User talk:Phil153

Amusing links:
Wine Preservation: [1][2]
Cold fusion: [3]
Evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy and water memory published in the most prestigious journals: [4][5][6]

Archives

[[7]][[8]]

Comments by Gen ato

Sorry Phil but I inserted all the documentation supporting the subject. If someting it's controversial it's not correct to cancel something. It's better that the different position are expressed. I didd'nt cancel anityng that you wrote. Othervise we can call this a sort of censorship. But I hope this is not the case!

Bye

Gen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gen ato (talk • contribs) 02:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

RfA thanks

Thank you for the trust you placed in me by supporting my RfA (which passed and, apparently, I am now an admin!). I will do my best to continue to act in a way that is consistent with the policies of wikipedia as well with our common desire to build and perfect this repository of human knowledge; and can only hope that you never feel that your trust was misplaced. Thanks again! --Regent's Park (Rose Garden) 00:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An answer to your Question on the Discussion Page of Steven Green's Wikipedia Article

I can understand your position on the whole issue. I consider myself an open minded, rationally thinking individual and I do have scientific and academic background. In order to get to the bottom of this matter I have taken a look - about a year ago - at the alleged documents and the videotaped testimonies of the 400+ military and corporate witnesses on the Disclosure Project website. According to my assessment there is a probability that what they are telling is fully or at least to some extent the truth. If it were Greer alone I wouldn't believe a word of it. Greer looks like to me as front man for more powerful people however I do not have any evidence to support this claim. The only thing which smells fishy to me that he had a successful medical carrier which he gave up for "this", risking to be ridiculed every day for the rest of his life. And no, it is not as profitable as you think. Now, here are the possible scenarios to consider.

1) The whole thing is a scam to swindle people out of their money. Question: Why would these other respected people(i.e former Canadian defense minister) put their reputation in jeopardy for Greer? Why would they go public with written testimonies?
2) What they are telling about "UFOs" and the whole "free" energy suppression subject is partly true. The claimed suppression/disinformation were in this case understandable because - if it were true and the government would let it in the mainstream - it would dramatically change the whole geopolitical landscape of the world. Of course the "suppressors" would then prevent any information reaching the public to come from reliable sources. Thus they wouldn't pass the rigorous filters/standards of Wikipedia. I assume this scenario according to my own research and assessment. In this case the public has a right to know at least what is partly reliable/notable.
3) Everything about the aliens and free energy suppression is true. In this unimaginable scenario we have to rethink our whole political and economical system and ask ourselves if our elected officials really represent the best interests of the people. I-netfreedOm (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're overlooking Cock-up before conspiracy. Basically, the simplest explanation is that people make mistakes, then find out that if they don't admit their errors there's easy money to be made with the additional perk of lots of attention. Rationality and honesty have a hard time standing up to ego and greed. --Ronz (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The most convenient approach against someone who dares to question the status quo is to label him as a conspiracy theorist. I simply cannot accept the fact that so many intelligent and influential people commit the same mistake on the same subject and hold on to it. This has a low probability. I-netfreedOm (talk) 19:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm? You're the one postulating a conspiracy ("The whole thing is a scam"). I'm offering a reason that doesn't involve much, if any, conspiring. I'm pointing out that ego and greed explain why respected people would be dishonest about their mistakes. --Ronz (talk) 20:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we cannot rule out a conspiracy on Greer's part. However, in this case they would be in violation of the law by forging government documents and presenting false witnesses in order to commit fraud. As far as I see you presume this scenario, right? Why hasn't anybody filed a lawsuit against them already? One possible reason is that he might be telling the truth. I-netfreedOm (talk) 09:27, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to the question(s) in (1) is that they genuinely believe. Countless scores of cult leaders, snake oil salesmen, and con men throughout history have managed to attract plenty of followers willing to testify. That's no mystery and really requires no explanation.

There are other options besides your 3:

4) People are deluded. Human memory is notoriously unreliable, especially over long time spans, and some percentage of people are prone to fantisyzing and having false memories. Ask any lawyer what they think about the reliability of human memory. Think of how many military workers, aircraft personnel, government officials, and so on there are in the United States. Now consider that the rate of serious delusional/psychotic mental illness is ~2% (schizophrenia, bipolar, etc), with the rate of milder psychotic episodes (from which people fully recover) even higher than this. Even in an alien-free world, you would get similar numbers of people to what you have today coming forward to testify. Greer himself may believe in his own evidence, though his business savvy and the way he taps into the market is a little too good for me to believe this.

5) It's a combination of the above. Some deluded, some merely convinced that something they saw was more than it was, some taken in by deliberate government misinformation to hide military research such as spy planes and stealth technology, some scammers and profiteerers, some doing it for attention or because they lied to their loved ones to sound more important (you'd be amazed what kind of detailed lies some small percentage of people create, and how well they do it), some "remembering" repressed memories via a shrink. And the people who write books about this stuff are rarely critical, scientific or careful, so the sources you read probably don't represent the true nature of the evidence.

Basically, most people, me included, find it intuitively compelling when a group of disparate individuals, some credentialed, get up and provide evidence. But the law of large numbers causes a clustering of outliers that makes that intuition unreliable. Phil153 (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]