French National Assembly to host UAP seminar with true believers

[JMartJr]

So for fleeting scenarios, I'd agree that not actively thinking of capturing a photo/video could be understandable.

Yes, in any individual case. The weakness in the "you can't expect good pictures because people are surprised and need a moment to recover, think of their camera and pull it out" argument is that it has to work EVERY TIME.

A similar argument could be made for fireball meteors, plane crashes, homicides, etc. And while often such things happen with nobody taking a picture or video, SOMETIMES people react quickly, or have their camera out anyway, and we have examples of clear, definitive pictures/film/video of all of them.

The argument has been made, "Go out and take a video of the next low flying plane you see, you'll see how tricky it is" misses the point that however tricky it might be to grab a shot of a given unexpected plane buzzing you, we have LOTS of imagry of low flying planes -- that is clear, crisp, retailed and very obvious the sort of thing captured in the picture/video.

Numerous example here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rare-things-that-have-been-documented-much-better-than-ufos.13047/

 

[NoParty]

And just for the record,
the reason I have never gone public with news that there are 5 leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet,
is less that I fear being made fun of, for believing there are 5 leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet,
than that I truly have no good reason to believe there are any leprechauns living in my east walk-in closet.

 

[Stryder]

IMHO, the statement: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" while logically true is not the absolute "get out of jail free" card that many "believers" seem to think it is.

For 80 plus years we've been hearing that any day now, we are going to get the clear and definitive picture or video proving the existence of ETI visiting earth. In the 1950's, only a few people had cameras and they were cumbersome to use quickly, required film, had delays between taking a picture and having results (developing), and were relatively expensive to own and use. By the sixties, many (most) families in the developed world had a camera and film and development costs were within reach. By the 1980's many families had video cameras, but these were typically dragged out only for special occasions. In the 1990's along came digital cameras where cost per image became negligible and initial camera price was also modest. Importantly, the time between snapping a picture and seeing the results was near instantaneous. In the 2000's, digital phones with digital cameras (still and video) came on the scene. Ownership was low at first, but adoption was rapid. Even in less developed countries, most people had access to such a device by the 2010's. Also in the 2010's the cameras in phones improved dramatically to the point where the camera's were better in many respects than the human eye. Digital security cameras came on the scene this decade as well (first Ring doorbell 2014). In the 2020's, there are more digital phone subscriptions than humans on earth. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions in use worldwide in 2022, while the population crossed the 8 billion mark. Fixed digital cameras (security, doorbells, traffic, etc.) have become ubiquitous. Each of these devices are continuously recording and many have at least a partial view of the sky. The number of images created everyday far exceeds the total of images for many of the decades in the 1950s - 1980s.

I think (again my opinion), that a strong case can be made today that we have enough images or devices showing an absence of evidence of ETI that we are approaching very high-P values of this most likely means there is an absence (of ETI). At the very least, we can state a hypothesis that people's firsthand reports are very likely to be mistaken. We test this by comparing the number of witness reports that seem to indicate an anomaly out of the number of humans on earth and the time they spend looking at the sky versus the number of anomalous images (not LIZ, but actual anomalies) and the number of images of the sky. Given the large number of reported sightings versus the low number of good images showing ETI (zero), we can show the null hypotheses (people are not seeing ETI) to be true at very high p values (3 sigma+?).

Now of course it is "possible" that ETI is here and invisible to all of our cameras and other recording devices, but of course, then they would be invisible to observers as well.

Bottom line, I don't think we need to wait another 20 years to have high confidence that ETI is not on or near Earth. We said something similar 20 years ago, and the sensor coverage of Earth has increased more than I expected in the intervening time. As many commentors have stated, "Time will tell". I think it has told.

 

[Nourali]

So you discount the possibility that we do not have authentic good pictures of truly anomalous objects because no truly anomalous objects exist?

It's literally the opposite of what my words mean...
I don't discout that possibility, i litteraly do count that possibility as I said. I just think there are anomalous objects. Thats my opinion for now.

 

[Andreas]

And you are dismissing witness reports... because you don't trust them? That's not very scientific. We have plenty of examples of witnesses being dismissed for science to later recognize they were right, epistemology is full of it.

This is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion, but since so much of this thread has ended up revolving around eyewitness testimony, I think it's worth addressing.

One point that keeps getting lost in these discussions is that honest witnesses are not the same thing as reliable witnesses. The vast majority of eyewitnesses are not lying. They genuinely report what they believe they saw. But human perception and memory are reconstructive, not photographic. People misperceive, misinterpret, misremember and unknowingly fill in gaps.

A good real-world example is the study of eyewitnesses to the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. Researchers compared 29 witnesses' descriptions with CCTV footage showing the offender only minutes before the attack. They found that 42% of all reported attributes were incorrect. Even more striking, over 60% of the witnesses got the offender's upper clothing wrong, despite clothing being one of the most obvious things people believe they would remember accurately. Estimates of age and height were even worse.

So when someone says, "Why would dozens of witnesses lie?", they're asking the wrong question. The relevant question is: Why should we assume that sincere human perception is an accurate recording of reality? Decades of cognitive psychology suggest that it isn't.

 

[FatPhil]

It's literally the opposite of what my words mean...

But it isn't. You claimed, and agreed to the interpretation when pressed, that it was the difficulty of obtaining good evidence that explains why there is no good evidence.
Mauro's now pressing you on the alternative explanation that there are in reality no things to have good evidence of. Which, if you are being consistent, you must reject as it contradicts what you've previously said. And if you are being inconsistent, well, I think this branch of the discussion has come to a mostly useless close.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

This is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion, but since so much of this thread has ended up revolving around eyewitness testimony, I think it's worth addressing.

