It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by longlostbrother
reply to post by Runciter33
Eyewitness testimony alone will almost never be taken as proof of anything.
The standards of a court of law are much higher than your own.
Originally posted by schuyler
reply to post by Runciter33
Well, don't tell greeneyedleo that. Eye-witness testimony ain't what it's cracked up to be. Besides, I don't see many people saying, "You didn't see that." The real question is, can you tell us what it is without making stuff up?
But I'd like to address more of the "trained observer" issue. I hear this all the time. The meme is that pilots, policemen, military personnel, etc. are more qualified observers than the rest of us because they are somehow "better trained" as observers.
There is no real evidence of that. They are people just like us, with the same tendancies of interpretation that anyone has. I'm a pilot and I've been in the military. I have a relative and two friends who are cops, and I see no evidence they are better at observation either. They can't even shoot straight at a range (something I gleefully point out to them when I whoop their butts!) I've been through flight school to the commercial level, and not once was there any special "observation training" that made me a better observer than you are. I've been trained in tha air and the only "observation training" I've been taught is "Avoid blinking lights" because whether it is a radio tower, another airplane, or a UFO, you don't want to hit it.
So I don't believe certain classes of people are better observers, and I use my own experience as an example. There is no credible evidence that this is true and using it as an argument is not credible either. In the absence of any evidence of trickery I'm willing to take accounts at face value and accept them. So a guy saw a light in the sky. Someone else saw a metal disk. OK. Fine. I believe you. Now what? In almost all cases, that's where we have to stop.
The problem with reports such as the OP's, besides the ones already brought up, is that you can't do much with them. In the final analysis, all you have is a UFO, even if perfectly described and faithfully related. It's a light in the sky or a "metal disk" and by God we saw it so we know it is real! But that's all you really know about it. It didn't have Starfleet's logo on the side in large letters, so no one really knows what it is. So what do we do?
Originally posted by squarehead666
Thus I call BS at least until such time as the 'former Air Vice Marshal' is identified.edit on 7-10-2012 by squarehead666 because: S&P/Content
Originally posted by charlyv
To Believe something, is to fixate it into the permanence of your reality. The use of the word "Believe" is often misused and more or less becomes a term variable by context, which is wrong.
For causative interpretation, you can get away with "I believe water is a liquid", which is perfectly ok, since it is substantiated by our knowledge of the world, and has no repercussions if some day, science should change views of what is solid or liquid or gas.
It is ok to say "I Believe in UFO's", because basically you are saying that you are certain that there are flying objects in the atmosphere or space that have not been identified, and you would be totally correct.
If, however, you say "I believe that UFO's are extraterrestrial", then, by definition, you have thrown away all your objectivity in the matter, and fixated it in your belief system as an absolute truth, yet it has no substantiation because the real truth has not yet been verified.
Belief is both a dangerous word and a dangerous attitude, and it has caused major trouble for all of us, since we were able to think.edit on 8-10-2012 by charlyv because: spelling where caught
Originally posted by OrionHunterX
Originally posted by charlyv
To Believe something, is to fixate it into the permanence of your reality. The use of the word "Believe" is often misused and more or less becomes a term variable by context, which is wrong.
For causative interpretation, you can get away with "I believe water is a liquid", which is perfectly ok, since it is substantiated by our knowledge of the world, and has no repercussions if some day, science should change views of what is solid or liquid or gas.
It is ok to say "I Believe in UFO's", because basically you are saying that you are certain that there are flying objects in the atmosphere or space that have not been identified, and you would be totally correct.
If, however, you say "I believe that UFO's are extraterrestrial", then, by definition, you have thrown away all your objectivity in the matter, and fixated it in your belief system as an absolute truth, yet it has no substantiation because the real truth has not yet been verified.
Belief is both a dangerous word and a dangerous attitude, and it has caused major trouble for all of us, since we were able to think.edit on 8-10-2012 by charlyv because: spelling where caught
I think it's best to keep an open mind. We don't know for sure what the heck is really going on. The debunkers who claim that that there are no such things as UFOs and aliens and that we are the only 'intelligent' race in this huge universe are farther off course than those who 'believe' in the possibility that there may be ETs out there.
After all, this universe is at least 15 billion years old and there are trillions of star systems that came into being billions of years before the birth of our Solar System. I should therefore think that there is every possibility that intelligent life sprouted millions of years even before life started on Earth. Logically speaking, it is possible that they have achieved technological levels that's sci fi to us.
The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible in the run-up to the Wright brothers' flight is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", only to be proved definitively wrong just eight years later. And look what we've achieved in a little more than a hundred years - including putting men on the Moon! And we're talking of millions of years of technological advancement! Where would we ourselves be by then?
So then, the possibility exists of UFOs traveling those vast distances of interstellar space by esoteric forms of propulsion that would seem science fiction to us considering our present level of technology.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Originally posted by Runciter33
Originally posted by longlostbrother
reply to post by Runciter33
Eyewitness testimony alone will almost never be taken as proof of anything.
The standards of a court of law are much higher than your own.
The standards of a court law give much weight to witness testimony, especially if there are several witnesses, which is the case in several instances of ufo sightings.
Originally posted by OrionHunterX
The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible in the run-up to the Wright brothers' flight is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", only to be proved definitively wrong just eight years later.
A growing body of research now supports this speculation, indicating that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more convictions of the innocent than all other factors combined. The Innocence Project determined that 75% of the 239 DNA exoneration cases had occurred due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. It is important to inform the public about the flawed nature of eyewitness memory and the difficulties relating to its use in the criminal justice system so that eyewitness accounts are not viewed as the absolute truth.
Originally posted by longlostbrother
A growing body of research now supports this speculation, indicating that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more convictions of the innocent than all other factors combined. The Innocence Project determined that 75% of the 239 DNA exoneration cases had occurred due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. It is important to inform the public about the flawed nature of eyewitness memory and the difficulties relating to its use in the criminal justice system so that eyewitness accounts are not viewed as the absolute truth.
en.wikipedia.org...:
Tons of info about how and why eyewitnesses make poor "evidence". Very poor.
Originally posted by K-PAX-PROT
Originally posted by longlostbrother
A growing body of research now supports this speculation, indicating that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more convictions of the innocent than all other factors combined. The Innocence Project determined that 75% of the 239 DNA exoneration cases had occurred due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. It is important to inform the public about the flawed nature of eyewitness memory and the difficulties relating to its use in the criminal justice system so that eyewitness accounts are not viewed as the absolute truth.
en.wikipedia.org...:
Tons of info about how and why eyewitnesses make poor "evidence". Very poor.
For anyone to say that there is NO possibility of advanced ETs having the nanotechnology to visit here or put it this way , that NOT one UFO high strangeness case ,(due to fight characteristics, manoeuvrability ect),has NO genuine possibility of a ET source is nonsense,the possibility has to remain as a possibility until PROVEN otherwise.edit on 15/07/2010 by K-PAX-PROT because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by longlostbrother
A growing body of research now supports this speculation, indicating that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more convictions of the innocent than all other factors combined. The Innocence Project determined that 75% of the 239 DNA exoneration cases had occurred due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. It is important to inform the public about the flawed nature of eyewitness memory and the difficulties relating to its use in the criminal justice system so that eyewitness accounts are not viewed as the absolute truth.
en.wikipedia.org...:
Tons of info about how and why eyewitnesses make poor "evidence". Very poor.