1.You didn't really comment on my proposition that ALL eye witnesses has to fumble.
He did. It's not necessary for all eyewitnesses to be mistaken. If 600 people report something that sounds like possible extraterrestrial activity, but there were 60,000 people there to see it, only 1% have to "fumble their eyesight roll," and if they're given opportunity to converse with each other beforehand, a few people who think they saw something strange may be able to convince many other people to revise their memories so they also believe they saw something strange. This sort of thing happens all the time, and almost certainly accounts for a proportion of eyewitness accounts even if we assume that there really are genuine cases of people witnessing extraterrestrial activity.
Recently I've been struck with a belief in Aliens being present on this Earth. It happened after I watched this documenary (and subsequently several others). My feeling of belief is not particular interesting in itself - I could be lunatic or otherwise psychological dysfunctional. What I'm interested in knowing is to what extend other people, who consider themselves rationalists, feel belief in the existence of aliens on this earth, after watching this documentary. Is anyone willing to try and watch it and then report back?
Another question arising in this matter is how to treat evidence of extraordinary things. Should one require 'extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims'? I somehow feel that this notion is misguided - it discriminates evidence prior to observation. That is not the right time to start discriminating. At most we should ascribe a prior probability of zero and then do some Bayesian updating to get a posterior. Hmm, if no one has seen a black swan and some bayesian thinking person then sees a black swan a) in the distance or b) up front, what will his a posterior probability of the existence of black swans then be?