One point that keeps getting lost in these discussions is that honest witnesses are not the same thing as reliable witnesses. The vast majority of eyewitnesses are not lying. They genuinely report what they believe they saw. But human perception and memory are reconstructive, not photographic. People misperceive, misinterpret, misremember and unknowingly fill in gaps.

A good real-world example is the study of eyewitnesses to the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. Researchers compared 29 witnesses' descriptions with CCTV footage showing the offender only minutes before the attack. They found that 42% of all reported attributes were incorrect. Even more striking, over 60% of the witnesses got the offender's upper clothing wrong, despite clothing being one of the most obvious things people believe they would remember accurately. Estimates of age and height were even worse.

So when someone says, "Why would dozens of witnesses lie?", they're asking the wrong question. The relevant question is: Why should we assume that sincere human perception is an accurate recording of reality? Decades of cognitive psychology suggest that it isn't.

I think some people, not necessarily alien believers, would conclude that some witnesses could be actually reliable.
I think most skeptics think that if this were the case, these cases would not have been unidentified or anomalous in the first place.

 

[jumbobob]

Yes, in any individual case. The weakness in the "you can't expect good pictures because people are surprised and need a moment to recover, think of their camera and pull it out" argument is that it has to work EVERY TIME.

A similar argument could be made for fireball meteors, plane crashes, homicides, etc. And while often such things happen with nobody taking a picture or video, SOMETIMES people react quickly, or have their camera out anyway, and we have examples of clear, definitive pictures/film/video of all of them.

The argument has been made, "Go out and take a video of the next low flying plane you see, you'll see how tricky it is" misses the point that however tricky it might be to grab a shot of a given unexpected plane buzzing you, we have LOTS of imagry of low flying planes -- that is clear, crisp, retailed and very obvious the sort of thing captured in the picture/video.

Numerous example here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rare-things-that-have-been-documented-much-better-than-ufos.13047/

I think the cases reflected in that thread are slightly different. Many of those are linked to an event that leads up to a photo/video or IP/Ring cameras that run 24h a day. The difference with a UAP is that there's no build-up to the thing happening. I'm aware I'm generalising a bit, as there are definitely once in a life time photos/videos. I compare it to taking a speed boat from point A to B in the ocean and then seeing a whale breach. You saw it for 2 seconds, you think it was a whale but you'll never be sure as you have no evidence.

Regarding what you said about the "amplitude" of what someone sees (I take that you mean the apparent size of the object), I would expect that most people seeing something very large, so, less likely to be a misinterpretation of something mundane, would be more likely to try to record it, than if seeing something small. My reason for assuming that is that a viewer would be more inclined to dismiss something small, as possibly mundane (and perhaps not worth recording), than something larger and easier to identify if it was mundane.

To clarify regarding amplitude/size, when you refer to things being large or small, do you mean how great a part of the viewer's field of view it occupies, and not a viewers assumption of its actual dimensions? i.e. something that is "large" is not something occupying a small part of the viewer's field of view, but which they assume is large, but at great distance. For example something reported as "the size of a football field", but "kilometres away", so seen as small in their field of view, would not constitute a "large" object.

Yes, I think we're saying the same thing. If I'm able to see something and immediately realise that it is not normal and the viewing occurs over minutes/hours - I don't see a reason to not have some sort of evidence.

Distance to a large object does add a complication. But I was thinking of the Stephenville sighting, multiple witnesses, ridiculously large object, slow moving and no evidence. Seems weird.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

If I'm able to see something and immediately realise that it is not normal and the viewing occurs over minutes/hours - I don't see a reason to not have some sort of evidence.

I see a possible reason, rare phenomena.

 

[Andreas]

I think some people, not necessarily alien believers, would conclude that some witnesses could be actually reliable.
I think most skeptics think that if this were the case, these cases would not have been unidentified or anomalous in the first place.

But I think people often approach this from the wrong perspective. I don't think only a handful of witnesses are credible—I think almost all witnesses are credible. The problem is that credibility does not imply reliability. Honest people can sincerely report what they believe they saw and still be objectively wrong. The real question isn't whether we should believe the witnesses. It's whether it's reasonable to assume that any of them actually interpreted what they saw correctly.

 

[Nourali]

But it isn't. You claimed, and agreed to the interpretation when pressed, that it was the difficulty of obtaining good evidence that explains why there is no good evidence.
Mauro's now pressing you on the alternative explanation that there are in reality no things to have good evidence of. Which, if you are being consistent, you must reject as it contradicts what you've previously said. And if you are being inconsistent, well, I think this branch of the discussion has come to a mostly useless close.

There is a difference between:

"I believe X is the best explanation at the moment,"
and
"X is an established certainty and all other possibilities are impossible."

That's basic epistemic nuance.

The alternative hypothesis, that there are no real anomalous objects to get evidence of, remains logically possible. I just don't think it currently accounts for all the strongest cases as well as my interpretation does.

So no, this is not inconsistency. It's just not binary thinking.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

But I think people often approach this from the wrong perspective. I don't think only a handful of witnesses are credible—I think almost all witnesses are credible. The problem is that credibility does not imply reliability. Honest people can sincerely report what they believe they saw and still be objectively wrong. The real question isn't whether we should believe the witnesses. It's whether it's reasonable to assume that any of them actually interpreted what they saw correctly.

No I actually meant that even if we were to assume 80% of witnesses are credible, some people might argue that a certain percentage of those "credible" witnesses are also accurate in their descriptions.

 

[FatPhil]

So no, this is not inconsistency. It's just not binary thinking.

But the question you answered in the affirmative was "does this fully explain ...". That's pretty binary.