Convincing Another...

Originally posted by 987931
Why not 99.133% or perhaps 97.218%?

I said maybe 99%. Of course, I don't know. My estimation is, maybe in several hundreds of videos (and pictures), a few look convincing, the rest are hoaxes and misinterpretations. Some of the best cases don't include any photographic evidence. I've studied hundreds of UFO reports with multiple sources, and read thousands, only in my country, France. I estimate the percentage of real, unexplainable cases, when there are no picture or video is much higher. It's very important to have several unrelated sources, as every human experience is fundamentally biased and subjective. Even known misinterpretations are interesting, because you get direct proof that witnesses basically don't lie, when confronted to the unknown, even if their interpretation is faulty.

But I do agree with your basic point, about multiple credible witnesses, even though we use crude proxies for credibility that undoubtedly lead to many false negatives; i.e. falsely concluding someone is not credible simply because they don't have some kind of credentials or position, current or past, that makes them "credible". Does the fact I have a PhD or that am an acaedmic in a good university make me more credible than someone whose lifetime hobby has been astronomy and astrophysics, if that's what is called for in a particular case? (hypothetical since I don't claim to have ever seen anything worthy of investigation).

Credibility has a lot to do with the psychology of the witness (whether someone is a known hoaxer, drug user, mythomaniac, attention seeker, etc...), and how much the story varies in time. A single report is nearly worthless without several interviews of the witnesses, other investigations in the neighborhood, confirmation by other means, such as physical effects. The level of education or job is not the most important factor. It doesn't disqualify anyone I mean.

On a similar note, I'm glad to hear you think the COMETA carries some weight, being French and having the very healthy and robust skepticism you do. I agree -- I see no reason not to take the experts involved seriously.

Yes, these high ranked military and scientists are very serious.

Credibility has a lot to do with the psychology of the witness (whether someone is a known hoaxer, drug user, mythomaniac, attention seeker, etc...), and how much the story varies in time. A single report is nearly worthless without several interviews of the witnesses, other investigations in the neighborhood, confirmation by other means, such as physical effects. The level of education or job is not the most important factor. It doesn't disqualify anyone I mean.

In ideal terms, I agree. Despite psychology being mostly pseudo-science, I agree some of the psychological factors you mention are important (though drugs ... depends on the substance and amount of use). I'm sure level of education or job is not the most important factor to you, but I'm pretty confident it is the factor most often reported as a proxy to all of the other things.

I admit I havent read any of this thread yet but the topic posted was what made me believe.... for me it was one day about 3 years ago when I was perusing youtube videos and I happened upon a segment of the May 2001 national press club disclosure project video. I watched the whole 2 hours, just enthralled. I couldn't believe the whole world hadn't been told about this. And I couldn't understand how all those testomonies could be ignored. I understand now, though.

Hi Crabmeat, great question.

Before I mention the cases that really sparked my interest, I just wanna say that I wouldn't focus so much on making anyone a 'believer'. Being a 100% true believer just causes more problems than anything.

Ufology shouldn't be about picking sides - it should be about all of us making one collective effort to uncover the truth, whatever that may be. Unfortunately there are already too many people who are so set in their personal beliefs (one way or the other) that it makes this very very difficult overall.

Too many true believers become so consumed by their convictions that they refuse to accept any unusual light in the sky can ever be a flare or a balloon or some other perfectly normal explanation. Similarly, the skeptics are so jaded by these people that they end up thinking no one in this field can ever actually think rationally at all, and so the whole phenomenon gets stuck with this stigma of simply being "crazy" and paranoid, no matter how compelling the evidence is that it's possibly something more...

Personally although I do believe it is something more, I'd never try to convince someone else to just accept that - instead it's much more important to get them thinking about it general, to seek out the answers themselves and in the process to at least take the phenomenon more seriously.

That way when a major sighting like Stephenville or O'Hare happens, it doesn't just show up in the news for a day or two and quickly disappear without any proper explanation. Instead people ask more questions and demand real answers. If enough people did that then the truth would really have to come out and none of us would need to sit around on internet forums bickering about it without ever actually getting anywhere.

Anyway...

...On to the cases - there are two that really got me asking more questions: Malmstrom AFB and Rendlesham Forest.

The reason being the way they were presented in the movie Out of the Blue.

I always tend to start out each case as a skeptic, and one of the hardest things to overcome is trusting the fact that anything ever even happened at all, i.e. that someone didn't just make it all up. Well in these two famous cases you not only have multiple credible (military) witnesses but you also have official confirmation through government documents that "respond" to these events.

The documents at least seem to confirm that something did occur. But on top of that the "official" responses end up sounding more fishy than the claims of the witnesses. I'll leave it to you to research these in detail on your own (if you haven't already), and I really recommend starting with the movie, but the gist of it is that both of these cases involve military stations where nuclear weapons are stored.

No matter what the real explanation is, some very troubling things occur here and yet the government responds with their typical, ambiguous "This is of no concern to national security" statement. That is a pretty bizarre response considering that by denying the claims of the witnesses they are implying these people are either hallucinating or lying, yet these same people are in control of nuclear weapons and it's of no concern to national security?? Doesn't add up to me.

This was enough to get me asking more questions and as a result I started investigating more cases where the military was involved. From Roswell to Kecksburg to the end of Blue Book right on up to Phoenix and most recently Stephenville - I have always, ALWAYS found the military explanation/response to be intentionally vague or very sketchy to say the least.

This ofcourse doesn't by any means prove that aliens exist but it is enough to keep me interested and open-minded about the subject. And until someone (or something?) can come along and provide an explanation that absolutely unequivocally puts the case to rest, that's the best I can do.