[zuckluni]

This all just seems a little anachronistic... a little arrogant...

Are there really people in this day and age that believe there's nothing that exists that can't be explained with a textbook? Is the world do devoid of magic, or is wonder in such bountiful supply that something amazing and wonderful must be snuffed out, crushed under the weight of such dullness, such grasping conspiracy theories?

A government psyop, really? That's your big plan to explain centuries of reports -- that all of that is because it's some state wanting to massage the minds of it's soldiers... are you insane?

[TeMPOraL]

Name one thing that a) we're sure exists, and b) it's so extraordinary that it "can't be explained with a textbook".

The entire progress of humanity came through converting "magic" to "mundane". It's usually called "gaining understanding".

[zuckluni]

I suppose it depends on the security classification of the textbook.

But seriously, your question probably depends on how you assess the explanations in textbooks, and the meaning of sure. I mean, are you sure you're satisfied with textbook explanations for stuff?

But the bigger picture is, it doesn't matter if we're sure, we're not sure about anything. We're not even sure about what's in the textbooks. It exists, the reports exist, that's what matters.

Gaining understanding by converting magic to mundane is good, but we don't get there by pretending everything is already explainable. We don't get there by denying the magic. Obviously.

We got to face it, right? It doesn't have to be aliens (or any theory that makes it hard for people to think about because they find it impossible to face), but we gotta look at it. And if the "textbooks" (or other 'sources of authority') are explaining it away as stuff we already know, that's not helping us look at the magic, that we need to understand, right? capiche? Obvious, right? I don't know why everyone's so crazy about this.

Science is supposed to look at stuff it doesn't understand. When did everyone get so scared of doing that?

[Supermancho]

> Name one thing that a) we're sure exists, and b) it's so extraordinary that it "can't be explained with a textbook

What does "explain" mean? There are lots of things that are known but unexplained as well as effects that are known but we havent proved an explanation (eg. the shower-curtain effect to wikipedia unknowns in physics).

[tgflynn]

That's easy: subjective experience.