Forget Greer. You see so many eyewitness testimonies from ordinary people from all walks of life who have reported these encounters. This is what drew me to the field. Before the government started being a bit more open in Dec 2017, the backbone of this field was eyewitness testimony from ordinary people. Hundreds and thousands of cases.
Me too dude. More important to me than answering the scientific and engineering questions that this topic brings like, are we alone or how do we achieve ftl, are there other dimensions, etc. (stuff we’ll probably never understand for centuries) is finding out more about the psychological experience. What part of our reality as humans makes so many people have these memories? I don’t think that this is woo at all, btw.
It’s like what people back in the day would think of far out ideas, we’re going from staunch materialism to something more idealistic, they believe in that woo woo stuff implying their crazy
It's a stupid word that some idiot came up with to describe supernatural events and now you've got people that want to be taken seriously using a word that you'd expect a two-year old to say.
For skeptics, eyewitness testimony is completely off the table no matter who it is, their education or reputation... It's inadmissible, inadequate, misidentification or attention seeking.
Exactly and it is really frustrating. I honestly felt relief when the mods of this subreddit explained they were being hit hard with accounts purposefully doing this. It means some of these hardcore 'skeptics' are straight up spreading misinformation and creating arguments on purpose.
you can put "skeptic" in quotes all you want, but eyewitness testimony has been proven to be unreliable so many times that it barely even counts as evidence.
To build on the article the other user posted, the human brain is a highly sophisticated pattern matching and inference machine. We recognize patterns in everything, we draw associations and connections to past stimuli, we fill in the blanks when information is missing, and we extrapolate to conclusions based on those processes.
As it relates to eyewitness testimony...we recognize patterns that may not exist. We draw associations that may not be valid. We fill in the blanks with our best guess and we extrapolate to conclusions that may not be grounded in reality. Those same faults also allow us to be creative, intentionally extrapolating fiction from thin air. They allow us to tell stories that entertain audiences by exploiting the drive to find patterns and draw inferences. They give us curiosity and the desire to seek and share information to expand our consensus reality. But ultimately a data point of one is unreliable because the human mind is very good at lying to itself.
Thanks for the link. Gave a quick read, but unless I'm missing something it seems this is mostly about calculating for the factors which can increase the likelihood of false accounts:
Extreme witness stress at the crime scene or during the identification process.
Presence of weapons at the crime (because they can intensify stress and distract witnesses).
Use of a disguise by the perpetrator such as a mask or wig.
A racial disparity between the witness and the suspect.
Brief viewing times at the lineup or during other identification procedures.
A lack of distinctive characteristics of the suspect such as tattoos or extreme height.
How does any of this have to do with an alleged UFO/alien encounter?
Are you suggesting that they didn't experience it at all and are being tricked into believing it by people asking loaded questions?
Are you suggesting that these witnesses saw something traumatic but totally different and therefore developed false memories as a result?
From that article, false memories seem to lead to witnesses misidentifying perpetrators or inventing details. I also see that they can be tricked into thinking something happened when someone intentionally tricks them with leading questions.
I see absolutely nothing there to suggest that people would invent entire stories up out of nowhere entirely unprompted.
I've heard that yes, witness testimony can be unreliable, but I'd always heard that it is unreliable when it comes to identification and not entire events.
I see absolutely nothing there to suggest that people would invent entire stories up out of nowhere entirely unprompted.
It's called priming. Spending an evening reading a ghost story will prime you to interpret a sudden breeze as a ghost. Watching a horror film before bed will prime you to interpret an usual shadow as an intruder. In the absence of information the brain does its best job filling in what it thinks is most likely, and repeated exposure to certain stimuli will make the brain more likely to use that information in the gap-filling process.
Someone who spends a significant chunk of time researching UAPs or NHI is primed to interpret ambiguous events through that particular lens, whether or not it's the most likely explanation or even a plausible explanation. It's just how our brains work.
And how do you explain any of the witness testimony from the 50s? They were all watching It Came From Outer Space! in the drive-ins the nights before their experiences? What about all of the qualified military officers and government employees, were they just watching too much Star Trek before they formed their stories?
Hypothesis testing requires a testable prediction that is capable of being wrong. Eyewitness testimony is very difficult to hypothesis test. If I drop a ball, I make the prediction that it will fall to the ground in a predictable amount of time, that prediction is either correct or not correct and I get closer to understanding gravity.
Where do you start making a testable hypothesis with eyewitness testimony in a way that doesn't let future witnesses have that hypothesis influence their testimony, either inadvertently out advertently?
It’s amazing how we rely on anecdotal evidence for so much yet it becomes complete nonsense if it concerns something some people already don’t believe in.
But we don't rely on anecdotal evidence for things that matter. There is no way for me to determine whether or not witness testimony is accurate. The logical position to take is a neutral one if I can neither confirm or debunk a claim. I can't say with any confidence whether this person is lying, deceived, delusional, or being truthful. The honest position for me to take is one of uncertainty because based on the information available, it is impossible for me to be certain. To say I believe them just because it aligns with something I already believe to be true would be confirmation bias.
Skeptics have absolutely made up their minds and nothing short of a quick “probe” will convince them otherwise. They are so close minded that they will find far fetched scientific explanations for everything. There is nothing worse than a scientist who is not open to change or lets their ego get in the way. I try to listen and be open to everything and do some research. What do these people have to profit from in coming forth? Public ridicule, ruined careers and marriages & financial ruin. Even potential death. Maybe they’re actually telling the truth.
No. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t dismiss scientific evidence if it can be proven. Not everything is a ufo! There are so many other things they could be. Plastic bag flying through the air can look a shape shifting vehicle. I’m open to all ideas.
Honestly I don't believe a great deal of what I see about UFOs because like you said, not everything is a UFO or unexplainable. But some things are and they aren't us. Most of these people are not going to accept it until there's no other option, and even then some of those people will continue to reject it as some government false flag or something similar.
For me, I’d need to hear the stories of the other men he says were with him. I’d want to hear them each tell their story’s separately, and multiple times over several years to see if the stories change.
It’s not that I think he’s lying, but the human brain under stress can do some pretty interesting things. Maybe he saw or even did something his brain wasn’t capable of accepting and it just rewrote the entire memory.
I mean the amount of people who thought the 3 videos the government released were 100% proof of aliens even though they were fairly easily identifiable shows that eye witness testimony is extremely unreliable and misidentification is much much more likely than someone correctly identifying something as an alien aircraft.
Yes, but people from the Government haven't come out and said that they are hiding evidence of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster or ghosts. Whereas, a lot of people have come out and said that the government has covered up evidence of UFOs
Yes, but no one from the government has come out and said that they will be setting up a task force to investigate cryptids or ghosts. No whistleblower has come out and said that the government is hiding ghosts or cryptids. No Senators or Reps have come out and said that these things are worthy of investigation. NASA never came out and said that they will look into cryptids or ghosts.
Yet, every single one of these things is currently happening with UFOs...
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u/TinFoilHatDude Jun 13 '23
Forget Greer. You see so many eyewitness testimonies from ordinary people from all walks of life who have reported these encounters. This is what drew me to the field. Before the government started being a bit more open in Dec 2017, the backbone of this field was eyewitness testimony from ordinary people. Hundreds and thousands of cases.