Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
It's all eyewitness observation. So tell me, can YOU tell a bicycle from a motorcycle?
LOL! They can't? How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Is it me or is this site in its death throes?
- Thread starter Bowser
- Start date
It's all eyewitness observation. So tell me, can YOU tell a bicycle from a motorcycle?
LOL! They can't? How did you arrive at this conclusion?
If you showed an indigenous tribesman from, say, an isolated Amazonian village with no technology at all a picture of a motorcycle, would they know what it was?
Are you claiming you could tell something is an alien spacecraft without ever having been onboard an alien spacecraft? Hell, for that matter, can you differentiate a 747 from a 767 when they are flying at 15,000 feet?
Knock it off with the red herrings...
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James R said: ↑
Congratulatons Kitta... you clearly have James R's ear... stay strong an dont let any rule brakers slide... ie... "give 'em an inch an they will take a mile"... which will lead to the serious science-minded people never comin back an others will continue to leave.!!!
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Looks like the reason this group is in its death roes has been abundantly demonstrated in this thread. Moderator abuse of power...plain and simple. No wonder most the sensible posters have moved on.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Philosophical argument can be frustrating and that can make people angry. It's best to try to remain centered and calm.
Eyewitness testimony is typically a combination of personal experience and memory of that experience. If our experience is totally 'real-time' and 'in-the-moment', it wouldn't be very useful in guiding our subsequent behavior during life. Learning from experience (or instruction) would be impossible, for one thing.
You'd be more persuasive if you didn't behave like that.
You and Bells would be more successful if you didn't overstate your positions to the point of absurdity. The idea that people relating their own experience is "more often than not, wholly unreliable" is ridiculous on its face.
If somebody just wants to argue for the far more defensible position that other people's reports of their own experiences don't necessarily have to be credulously believed at face-value, I'll happily agree. I certainly don't believe everything I'm told.
Though I will say that we probably should accept our own and others' experience until we have good reason not to. That's what happens in the arguments from illusion, and it's how evidence, including witness testimony, is treated in courts of law: witness testimony isn't just dismissed a-priori because it is based on personal experience, but it is treated as rebuttable. Counter-evidence has to be produced that contradicts it. Then decisions have to be made regarding which evidence is more convincing.
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Then why do we need road signs?
In your dreams, I guess... since that seems to be the only place you can win a debate.
There is nothing "philosophical" about outright dishonesty and fallacious thinking...
I would counter, you would be more persuasive if you stuck to the facts, instead of attempting to be dishonest *shrug*
So you contend that the citations provided are wrong, then?
So, you wish to dismiss the volumes of evidence and numerous studies proving just how fallible memory is in favor of... what, exactly? Continuing to convict innocent people?
This in particular strikes me as odd - who is claiming that our experience is totally real time or in the moment? The claim made was that "in the moment" experience and the ability to pick out details of such an experience is vastly different from trying to recall something from memory, even just minutes later. Studies have shown this to be true, time and again... do you have some actual evidence to show in rebuttal?
I do apologize if I seem irritated by all of this - I have been watching a site I've participated in for several years slowly degrade due to an influx of bad-faith debating and other rules violations... now that we are finally taking steps to fix this, I hope that those who left to search for more good-faith debates will return; however, there are some folks who seem bound and determined to try and be as disruptive as possible.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
So people can know what to do and where to go the first time they drive on a street.
Does this mean you only ever need road signs the first time you have been on a street? You have never needed reminding on how to get some place you don't often go? You did, after all, specify that they are so people know what to do and where to go the first time they drive on a street...
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Then why do people need three signs to tell them of an upcoming exit? Why are there multiple speed limit signs along a given stretch of road? Why are there periodic reminders of rules for HOV lanes?
That's a rhetorical question. They need more than one sign because PEOPLE FORGET. There would be far more lost people without those signs.
And even with those signs, the most common excuses for speeding are:
3. I didn't know I broke the speed limit: 12.4 percent.
2. I'm lost and unfamiliar with the roads: 15.6 percent.
1. I couldn't see the sign telling me not to do it: 20.4 percent.
(from insurance.com)
Your attempts to support a point that was weak to begin with are becoming pretty pathetic. I'd stop digging that hole now if I were you. (I know you won't, but that's life.)
