Magical Realists Magical Reality

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

If eye-witness observation is always bullshit, then what can people watching a Youtube video tell them? Since they would have to personally observe it, whatever they take its content to be would have to be bullshit by definition right?

Once again we are faced with the ambiguity inherent in words like "delusion that eye-witnesses are reliable".

A. If you are placing perhaps exaggerated emphasis on the unobjectionable idea that personal experience and eyewitness testimony aren't 100% inerrant and infallible (even if they are clearly reliable enough for most real life purposes) and if you are suggesting that if doubts and controversies arise then it might be necessary to seek corroborating evidence, then I will certainly agree.

B. But if you are making the much stronger assertion that eyewitness accounts of things observed are typically fallacious and should be disregarded merely because they are eyewitness accounts, then I couldn't disagree more vehemently. If we accepted that, then everyday life, and science along with it, would become very problematic.

So here's a simple question - which do you favor, A. or B.?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Ah yes..the power of focused counting to distract us from changing environmental details. What next? Proof eyewitness accounts are unreliable because drivers can be distracted with texting?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It's not an outlandish request Bells. Simply provide the background on the photos taken. Show that they aren't just artwork or clips from movies. It's what I check when I post ghost pics. I don't go to Google images and just randomly clip any pic of a ghost that comes up there. I select the photos that are known to be real photos of ghosts. I select the best of the best from websites explaining them as such. So since I know you aren't going to provide the background info on any of these unicorn photos as there probably isn't any, let me ask YOU: do you believe in the evidence posted here for unicorns? Do you accept the Korean scientists' assessment of the unicorn they dug up? And if you don't, why do you expect me to?

Here's an example of what I provide. These are vetted and backgrounded photos of ghosts. They are reknowned for being authentic. Now, is there any website even remotely similar in the case of unicorns?

http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Best-Ghost-Photos/

 

Automobile drivers in general provide pretty good evidence for my option A, the idea that first-person observation is typically reliable, even if it's obviously fallible and imperfect.

Obviously many auto accidents occur all the time due to driver error. It isn't clear how many of those are due to unimpaired individuals' perceptual and cognitive errors, as opposed to factors like speeding, alcohol and recklessness, but I'm sure that many are.

But having said that, the fact remains that hundreds of millions of people safely steer their automobiles along the streets every day, avoiding unpredictable pedestrians and erratic drivers in other cars. That wouldn't be possible unless they had some ability to correctly perceive what's around them.

 

There's also an issue with discounting eyewitness perception based on it being focused on one thing. Doesn't the ability to count the number of white shirt ball exchanges count as eyewitness reliability? Why are we not giving the witness credit for that, and only mentioning them overlooking deceptive tricks played on them? The number of miles I have reliably driven by being focused on the stretch of road before me without having an accident should MORE than prove the reliability of eyewitness perception.

 

So you are saying that people out in the woods, where there are countless ways one can be injured or harmed, are not also distracted by the constant movement of objects (since it's a well-proven fact that human eyesight is highly attracted to motion), the uneven and unstable terrain (since, especially wearing heavy shoes, it takes more attention to walk over uneven terrain), and the countless other distractions that occur in nature... that said people in that kind of distracting environment are somehow laser-focused on ONLY the random blurry spot they are looking for?

So, the "background story" of a photograph is more important than the photograph of the object itself? Interesting... especially when said background stories are often nothing more than conjecture (or are the people who photograph UFO's able to go up and interview them to see what their story is?)

You are confusing perception and recollection - it is a proven FACT that information stored in human memory is "compressed", so to speak - that is, details fade out. A classic example from any psychology textbook is that of the person recalling a winning home run of a favorite teams baseball game... as soon as a few minutes after the event, details of the surroundings (such as who was sitting next to them and what they looked like, the advertisements on the billboard, etc) start to fade out. Within a few hours, anything not directly related to the actual play (even such things in the direct field of view, such as the location of other players, the umpire, etc) starts to deteriorate... and within a year or so, all that is really accurately remembered is who it was that made the play - even then, details about the person (how they looked that day, etc) are starting to become fuzzy, and instead are filled in by other recollections and other related data.

We aren't computers... and our memory is not infallible.

 

Eyewitnesses are not reliable, period. That does not mean all eyewitness testimony is wrong it simply means there are enough proven cases of eyewitness being completely wrong that it is not reliable. Geeze, trying to talk to you is like trying to talk to a brick wall.

