@chrissedoff: Nevermind. You're right, the Pentagon spending is huge. But that chart belies the actual information. It's not like all of that is spent on useless shit like F22s. The Coast Guard is in that 59%, and I don't think there's a hell of a lot of bloated overspending on ridiculous R&D there.
Also, sources?
I've got this:
And this:
Same year, wildly different charts. Or maybe that's what happens when you pick and choose, ignoring all of the "mandatory" spending because it makes your chart look better. Social Security by itself accounted for more spending in FY2009 than the entire budget for the DoD.
EDIT: Oh, and that 2nd chart (with the 48% listing) lumps in the $145 billion for the war on Terror (which I believe goes to either Homeland Security or other countries anyways). The DoD budget is only around 42% of discretionary.
@example1013: i ignored mandatory spending because: 1) medicaid: obviously. if our system was more smartly designed, we would probably save a lot of the money we have to spend on this, but there you have it. but you can't let poor people die in the streets because they're poor. even so, i bet this will be the first thing to get slashed in the "austerity measures" of the coming years, because most people don't give a shit about helping poor people. still, medicaid is essentially an insurance program that people pay into (like with any insurance, people who use it subsidize the people who don't) but most people (knock on wood) aren't impoverished enough to be eligible for it. 2) medicare & social security: these are called "entitlement" programs for a good reason: you're entitled to them because you pay into them your entire life. cut these programs and you're straight up robbing people of what they're owed. the government pretends social security is bankrupt, but really they just replaced the massive surplus it had with a bunch of i.o.u.'s so they could pay for tax cuts and wars.
so, as you can see, it doesn't really make as much sense to include mandatory spending, because it's not really spending, in the way people normally understand it. people pay into it, and they get back roughly what they pay in.
that you believe the percentage of the discretionary budget is 60%, 40%, or 30% isn't really important to me. i just wanted to illustrate with a picture that an incredible amount of federal money is spent on national defense, and that it is a very wasteful thing to spend such a large amount of money on. for example, the f-22, while it's a totally badass piece of machinery, is useless in our current circumstance, where our primary national security threat is a primitively equipped criminal organization with no allegiance to any government (al qaeda). if, in the time since the end of the cold war, we spent half of the money that we ended up spending on defense, on making college education affordable and investing in technology that actually betters mankind (renewable, clean energy, better and safer transportation, etc) it is my firm belief that we'd be living in the fucking future right now, instead of wondering why contemporary american life more closely resembles hill valley ca. 1985 than it does hill valley ca. 2015.
You're right, it's a lot of money. But a sixth of it is specifically for the War on Terror.
Ah, fuck it. I based my argument off of an incorrect assumption, and I'll concede the point. You're right, it is a lot.
@beej: My sleep schedule has been fucked up (like waking up at 4PM fucked up) and I'm depriving myself this morning so I'll have an easier time getting to sleep tonight.
You're right, it's a lot of money. But a sixth of it is specifically for the War on Terror.
Ah, fuck it. I based my argument off of an incorrect assumption, and I'll concede the point. You're right, it is a lot.
@beej: My sleep schedule has been fucked up (like waking up at 4PM fucked up) and I'm depriving myself this morning so I'll have an easier time getting to sleep tonight.
"
first of all, thank you for having the balls to admit on the internet that you were under a misapprehension. that quality in a person shows ten times more character than being on the right side of any given argument. secondly, you were right to call bullshit on the chart i posted because there so many variations of the same data and i honestly just posted one of the first results of a google image search (albeit one that i felt was an accurate enough representation to support my basic argument). and most importantly, the substance of your original argument is basically right. defense spending alone did not put us in the debt we're in. you also have to look at the revenue side of it, as taxes have been cut and circumvented altogether to an increasing degree over the last few decades. it was just the wrong argument for that occasion, because i wasn't saying that defense spending was the cause all on its own.
@chrissedoff: I just realized that I actually wasn't even right in what I was thinking about, because I'd forgotten what the original argument I'd read was.
A few years ago, I read an article that said that spending on the two wars wasn't even making a dent in the budget, because everyone in the media was having a grand old time saying that the war was getting us deeper and deeper into debt, when that wasn't the case. But since it's been a few years, I misremembered and thought that the person was talking about military spending, not war spending. So basically, I was really really wrong in just about every way in what I said.
But yeah, the budget issues are monumental, and while military spending is pretty crazy, the government spends money on laughably ridiculous things--like abstinence-only sex ed. EDIT: And they spend a lot of it. Maybe not percentage-wise, but certainly in real dollars.
