I've had an interesting first two weeks at college to say the least. I'm majoring in Astrophysics, and thus far, almost all my time in my physics classes has been spent demonstrating the "obvious" baloney of the entire phenomenon while throwing in the occasional concept or formula to learn. The department is very interested in the new science of astrobiology and frequently compares it to ufology. On the first day, we discussed the textbook, which was written by Seth Shostak of SETI. It turns out, Seth is scheduled to come next semester and talk to our group about SETI, astrobiology, and all of these pseudosciences. Anyway, on the second day of class, we had a quiz, and on it was one question. "On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the highest, how convinced are you that we have been visited by aliens?" I could feel myself falling into a trap here, so I decided to put a "conservative" answer of 9. So then I got wise and asked the professor what HIS answer was. His response was, "Uh, well, we'll talk about that later." After that, the the UFO theme for the day was virtually dropped. It turns out that the first chapter of our textbook is an introduction to astrobiology, SETI's contribution to it, and how aliens in popular culture have influenced and skewed the science. On day three, we discussed various aspects of the scientific method, and the Occam's Razor mode of reasoning(if two theories fit the data equally well use the simplest one) was applied to UFOs. There was a neat little video of a UFO hovering over a house on the Powerpoint presentation, and we were to suggest ideas about what the UFO was. So we came up with a hoax, distortion in the camera, distortion in the atmosphere, and remote but negligable possibility it was an alien spacecraft. The video did seem like a hoax to me. It was one of those in your face flying saucers that conveniently sat over this guy's house so he could film it. On day four, we discussed the results of the little quiz we got. It turns out about a third of the class believes in UFOs, a third didn't really know, and another third was highly doubtful or completely dismissive. 6 brave souls actually put a 10 on the quiz, which was countered by 7 who put 0. There was a large clump around 5, and a scattered few picked numbers other than this. I once again asked the professor what he thought, and he asked me what I thought he thought. Being conspiratally minded, I said, "I think there's more to this survey than meets the eye," under my breath. After a moment, he told the class, "we must not believe in pseudosciences." After that, I kind of dropped the subject and decided to sit quietly and take notes like a good little student. Yesterday, there were no discussions about UFOs.
In addition to that class, I also have a seminar class which is designed to introduce us to various subjects in condensed matter physics, astrophysics, high energy physics, quantum mechanics, and some other branches that they might choose to include. It is taught by another professor. On the first day of class, we got a speech very similar to this.
"You are here to become scientists. You could make a lot more money if you went over to the College of Business, but you wanted to be scientists. As such, you will be the future leaders of our society and scientific institutions. If our civilization is to survive, you must avoid the trap of pseudosciences. So take your favorite supernatural thing; ghosts, UFOs, telepathy; and throw it out."
Now it turns out, I really like this professor, he is very friendly and highly philosophical, but this constant mention of UFOs was starting to bother me. After being here a couple of days, my thoughts became very murky. It seemed to take me forever to do simple calculations I used to be able to do with ease. I couldn't think very far beyond the next class, let alone ponder controversial and far-reaching questions. (I don't know if EM waves have anything to do with it, there is a rather large antenna, 40 feet or so, on top of my dormitory, I'm almost directly underneath it.) I was beginning to believe I had been wrong all along. These professional, intelligent, and rather interesting people had decent rationale for what they were saying. However I noticed that they avoided confronting highly controversial things like Roswell and the many unsolved cases of Project Bluebook. They invited us to come in and talk about our various paranormal stories for the first few minutes of class, but I was wary of this, because A) there was too much noise in my head to think, and B) I don't want to be placed on anybody's watch list this early in the game. So the best option was to fein ignorance and just shut up. So I continued drifting in this twilight of consciousness for about 2 weeks. I began to feel as if I was losing touch with myself. Then on Friday, I got this weird inclination to listen to SOTT podcasts simply because I hadn't had a fast enough internet connection before. And for some reason, the sound of the voices of Scott, Henry, and Laura reignited my mind; though I'm still not where I was. It takes a considerable amount of willpower to stay alert and focused on the greater occurrences in the world. I'm working twice as hard to think half as much. Something about this environment makes me want to forget about everything and focus only on what is immediately in front of me. I was willing to just accept this minor hiccup in my Work and forget about it until today. Today's seminar homework is to read Chapter 12 of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon Haunted World" subtitlted "Science As A Candle In The Dark" where he talks about baloney detection with all of these New Age examples of spirit channeling and UFO research and then he moves on to the correlation between carcinogens in cigarrete smoke and the incidence of cancer cases. I'm not so much against the book, as wary of where its implications are trying to lead me. It seemed to warn me that I am entering a prolonged battle over who I am.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this other than it clears my mind and the whole thing just feels not right somehow. I was expecting the subject of UFOs to creep into my classes on occasion, but I wasn't expecting it to be brought up front and center. Apparently, I'm not the only weirdo in the class, but considering my history following the UFO phenomenon, psionic phenomena, and then the QFG material, it almost seems as if all of this was "set up" for me, because it all hits so close to home. It's like some guy has been watching me and organizing his pawns on the chessboard; waiting to move them into my square. Is it some type of reeducation program? Now I seem to be lapsing into paranoid delusions that because I've read some Cass material I'm being "targeted"... Perhaps it is just some scientists' attempts to keep children from lapsing into naive beliefs about "Space Brothers." But my mental bias always causes me to lean toward conspiracy, and makes me think there is more to it than that... Well, thanks for listening.
