6 ms·

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard)

pmarreck 4y ago
Exactly how many eyewitness accounts, devoid of good physical evidence, constitute "Evidence" with a capital "E"? If this number is "infinity" for you, that is unreasonable.
- smiley1437 4y ago
  It would require an extraordinary number
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    OK so assuming all the witnesses' accounts are in reasonable concordance (the broad strokes are fairly identical in account), what is that number? I had a funny showerthought the other day- Imagine that orgasms never existed, but a human had one one day and had to explain to others what it was and that it was real and how it felt. This person would be ENTIRELY not believed. Now let's assume this 1 person became 10, 100, 1000. At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real?
    - doodlebugging 4y ago
      >I had a funny showerthought the other day Haha. Okay. That's a great lead-in. >At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real? Is your audience male or female? Going by anecdotal tales, for some it could be an experience akin to an alien encounter.
      - pmarreck 4y ago
        Hah! Unfortunately, yes!
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Depends on whether physical evidence is obtainable. I.e. If you come out of a room and tell me you saw something in there, ok, let's consider it. If you come out of a room and say you saw something there, but the security camera placed there doesn't show it, you have no photos on the iPhone you had at the ready, nobody else saw it, etc... Yeah the number of such reports needed climbs quite high.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  None of them. My dad did accident investigation for the Air Force for a time. One time there was a crash into the sea, amply witnessed by many on board a Navy ship, including pilots. They all said the wings came off the airplane before it hit the water. (The airplane had a reputation for wings coming off.) These people honestly believed that's what they saw. Except for one Navy seaman, on his first trip on a boat. He said the wings were on when it hit the water. So they pulled the airplane up from the bottom, and lo, the wings were on when it hit. One the seaman saw the truth, because he was not predisposed to attribute the crash to a known fault in the airplane.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    This is really key. Eyewitness accounts are reliably dismal in evidentiary value, even by people with relevant knowledge. Our brains lie to us all the time.
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      I'm aware of this, but a sufficient amount of it, almost entirely in concordance, should override this noise.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I remember a case long ago where a woman was cruelly raped. She was face-to-face with her attacker. She identified him in a lineup, he was convicted, and sent to prison. He always insisted on his innocence, but people just laughed at him. She was face to face with him, and identified him. But decades later, as DNA testing became available, a testing was done and he was not a match! But a known sex offender was a match, and had died in prison some years earlier. They dug up a picture of him, and he looked just like the wrongfully accused man. The woman apologized to him as best she could, but her mistake was an honest one, and the falsely convicted man did not blame her. The jury did the right thing based on the evidence. It was just a horrible coincidence. Eyewitness testimony is the gold standard in court. But I'm skeptical of it. I'd like to see hard evidence if I was on a jury. Fortunately, hard evidence is a lot more easily obtained than it used to be.
- toss1 4y ago
  It is the Santa Claus problem There are mountains of evidence and billions of "eyewitness" accounts of Santa, including "NORAD is tracking him". The iconography, imagery, and tales are ubiquitous to the point of it being nearly an independent religion. Yet exactly 100.000...000% of those observations, photos, images are insubstantial. I want to believe as much as anyone that there are technically advanced aliens nearby who are could and would help us advance. But all I've seen so far is a lot of interesting and a bit overly credulous accounts, and some fuzzy evidence. And much of it can be accounted for by observer or instrument error. Maybe the classified material has something clear and unequivocal; that'd be nice. Until we have something clear and revealing, lets investigate by all means. But until then, let's not jump to conclusions either way.
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  The number is infinity. There is a reason that data is not the plural of anecdote. Once scrutinized, these phenomena are almost always explained by humans misinterpreting their instruments (either machine readout, or their own eyes). Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth). These people aren't idiots. Their brains evolved to recognize patterns as a survival mechanism. Arguably their pattern recognition is stronger than everybody else's. But when you factor in lack of familiarity with the scientific method, or inclination towards spirituality, or a simple willingness to believe in extraterrestrial life, it's not uncommon to hear stories about ghosts, angels, and aliens. These stories do not stand up to inquiry. They have been tested time and time again and always fall apart under scrutiny. The reason that Bigfoot photos are always blurry isn't because he's camera shy - it's because when the photos are not blurry, we can clearly see it's not Bigfoot. NB: I have no problem with believing in alien life in terms of say the Drake equation (statistically, it's probable!). I just find it highly unlikely of such a visitor reaching Earth.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth). A disturbing number of people think that the Moon only comes out at night, opposite of the Sun. Probably because cartoons and video games depict it that way, but it's still a real head scratcher how some people never notice the moon in the sky during the day, which it is for roughly half of each and every month.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Also the other essential problem: you never stop being afraid of the dark. This is evolutionarily sensible: we're a tribal species with a group-collective survival strategy, but few natural defenses: no fur, poor night vision. We're almost entirely dependent on tool-using to exist in the wild, it's our edge but it makes us very vulnerable. UFO reports disproportionately occur at night, and also from relatively isolated people. It doesn't matter how smart you are, it's almost impossible to turn off those primitive senses which tell you "you're in danger, you need to be aware". Being afraid of something which is not there and avoiding it is a vastly preferable strategy if it also means you're afraid of something which is there.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  How many eyewitness accounts of mermaids devoid of physical evidence have there been? I don’t think there’s any amount of eyewitness accounts of aliens that I would consider credible evidence without having something verifiable to corrobate them.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  The number is infinity. Without being taught or gathering evidence, the first conclusion that every human would come to on their own is that they live on a flat plane. Yet this is patently untrue. The human perspective is often fundamentally flawed, and only after conducting actual science can you arrive at something even slightly representing the truth.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Humans do live in a flat plane, since on earth at the human scale, things are pretty flat locally. You couldn't say that it's an infinite flat plane, but you could say pretty definitively that you don't live on the inside of a cylinder or sphere
nonethewiser 4y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard) This response doesn't make sense because there wasn't an extraordinary claim being made. He just said we don't know what it is and shouldn't assume it's uninteresting.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  Have you ever been unable to find your keys? Did you consider it reasonable to explore the possibility that you might have small elves living in your walls who stole them? Why not? The observed phenomenon is literally being referred to as "possibly aliens or magic". Obviously something was observed, and obviously you can (and people certainly do) analyze them to come to a rational conclusions. But to even mention the possibility of aliens or magic as within the realm of possibilities to be considered is an extraordinary claim.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  So we have a handful of barely confirmable observations with no repeatability. I’ll file it under “case open, but nothing to do about it for now.” Happy?

