D&D 5E How to pronounce Artificer

[Charlaquin]

The thing is, it's true. It's bad science to say UFOs are not alien spaceships, because there is no evidence that they are not.

This is the opposite of how it works. Evidence is needed to support a positive claim, not a negative one. A good scientist doesn’t say UFO’s can’t possibly be alien spacecraft, they say I have seen no evidence to suggest they are alien spacecraft.

It's unlikely, but that's not the same as fact. Showing that one UFO was a weather balloon does not prove all UFOs are weather balloons.

No one claims all UFOs are weather balloons. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and claiming that a UFO is an alien spacecraft definitely qualifies as extraordinary (literally, it is beyond the ordinary).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is the opposite of how it works. Evidence is needed to support a positive claim, not a negative one.

Evidence is needed to support any claim, positive or negative.

A good scientist doesn’t say UFO’s can’t possibly be alien spacecraft, they say I have seen no evidence to suggest they are alien spacecraft.

Exactly, Those two statements are very different. And a good scientist will investigate all hypotheses, even the extraordinary ones.

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine."

-Arthur Eddington, scientist​

(Actually, he said queerer, but language has changed since he said it.)

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's also bad science to suggest that UFOs might be alien spaceships, because no evidence of any alien spaceship has ever been documented.

Pfft.

Excuse me, but we've all seen and documented the moon.

 

[CleverNickName]

Pfft.

Excuse me, but we've all seen and documented the moon.

Are you suggesting that the moon is not, in fact, an Unidentified Flying Object?

 

[TheSword]

Ar-tiff-fiss-sir
Without a shadow of doubt!

 

[CleverNickName]

No evidence of anything is documented until it is documented.

If scientists dismissed ideas that are without without precedent there would never be any paradigm shifts and we would still be living in a stone age. Occam's Razor is a tool for ranking competing theories in order of probability, but Sherlock's Razor also applies: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Alien spaceships are highly improbable due to the vast distances involved, but they are not impossible. An interstellar craft could be constructed by humans using current technology, the human lifespan is the only currently insurmountable obstacle preventing them making the journey. And aliens, by definition, are not human.

I don't know where to begin with all this--the definitions of "alien" are in the dictionary, there's no such thing as 'Sherlock's Razor,' etc.--but none of it has anything to do with the pronunciation of the word Artificer.