The idea that "eyewitness testimony is unreliable"

MaximRecoil

JimOberg
reply to post by neoholographic

 

NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable.

Some people in this very thread have made such a claim, and if you were to exhaustively search the entire ATS forum database, you'd find a lot more, to say nothing about somehow searching the entire internet or the entirety of human history in general, i.e., everything ever said or written down.
I
The very first reply in this thread was:

Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.

Which alone refutes your claim that "NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable."

edit on 3/29/2014 by MaximRecoil because: (no reason given)

So you find it acceptable to roll one comment up as a representative of what everyone believes that disagrees with you? And you seem to be quite content to argue against points that don't represent anyone's point of view that you are arguing with.

I find that kind of straw mannish.

Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.

Does not represent everyone's point of view. Argue with the person that said that.

Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.

Yes, you do speak very well of yourself!

ZetaRediculian

MaximRecoil

JimOberg
reply to post by neoholographic

 

NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable.

Some people in this very thread have made such a claim, and if you were to exhaustively search the entire ATS forum database, you'd find a lot more, to say nothing about somehow searching the entire internet or the entirety of human history in general, i.e., everything ever said or written down.
I
The very first reply in this thread was:

Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.

Which alone refutes your claim that "NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable."

edit on 3/29/2014 by MaximRecoil because: (no reason given)

So you find it acceptable to roll one comment up as a representative of what everyone believes that disagrees with you? And you seem to be quite content to argue against points that don't represent anyone's point of view that you are arguing with.

I find that kind of straw mannish.

Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.

Does not represent everyone's point of view. Argue with the person that said that.

This entire post of yours is from deep, deep in left field, and once again, you've bizarrely misapplied the term "straw man", and, ironically, have constructed a blatant straw man yourself. My post that you quoted merely refutes the following claim ...

NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable.

... by quoting a poster in this very thread that has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable (and he's not the only one in this thread to do so, but it only take one example of someone claiming that all eyewitness reports are unreliable to refute JimOberg's claim, which started out with the word "nobody", in ALL CAPS, no less).

Your first straw man is in blue, given that I never claimed, suggested, nor even hinted that Jefferton's comment was "representative of what everyone believes that disagrees with [me]". Your second straw man is in green; it is a rephrased version of your first straw man.

Not only did you, yet again, see a straw men where nothing even remotely similar to a straw man actually exists, you also have utterly missed the very simple point of my post. Here is an analogy of what you've done here:

Poster A: "NOBODY has claimed that a whale is a fish."

Poster B (in reply to Poster A): "In the first reply to this thread, Poster X said, 'A whale is a fish', which refutes your claim."

Poster C (in reply to Poster B): "So you find it acceptable to roll one comment up as a representative of what everyone believes that disagrees with you?"

Thought balloon of everyone reading Poster C's bizarre, out-of-left-field post: "Say what?"

reply to post by MaximRecoil


Sorry but you are not making much sense. Why are we talking about what someone else's point of view is? How does that relate to what I have said? As far as I can tell it's not representative of my view or the view of the poster you were responding to. Seems like you want to associate comments from other posters into one Straw man. Why bring it up? Why not discuss what someone says directly? You have yet to discuss one point I have actually made. People are drunk, project Bluebeam, I am making claims about this and that. It's actually quite remarkable how well you have misinterpreted pretty much everything I said. You seem to have figured everything out and that seems pretty amazing. I am not going to bother commenting on your nonsensical ramblings. Logical discussion requires actual logic and that is far from what you are representing. You have quite a circular argument going.

reply to post by draknoir2

Bigfoot is real.

Amen brother.

When blind debunkers say that all witnesses that see Bigfoot are delusional, I have to put a LOL! In caps to express that it makes me laugh really loud.

Bigfoot is witnessed by witnesses that are really GOOD and COMPELLING. When someone sees Bigfoot, they see Bigfoot. Unless they can show that they are all drunk during the sightings. This is just common knowledge. They want to throw logic and reason out the window!

There is also this whole body of knowledge about what witness testimony is and there is a lot scientific literature about perception and stuff that I use for toilet paper because I don't want to know about anything that could possibly go against my beliefs.

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by MaximRecoil

 

Sorry but you are not making much sense.

That's comically ironic.

Why are we talking about what someone else's point of view is? How does that relate to what I have said? As far as I can tell it's not representative of my view or the view of the poster you were responding to. Seems like you want to associate comments from other posters into one Straw man. Why bring it up? Why not discuss what someone says directly? You have yet to discuss one point I have actually made. People are drunk, project Bluebeam, I am making claims about this and that. It's actually quite remarkable how well you have misinterpreted pretty much everything I said. You seem to have figured everything out and that seems pretty amazing. I am not going to bother commenting on your nonsensical ramblings. Logical discussion requires actual logic and that is far from what you are representing.

How's the weather out there, deep, deep in left field? Consider your baseless and irrelevant ramblings to be dismissed (by the way, I bolded some more comical irony from you).

