Eneasz comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1329)
To my own great embarrassment, I have experienced a "UFO sighting". It was in the late 1990s in Phoenix, Arizona. What I saw was 7 or 8 bright orbs in the shape of a triangle traveling very slowly over the Phoenix/Scottsdale area (which is why I thought it was a blimp at first). After about a minute and comparing it to a nearby mountain I decided that it couldn't possibly be a blimp. The length and width were way too large. Next, I thought that perhaps it was flares, but after watching it for about 10 more minutes was sure they they had either floated higher into the sky or stayed the same altitude and were still in the same configuration with respect to each other (an isosceles triangle).
Before my personal experience, I had assumed that the people on those ridiculous documentary shows on the Discovery Channel were simply fools or people suffering from a psychological illness. I wasn't the kind of person who believed in that stuff. The next day I started questioning if I even saw it (after all, I would probably has ridiculed someone who told me they saw such a thing the previous day). It must have been a mistake. A few months later, I rationalized it by telling myself that it had been a dream. This worked until my mother (who also saw it) reminded me about something that happened on that same day.
I had a very similar UFO sighting, just a couple months ago. Fortunately I've been consuming rationalist media for a long time, and I was able to say "There is a non-magic answer to this question, just because I don't know the answer doesn't mean UFOs exist. My map is incomplete, but the territory isn't magic."
It doesn't make the creepy shiver-up-your-spine and cold-knot-in-your-stomach feelings go away, those are biological reactions. But it does let you accept them and ride them out, like the cramp you know will go away in a while that isn't ACTUALLY a knife in your leg, no matter how much it feels like it.
If it's an object, it's suspended in the air ("flying"), and you haven't identified it's nature or origin in any meaningful way, then in the most ham-fistedly literal sense, it's an Unidentified Flying Object. What am I missing, here?
While it may literally mean "unidentified flying object", in the USA it is synonymous for "Extra-Terrestrial Craft"