Exactly how many eyewitness accounts, devoid of good physical evidence, constitute "Evidence" with a capital "E"? If this number is "infinity" for you, that is unreasonable.

smiley1437 4y ago
It would require an extraordinary number
- pmarreck 4y ago
  OK so assuming all the witnesses' accounts are in reasonable concordance (the broad strokes are fairly identical in account), what is that number? I had a funny showerthought the other day- Imagine that orgasms never existed, but a human had one one day and had to explain to others what it was and that it was real and how it felt. This person would be ENTIRELY not believed. Now let's assume this 1 person became 10, 100, 1000. At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real?
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    >I had a funny showerthought the other day Haha. Okay. That's a great lead-in. >At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real? Is your audience male or female? Going by anecdotal tales, for some it could be an experience akin to an alien encounter.
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      Hah! Unfortunately, yes!
NikolaNovak 4y ago
Depends on whether physical evidence is obtainable. I.e. If you come out of a room and tell me you saw something in there, ok, let's consider it. If you come out of a room and say you saw something there, but the security camera placed there doesn't show it, you have no photos on the iPhone you had at the ready, nobody else saw it, etc... Yeah the number of such reports needed climbs quite high.
WalterBright 4y ago
None of them. My dad did accident investigation for the Air Force for a time. One time there was a crash into the sea, amply witnessed by many on board a Navy ship, including pilots. They all said the wings came off the airplane before it hit the water. (The airplane had a reputation for wings coming off.) These people honestly believed that's what they saw. Except for one Navy seaman, on his first trip on a boat. He said the wings were on when it hit the water. So they pulled the airplane up from the bottom, and lo, the wings were on when it hit. One the seaman saw the truth, because he was not predisposed to attribute the crash to a known fault in the airplane.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  This is really key. Eyewitness accounts are reliably dismal in evidentiary value, even by people with relevant knowledge. Our brains lie to us all the time.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    I'm aware of this, but a sufficient amount of it, almost entirely in concordance, should override this noise.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I remember a case long ago where a woman was cruelly raped. She was face-to-face with her attacker. She identified him in a lineup, he was convicted, and sent to prison. He always insisted on his innocence, but people just laughed at him. She was face to face with him, and identified him. But decades later, as DNA testing became available, a testing was done and he was not a match! But a known sex offender was a match, and had died in prison some years earlier. They dug up a picture of him, and he looked just like the wrongfully accused man. The woman apologized to him as best she could, but her mistake was an honest one, and the falsely convicted man did not blame her. The jury did the right thing based on the evidence. It was just a horrible coincidence. Eyewitness testimony is the gold standard in court. But I'm skeptical of it. I'd like to see hard evidence if I was on a jury. Fortunately, hard evidence is a lot more easily obtained than it used to be.
toss1 4y ago
It is the Santa Claus problem There are mountains of evidence and billions of "eyewitness" accounts of Santa, including "NORAD is tracking him". The iconography, imagery, and tales are ubiquitous to the point of it being nearly an independent religion. Yet exactly 100.000...000% of those observations, photos, images are insubstantial. I want to believe as much as anyone that there are technically advanced aliens nearby who are could and would help us advance. But all I've seen so far is a lot of interesting and a bit overly credulous accounts, and some fuzzy evidence. And much of it can be accounted for by observer or instrument error. Maybe the classified material has something clear and unequivocal; that'd be nice. Until we have something clear and revealing, lets investigate by all means. But until then, let's not jump to conclusions either way.