It's why I'm kind of glad there are a bunch of people who recently got elected who actually don't care about being re-elected, and just want to cut some spending. I may not necessarily agree with the party they've aligned themselves with (because they're Republicans, and some even Tea Partiers), but I can certainly appreciate their willingness to drop the bullshit politicking and actually try to get something done. It's not an attitude you see a lot featured by the news (of course, that's a whole other issue).
EDIT: Also, the real problem I had with that graph was that it wasn't scaled correctly. That slice said 15%, but I made a quick graph in Excel with a 15%, 20%, 25%, and 40% slice, and the 15% slice was nowhere near the same.
" if it were true, we would have seen some of the technology by now. "
Hi? The F-22 is at least 50 years ahead of every jet out there, and is owned by the USAF. It's unbeatable, undetectable, and is the closest thing to an X-Wing fighter. No other plane comes anywhere near close to it and it was started in the 80s. To this date, no country has come remotely close to the technology in this. "
LOL. The F-22 is having trouble being sold to anyone, including US owned PMCs. It's been plagued with controversy for years and right now is seen as a kind of joke in political circles. It's also not that advanced in many ways - it lacks range and maneuverability when compared with the much older F-15 and many of the similarly aged Russian fighter jets. It's also not undetectable at all. No plane is undetectable, especially in this age of LEO satellites.
Frustrating to see so many people refusing to be open to the idea that there could be anything to this Roswell alien thing. There is an amazing amount of testimonies from people involved in the event. Read up on it. I might not flat out believe all of it, but there was definitely something more going on than a god damned weather balloon crashing, which is the official explanation. If there was a plausible explanation not involving something truly extraodinary worth keeping secret for over 60 years, they would have come out with it already.
Being open minded does not require one to believe claims that lack any evidence. As for plausible explanations being offered, they have been. Just because you haven't bothered to look into any actual facts does not mean that they are not there. The most likely explanation (from my understanding) would be the Mogul project. It, along with other hush-hush intelligence experiments not only offer a clear explanation of events, but they explain why there was not absolute transparency at the time.
As for the loons, liars, and assorted idiots that offer testimony, look into the dates of that testimony. As attention to a situation grows, so does the number of attention-seekers. Take any major event, and there will be plenty of people offering testimony (I've met dozens claiming knowledge of the Kennedy assassination, for example). The thing about testimony is that it means dick when there is not only no evidence, but a lack of expected evidence.
" Whos to say microchips, jet propulsion, electro magnitism technology, all these big jumps we've made over the last century aren't the product of better understanding alien technology. "
Well to start, I'd say the scientists who studied and researched to develop those techniques, scientists who peer reviewed said research, the engineers who constructed them, various people who have reverse engineered and tested said devices, and so on and so forth. "
Could not more agree. We accomplished these things, and for good or bad, it will radically increase. The only thing outpacing our achievements is our screwing things up with over-population, depletion of resources and what-not. A very, very close race
But aliens..why sell ourselves short? We did build the pyramids,
HUMANS...F**K YEAH! Till we f**k ourselves, anyways.
Well...i do believe in aliens and all. Its a big ass universe, and odds are they aer just as advanced as we are...or most so. Have they visted earth? im not really sure...but hey, why not? I think it'd be kinda cool.
I haven't read this whole thread, but I'll be seriously disappointed if there's anyone here who actually believes our government is clever enough to cover up recovered alien corpses.
" I find it suspicious that they've seemingly made a report that's been hidden away for some 60 years public all of a sudden. "
Weird, it's almost as if some sort of act to do with freedom of information existed, which meant documents got declassified after a certain amount of time.
The memo has been available, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act, for some time, but the Vault has made nearly 2,000 records all the more readable and searchable, so expect more conspiracies to bubble up in the future.
I don't know about you, Mulder, but I'm stumped. :D
The thinking when it comes to pyramids and similar achievements is rather common: "I don't know how to do x, and surely nobody in the history of the world could have known something I don't know; therefore, x cannot be explained*."* "cannot be explained" applies only to rational, logical explanations; gods, pixies, aliens, ghosts, and other assorted hoopajoo are still fair game. "
Hoopajoo is my new favorite word.
On topic -
There's no aliens on Earth. Never was. Seriously.
The amount of idiocy in your confidence via the first sentence makes the rest of your post irrelevant. i suppose that you know for certain that god does/does not exist? you must know everything? not to shit on your opinion in a fit of rage, but saying "aliens can't happen on earth..because that's stupid" is pretty lame and unintelligible. "
This isn't a religious debate, so that's neither here nor there.
