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CJCrawley
Sure, people see strange things moving around in the sky, big deal.
It's proof that they are intelligently-controlled craft from another planet that is conspicuously lacking.
CornShucker
Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.
Therefore, your opinion is automatically vacuous.
The problem as I see it is that there's nothing more to be done with it. A person describes a sliver flying saucer that zoomed over their head. Okay, fine. What am I supposed to do with that? I can't study it. I can't replay the event. It is of no help when trying to figure out what the thing was, who built it, or where it came from.
Your position is that there is no way it could be anything other than a metallic craft that moved at an extreme speed. Can you provide some information, links, literature...anything that shows how misidentification can be ruled out? Of course not and I don't expect you to.
ZetaRediculian
If you have alternate explanations of the event in mind, it is up to you to present and support them, which is the only path to creating reasonable doubt. You can't create reasonable doubt by simply throwing things at the wall hoping something will stick; doing so is tantamount to a defense lawyer randomly proclaiming in court, "Maybe the butler did it!" in an effort to direct attention away from his client, but without anything to support the claim.
Oye vey.... what exactly is on trial? That people saw something? OK. What did they see? I DON'T KNOW. There is not enough information to determine what they saw. YOU think so and that is fantastic. So I have to agree with you without question? I don't. Get over it.edit on 24-3-2014 by ZetaRediculian because: (no reason given)
Also, according to your own statement, it seems that I'm not the first person to point out that you don't know what a straw man is. That should tell you something.
Uh huh. You already indicated otherwise. Don't forget that you only have 4 hours to edit your posts, so you'll need to go back and change what you said soon.
I assume you're done here in this thread?
Irony alert.
(much like the "Hitler card"; see Godwin's law)
PhoenixOD
The fact that people sometimes see things they cant explain at the time is not in dispute. But when they make the assumption that its not something normal just because they cant tell what it it all becomes unreliable.
-- snip --
of course people see things they cant explain at the time. But the big problem is that if they dont eventually wor out what it was it then becomes part of the percentage of UFO's that cant be explained which other people then try to tell us MUST be visiting aliens.
edit on 22-3-2014 by PhoenixOD because: (no reason given)
ZetaRediculian
reply to post by MaximRecoil
Also, according to your own statement, it seems that I'm not the first person to point out that you don't know what a straw man is. That should tell you something.
Actually, you are.
I just think you are a troll now.
Nobody is this dumb.
I believe the only argument against misidentification is that all the witness reports were consistent on the details in question.
Assuming the craft was misidentified, why would all the witnesses misidentify it in the same way?
Blue Shift
CornShucker
Jefferton
No witness is reliable. The human brain is flawed, and can't be trusted.
Therefore, your opinion is automatically vacuous.
Yours, too! And so we spiral down into the infinite hole of inherent contradictions.
-- snip --
Unfortunately with UFOs, because there is no good hard evidence suggesting any kind of solution (including extraterrestrial), even if a person's perception is accurate, and their description is reasonably accurate, it doesn't matter.
JimOberg
Too much time has been wasted theorizing about HOW people of different professions OUGHT to be able to perceive – as in the statement on pilots – and not on what the observational data can tell us. So naturally we’ve gotten nowhere on trying to backtrack raw perceptual reports to potential original stimuli.
edit on 24-3-2014 by JimOberg because: (no reason given)
Generally speaking, we all perceive these types of illusions the same way. Its pretty predictable actually. One of the most dramatic examples of "witnesses" being fooled is this video of David Blaine levitating. Watch peoples honest reactions to witnessing something unexplainable. Of course, David Blaine doesn't actually levitate.
Then there is the way which people can influence other peoples perceptions simply by suggesting it. For instance, there is an ambiguous object. Person A says to person B "I see a craft" Person B now sees a "craft". Its that simple. Try it sometime. Experiment on your family and friends!
My only counter argument would be that this doesn't necessarily relate to UFO sightings.
David Blaine's video, as well as many of the "Brain Games" experiments—as they appear to my uneducated eyes—seem more like optical illusions than misperceptions.
In the unexplained reports, however, there are cases, where multiple witnesses independantly report the same object similarly. Additionally, there are cases all around the world (USA, Europe, Australia, South America etc...) where the UFOs are reported to look and behave very similarly—regardless of differences in location, cultural surroundings, etc... To me, these patterns suggest a phenomenon independant of the misidentifications.
The brain may interperet the scenario as something that it is not, e.g. levitation, but this doesn't necessarily represent a case of unreliability on the part of the observers.
Simply because the witnesses were unaware such an effect could be produced, and thusly interpreted it as "levitation" doesn't mean their perceptions of the event were in error.
Such a situation is, according to my argument, not relatable to most UFO cases.
Consider the O'Hare case:
Nothing suggests (that I have seen) the witnesses would misidentify an IFO (weather balloon, strange cloud etc...) as exactly what they reported—which was:
-disc shaped craft
-silver/grey + metallic
-hovering, then shooting upwards at high speed
-cutting hole in the clouds
If there is an optical illusion/mind trick/whatever that can produce such effects, I apologize for my ignorance of it.
"What the eff?"
You will have to figure that out on your own if are actually interested in this topic. Seem more interested in silly rants though.
What does Brain Games or tricks of perception have to do with anything?
You are not really paying attention. It has NOTHING to do with debunking anything or giving more weight to anyone's opinion. Let me explain it to you in simple terms. There is an unknown phenomenon. I believe that understanding how people perceive will help understand the phenomenon that is based largely on perception why don't you? People shouldn't be giving more weight to me or Jim Oberg or anyone else. People should feel free to explore the topic as they wish and make up their own minds.
So a debunker wants you to give more weight to their opinion over a credible eyewitness because they watch Brain Games lol.
There are people that think they see weather balloons and are mistaken.
There are people who think they see Chinese Lanterns and are mistaken.
neoholographic
.....
This is the point, all of these eyewitness and close encounter cases are not from people who are mistaken. That's just silly on it's face.
The fact is debunkers have to put every eyewitness into a monolithic box of stupidity.
Herein lies the problem with debunkers. They have to make it seem that every eyewitness was either an idiot, mistaken or delusional. We know this isn't the case because that's not how it works with eyewitnesses. Some eyewitnesses are very accurate and they describe exactly what they saw.
So a debunker wants you to give more weight to their opinion over a credible eyewitness because they watch Brain Games lol.
It is the natural result of the proper functioning of recognition algorithms under unusual inputs, and if intelligence has anything to do with it, smarter and more experienced people are MORE vulnerable to it, not less. We have evolved to favor -- i.e., let survive long enough to reproduce -- people whose minds use their accumulated life experiences to fill-in incompletenesses and uncertainties around fragmentary perceptions in order to quickly-enough recognize and react to potential hazards.
ZetaRediculian
reply to post by JimOberg
It is the natural result of the proper functioning of recognition algorithms under unusual inputs, and if intelligence has anything to do with it, smarter and more experienced people are MORE vulnerable to it, not less. We have evolved to favor -- i.e., let survive long enough to reproduce -- people whose minds use their accumulated life experiences to fill-in incompletenesses and uncertainties around fragmentary perceptions in order to quickly-enough recognize and react to potential hazards.
in sports psychology, its called "visualization". A quarterback that can perceive where their receivers are with minimal information, a baseball player perceives exactly where a curve ball will be. Avoiding an accident because you saw the car out of the corner of your eye. This system can be incredibly accurate. We do this constantly.