Magical Realists Magical Reality

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

[Scrolls down and reads kitt's quotes]

Right: Kitt never stated the position that you are attributing to him, and you know that.

So, again, your understanding of the issue appears to be correct, but where you are falling down is on the intellectual honesty/etiquitte piece of your presentation. Yes, indeed, the position we are defending is inherrently ambiguous, because the reliability of eyewitness testimony itself is inherrently ambiguous! Where you fell down from an intellectual honesty/etiquitte standpoint is selecting the extreme case to argue against instead of dealing with the inherrent ambiguity of the issue -- or better yet, if you really didn't know what he believed (unlikely, since when pressed for accuracy, you provide it), asked him.

If Kitt is guilty of lack of clarity, shame on him, but that still does not entitle you to put words in his mouth he didn't say. You must ask for clarification.

Not just any un-named "one": Kittarmaru. And he didn't. So, by definition, that's a strawman.

So again, now that who believes what is clear, all that is left is for you to acknowlege that the difference between a lab test report and a typical report of seeing bigfoot is a really, really big difference. You conveniently neglected to respond to only that part of my post. That is also, at the very least, bad etiquitte.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Yataza has already explained this. When a biopsy is taken to be tested for a cancer, a pathologist looks at the specimen under the microscope to see if they can identify any cancerous cells. Likewise, when a brain scan is taken, neurologists will look at the image to identify any blockages, damaged tissue, lesions, etc. If you or I were to look at a clump of cells under a microscope, I doubt either of us could distinguish between cancer cells and healthy cells, or identify where in the brain a stroke has occurred. In these areas of medicine, a diagnosis is formed from visual analysis and professional judgement. Hell, sometimes even doctors can't reach a consensus after viewing an imaging study!

So yes, a lot of science does rely on eye-witness testimony and interpretation of visual observations. If we disregard all evidence that involves visual input from a human being, you're essentially labelled all of mainstream science 'pseudoscience'.

 

Do you actually know what the word "pseudoscience" means? You're using it wrong.

 

Nobody suggested this. It's a strawman. Clearly those of us who support science and oppose pseudoscience are in favor of the methods of science, not opposed to them. Moreover, it is a really bad twisting of reality - probably on purpose - to suggest that the method used by science bears any resemblance to the methods used in speudoscience (such as with bigfoot sightings). The reliability is vastly better with the way real science does it. Hell, the two are so different, it isn't even correct to call what the radiologist does "eyewitness testimony". The principal differences are huge:

1. There is no significant reliance on memory for the radiologist because he has the scan in front of him and it is always available for him or another expert to refer back to it. He only has to rely on his memory long enough to look from the scan to his computer to type his findings. Mere seconds. Then he can look back at the scan and double-check. The possibility of a memory lapse impacting his findings is virtually nonexistent.

2. He's an expert in what he's looking at (that's actually a separate issue, unrelated to the "eyewitness" aspect).

 

Yes, it is laughable. What makes it so silly is that it isn't even a good strawman, but a strawman that generates a false equivalence: a logical fallacy two-fer!

Yes, technically any task that humans perform involves some non-zero use of memory. So it would be wrong to claim otherwise...but only a little, and vastly less wrong than then claiming because both reading/reporting an xray and eyewitness testimony utilize memory, both are similarly fallible.

What makes this look like trolling is that because the radiologist's reliance on memory is so vanishing small, it can safely (even if accidentally) be ignored. The only reason I can see to focus on the strawman is to create a "gotcha" to win. But an empty win.

 

Sure is laughable. Tali89's example of a brain scan is completely different because the record of the brain scan is available to verify if the doctor is right. If the doctor did not have a record of the brain scan and only said, "I looked at the brain scan a couple of weeks ago and then deleted it, but based on what I remember, here is my recommendation for treatment", that would be along the lines of an eyewitness example. How many here would think that is a good idea? I think I would choose a different doctor, but I guess MR and tali89 would think he was just fine.

 

Actually it's only the unreliability of DECEIVED or LIED TO eyewitnesses that magicians cash in on. This doesn't imply anything about eyewitness accounts themselves of real undeceiving situations. It only proves the effectiveness of well-practiced distraction and diversion on an observer.

Right, since I was again banned for a week this time based on trumped up charges. But I'm delighted to see that posters are making my argument for me. At least that's what I THINK I saw. Tks to all involved!