I don't know everything, nor do I claim to.
I do know, however, there are no aliens. Present me some factual evidence that there are aliens, and I will stand corrected.
"
I think he was using that as an example of the logical fallacy you're committing. Ironically, you just did it again.
I can not present you with factual evidence that there are aliens, just as much as you can not present me with factual evidence they do not. However, a lack of evidence in not indicative that the other side is right. He is not claiming the knowledge of alien existence, however, wrongly you are.
If you are to make the claim that you know aliens do not exist, on earth or otherwise, the burden of proof is on you friend, not the other side.
who knows if they really came here or not. but ive always believed in what Carl Sagan used to say, something like "its a big waste of space" if we're the only ones
I did know about the mogul project and I should've mentioned it. Though it is a more plausible explanation, It still doesn't match up to the description that has been given of the debris field. But since you don't believe in testimony alone I guess that's a dead argument. I will say though, calling everyone who testified "liars, loonies and assorted idiots" is ignorant and disrespectful. Many of them were military professionals and some of them testified on their death beds. Why would they lie in that situation? I'm not telling you to believe in the alien story, I just wish people wouldn't completely write it off as bullshit as long as there isn't hard evidence that say otherwise.
The thinking when it comes to pyramids and similar achievements is rather common: "I don't know how to do x, and surely nobody in the history of the world could have known something I don't know; therefore, x cannot be explained*."* "cannot be explained" applies only to rational, logical explanations; gods, pixies, aliens, ghosts, and other assorted hoopajoo are still fair game. "
Hoopajoo is my new favorite word.
On topic -
There's no aliens on Earth. Never was. Seriously.
The amount of idiocy in your confidence via the first sentence makes the rest of your post irrelevant. i suppose that you know for certain that god does/does not exist? you must know everything? not to shit on your opinion in a fit of rage, but saying "aliens can't happen on earth..because that's stupid" is pretty lame and unintelligible. "
This isn't a religious debate, so that's neither here nor there.
I don't know everything, nor do I claim to.
I do know, however, there are no aliens. Present me some factual evidence that there are aliens, and I will stand corrected.
"
I think he was using that as an example of the logical fallacy you're committing. Ironically, you just did it again.
I can not present you with factual evidence that there are aliens, just as much as you can not present me with factual evidence they do not. However, a lack of evidence in not indicative that the other side is right. He is not claiming the knowledge of alien existence, however, wrongly you are.
If you are to make the claim that you know aliens do not exist, on earth or otherwise, the burden of proof is on you friend, not the other side.
"
Fair enough, then you are right to say there was a logical fallacy in what I said earlier. Then, instead, I do not believe there are any aliens that have ever landed on Earth. This roswell incident is essentially "He said this" - it doesn't furnish any pictures, it just cites one guy. Admittedly it's a US Air Force Investigator, which adds to his credibility significantly, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't SEE this so-called evidence of his. The president could say that he saw a UFO in his own backyard but if he isn't showing me proof I won't believe him either. Chalk it up to my skepticism - I'm a skeptical guy in general.
Sure, it's still a belief, but I firmly believe that based on the fact that we
1 - Still have very limited space travel
2 - Have no space colonies/habitats, and the few we may be building in the future will probably be due to this guy, not aliens.
3 - Use movement systems that do not benefit from the movement systems of UFO's in the slightest
4 - Have made no other discernible relevant benefits from so-called UFO's,
that there are no aliens or other hoopajoo, such as Atlantis, as earlier mentioned in the thread. (Already finding uses for this word, lol)
Every single advancement by man has been made by man, with blood, sweat, tears, and alot of incredibly smart people.
I would imagine there is a vast number of species roaming the universe considering the sheer magnitude of it. Would an advanced species really be interested in visiting us? My own opinion is no. We are still very primative beings. 10 minutes of listening to online game chat from xbl would convince them of that....unless it was that Duke Nukem Ventrillo clip...Balls of Steal!
Here's an experiment that you may get a chance for: The next time you see a car accident, fight, robbery, or other such crime (or the next time you happen across the aftermath of one), listen to the eyewitness accounts. One is often so concerned with other matters that they don't notice how bad immediate eyewitness testimony is. People genuinely trust their memories, but you'll probably hear different age, weight, clothing, and racial descriptors; an involved vehicle will be offered with drastically different colors and models. And this is true of events that actually happened minutes before. How reliable do you think such testimony would be decades later?
