
Oxford Professor argues invisible aliens are interbreeding with humans - hhs
https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2019/04/26/oxford-professors-theory-on-climate-change-and-alien-abduction/
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ConfusedDog
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this theory right there with unpublished science fiction ideas.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.

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lpolzer
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.

~~~
gruez
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.

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dionian
but appeal to popularity/authority is not the proper way to validate a
hypothesis no matter what

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mikeash
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.

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haihaibye
Sounds like he watched the movie They Live too many times:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJC4R1uXDaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJC4R1uXDaE)

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mijoharas
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.

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reaperducer
_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.

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tyingq
Looks like he teaches language courses:
[https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/people/young-hae-
chi](https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/people/young-hae-chi)

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zwaps
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.

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bArray
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.

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gruez
>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.

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bArray
> 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.

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RickJWagner
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.")

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apricot
No doubt this language instructor will soon be providing us with the
extraordinary evidence needed to establish his extraordinary claim.

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i_am_proteus
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.

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danielbigham
He's right -- they're called ideas.

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gatherhunterer
As Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain
a thought without accepting it.”

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sdenton4
And tenure shall set you free!

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dramm
He is an instructor, that's a non-academic position and does not have tenure.
_Not_ having tenure may set him free from Oxford.

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ordu
Where can I find an alien female to breed with her?

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shove
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)

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shove
Could someone explain the down-votes? My hypothesis isn’t great but surely
it’s better than aliens interbreeding with humans etc etc?

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thatcat
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.

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shove
Because it’s not about averages. It’s about wider ranges.

Fair point on chemical pollutants.