I'll simplify this even further:

1. JimOberg made a demonstrably false claim ("NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable.")
2. I demonstrated it to be false by pointing out that some posters in this thread did claim that all eyewitness reports are unreliable, and I specifically quoted one of them.

End of story.

Then you went off on a wild tangent that had nothing to do with anything, which makes me question your grasp of reality in general (especially since it's not the first time you've done it in this thread).

You have quite a circular argument going.

You don't know what a circular argument is any more than you know what a straw man is. In any event, this is a random and entirely unsupported mere assertion, and as such, it can legitimately be dismissed out of hand.

Do you have any idea how foolish or otherwise "out there" it makes you appear when you accuse people of things like constructing a "straw man" or a "circular argument" when not only do you not support the assertions in any way, but there isn't even anything remotely similar to a "straw man" or a "circular argument" present in the post at all? Your accusations are so bizarrely random and arbitrary that I've never seen anything like it, and that's saying quite a lot, considering I've been regularly posting on various forums for about 14 years.

reply to post by MaximRecoil


I am not really going to respond to your nonsensical remarks. They can be ignored. You have essentially concluded what witness testimony is without actually discussing it. You use the O'Hare sighting as a example of how great witness testimony is to show how great witness testimony is. My only point was that I don't think we can rule out some things about the case but since you already ruled them out, they are not really worth discussing. I don't know how much more circular you can get.

Witness testimony is great because witness testimony is great. That's your argument. Oh and people learn how to read. You should think about getting published.

JimOberg
NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable.

MaximRecoil
Some people in this very thread have made such a claim, and if you were to exhaustively search the entire ATS forum database, you'd find a lot more, to say nothing about somehow searching the entire internet or the entirety of human history in general, i.e., everything ever said or written down.
I
The very first reply in this thread was:

"No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted."

Which alone refutes your claim that "NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable."

... by quoting a poster in this very thread that has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable (and he's not the only one in this thread to do so, but it only take one example of someone claiming that all eyewitness reports are unreliable to refute JimOberg's claim, which started out with the word "nobody", in ALL CAPS, no less).

"Unreliable" refers in one quote to the claims, and in the other quote to the witness himself. These are not semantically equivalent.

Claims are, of course, of varying reliability, depending on the characteristics of the witness, the witness's life experiences, the familiarity level of the stimulus, the observing conditions, inter alia.

Studying the reliability of claims requires evaluation of all factors, and I'm trying to persuade you that careful studies of specific unusual stimuli satellite reentries -- can teach us useful things about assessing reliability.

Sorry for any ambiguity or confusion I've contributed to.

ZetaRediculian
reply to post by MaximRecoil

 

I am not really going to respond to your nonsensical remarks. They can be ignored.

*Irony Alert* See above.

You have essentially concluded what witness testimony is without actually discussing it.

There is nothing to discuss; it is a matter of simple definition. Eyewitness testimony is when someone tells what they saw. The only one who has displayed any confusion here about what it means is you.

You use the O'Hare sighting as a example of how great witness testimony is to show how great witness testimony is.

No; I've used various examples of which parts of eyewitness testimony tend to be reliable (i.e., the more fundamental details of an event) and which parts tend to be less reliable or unreliable (the more minor details of an event); e.g., the car accident example in the OP. I haven't used the O'Hare sighting "of how great witness testimony" at all, and that you think I did is further evidence of your significant difficulties with regard to reading and general comprehension.

My only point was that I don't think we can rule out some things about the case but since you already ruled them out, they are not really worth discussing.

Here's how it works: you offer an explanation that you don't think can be ruled out. I consider the merits and give my response, in the form of an actual argument. Since I haven't said anything even similar to: "I've already ruled that out, so it is not worth discussing" in response to any offered explanation, consider your blatant mischaracterization of my replies dismissed.

I don't know how much more circular you can get.

You've repeatedly demonstrated that you don't know what "circular" means, by misapplying it a few times now. To make matters worse, you have a faulty premise here (see above), which in and of itself negates your conclusion in this case.

Witness testimony is great because witness testimony is great. That's your argument.

That's a bald-faced lie. I've never even claimed that "Witness testimony is great", much less that "Witness testimony is great because witness testimony is great". I made note of the aspects of eyewitness testimony that tend to be unreliable in my very first post (the OP), and I've done so elsewhere in this thread as well, which is a far cry from the blanket statement that "Witness testimony is great".

By the way, you're still on a wild tangent, and apparently you don't know why. None of what you have posted to me since I replied to JimOberg regarding his false "NOBODY has claimed that all eyewitness reports are unreliable" claim has been relevant to that in any way.

JimOberg
"Unreliable" refers in one quote to the claims, and in the other quote to the witness himself. These are not semantically equivalent.

Yes, they are semantically equivalent. Saying that "No witness is reliable", means the same thing as saying that "all eyewitness reports are unreliable", i.e., if no one is a reliable witness, it follows that no witness report is reliable, and vice versa. But even if you want to play semantic games with that single example, here's another one from this thread:

Krahzeef_Ukhar
And that is exactly why eyewitness reports are unreliable.