 

People successfully rely on eyewitness accounts every day. Not just their own but other's as well. My brother says he saw an accident on the freeway coming to visit me. The store cashier says she saw her daughter graduate college last week. My apartment neighbor says he saw a mouse in his apt last night. My grandmother calls and describes her visit to the doctor. My boss tells me about his vacation trip to the Grand Canyon. We accept all of these at face value. So obviously eyewitness accounts are very reliable.

 

I haven't read all of this thread, which is totally scrambled (by a moderator!) and seems to consist of little more than 'You Suck!' followed by 'No, You Suck!'

Nor have I followed every link or watched any video, many of which don't work for me on this computer.

But the thing that Bells posted that started the 'North Korean unicorn' flame-battle said this:

Yet in what appears to be a genuine world exclusive, the inimitable Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has now broken the incredible news that archaeologists in Pyongyang have discovered a unicorn's lair.

Or rather, the report says that they have "recently reconfirmed" the lair of one of the unicorns ridden by the ancient Korean King Tongmyong, founder of a kingdom which ruled parts of China and the Korean peninsula from the the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD.

The KCNA goes on to state that the location happens to be 200 metres from a temple in the North Korean capital, adding: "A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair."

"The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392)," says the report.

Archaeologists from the Academy of Social Sciences at North Korea's History Institute were credited with making the discovery.
​

The text says that they found a thousand year old inscription that reads 'Unicorn Lair'. I have no reason to doubt the truth of that. As to whether that "reconfirms" that King Tongmyong actually rode unicorns is obviously far more questionable. The Koryo dynasty date of the inscription seems to put it a minimum of 300 years after the time of Tongmyong. Nor is it clear that the words 'Unicorn Lair' even refer to the legends about that king riding unicorns. At best, the inscription indicates that some kind of unicorn legends were extant at the time it was made.

But it is kind of striking how unicorn legends are found in such widely separated parts of the world as Europe and Korea though. That's something that calls out for investigation.

 

MR why do you subject yourself to this? I really wonder. Why don't you go to a site where there are people of your ilk that would be thrilled by your magical beliefs. Instead you stay here and get ridiculed and laughed at for coming up with comments like the one above. Do you enjoy being made light of? It is really odd, depressing really.

 

You are probably not joking, which leaves me speechless.

 

People are responsible for how they treat others. They don't get a free pass to act like a bunch of hysterically laughing monkeys just because I post evidence of something they deny exists. If people ridicule and mock, that's more a statement about them as human beings and not about me. It also suggests a desperation to personally attack and insult us because they have nothing to refute the evidence with. OWN your own behavior.

 

If one acts like a clown one should expect to be laughed at. I am done here because it is not nice to laugh at unintentional clownish behavior.

 

Post where I have acted like a clown then..I take this topic very seriously. You are insinuating I'm doing it to be funny. That's not true at all.

 

When something goes over your head like that, you probably should remain silent.

The point I was making is that unicorn legends are items of folklore that seem to be widely distributed across the Earth's surface. The question that I suggested needs to be investigated is how that came to be.

Were the legends carried by unknown early travelers? (That would be my guess.) Did they travel from west to east, from east to west, or did they originate in central Asia someplace and went both ways? Can we ascertain rough dates for when unicorn legends first made their appearance in different places? Given the lack of documentary evidence for many locations, mapping the movement and spread of items of folklore might be very difficult.

Or alternatively, are unicorn legends an example of convergent cultural evolution? Did they arise independently in both east and west? How similar are the legends and the imagery associated with them in locations very distant from one another?

This kind of stuff is of great interest to historians of ideas, anthropologists, students of mythology and folklore, and specialists in religious studies.

 

Reading about an event counts as an eyewitness account of that event? I don't think so..

 

Acting like a clown doesn't insinuate you are doing it to "be funny"... rather, it implies you are acting foolishly, a simple and quite evidence observation.

You continue to claim that the evidence you provide, and the TYPE and QUALITY of evidence you provide, is sufficient to make your claim.
However
When someone uses the EXACT SAME kind and quality of evidence, or even better quality (crystal clear pictures, easily repeatable and proven studies, biological and physical facts) you claim said evidence to be "insufficient" or somehow wrong, and hand-wave it away.

It is, at best, a disingenuous double standard (if we assume you honestly do not know better), at worst outright dishonest and deceptive (assuming you do know better).

This is a perfect example... you are knowingly and willfully being deceptive - there were TWO different "eye-witnesses" who saw the exact same "thing". Yet, their understanding and comprehension of it are different. Instead of acknowledging that simple fact, you choose to make up some bullshit excuse and try to hand-wave away this information... that is dishonest. Can you seriously NOT see that?