gregconen comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 16 March 2010 05:40:31AM 2 points [-]

I can't tell if you are honestly trying to help or making fun of me. Although it is possible that it was the things that you mentioned, it feels like it would if I thought I saw an eagle in my backyard and you asked "are you sure it wasn't a pigeon?"

Comment author: Tom_Talbot 16 March 2010 09:21:50AM 3 points [-]

I was genuinely trying to be helpful. I apologise for lack of context/social skills. The fact that you said it was orange made me think of street lighting, and the v-shape of migrating birds.

Anyway, I googled and this explains what I meant:

"Birds

Individually and in flocks, birds can catch out the unwary. Many fuzzy, elliptical UFOs captured by chance on photographs have been attributed to birds flying unnoticed through the field of view just as the shutter was pressed.

Migrating flocks of birds can create UFO ‘formations’, particularly if lit up by streetlights at night.

As a boy, I was fooled by an orange UFO that zig-zagged over the roof of my parents’ house one night. Not until many years later did I realize that it must have been an owl lit up by sodium lighting, which was newly installed in our area at that time."

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/astroufo1.htm