And another:

kelbtalfenek
reply to post by MaximRecoil

 

Generally speaking, the human mind is fallible. Each time a human remembers a memory, he/she rewrites it in their head. That alone makes it unreliable!

And another:

draknoir2
There's a good reason for this: eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.

From another forum:

But all eyewitness testimonies are unreliable

Source

reply to post by MaximRecoil


Again, no real substance here. Your argument is verifiably circular. Obviously I'm not going to convince you because you seem rather content with it. Witness testimony is good because witness testimony is good. As an example of good witness testimony, you provide the O'harre case in which you entertain no other explanations except the one you concluded which is the one that supports witness testimony is good. Of course, this case isn't verifiable but you seem to have verified it because witness testimony is good and the witnesses verified it. No other explanations needed! Full circle.

Of course I never made any claim whatsoever. anything I offered was pure speculation and was offered as the only explaination I could think that would fit if certain conditions were met. Something I said repeatedly. But you find that unbearable to discuss because?? You already figured it out! No mystery here.

I don't think I am missing anything. Except you do entertain that if I could prove the witnesses were drunk, or if project bluebeam was involved that might support a possible alternate explaination. You also disregard anything relating to actual studies of perception and consider them off topic. You state that "common knowledge" supersedes whole branches of scientific study. You make up your own explainations that you think relate to witness testimony like that people can learn how to read. Again, you should publish this. It's a new a unique perspective based on common knowledge and one the scientific community is desperately in need of because you know better.

reply to post by ZetaRediculian


Everything you have typed here falls under one or more of the following categories:

1. Baseless assertion
2. Already-refuted claim
3. Misconception
4. Straw man
5. Bald-faced lie

And that can be confirmed by anyone who can read properly and wants to check your nonsense against what has actually transpired in this thread.

Off topic, Zeta i think that you are excellent poster but Maxim is spanking your ass in this thread.No offense.

reply to post by MaximRecoil


I am dismissing this because it's inaccurate and not really worth responding to. People that are interested can read the discussion and figure it out for themselves. I do believe you when you say you have been at this for a while. I think you have convinced yourself that you know what you are talking about. You really don't. You really haven't offered much in the way of accurate information and any attempt to introduce anything of value, you dismiss and offer up some crazy rhetoric disguised as logic and "Common knowledge" and make up your own validation based on your own validation. For example, people can learn how to write, therefore witness testimony is the bees knees. Of course there are all kinds of studies that deal with learning and all kinds of studies that deal with witness testimony and obviously all kinds of studies that deal with perception. Despite this information, the only thing you offer is what you deem to be "Common knowledge" which is your own knowledge based on what you make up. This is apparent to anyone who knows about this stuff.

People can tell the difference between people and dogs? And people can distinguish between male and female? People know when cats are in trees? But actual studies of misperceptions of UFOs are dismissed and real information about perception is dismissed? How convenient.

xavi1000
Off topic, Zeta i think that you are excellent poster but Maxim is spanking your ass in this thread.No offense.

Non taken. I think he is very good at twisting things. He represents the common folk here and I fully expect the common view is that he is kicking butt. Not really a deterrent.

I have never really noticed you before but thanks for the compliment.

MaximRecoil


And another:


draknoir2
There's a good reason for this: eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.

draknoir2
There's a good reason for this: eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.

Show me where it says "COMPLETELY", "ALL", or "ALWAYS". They are not synonyms for "NOTORIOUSLY".

I fully explained what was meant in the posts you ignored in favor of arguing about arguments and arguing.

Most of those cheerleading in this thread are not really interested in honest discussion of the strengths and limitations of eyewitness testimony, but rather are just here to assign labels and bash a particular hypothetical POV... or star those who do it for them.

draknoir2
Most of those cheerleading in this thread are not really interested in honest discussion of the strengths and limitations of eyewitness testimony, but rather are just here to assign labels and bash a particular hypothetical POV... or star those who do it for them.

You are entitled to another "think"; please take it. For you are very wrong in your perceptions here.

Further, I would kind of like to see a "real" discussion on "eye witness" data...maybe even join in, but only IF the discussion remains "intelligent".

So, kindly reevaluate your thinking.

BTW, none of yall have received a "star" from me, and aren't likely too.

Although, MaximRecoil, I do understand your frustration in attempting to discuss this with ZR and co. Those you were discussing with are the primary reason I didn't put much into this...ZR has a habit of twisting things to suit himself, and his views (if he actually has any).

reply to post by tanka418



Case in point.

Returning to the fascinating issue of assessing human perception, let me draw attention to two old essays of mine that I belive offer useful insights for disputation here.

At a conference debate with Bruce Maccabee in 1985 I spoke on a 'Black Box Theory" of UFO perception, and raised points which I'm sad to see still undiscussed by the UFO community:

www.debunker.com...

Specific to the queston of pilot perception, I discussed two cases where pilot perception had occurred -- please argue that it did NOT, if you can -- here:

www.zipworld.com.au...

reply to post by tanka418


says the guy with alien DNA and that can summon alien spacehips at will and who can predict the future