SquareWheel 4y ago
The number is infinity. There is a reason that data is not the plural of anecdote. Once scrutinized, these phenomena are almost always explained by humans misinterpreting their instruments (either machine readout, or their own eyes). Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth). These people aren't idiots. Their brains evolved to recognize patterns as a survival mechanism. Arguably their pattern recognition is stronger than everybody else's. But when you factor in lack of familiarity with the scientific method, or inclination towards spirituality, or a simple willingness to believe in extraterrestrial life, it's not uncommon to hear stories about ghosts, angels, and aliens. These stories do not stand up to inquiry. They have been tested time and time again and always fall apart under scrutiny. The reason that Bigfoot photos are always blurry isn't because he's camera shy - it's because when the photos are not blurry, we can clearly see it's not Bigfoot. NB: I have no problem with believing in alien life in terms of say the Drake equation (statistically, it's probable!). I just find it highly unlikely of such a visitor reaching Earth.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth). A disturbing number of people think that the Moon only comes out at night, opposite of the Sun. Probably because cartoons and video games depict it that way, but it's still a real head scratcher how some people never notice the moon in the sky during the day, which it is for roughly half of each and every month.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Also the other essential problem: you never stop being afraid of the dark. This is evolutionarily sensible: we're a tribal species with a group-collective survival strategy, but few natural defenses: no fur, poor night vision. We're almost entirely dependent on tool-using to exist in the wild, it's our edge but it makes us very vulnerable. UFO reports disproportionately occur at night, and also from relatively isolated people. It doesn't matter how smart you are, it's almost impossible to turn off those primitive senses which tell you "you're in danger, you need to be aware". Being afraid of something which is not there and avoiding it is a vastly preferable strategy if it also means you're afraid of something which is there.
wlesieutre 4y ago
How many eyewitness accounts of mermaids devoid of physical evidence have there been? I don’t think there’s any amount of eyewitness accounts of aliens that I would consider credible evidence without having something verifiable to corrobate them.
teawrecks 4y ago
The number is infinity. Without being taught or gathering evidence, the first conclusion that every human would come to on their own is that they live on a flat plane. Yet this is patently untrue. The human perspective is often fundamentally flawed, and only after conducting actual science can you arrive at something even slightly representing the truth.
- 8note 4y ago
  Humans do live in a flat plane, since on earth at the human scale, things are pretty flat locally. You couldn't say that it's an infinite flat plane, but you could say pretty definitively that you don't live on the inside of a cylinder or sphere

nonethewiser 4y ago

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard) This response doesn't make sense because there wasn't an extraordinary claim being made. He just said we don't know what it is and shouldn't assume it's uninteresting.

teawrecks 4y ago
Have you ever been unable to find your keys? Did you consider it reasonable to explore the possibility that you might have small elves living in your walls who stole them? Why not? The observed phenomenon is literally being referred to as "possibly aliens or magic". Obviously something was observed, and obviously you can (and people certainly do) analyze them to come to a rational conclusions. But to even mention the possibility of aliens or magic as within the realm of possibilities to be considered is an extraordinary claim.
ramraj07 4y ago
So we have a handful of barely confirmable observations with no repeatability. I’ll file it under “case open, but nothing to do about it for now.” Happy?