• WoodScientist
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    2 days ago

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    • MangoCats@feddit.it
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      2 days ago

      Those stone soldiers should have made a world tour 25 years ago when they were declassified.

    • chingadera@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      But why?

      Proving our place in the cosmos only required regular evidence. That was extraordinary. Why is this subject on a separate pedestal?

      • WoodScientist
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        2 days ago

        Do you think our astronomical theories were developed on word of mouth, rumor, and “trust me bro?”

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yeah that’s not at all what I said.

          And there is plenty of evidence/data that points to something out of the ordinary going on, plenty aside from word of mouth/rumor.

            • chingadera@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Am I the only person left that can read? The question is, why is this line of thinking only applied to this subject?

                • chingadera@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  Everyone wants to jump in and talk about semantics and very specific claims, and no one has answered a very simple question on why they think about this the way they do.

                  Everything is “paranormal” until it’s explained by science is what I’m trying to get at. Something is very clearly happening with this subject, and it has been systematically ridiculed or put in separate categories of thought and no one is stopping to ask why.

                  That’s all I’m getting at.

                  I shouldn’t have come at you like that, that was an asshole move. You’re just the next person to shrug it off instead of actually talk about it, so I took it out on you. Sorry for that.

                  • WoodScientist
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                    2 days ago

                    Something is very clearly happening with this subject, and it has been systematically ridiculed or put in separate categories of thought and no one is stopping to ask why.

                    There isn’t something “clearly” happening with the subject of UFOs and aliens. UFO reports are people seeing weird lights in the sky and not understanding parallax. Do some people report direct contact with alien beings? Sure. But some people also report contact with angels, demons, leprechauns, bigfoot, and any number of other otherworldly phenomena. It’s really not that complicated. People hallucinate and dream things, often based on pre-existing cultural exposure. There’s very few people on Earth at this point that haven’t seen depictions of a big eyed grey alien. And since everyone has seen these depictions, when people end up in altered states of consciousness through mental issues or psychotropic substances, that image serves as feedstock for their visions.

                    Yes, claiming that otherworldly beings are visiting us and interacting with people IS an extraordinary claim. It’s something that would redefine our entire worldview and our understanding of our place in the universe. And we don’t accept those types of claims based on flimsy and unreliable eyewitness testimony.

                    The most damning piece of evidence against UFOs and alien encounters is that the quality of visual evidence for these phenomena hasn’t increased at all over the last 30 years. Every UFO is still an out-of-focus blob, and that’s because it’s only out of focus objects that can be mistaken as alien spaceships instead of ordinary objects like planes and balloons. And despite everyone now having HD cameras in their pocket, no one has ever managed to get a clear video of one of these grey aliens that are supposedly constantly flying around and fucking with people.

                    The quality of evidence for alien visitors is, from a scientific perspective, absolute dogshit. It’s not repeatable. It’s not reliable. It’s not in a form that can be interrogated and examined critically.

                    Do you know what it took to get people to accept the heliocentric model of the Solar System? The exact opposite of that. It took multiple independent lines of evidence that could be independently verified. Galileo didn’t say, “I have observed that the Earth goes around the Sun, and you’ll just have to trust me.” He said, “here are my pieces of evidence A, B, C, D, and E, here is my method, and if you build a telescope like mine, you can repeat my experiment and confirm everything I’ve done myself.” And even then it took centuries for the heliocentric model to be accepted completely!

                    I’m sorry, but fuzzy out of focus dots and unreliable eyewitness testimony (often produced under hypnosis) is just absolute shit-tier evidence. And no, the recently military videos aren’t any proof either, as they’re also out of focus crap and clear parallax errors.

      • ZeroCool@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        You’re too focused on the word “extraordinary” but all this adage is meant to convey is that claims require evidence. If you ignore the word “extraordinary” the point remains the same.

        The phrase is popular among skeptics because we deal with a lot of paranormal claims. And paranormal claims are by definition, extraordinary.

          • ZeroCool@lemmy.ca
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            2 days ago

            Yes, and I explained why the phrase is worded the way it is because you clearly didn’t understand.

      • SippyCup@feddit.nl
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        1 day ago

        Because generally, if you’re making an extraordinary claim based on ordinary evidence, chances are the evidence actually points to something ordinary. You need extraordinary evidence that can’t be explained by something ordinary.

      • threeduck@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        Proving our place in the cosmos already HAS extraordinary evidence. Our continued existence (and witness to that) IS the evidence. No one bar solipsists doubt that humans exist.

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I meant the actual mapping of this planet in the universe as we know it as an example of something that changed how we view our place in the universe. It had regular evidence. We don’t need evidence+ for anything including this topic.