 

The argument against eyewitness accounts still applies. Perhaps the doctor is looking at the brain scan in a certain biased way and not interpreting correctly. Perhaps he is only seeing what he wants to see, and has convinced other doctors of this as well. We are still relying on the ability of the human brain to make assessments of a situation based on seeing it firsthand. If this is unreliable, then every consult with an expert, be it a doctor, a plumber, an automechanic, etc. becomes suspect.

 

I devoted an entire post to that.

I quoted a number of things that he wrote that seem to suggest the strong interpretation. If I am mistinterpreting what he actually meant, he's perfectly capable of qualifying his statements so as to make his intentions clear.

My intention here isn't really to attack Kittamaru. I was just pushing back against his rudeness directed at Tali, as I recall. Then Russ challenged me for doing that.

In two sentences:

Just because memories and observations may be wrong on occasion doesn't mean that they are always wrong or even that they usually are. It certainly doesn't imply that reports from memory of things observed at an earlier point in time should therefore be disregarded on principle, based merely on the perceived nature of the report.

Read what I wrote in the two highlighted sentences. Those are the propositions that I am defending.

Both the eyewitness to a news event and the technician in the laboratory are human beings, using their senses to observe objects (whether on the street or on a microscope slide), applying some cognition and pre-existing knowledge (memory again) to it in order to identify and interpret what's observed, and then reporting it.

If we believe that human memory and eye-witness testimony are fatally flawed, then all human observation reports would seem to fall under the condemnation. If we are willing to acknowledge that some memories and some observation reports are accurate and credible, then the blanket condemnation doesn't hold.

I favor the latter. In which case it's probably a good idea to inquire more deeply into epistemology, the theory of knowledge, to determine what kind of things can be known, and how we might come to know them.

The whole idea of corroboration and repeatability seems to presuppose that observations are veridicial more often than not. If observation reports are mostly false, then repeating observations and having others corroborate them would only take us further away from the truth. You would be piling errors atop errors.

Why would animals have evolved senses and memories, if what they tell us is most likely wrong? What selective evolutionary advantage would there be in that?

Bigfoot sightings are eye-witness evidence. Eye-witness evidence shouldn't be dismissed merely because it is eye-witness evidence. Of course people can, do and should think critically about how convincing that eyewitness evidence is. Additional arguments can be advanced in hopes of discrediting it, such as lack of discoveries of dead bigfoot bodies. (If they really exist and live in the woods, they must die somewhere in the woods).

My purpose here isn't to argue for the existence of bigfoot or to defend the credibility of those who claim to have witnessed the cryptozoological creature. I don't believe in bigfoot's physical existence myself (just to clear that up).

What I'm concerned about is something more abstract and philosophical, namely the board's promotion of and its rude and insulting insistence on manifestly bad arguments in pursuit of what are perceived as good ends. Just because somebody believes that he/she is arguing for the truth, or against evil "anti-science", doesn't automatically mean that every argument that they decide use towards that end is a good argument.

 

Right on Yazata. This desperate attempt to discredit all eyewitness experience because it can sometimes be inaccurate is a really bad argument bent on supporting a really bad premise: that all eyewitness accounts of anything unexplained, be it bigfoot, or ufos, or ghosts, are unreliable. I earlier pointed out the flaw in the argument itself:

"I ignore you and your so-called "arguments" because they make no sense. As in this case, where since eyewitness testimony can SOMETIMES be flawed then you say eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Yet every criminal investigator and court trial says otherwise. We don't say that because SOME doctors are quacks then doctors are unreliable. We don't say because SOME people fall off ladders then ladders are unsafe. We don't say because SOME apples are bad, that all apples are bad. Etc and etc..

 

Proving only that misdirection makes us overlook things. That entails nothing about eyewitness accounts that are not deliberately misdirected.

 

Wrong. Nothing about that study contradicted its own included statement "emotions make memories more lucid and accurate." And it is noted you can't provide any context that changes the meaning of that statement. So again you lie and twist meanings into something they aren't. And just out of curiosity, where have I plagiarized now? You are accusing me of a serious offense. I'm assuming you are referring to a quote I made that I didn't properly credit and tried to pass off as my own? Which one WAS that?

 

That was both cool and an absolute riot.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!