Comment by codezero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codezero | Hacker News Reader

preface: this was a great and interesting article, forgive my grumbles below :)

People are rarely reliable witnesses when they are trying to tell a story. Being an officer of anything doesn't really lend anyone extra credibility either, everyone has their own biases and fantasies. Astronauts have claimed to see aliens and this doesn't make them more credible than a guy on his farm who claims the same thing.

I do think that it's always worth keeping an open mind about the existence of undiscovered creatures, but I don't think it's necessary to latch on to transient sightings to decide that those are the creatures we should look for.

Every time a decaying dead whale washes up on shore, even smart people think it might be something new or undiscovered, because that sounds less banal than the reality, this causes news media to stir up because life is generally boring, and people eat it up for the same reason.

I'll leave the science to the scientists and wait patiently for their new discoveries :)

I think it does make them more credible. Our early astronauts came from the test pilot programs, mostly, where careful observation of things (expected or not) out of the ordinary was a critical life skill, not to mention part of their job.

If Bob says he saw a UFO, I am likely to believe that he might have been drunk, or mistaken, or tricked by the light. If a test pilot (who is more familiar with light effects and weather balloons, etc) or astronaut tells me they saw something out of the ordinary, I lend that more credence.

Of course it's possible that they're mistaken in their testimony, but I think it's more likely for the astronaut to have noticed and correctly reported something than for the average Joe.

The real thing you should ask is, did "Bob" believe in UFOs before he/she became a pilot, or involved in the military? The military doesn't give people any more information than they need, there's no reason to think that a highly trained pilot has any more information than they need to fly a very fast deathplane :)

Whatever your experience, there always is something that is so rare that you won't have seen it. Bob's will have that with an event of which the test pilot thinks "I have seen that countless times", that test pilot will have it with an event that is way rarer, but that still may have some quite ordinary explanation. Program is, we don't have an super test pilot who can say "I have seen that countless times".

And yes that will be something out of the ordinary. But the test pilot claims as to what it is, I wouldn't trust more than Bob's claims as to the nature of the things he finds extraordinary.

Agreed, people are unreliable sources of information. It's not because we're trying to fabricate a story or lie, it's because our memory is anything but perfect. I remember seeing some good YouTube videos that demonstrated this, but I can't find any at the moment. Below is a random eyewitness video I just stumbled across...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSzPn9rsPcY

I think the best part of that video is how the professor mentioned the robber had an odd nose. Later, the student recalls seeing the robber firsthand with an odd shaped nose, but they don't recall hearing anything from the teacher. This is basically inception, the teacher planted a small seed of information, and now it turns into the memory of the student without them knowing.

Yep, for sure. Reminds me also of the Gorilla experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

> Astronauts have claimed to see aliens

Really? Which astronauts?

Correction, an Astronaut believes in a global conspiracy to cover up human knowledge of UFOs and extra terrestrials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell

unrelated: your bio sounds interesting, do you have any info on your roguelike mmo? :)

Thanks! It's called Massive Dungeon, and is heavily inspired by Dungeon Crawl. It has a retro pixel graphics aesthetic. The goal is 10,000 players in a single, truly massive dungeon, all trying to beat each other to the bottom. No rules, no holds barred, every man for himself. Winners are immortalized forever.

Awesome, sounds equal parts fun and frustrating, a true rogue-like :P

I'd play that. Maybe put up a "coming soon" and collect my email in the meantime? :)

Epic! When can we play? You collecting emails yet?

> It has a retro pixel graphics aesthetic

Something like Pixel Dungeon[1] ? I love this game btw. So it isn't as free and open as a traditional rogue like, but it's perfect for a touch interface

[1]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watabou.pi...

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