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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)

#171

Post by Eisenstein »

WalterBright wrote: post #162
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…

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 -…

More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. Agriculture, animal husbandry, arts, warfare, engineering were all very sophisticated, limited by the materials science available (firearms, for instance, need very strong metals not to explode).

The scientists that existed before the industrial age in the West were upper class, bored and educated men who did it for their own amusement.

It wasn't until the abandonment of the economic system which worked on the assumption that international economics was zero sum and capitalism (and imperialism) took hold that the incentive structure for creating novel technologies could exist.

This is all recollection based on various histories I have consumed and may not be entirely correct, but I'm pretty sure the idea is solid.

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

#172

Post by NavinF »

kykeonaut wrote: post #150
huijzer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

meth vs adderall is more about dosage. If for some reason you decided to consume massive amounts of adderall the same way crazy homeless people consume meth (1000mg instead of 30mg), you could get addicted to it. Pretty much nobody does this with adderall, but the theory is solid. See https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-of-dru...

> Despite the repeated claims of METH being more addictive or preferred than AMPH, proven differences between METH and AMPH in addiction liability and in reward efficacy have evaded researchers. Animals self-administer METH and AMPH at comparable rates (Balster and Schuster 1973) and humans prefer similar doses (Martin et al. 1971). Also, neither humans nor animals discriminate between equal doses of METH and AMPH (Huang and Ho 1974; Kuhn et al. 1974; Lamb and Henningfield 1994). Furthermore, while METH is commonly believed to be a more potent central psychostimulant than AMPH, no direct comparison on the potency of the two drugs to stimulate central processes have been verified. In addition, no previous study has directly compared the acute effects of the two drugs on locomotor activity, an important central process that contributes tothe definition of psychostimulant. Moreover, there are no known neurobiological differences in action between METH and AMPH that would account for the putatively greater addictive, rewarding, or psychomotor properties of METH.

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

#173

Post by Eisenstein »

WalterBright wrote: post #165
RajT88 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But again, that is access to knowledge. How good would your college education have been if there was no library or textbooks?

If you took the athletes today without their support team and sent them back in time two years before an Olympics event to compete on their own, I don't think it would be as big of a blowout as you suggest.

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

#174

Post by heresie-dabord »

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.

It's a clear planetary majority. There is no consensus about the indoctrination day per se. Not participating is punishable in many regions.

"The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account for 5.8 billion people and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (with the relative numbers for Buddhism and Hinduism dependent on the extent of syncretism), and traditional folk religions."

"The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account for 5.8 billion people and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (with the relative numbers for Buddhism and Hinduism dependent on the extent of syncretism), and traditional folk religions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Demographic_classific...

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

#176

Post by oceanplexian »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #131
jidar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not terrifying. It's how people are, and it's destressing to me that so few people seem to be aware of it. No amount of explaining what confirmation bias is will convince people that drones in the sky aren't aliens. The people who have looked behind the curtain and come to this realization about people and their behavior tend to be the ones who make the skeptic community, so we have that going for us at least.

The fundamental issue with skeptical truth and science is that it is boring in terms of mass market marketing. Combined with the inherent anti intellectual bias of most of America inherited from the nerd hatred of us high schools, reality has no chance against fantasy. Look at how newspapers treat science. Findings are held up like a freak zoo of "look at what the weirdo science nerds are saying now" as they sensatio…

Intellectuals have the same blind spots. During COVID (At least the ones I worked with) made fun of the disease when it started spreading and refused to take it seriously, then did a complete 180 when their social circles took it seriously. And then did insane stuff like wipe down their groceries with bleach and obsessively washed their hands long after the science was clear that it spreading through the air.

No amount of intelligence will protect you from confirmation bias, authority bias, social proof, and the numerous other vulnerabilities we all have built in. Actually intellectuals are more vulnerable, since intelligent people tend to have a cognitive bias where they over-estimate their expertise in unrelated fields to their own.

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

#177

Post by Eisenstein »

willy_k wrote: post #164
wat10000 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Nobody can explain what you saw because they didn't see it with you. Your vision is interpreted by your brain and memories are reinforced by whatever narrative you produce when you recollect them each time and grow stronger into that narrative. It will always have been a drone to you, no matter what anyone can say about why it probably wasn't.

I am not discounting what you saw and have no particular reason to doubt you, but human psychology operates in a way that is not conducive to being proven wrong about such things. Take that as you will.

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

#178

Post by heresie-dabord »

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]

Even well-funded and widely-supported notions, projects, and institutions prove to be mere facades when we demand evidence and verifiable predictability.

So to actually be provocative, I suggest that we set aside theoretical economic constructs and mention the hypothesis of Democracy itself.

Government itself becomes the consensus of the wealthy. And for any lesser hysteria, we can consider the uncomfortable lessons described in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". [1]

[1] _ https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm

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

#179

Post by willy_k »

Eisenstein wrote: post #177
willy_k wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 se…

Nobody can explain what you saw because they didn't see it with you. Your vision is interpreted by your brain and memories are reinforced by whatever narrative you produce when you recollect them each time and grow stronger into that narrative. It will always have been a drone to you, no matter what anyone can say about why it probably wasn't. I am not discounting what you saw and have no particular reason to doubt y…

All true. Although I meant all the observations I’ve noted here - namely the light pattern coupled with not being far enough to be silent if a plane (sure distance is extremely iffy at night but one can tell if a plane is six miles up or one without needing to know it’s exact size).

You’re right that my interpretation in the end will be heavily influenced by my expectations, but unless I completely hallucinated the light pattern or gained temporary telescopic vision such that I saw each nav light separated by multiple visual-field-feet (if that makes any sense) on a plane at cruising altitude, I just can’t think of any explanation that fits better than drone.

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