In addition to that class, I also have a seminar class which is designed to introduce us to various subjects in condensed matter physics, astrophysics, high energy physics, quantum mechanics, and some other branches that they might choose to include. It is taught by another professor. On the first day of class, we got a speech very similar to this.
"You are here to become scientists. You could make a lot more money if you went over to the College of Business, but you wanted to be scientists. As such, you will be the future leaders of our society and scientific institutions. If our civilization is to survive, you must avoid the trap of pseudosciences. So take your favorite supernatural thing; ghosts, UFOs, telepathy; and throw it out."
Now it turns out, I really like this professor, he is very friendly and highly philosophical, but this constant mention of UFOs was starting to bother me. After being here a couple of days, my thoughts became very murky. It seemed to take me forever to do simple calculations I used to be able to do with ease. I couldn't think very far beyond the next class, let alone ponder controversial and far-reaching questions. (I don't know if EM waves have anything to do with it, there is a rather large antenna, 40 feet or so, on top of my dormitory, I'm almost directly underneath it.) I was beginning to believe I had been wrong all along. These professional, intelligent, and rather interesting people had decent rationale for what they were saying. However I noticed that they avoided confronting highly controversial things like Roswell and the many unsolved cases of Project Bluebook. They invited us to come in and talk about our various paranormal stories for the first few minutes of class, but I was wary of this, because A) there was too much noise in my head to think, and B) I don't want to be placed on anybody's watch list this early in the game. So the best option was to fein ignorance and just shut up. So I continued drifting in this twilight of consciousness for about 2 weeks. I began to feel as if I was losing touch with myself. Then on Friday, I got this weird inclination to listen to SOTT podcasts simply because I hadn't had a fast enough internet connection before. And for some reason, the sound of the voices of Scott, Henry, and Laura reignited my mind; though I'm still not where I was. It takes a considerable amount of willpower to stay alert and focused on the greater occurrences in the world. I'm working twice as hard to think half as much. Something about this environment makes me want to forget about everything and focus only on what is immediately in front of me. I was willing to just accept this minor hiccup in my Work and forget about it until today. Today's seminar homework is to read Chapter 12 of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon Haunted World" subtitlted "Science As A Candle In The Dark" where he talks about baloney detection with all of these New Age examples of spirit channeling and UFO research and then he moves on to the correlation between carcinogens in cigarrete smoke and the incidence of cancer cases. I'm not so much against the book, as wary of where its implications are trying to lead me. It seemed to warn me that I am entering a prolonged battle over who I am.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this other than it clears my mind and the whole thing just feels not right somehow. I was expecting the subject of UFOs to creep into my classes on occasion, but I wasn't expecting it to be brought up front and center. Apparently, I'm not the only weirdo in the class, but considering my history following the UFO phenomenon, psionic phenomena, and then the QFG material, it almost seems as if all of this was "set up" for me, because it all hits so close to home. It's like some guy has been watching me and organizing his pawns on the chessboard; waiting to move them into my square. Is it some type of reeducation program? Now I seem to be lapsing into paranoid delusions that because I've read some Cass material I'm being "targeted"... Perhaps it is just some scientists' attempts to keep children from lapsing into naive beliefs about "Space Brothers." But my mental bias always causes me to lean toward conspiracy, and makes me think there is more to it than that... Well, thanks for listening.