.)
Perhaps you could have written it more clearly. Try to avoid short comments. Something like:
fake alternative comment> The author proposes that the increase of the abduction cases [1] is caused because the aliens[2] are concern about climate change. I think that an alternative explanation is that is the increased climate change stresses & temperature swings impacting human mood disorders (the same way it correlates with increased violence) and this cause the increase in the report of false[3] alien abductions."
My notes:
[1] Is there an increase of the report of the "abductions"?
[2] If they live here and are somewhat related to the normal animals, are they alien?
[3] false/fake/??? I'm not sure about the best word here.
[4] I didn't like how you used the "Occam’s Razor", so I made the editorial decision to avoid it in the fake comment.
I hope that my alternative is a good representations of your ideas, and I hope it's more clear that it propose an alternative explanation of parts of the article.
Because you quote occam's razor then give no simple direct mechanism of action. There is a big gap in how a few degrees average heat increase causes mood disorders. It's more likely, for example, the result of the ten's of thousands of unregulated synthetic chemicals produced, some of which are hormone analogues like PHB and which make their way into the water sources. Then since they're not regulated no one filters them out or monitors their levels regularly.
Because it’s not about averages. It’s about wider ranges.
Fair point on chemical pollutants.