frightful_hobgoblin

Only thing better for humanity would be if a billionaire swallowed Abiy and died.

I sometimes think of this with regard to Israël complaining that the Palestinians launch violent attacks against them.

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Ok, we are in agreement: the sneer club is more interested in respectability/dignity than investigation. That's my main point.

Which kind and ætiology of Delusion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 5d ago

What is your preferred explanation of the anomalous data? Try even once.

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 5d ago

Right, that's my point, thanks for agreeing.

You're claiming that we do have data, but not enough. So let's investigate. And you're happy to trust my eyewitness account in one case but not the other.

It's obvious that some phenomena will have a lot of data, some (dark matter, Planet X, sterile neutrinos, Sasquatch), are only suspected to exist. We have varying amounts of data for varying phenomena, naturally.

Have you read Kuhn? He says that when anomalous data build up that contradicts the incumbent theory, they're dismissed/resisted for a long time, don't get research-funding, until enough substantiating data build up that the paradigm has to be replaced.

There are two ways of dealing with data that don't match your theory –

Investigate, research, adjust
Dismiss, ignore, deride. You've used scare-quotes twice here and here to sneer at the data that doesn't fit the understanding that temporarily holds sway now.

One of these two ways is rational, the other is dogmatic.

At least three claims have been made in this thread that were quickly debunked –

All sasquatch sightings are from single witnesses and them in delirious states. This is a falsification of the data.
There have been no sasquatch or UFO sightings since the smartphone era. This is a falsification of the data.
People who do normal jobs have no credibility. Your opinion is invalid if you are not bourgeois.

Which is more likely:

There are no anomalies
Some people have a psychological abreaction against anomalies, and try to shout them down.

I'll admit to having poor understanding of the paradigmatic theory of these data. Supposing there is a vast conspiracy to fake UFO videos, to have fake congressional and military inquiries.... why? Why do these alleged conspirators make these claims? They get a lot of negative backlash from the dogmatists – why expose themselves to scorn for no reason?

Or the 'mass hallucination' theory.... what is the psychology theory behind that? I've never heard of a credible psychiatric report of people hallucinating the same thing at the same time. And why would people with no existing mental conditions suddenly start hallucinating?

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

It's a big question, maybe start a thread and tag me?

Section 2.3 of 'The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) using multimodal ground-based observatories' lays out some of the evidence. There's the model of categorising reports as [low credibility, low strangeness], [low credibility, high strangeness], [high credibility, low strangeness], and [high credibility, high strangeness], and obviously the high credibility high strangeness reports are the most interesting ones.

eyewitness testimony without substantiating physical evidence is worthless

In all cases? e.g. in a legal trial? Or in ethlogy? Or only if the claims are anomalous? Like if I said I saw a flock of geese in the sky, and I had no video, you'd think I was lying?

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

Is your question about UFOs or Sasquatch?

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

Come to think of it, the meme itself is also mad classist: "Maybe some people have had forbidden experiences, but fuck em they're poor"

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

somebody who studied ley-lines was working-class, therefore there's no North American primate

frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

Good point

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frightful_hobgoblin @lemmy.ml 6d ago

Kinda a dated view, IMO.

Deriding data doesn't make the data go away. That's what people used to do decades ago; now we have governments, militaries, researchers taking the UFO phenomenon seriously.