Hell, look at 9/11. There are conflicting reports from people at virtually every level of expertise and pressure. Read through military testimonies from high-ranking officers; even events without controversy can be very different from one person to the next.
Experiments have been done to show that not only is witness testimony poor for the individual, but that it is very shitty for groups. I recall one study in which a staged, attention-getting event occurred (non-violent, but the sort of thing people would look to). When witnesses were asked to silently write down what they saw, the accuracy was pretty bad. However, the study also included a version in which people told an authority figure what they saw. When people overheard each other's testimony here and there, the descriptions were more consistent, but even less accurate. The larger the group and the more access to similar claims, the less valid the testimony.
The memory is a problematic little fucker. Many of the things that you remember are simply wrong. The dream that you had last probably wasn't what you think it is. Your childhood is largely bullshit. See, it's very easy for false memories to form, and we can unintentionally build errant information into our past. Many memories that you are very certain of and events that you can recall vividly just aren't accurate.
Mass hysteria (take your pick of notable cases) illustrates this rather well. Obviously the Roswell crash doesn't fall directly within mass hysteria, but similar operations occur. You ever notice how those who claim to have had personal encounters tend to have similar stories? They'll boast this as corroboration, and contemporary testimonies often have many matching details. What is interesting, though, is that this has been the case for a long time with gradual changes. That is to say that the stories from one generation do not match the stories of the next. Now, it's possible that the abductees of the '40s and '50s just happened to have experiences similar to the science-fiction of that time (short, often green beings) while those of the '90s just happened to be abducted by tall, thin, grey aliens (matching the sci-fi of the era). Changes in the fiction tend to be followed by changes in reports, and the reports become more and more consistent - until the fiction changes again.
As for loons, liars, and idiots, I should perhaps have specified a bit, but I stand by the general statement. People whose testimony is vague and simple may not fall into those categories. Those who testify in ways that support science-fiction, on the other hand... It's one thing to describe something that you don't recall too well or aren't sure of. It is quite another to not only include bizarre details, but to have confidence in them given what we know about the flaws of memory. If I saw something that looked a hell of a lot like a werewolf raping a stray dog, I'd be a fool to think that the existence of a werewolf is more likely than human cognitive failure. And when there is not a shred of evidence beyond useless anecdotes in any way, to still think that one's memory of little spacemen is real is beyond sanity and logic. If you've actually read some of the testimony, you'll notice that it gradually gets more and more bizarre and unlikely as time went on. Initial reports were pretty tame and the fears had more to do with international war than interplanetary fender-benders. The scale of mystery in testimony had a very gradual and predictable growth. Those who played into it are, indeed, loons, liars, or idiots.
If a god existed and began speaking to you, you'd be an idiot to believe that it was occurring, even if it was true. An intelligent, sane person, would seek medical help unless there was some solid, independently verified evidence that it was true. As I mentioned in a prior post, the correct answer is less important than the correct methods.
"It is often suggested that extraterrestrial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the improbability of life evolving at all in our universe. A couple of other possibilities seem worth considering. One is that life capable of evidencing itself on interstellar scales has evolved in many places but that evolutionary selection, acting on a cosmic scale, tends to extinguish species which conspicuously advertise themselves and their habitats. The other is that -- whatever the true situation -- intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion. These possibilities are discussed here, and some counter-arguments and complicating factors are also considered. "
Should we start considering building a high speed missile to intercept and destroy or retrieve our voyager probes, which might have been a tremendous mistake to send out.
My basic concern is we don't know. Aliens may be hostile, or they may be beneficent. If they are beneficent then advertising ourselves might be good, if they are hostile then advertising ourselves could result in our destruction. It seems we must consider both possibilities and thus the best approach is to reduce the likelihood of our destruction by not advertising ourselves.
As i read though this the author seems to agree. "The relevant probabilities are unknowable, but even if they are pretty small, the cost (likely extinction) is so high that the possible gain of new habitats and new knowledge may not seem adequate compensation, unless perhaps one’s situation is already truly desperate."
Anyway with regards to the original article posted by the OP about the rosewell incident i hope this was an experiment by the military at seeing if they could induce mass hysteria or manipulate the public that they quicker terminated. I dread the thought that intelligent and advanced alien life exists because of the even infinitesimal probability of interstellar genocide.
@Rockdalf: On your reply to the bloke who said he knew aliens didn't exist, I have to disagree to some extent. First, his second reply isn't an example of irony; it's coincidence. Neither here nor there, but it's worth the heads-up.