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I don't know about your claim that there's always 3 signs for everything. Most the speed limits and exits I see are double signs at most. People don't need multiple signs because they forget. They need multiple signs to get in the right lane before the exit comes up. It's not because people forget which exit is coming up. And it's not because people forget what the new speed limit is. They need to know when to start slowing down. Other speed limit signs are repeated for people who turn onto the street or enter the freeway after the previous speed limit sign. It's just common sense. Reminding forgetful people is a ludicrous claim.
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Two miles before the exit - "Main St 2 miles Downey St 3 miles"
Half a mile before the exit - "Main St next exit"
At the exit - "Main St"
Speed limit signs are placed regularly; most freeways have dozens of them along their length.
But keep digging, by all means! You're very entertaining with your claims that drivers (and indeed most people) have nearly infallible memories.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Never said that. Be careful. Kittamaru infracts posters for claiming people said things they didn't.
He isn't wrong - your implied reasoning seems to be that you think memory is nigh infallible.
From the large number of people who claim to see UFO's only to find out they are airplanes.
During the day? Pretty easy.
At night from 300 yards away? Sometimes all I can see are the lights and it's impossible to tell whether it has a motor or not. Fortunately that's all I need to see.
Your own words:
"So you're claiming both long term and short term memory, which are totally at play in getting millions of drivers to their destinations everyday, are unreliable?" - you then disputed this.
"Tens of millions of people successfully drive from one location to the next every day, even in rainy conditions, without having accidents. That's screams loudly for the accuracy of eyewitness experience." - you then described how people did not need multiple signs due to their memories,
But keep digging! I am enjoying this.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Oh really? So what is this supposed large number and where did you get it from?
Right. And so do most drivers.
Where did I claim drivers' memories are "nearly infallible"? I never said it. You do realize that something can be reliable and accurate without being infallible. Your car for instance.
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Here's one example of 60 such incidents, in one month, in one city.
==============
10/25/2011 12:23 pm ET
B-2 Stealth Bomber And Other Aircraft Mistaken For UFOs
By Lee Speigel
Huffpo
People in Missouri have been scratching their heads this month over a rash of UFO sightings that has them wondering if it’s alien visitors, small plane experimental flying teams, the B-2 stealth bomber or all of the above. So far, eyewitnesses in the “Show Me” state have been entertained by aerial displays of lights or orbs in the night sky, with the majority of sightings centered around the Kansas City area. “With all the sightings, we’ve had a description of a triangle-shaped craft with multicolored lights surrounding it,” said Debbie Ziegelmeyer, state director for Missouri MUFON, a chapter of the International Mutual UFO Network. “We have information that the nearby Whiteman Air Force Base, 50 miles east of Kansas City, is under a yellow alert with training mission activities of the B-2 stealth bombers around the area.” But, according to Ziegelmeyer, it wasn’t just the B-2 craft that may be responsible for many of the nearly 60 UFO sightings since the beginning of the month. "We learned about an EAA flight team (Experimental Aircraft Association), based in Lee’s Summit, Mo., that was doing some stunt flying on Oct. 4,” Ziegelmeyer told The Huffington Post. “They practiced for an audition to do a night aerial formation flight for the Kansas City Chiefs. Their team leader told me it was a group of six small planes that fly in groups, and they flew together in a delta or triangular formation, circling over Lee’s Summit before heading to Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Chiefs, where they circled the stadium and then returned to the Lee’s Summit Municipal Airport.”
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I love to watch you try to backpedal.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Not the "large number" of people who mistake airplanes for ufos I was expecting. I guess you don't have that number then?
Still waiting for you to quote where I said drivers' memories are "nearly infallible". I don't even know what that means. I mean something is either fallible or infallible. There's no such thing as something being nearly infallible.
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Keep trolling MR
You are absolutely correct MR. The proper structure would be "nearly infallible." Good catch...