UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

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Whatever we may think of it, the scientific method doesn't seem to me to test perceptions or observations. What it tests are hypotheses that scientists concoct in hopes of explaining some aspect of their observations.

 

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Good point there.

The idea seems to be that we are supposed to dismiss eye-witness testimony simply because it is eye-witness testimony, the dismissal supposedly justified by the observation that while personal experience is certainly reliable enough for us to live our lives (hard to argue with that), it nevertheless isn't 100% veridicial and immune from error. (Is anything an infallible road to truth? The "scientific method" doesn't seem to be.)

But if we are going to try to deconstruct visual experience in that way, what should we make of spoken and written language? When we look at a text, what we see are strings of symbols. When we hear speech, what we hear is a succession of sounds. We don't directly perceive meaning at all. Yet when we hear somebody speak or read a page of text (assuming it's a language we understand) meaning just seems obvious and directly intuited. So what's up with that?? (Fact is nobody really knows. It's another of the countless mysteries that surround us.)

When people speak, we feel that we know what they meant to communicate. (That's the whole point, right?) Yet it's indisputable that we sometimes misunderstand and misinterpret what people say or write. So if we are going to try to dismiss information that people believe that they obtained through their senses simply because it was obtained through their senses and wasn't subjected to some perhaps largely mythical (and perhaps logically questionable) confirmation process, then why doesn't written and spoken speech fall prey to similar skepticism?

Actually, a succession of trendy French theorists have tried to do exactly that, attacking the idea that texts possess stable meanings. (And I think that's an attack on the whole idea of communication and in my opinion largely nihilistic bullshit, but that's for another thread.)

 

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No one here is suggesting to dismiss eye witness testimony if the eye witness appears to be sane, sober and credible. I can’t speak for others but I’ve stated that we shouldn’t rely only on eye witness testimony as the only evidence.

We need more to go on before determining if there is an explanation or there isn’t. I don’t believe in snap judgements, either way.

 

Yes. And 'UFO' is a hypothesis - a proposed model to explain an observation. But one-time unexpected observations of unprecedented events are notoriously difficult to describe accurately and objectively. IOW, we get bad data - such as "it looks like a 40 ft tic-tac".

 

You once again misrepresent the opposing argument. You've done it enough times now that it's not an accident.

This is a disappointment, Yaz. It appears you are adopting MR's "deliberately obtuse" ploy to try to score cheap points.

Give us a heads up when you want to engage with us, rather than that straw man next to us.

 

But you can read it multiple times and note which bits are always present

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Your overly long post is more about me than a response to me. Or should I say all about you? As usual you are performing for some imaginary audience of anxious fans. Let me know when you figure out how to paticipate in a normal and honest conversation. Wegs is a good example of that.

 

Aw, thanks MR.

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If it is an accurate descriptor of what those pilots saw, then it is very good data. It immediately brings to mind a clear image of what the UAP resembled, which in terms of successful communication is the whole goal of description. We can immediately imagine what the pilot saw, and that's a good thing.

 

Imagination is antithetical to data collection and analysis. We don't want to imagine it. That's not data - that's an interpretation that's been corrupted by the pilot's processing.
If asked - how long, how wide or what colour - the object was, he's already reformed his memories in the shape of a tic-tac. The raw data we needed to process the event is at risk of getting lost behind this imagined symbol of the real object.
That's a proven phenomenon in cognitive perception.


It is tantamount to a witness seeing this:

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and saying "It looked like a big white triangle, with balls on the vertices."

Except that isn't a big white triangle, it's six discrete objects that form an illusion of a triangle. But that's been corrupted now, both in the witness' memory and in the imagination of anyone they tell.

(This is not just blowing smoke. Some UAP accounts are of giant back triangles seen against a black sky. Lights in a V shape does not mean there is anything solid there. That's a corruption of what the witness saw.)

So experienced pilots know not to draw conclusions or form interpretations. And they sure don't get imaginative.


But this is wasted on you. Even if you've managed to read this far, you have zero interest in understanding the mechanisms and limits of perception and cognition, so it's pointless to argue about it with you.

 

It appears you greatly underestimate the role of imagination in science and learning:

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."
― Carl Sagan

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."---Einstein

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination."
John Dewey

 

Totally inapplicable, and I think you know that.

We don't want to use our imaginations on the data.

"You know, this graph looks like the back of a duck, if we just lose these points here. Do you see it now?"
That's analogous to "It looks like a tic-tac."

 

The data is that it looked like a tic tac. It's not an interpretation of data. There was nothing else the uap resembled. Hence it is good data. And it stands as what the pilots claim they saw.

 

Wow. Dude.

That is not data. That is an interpretation. A shortcut. A symbol. A simplification.

It is the antithesis of data.

That is precisely what it is. You are making a fool of yourself.

So they shouldn't make stuff up that serves to distort the raw data.

You're terrible at this cognitive perception stuff as well as this analysis stuff, because you know nothing about them. Worse, you actively deny them.

For the sake of a better world, stick to reporting the accounts. Let the analysts handle the analysis.

 

If perception isn't reliable, then neither is reading. No matter how many times I read it, I wouldn't correctly understand it.

 

The data is clarified by the descriptor, not distorted by it. It describes what the uap looked like, and does so with a simple comparison. Once again, very good data. "Like a 40ft long tic tac".
Concise, universally understandable, and to the point. No interpretation of what it might be. No introduction of details that weren't already there.

Resorting to ad homs doesn't do much for your position here. Stick with logical argumentation and analogies. You're actually quite good with that.

 

Magical Realist, what is your position? Do you think alien space craft have visited Earth based on the evidence that you're aware of?

 

Not necessarily just alien space craft. These beings may be any number of things: an interdimensional race, our own descendents traveling back into time, or AI from another planet. I propose even a terrestrial race that lives under the ocean, like in the movie Abyss by James Cameron. I try to remain flexible beyond the standard bird/weather balloon/Venus explanation..lol

 

I understand that you are being "flexible"

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However, I'm asking what you you think based on the evidence that you've encountered? I'm not asking how creative you are or how great is your imagination.

For instance, I would agree that anything is possible but I don't think that those things are reality based on evidence that I'm currently aware of. They may be reality if some evidence for them comes about but at the moment, I would just put them in the realm of my imagination, for example.

Do you feel that these beliefs of yours are currently based on available evidence?