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Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

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Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#141

Post by Aloisius »

mvkel wrote: post #80
Aloisius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some just learn to ignore news gossip.

Slippery slope. I posit that there are news items that deserve real cause for concern, but because we're so overwhelmed with information, we throw it into the same "gossip" bucket with the rest of the slop.

Few news items ever rise to that level and fewer still deserve immediate attention.

Daily news is merely a first rough draft of history and I'd argue most people would be better off instead reading later drafts - after much of the confusion/gossip/rumor/panic that plagues daily news clears.

Sadly there's not a lot of news sources that limit themselves to writing articles about month+ old well-covered news.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#142

Post by sombragris »

English is my second language, so this might explain what I'm going to say.

I really did not understand what this was all about. Even worse, the pictures were not clear.

AFAICT, there were some minor dents in windshields that caused some hysteria in the Seattle area but no further explanation was given.

The article was confusing indeed.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#143

Post by toast0 »

csours wrote: post #27
thmsths wrote: post #9

The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. A not yet explained phenomenon or even something as far fetched as "aliens" would have been a more comforting answer than "essentially we can all start losing our mind at once, and it takes very little to trigger it".

> The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. And this is why "conspiracy" theories exist. I prefer to call them Low Information High Satisfaction theories, as I fee that is a more accurate name. I am do not intend to pass judgement on this commentor or on people who believe in these theories; in fact, I think that if you tell yourself "I am too smart to believe in conspiracy theories", you are making yourself MORE l…

> I think that if you tell yourself "I am too smart to believe in conspiracy theories", you are making yourself MORE likely to fall into one.

That's what they want you to think.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#144

Post by toast0 »

metabagel wrote: post #104
mrandish wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a more neutral term than "collective delusion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attentional_bias

What's the term for when people's attention and outrage is directed by an unreliable third party (let's say a partisan news channel) towards certain issues/threats, and away from other equally (or more) significant issues/threats? I'm not talking about editorial bias. I'm talking about deliberately manipulating audience attention in order to control the perception of reality. Another way of putting it is to create a…

Curation? Programming? Editorial discretion?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#145

Post by willy_k »

wat10000 wrote: post #138
willy_k wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100% of the ones I looked into have been debunked, helicopters, planes, out of focus stars, fireworks A lot of videos are bunk, I have seen at least one video that is certainly drones. > At night you have absolutely no way to tell I agree, but I’ve seen plenty of other aircraft at night and it appeared to be much closer than any of those. And you can get a rough guess based on apparent size of the lights, though of…

You absolutely cannot determine the size, distance, altitude, or speed of an unknown object in the sky at any significant distance. It’s not even rough, it’s completely impossible. You can determine the ratios of those quantities, but the best you can do is come up with a wide minimum and maximum of, let’s say, 500ft to 50 miles of distance (more if it’s just one light). If you saw an unknown object and it seemed clo…

An unlit one or one with blinking or few lights, sure. This had four constantly illuminated nav lights, and I was in a car so I was able to see the parallax relative to the clouds. I couldn’t tell if it was 500 feet or a mile, but I could tell that it was either close enough to be audible, or many times bigger than the largest jetliners.

> If you saw an unknown object and it seemed closer to you than normal aircraft, that’s your brain suffering from an illusion. It’s not real information.

Ohhh, thanks for letting me know.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#147

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

sombragris wrote: post #142

English is my second language, so this might explain what I'm going to say. I really did not understand what this was all about. Even worse, the pictures were not clear. AFAICT, there were some minor dents in windshields that caused some hysteria in the Seattle area but no further explanation was given. The article was confusing indeed.

Basically a lot of people mistakenly thought something had been damaging their windshields, but it was just regular wear and tear they had never noticed before.

The damage appeared to spread as more people talked about it

The pictures weren't clear to me either, probably because they're pictures of ordinary windshields lol

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#148

Post by kykeonaut »

Vegenoid wrote: post #100
kryogen1c wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.

I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. History makes it abundantly clear that it is a regular occurrence for large groups of people to collectively believe things for which there is little evidence, and furthermore, to take extreme actions based on such beliefs. This applies to you too, reader. Many would read the above and fully agree…

thinking about lizard with lizard brain hard

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#149

Post by nilsbunger »

thmsths wrote: post #9

The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. A not yet explained phenomenon or even something as far fetched as "aliens" would have been a more comforting answer than "essentially we can all start losing our mind at once, and it takes very little to trigger it".

It’s been fascinating to watch this play out with the drone stories in NJ too. Despite all our amazing tech, we still can’t tell truth from fiction.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#150

Post by kykeonaut »

huijzer wrote: post #70
kryogen1c wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.

Although there is one part of my brain which tells me I and other people are rational beings, my own behavior tells me otherwise. Why else would I eat a candy when I rationally know I don’t need it? For people interested, I can highly recommend Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal. It tells many interesting stories about social interactions between apes that look surprisingly human. By the way, did you know that apes pick…

because candy is to carbohydrates what meth is to adderall :)
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