• frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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    10 hours ago

    Right, that’s my point, thanks for agreeing.

    You’re claiming that we do have data, but not enough. So let’s investigate. And you’re happy to trust my eyewitness account in one case but not the other.

    It’s obvious that some phenomena will have a lot of data, some (dark matter, Planet X, sterile neutrinos, Sasquatch), are only suspected to exist. We have varying amounts of data for varying phenomena, naturally.

    Have you read Kuhn? He says that when anomalous data build up that contradicts the incumbent theory, they’re dismissed/resisted for a long time, don’t get research-funding, until enough substantiating data build up that the paradigm has to be replaced.

    There are two ways of dealing with data that don’t match your theory –

    • Investigate, research, adjust
    • Dismiss, ignore, deride. You’ve used scare-quotes twice here and here to sneer at the data that doesn’t fit the understanding that temporarily holds sway now.

    One of these two ways is rational, the other is dogmatic.

    At least three claims have been made in this thread that were quickly debunked –

    • All sasquatch sightings are from single witnesses and them in delirious states. This is a falsification of the data.
    • There have been no sasquatch or UFO sightings since the smartphone era. This is a falsification of the data.
    • People who do normal jobs have no credibility. Your opinion is invalid if you are not bourgeois.

    Which is more likely:

    • There are no anomalies
    • Some people have a psychological abreaction against anomalies, and try to shout them down.

    I’ll admit to having poor understanding of the paradigmatic theory of these data. Supposing there is a vast conspiracy to fake UFO videos, to have fake congressional and military inquiries… why? Why do these alleged conspirators make these claims? They get a lot of negative backlash from the dogmatists – why expose themselves to scorn for no reason?

    Or the ‘mass hallucination’ theory… what is the psychology theory behind that? I’ve never heard of a credible psychiatric report of people hallucinating the same thing at the same time. And why would people with no existing mental conditions suddenly start hallucinating?