Redfern Out, Kimball In - 8 October 2017

[marduk]

Actually, the first kiss analogy proves the point... just not the one you were trying to make. Sure, you know you kissed her, just as you know you saw something. But people often romanticize that first kiss, and remember it as something more special than it was. Perception and memory are malleable, subjective things. Going even further, while you might think you know what the other person was thinking when you kissed her, you don't. You can say, "I know what she felt" until you're blue in the face, but that's your perception, not hers. We have a great propensity to see or feel what we want to see or feel.

Or take your car accident example. I was in a serious one years ago. There were two of us in the car (we hit a tree). Both of us remembered different things about it, in different ways, even at the time of the accident. That's natural. When I worked with the RCMP I dealt with lots of witnesses who did the same thing, often creating conflicting narratives of the same incident. We're not computers.

I'm not saying you didn't see space aliens. I'm just saying that there's no way you can say for sure that you did. There's a difference between those two positions.

There also needs to be some firm grounding in the human experience.

Once, during my divorce years ago, I went for a drive in the north of town on a foggy night. Pulled my car over to the side of the road, got out just to get some air and think.

Suddenly, out of the fog and the dark came some flashing lights, low, silent, in a triangular pattern. I got quite freaked out, they came right at me, low and slow. I thought it was something anomalous for sure. And as it passed overhead, I was suddenly deafened by the commercial airliner coming in to land at YYC. The angle was just perfect that all I could see were the front lights on the plane, not the navigation lights. The fog must have deadened the sound. If I had been even a mile or two away, I might have thought it was a UFO. But I remember that night well, because those kind of emotionally laden experiences are burned in to your memory.

Just like when the Challenger exploded, or I first saw planes hit the twin towers on TV. I can tell you where I was, what I was wearing, who I was with.

But being human, telling you the date, or the day of the week, or the exact sequence of events gets muddled, because that's not how our mind works.

 

[Randall]

... I'm not saying you didn't see space aliens. I'm just saying that there's no way you can say for sure that you did. There's a difference between those two positions.

And again, the title isn't, "I Know What The Object I Saw Was" it's simply "I Know What I Saw". So the difference between the two positions doesn't apply to the title. But for the sake of argument, let's suppose someone says they know what the object they saw was ( any object ). The argument you and @Greers Meeting Planner are making is that we cannot know that with any certainty. This gets into a philosophical realm based on consciousness and perception, and ultimately when we go down that rabbit hole ( as @marduk put it ) there's no way to be sure we're not simply brains in a vat and that nothing we perceive is real. However that argument is rather sophomoric.

If we are to submit to subjective idealism as a basis for reality, then one object is as real as the next. Personally I don't subscribe to that notion because I just don't think it's a reasonable position, even if there's no way to empirically prove it. The point being that at some point we all decide what is reasonable to believe we perceive and what isn't. When we do that we find that on a daily basis normal healthy unimpaired humans make countless accurate observations that guide our decisions. If this weren't the case then our species probably would never have survived.

I say that our species would never have survived because the ability to accurately distinguish one thing from the other the vast majority of the time is necessary for such things as discerning the difference between a sabre toothed tiger and rabbit, or flat ground and the edge of a cliff. Skeptics would have us believe that our faculty of perception and interpretation is so bad that we're a bunch of quasi deaf, dumb, and blind nincompoops that wander around aimlessly without the capacity tell what's going on in the environment. Piffle.

Humans are among the most advanced and intelligent life forms on the planet, if not at the top of the list. Our accomplishments as a species are a testament to our ability to discern one thing from another with accuracy and catalog it accordingly. So let's be fair-minded about this. Yes there's a difference between saying, "I saw an alien spacecraft" and saying, "I saw a luminous object rise up out of the forest and instantly accelerate north up the valley, disappearing from sight in about the time it takes to snap your fingers." The first statement is interpretive, the second statement is descriptive. The first statement fits your point, but the second one doesn't.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

And again, the title isn't, "I Know What The Object I Saw Was" it's simply "I Know What I Saw". So the difference between the two positions doesn't apply to the title. But for the sake of argument, let's suppose someone says they know what the object they saw was ( any object ). The argument you and @Greers Meeting Planner are making is that we cannot know that with any certainty. This gets into a philosophical realm based on consciousness and perception, and ultimately when we go down that rabbit hole ( as @marduk put it ) there's no way to be sure we're not simply brains in a vat and that nothing we perceive is real. However that argument is rather sophomoric.

It's just a title. Period. Time to move on.

 

[Randall]

Once you understand this, the position of "I know what I saw" becomes untenable

Not really. It's more like the position ,"I know what the object I saw was" becomes uncertain ( not untenable ), and the position "I know what I saw" is something that cannot be proven one way or another, but it's entirely reasonable to assume that normal people have the phenomenological experience of vision and therefore they must know they are seeing something that can be described objectively.

 

[Randall]

It's just a title. Period.

Not really, it's about the accuracy of human perception and intelligence with respect to discerning between objective and subjective reality. Not to mention having respect for witnesses.

Time to move on.

Okay. Let's do that or shut the thread down. What else would you like to talk about? Is Redfern back on the schedule?

 

[Paul Kimball]

It's just a title. Period. Time to move on.

