Yazata,
Like DaveC, I'm disappointed that you've taken this downward slide lately, to the point where you no longer seem to be engaging in this discussion in good faith, much like Magical Realist.
You persist with these straw man versions of what the skeptics here have put forward for your consideration. Why? You're a smart guy. I'm sure you understand what has been said. So why pretend that something different was said?
I also find it interesting that you're no longer willing to engage with what the "skeptics" write here. Mostly, these days, you only chime in to hit "Like" on Magical Realist's posts or to post a straw-man argument that you can easily knock down. Even when I directly address something to you, you do not respond. Why?
What happened to you, man?
Here's the latest example of a straw man from you. This is just one in a series, of late.
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.
Nobody, of course, has said anybody is "supposed to dismiss eyewitness testimony". And you know this because, even if the
first time you posted this kind of thing it was an honest misunderstanding on your part, more than enough people have posted since the first time to allow you lots of time to correct your misapprehension. Why, then, do you keep re-posting this canard that skeptics say we should ignore evidence? It smacks of a lack of good faith, to me.
Your straw man is one extreme position, which nobody here holds as far as I am aware: that eyewitness testimony (of
anything) is worthless and should be ignored (or "dismissed").
At the other extreme end of the spectrum we have the opinion that eyewitness testimony is sufficient, on its own, to establish that a particular extraordinary sight was actually seen. Not only that, but it is also sufficient to justify unquestioning acceptance of whatever
interpretation of what was seen that the eyewitness has come up with.
Perhaps nobody here holds such an extreme position, either, but Magical Realist comes very close even if won't
quite go all the way. (I might venture that he might only balk if the eyewitness's interpretation of what the eyewitness reported seeing does not mesh with what Magical Realist himself is willing to allow in terms of suitable "paranormal" explanations. So, for instance, if the eyewitness were to claim that the UFO he saw was piloted by angels sent by God, then Magical Realist, as an atheist, would be unwilling to accept
that interpretation, while on the other hand if the eyewitness were to claim that the UFO was piloted by superhuman beings from the bottom of the ocean, Magical Realist would be happy to take that interpretation at face value.)
The rational, skeptical position on eyewitness testimony that is actually held by most of the skeptics here, as far as I can tell, is that we should recognise that human perception, interpretation and memory are all to prone error and these things are particularly likely to play a role when what is seen is unusual , extraordinary or unfamiliar to the observer. Therefore, we should not over-egg the pudding by reading more into what eyewitnesses report than can be independently confirmed. This means we should be aware that:
(a) what eyewitnesses report seeing (e.g. a tic-tac shaped object) may not have been what they actually saw;
(b) inferences drawn by eyewitnesses, based on what they saw (e.g. the UFO was moving incredibly fast) may be incorrect;
(c) eyewitness interpretations of the "meaning" of what they saw (e.g. it was an alien spaceship) may be incorrect;
(d) eyewitness memory of what they saw is susceptible to later modification or revision, failure to recall accurately, outside influence, etc.
MR and yourself have both repeatedly made the point that human perception is
good enough, most of the time, to allow us to "live our lives". Nobody disputes that. But, of course, we can "live our lives" quite effectively
even if we make the mistakes mentioned above: seeing things that aren't there, failing to see things that are there, misidentifying things that are seen, drawing incorrect inferences about what we saw, imposing our own biases and expectations on our interpretations of what we saw, failing to accurately remember - or misremembering - what we say, and failing to recall what we saw accurately.
It ought to be a no-brainer to note that
most of the things we see as we "live our lives" are
familiar things to us. As we grow, we gain a lot of experience in identifying familiar things and accurately interpreting (and predicting) their behaviours. But seeing a UFO is usually
not a familiar experience; most often it is a very new and unusual experience. It would be wrong to assume, therefore, that we will be just as skilled at accurately identifying what a UFO is - just by looking at it - as we will be at identifying, say, an iphone or a banana or a car. It is likely that our perceptions and interpretations and inferences about UFOs will be
wrong.
Just to emphasise: none of this means that eyewitness testimony "doesn't count as evidence", or that it is "worthless" or that it "should be dismissed". Most of the time an eyewitness report of something means that
something was actually seen. (There are, of course, plenty of cases where supposed eyewitnesses have knowingly told lies and made up stories.) The question with UFOs usually comes down to trying to identify
what was seen - objectively identify, I mean.
By now, nobody reading this thread can pretend to be unaware that the more unusual and "extraordinary" the claims of an eyewitness are, the greater the need for good confirming evidence of those claims. That means that two eyewitnesses might be better than one (though not necessarily, especially if they have the opportunity to collude or compare notes), and 100 eyewitnesses might be better than two. It also means that physical evidence that tends to corroborate the eyewitness testimony is valuable (though there are caveats with this, too). To summarise, it means that eyewitness evidence is not special or privileged. It should be viewed in the context of
all the available evidence and not given special weight. Indeed, it should be treated with a healthy level of skepticism, for the reasons given above.
So, let's please not hear yet another repeat of the lie that skeptics say you are "supposed to dismiss" eyewitness evidence. Okay?
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??
We spend
years learning a language. That means we have a large amount of relevant experience when it comes to interpreting written symbols on a page, or the speech sounds made by other people. What is "obvious" often comes after a lot of hard work. Because we tend to learn our first languages as babies, we don't remember how hard it is to do that. Moreover, our brains actually seem hard-wired (by evolution) to be especially well-equipped to learn a language, so we already have a leg up on achieving that difficult task. Nonetheless, even with all of our years of experience, we can still mis-hear what people say, misinterpret what they mean (in writing or in speech), mis-remember what was said, etc. These kinds of problems ought to sound familiar in the light of the discussion of UFOs, above. And yes, our understanding of language is
good enough, most of the time, to allow us to "live our lives".
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?
By now, you should be able to work out what my answer would be to that, so there ought to be no need for me to spell it out. Suffice it to say, we should be appropriately skeptical of notions such as the idea that written and spoken language is always perfectly intelligible and unambiguous, or that everybody always correctly intuits the intended meaning.
It's telling that you started with "going to try to dismiss" again, though. With language, as with UFOs, the aim of a reasonable person is to try to understand, not to try to dismiss.
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.