My actual disagreement is a matter of epistemological onanism & nuance, and it may not prove a disagreement with your position so much as its presentation (or my reading thereof). I assert that one can "know" a negative, i.e., one can "know" that aliens do not exist. It is not a position I hold, myself, but it can be defended on two primary points.
To start with, knowledge is a sub-set of belief. One must believe something to know it, but not vice-versa. "Absolute knowledge" is of no relevance in this context. It cannot be independently or externally verified, so it cannot be reasonably claimed. Even if one's belief is true and is proven time and again, absolute knowledge requires that one must rule out any possibility of error; the Cartesian theater is an obvious example of such a possibility that cannot be completely ruled out. The only thing one can have absolute knowledge of defensibly is of the most basic internal occurrence; thinking the following sentence illustrates this: "I am thinking." Beyond this, things cannot be certain. Even many internal phenomena can't attain this certainty; one may believe that their left foot itches even if they are an amputee. For anything of practical significance, absolute knowledge is bullshit.
As absolute knowledge is irrelevant to the matter, "knowledge" must be considered belief with a relatively high level of certainty. The difference between a strong belief and knowledge is certainly not a clear line. I might not claim know that my spouse won't kill me, but I could claim to know that they won't murder me with their third left toe. We may not know what happened to Hoffa, but I know that he's not having tea with Elvis tomorrow. Russell's teapot provides yet another clear illustration of cases in which knowledge may be reasonably claimed without direct evidence. The difference between knowledge and mere belief is fungible and, to some degree, personally variable. I know that I'm not a 12th century lemur, that I'm writing in the English language, that 2+2=4 (barring some twat bringing up different bases), that friend x loves me, that acquaintance y does not, that bogeymen aren't real, that the god of Abraham doesn't exist, and on and on. These claims come with varying levels of evidence, but I'm sufficiently certain of them to claim knowledge. Others may believe all of these things but only claim to know some.
We can rule out one's knowledge in some matters, but the demarcation of this practice is very difficult. If you claimed to know next week's results of my running numbers, I know that you are wrong. Ridiculous claims to knowledge are easy to spot, but the point at which claims are legitimate is impossible to specifically identify.
Absence of evidence is not often evidence of absence; however, absence of necessary or expected evidence can be evidence of absence. It cannot provide proof to the extent that could be offered for a positive assertion, but a dearth of expected evidence can lead to a reasonable conclusion. If I tell you that I have two cats, and they're in my apartment, you cannot prove otherwise. But, you can look for evidence. If you see no cats, it makes my claim questionable; if you cannot smell them, find no cat food, no cat litter, no cat hairs, no cat toys, etc., you have solid grounds for disbelief. If you check my trash, clothing, lint-trap, vacuum bag, etc. and still find no traces of a cat, even with sophisticated techniques, then it would be safe to conclude that my statement was false. Maybe I don't have cats, maybe they aren't in the apartment, but you know that there are not two cats in the apartment.
We know that Spider-man is not real, we know that Nessie isn't in the loch, and we know that our houses were not entirely demolished and replaced with exact replicas.
@drbendo: I absolutely agree with what you are saying an extremely over verbose manner, however, we'll have to agree to disagree on where the line is drawn.
My argument was simply that when one claims to have the "knowledge of high certainty" on things that are not certain (i.e. the existence of extraterrestrial beings) the burden of proof is on them, not the person disputing such claims. I don't see how you could classify such a claim as "knowledge of high certainty". If I was to dispute your claims of cats, I would need to provide evidence because there is high likelyhood, based on things I already know (Cats exist and are a common house pet), that your claims could be true. It is possible. Therefore the burden of proof would be on me, to prove that you do not have cats.
However, we know that the actual Spider-man does not exist because that would exist outside the realm of thing we are highly certain of. It is Impossible (according to common accepted knowledge). Therefore the burden of proof would be on the person trying to prove he exists.
Alien life is certainly possible, however, I too make no claims to "know with high certainty", because that would be a baseless assumption. To associate it with your cat metaphor, you would make the claim there are only cats in one of these 1 million rooms. You show me the room and we see that it has cats in it. You then proceed to show me 12 more rooms and we see that they do not have cats. You then tell me, that you know it with high certainty, the remaining of the million rooms do not have cats and that I must prove you wrong for you to believe otherwise. Certainly, you wouldn't agree that opening one room of twelve to see cats would be indicative of every other room of the million.
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