Actually, I think it's the fundamental question when it comes to how believers and skeptics approach UFOs (or any "paranormal" event) in terms of determining what people actually see / experience, and as such is key to understanding what happened. But that's just me...

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Should I watch Plan 9 From Outer Space in black & white or the colorized version? Decisions decisions...

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I always recommend seeing a movie in the original format, since lighting, staging and the way art direction was handled depended on the medium in which it was shot. Of course, none of that mattered to Ed Wood, but I'd go with black and white for that movie too.

 

[Paul Kimball]

Should I watch Plan 9 From Outer Space in black & white or the colorized version? Decisions decisions...

Never watch any movie in the colourized version.

 

[Greers Meeting Planner]

Perhaps @Gene Steinberg could get a neuroscientist on one of the shows to discuss (ref: I know what I saw)

 

[Jimi]

Great video, and the relevant point being that our brain does not see or sense anything itself, but sits inside a bony shell and makes a best guess on what is happening outside from the electrical signals it receives.

Once you understand this, the position of "I know what I saw" becomes untenable

You have a great point there and I also think your posts / questions in general are amazingly insightful. I do think that the title is open to a wider interpretation though. Just my opinion for what it’s worth (probably not a great deal)!

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

Memory really does distort over time i can relate in some ways with some dramatic "firefights" in Afghanistan, i remember one Contact where we were ambushed by Taliban with RPGS we had a Spectre Gunship above us providing over watch and cover we took Five casualties in the opening minutes and Spectre provided our cover (Danger Close) and we exfiled after a lengthy fire fight.

and my couple of my Oppos remember it differently and that goes for most of the experiences gained in that theatre.
even in my younger years seen objects in the sky up in Inverness Scotland my friends remember the objects differently.

"Perception" is definitely the key in some cases.

This is an excellent example Azz7092. Yes, especially under duress, our recall ability does become unreliable to an extent - details and sequences can get jumbled, or altogether forgotten. I've never experienced anything as harrowing as an ambush by the Taliban, but I have experienced memory loss during a car accident (I can remember everything except the moment of impact), and I've seen eyewitnesses dispute the details of a crime as they reported what they saw to the police. The first class of memory failures appears to be a natural human response to the survival impulse - it's almost as if the brain is too busy fighting for your life to neatly transfer your perceptions to long-term memory, and the second class simply reveals how poorly we humans pay attention to our surroundings when we're "going through the motions" of life.

But the sighting experience doesn't fall into either of those categories, usually. It's more like seeing a rainbow for the first time in your life - it's surprising, but it doesn't throw you into a state of shock and terror. Instead, you give it your whole attention for a moment, and then you go tell somebody about what you saw. And because it's a common experience with a prosaic explanation, when you tell your family or friends about seeing an arch of spectrum colors in the sky, everyone accepts it and they simply tell you that you saw a rainbow, and that's that. Nobody tells you "Prism colors in the sky? That's crazy. Your memory must be all effed up."

Also note that even under the most extreme forms of duress, the key points of your recollection are still accurate: you were attacked, they used RPGs, a Spectre gunship provided cover, and your team had several casualties. I'm sure that if we asked the other members of your unit about what happened, they'd convey those same key details of the event. Because memory can be malleable, but it's not completely unreliable (unless someone has a very severe mental illness or a brain injury).

Thank you for your service Azz7092. I hope we bring all of our personnel back from the Mideast, and as soon as possible.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

I always recommend seeing a movie in the original format, since lighting, staging and the way art direction was handled depended on the medium in which it was shot. Of course, none of that mattered to Ed Wood, but I'd go with black and white for that movie too.

I like that Johnny Depp movie about Ed Wood's life.

 

[Randall]

I like that Johnny Depp movie about Ed Wood's life.

I think it's just called Ed Wood and although it's not fashionable to like Depp anymore, I still think he's good, but Landau was amazing!

 

[DaveM]

Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in ‘Ed Wood.’

 

[Creepy Green Light]

What should have tipped me off (back when I was in middle school/high school) that Meier's "beamship" movie footage was bogus - was that his UFO's have the exact same warbling/wobbling effect as Ed Wood's flying saucer's. I was watching Plan 9 last night and as soon as they started showing the flying saucers I started laughing while thinking "Hmmmm, they have the same flying characteristics as Billy Meier's ships...."

 

[Randall]

What should have tipped me off (back when I was in middle school/high school) that Meier's "beamship" movie footage was bogus - was that his UFO's have the exact same warbling/wobbling effect as Ed Wood's flying saucer's. I was watching Plan 9 last night and as soon as they started showing the flying saucers I started laughing while thinking "Hmmmm, they have the same flying characteristics as Billy Meier's ships...."

What! Eddies Beamships are fake ? Semjase is going to be very disappointed to find this out.

 

[Han]

Great video, and the relevant point being that our brain does not see or sense anything itself, but sits inside a bony shell and makes a best guess on what is happening outside from the electrical signals it receives.

Once you understand this, the position of "I know what I saw" becomes untenable

Yes but it also makes what "you know what I saw" untenable

 

[Greers Meeting Planner]

Yes but it also makes what "you know what I saw" untenable

I agree.

 

[Bergen]

Just listened to ATP . Considering the kind of mud that got thrown at James Fox during that broadcast it would be highly unethical not to invite him on to defend himself. Regardless of how anyone might feel about him.