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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)

#161

Post by raddan »

nilsbunger wrote: post #149
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.

I assume this is why this was posted on HN. My first thought when I heard the drone stories was “you’re just noticing them now?” Anyone who has ever spent any time watching the skies knows that there is an amazing variety of things in the sky.

To be honest I am kind of surprised that the current hysteria revolves around something plausible (foreign drones) given that past hysteria has been about the totally implausible (alien UFOs… or angels… or whatever).

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

#162

Post by WalterBright »

Eisenstein wrote: post #115
Vegenoid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…

Initial technological progress was agonizingly slow. Presuming that man then was just as smart as today, why would that be so?

I suspect it is because the thought of what might be possible just never entered their minds.

For example, Edison invented the idea of the invention development laboratory. Very, very recently. The Wright Bros were the first to come up with the idea of a research and development laboratory - just over a century ago.

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

#163

Post by BenjiWiebe »

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…

This is like saying you're more likely to fall for scams if you think you're too smart to fall for them.

I don't think it works that way.

I wouldn't use the word smart to describe the people (that I know) that fall for scams/conspiracy theories.

Now, you could say that they incorrectly think they're to smart, but then that means how smart you consider yourself isn't relevant, i.e. a not-smart person and a smart person both consider themselves smart.

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

#164

Post by willy_k »

wat10000 wrote: post #160
willy_k wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Parallax relative to the clouds doesn’t tell you anything unless you know how fast it’s moving or how far away it is. Given all the rest, I have to say I’m not super confident in your estimate of angular size.

> I’m not super confident in your estimate of angular size.

Neither am I, but I am confident it was a drone. Does “given all the rest” mean I wrote so much I have to be crazy, or do you actually have an explanation that better fits what I saw? Given the light configuration I don’t see how it could be a plane. And helicopters make a very distinctive noise. Maybe I saw a military helicopter, but at that point drones seem more likely.

I am interested in alternative proposals that take into account everything I observed. Less so in single-point criticisms coming from the assumption that there’s nothing to see so I must be deluded if I think I saw something.

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

#165

Post by WalterBright »

RajT88 wrote: post #122
Eisenstein wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…

> People may have had less access to information and technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we are now. There's probably an aspect to people confusing "knowledge" with "brainpower". People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. We have the advantage of Millenia of stuff figured out and documented. So we know on average more about how the universe works than people in the d…

> People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today.

I seriously doubt that. My experience in college was not to learn facts and formulae, but to learn how to learn. I.e. training the mind.

It's similar to athletes. The worst Olympic athlete today would blow away the best from a century ago. That's not because people are inherently stronger today, but because we know how to train much better.

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

#166

Post by raddan »

jdietrich wrote: post #151
karlgkk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the seed oil thing is so funny to me because, like, yeah. also, no. it's actually true. they cause serious inflammation which aggravates serious downstream health problems. like, you shouldn't be eating seed oils in any large quantity that you would get from regularly eating deep fried foods oh but wait, eating foods with beef tallow and other saturated fats also causes health problems. except, those problems only sh…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmY-VYUeAuc

lol!

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

#167

Post by stickfigure »

mikepurvis wrote: post #94
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".

I think the vast majority of people are just astonishingly suggestible. That combined with a dash of main character syndrome and horrid sleep patterns and you’ve got millions driving home from work in the dark, ready to immediately assume that whatever is out their windshield is what they heard about on the radio that morning.

The majority of people (in the US, at least) spend half a day a week being taught to believe in magic. From birth. Usually on Sunday.

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

#168

Post by WalterBright »

binoct wrote: post #99
vehemenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm more optimistic. Is it our animal nature? Or is it that science is hard, and most people don't have enough formal education in the relevant subjects to know they're out of their depth, let alone to understand these things.

I don’t take issue with the point of your last sentence, but rather the framing that “animal” is somehow a negative thing. Humans are animals, there’s no separate animal nature. We are animals, full stop. The scientific method is a skill we have developed to be more objective about complicated phenomena. Depth of knowledge and education certainly help an individual reason more carefully about cause and effect in vari…

What separates men from animals is men have honor.

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

#169

Post by WalterBright »

stickfigure wrote: post #167
mikepurvis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of people are just astonishingly suggestible. That combined with a dash of main character syndrome and horrid sleep patterns and you’ve got millions driving home from work in the dark, ready to immediately assume that whatever is out their windshield is what they heard about on the radio that morning.

The majority of people (in the US, at least) spend half a day a week being taught to believe in magic. From birth. Usually on Sunday.

[flagged]

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

#170

Post by cassepipe »

WalterBright wrote: post #169
stickfigure wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of people (in the US, at least) spend half a day a week being taught to believe in magic. From birth. Usually on Sunday.

[flagged]

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/25/is-everything-a-religi...
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