Sure. I guess you know better than I . I am a flawed first person observer. Please do let me know what my experience was.
That’s right, you are. And it’s not just you, either; nearly anyone who hasn’t been trained to be particularly observant is going to be subject to perceptive and memory distortions and these problems tend to be magnified over time, resulting in decreasingly accurate recollection the more time has passed. No one is more aware of this fact than police who have investigated incidents with multiple witnesses; they can interview ten witnesses and get twelve different descriptions of what happened. Everyone has their own biases, experiences, expectations and perceptions which tend to color their observations.
For these reasons, firsthand witness accounts are the LEAST reliable types of evidence. Sorry if that offends you.
That is why I never talk about it. Other people know what I saw. I do not. It is not wise to bring up such things. On a computer board maybe less risky.
How the hell do you train someone to be observant and why do you assume I am not.
What about the cops who saw something. did their ability suddenly leave them only to return when needed for work.
So seeing is the worst kind of evidence. Every thing has that for a starting point. I did not touch or smell anything. When I cross the street I still rely on my poor seeing abilities. I should be more careful.
No one is saying that at all. They are saying the exact opposite.
What is being said is that no one, not me, not you, not Q.E.D., could be certain of all the details after 50 years. So we don’t know what you saw, no one does. At least, not exactly. Memory is too malleable across that period of time.
Why couldn’t the aliens be indifferent to our seeing them? They could fly by, not see anything of interest and then move on to Venus. Since they are supersmart, they probably wouldn’t need to land in order to learn what they were interested in.
My personal belief is that we probably haven’t been visited but I’m agnostic on the matter.
Not right. That is not the kind of thing that fades with memory. Like your first kiss or homerun,they stay there forever. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated . How about when Elvis died. Your mother or father die. You will remember as long as you live. My dad died 35 years ago. I can tell you what we were eating when the hospital called . I can tell you who was there.
And many of those memories don’t hold up to examination. It is a fact of life, not a judgment or an accusation, that some of our most treasured memories are objectively inaccurate or wrong. I have had cherished memories from childhood that I’ve told and retold, but in speaking of them with my folks they’ve informed me that those events couldn’t have happened.
In one case, I can remember a relative who died before I was born. How did that happen? Somewhere along the line I confused a memory of one person with stories I’d been told of another person. The memories seemed so real but they couldn’t possibly have happened. Even now, knowing that the meeting never occurred I can draw on that memory and it feels real.
I don’t think anyone doubts that you saw something. But the at this point the details and specifics are so unreliable as to be impossible to verify or assess.
I was reading about Carter’s (alleged) encounter with the UFO-then read where he was attacked by a swimming rabbit!
Given Carter’s tremendously poor judgement (as president), was he suffering from some kind of mental illness?
I should have never posted. I knew where it would go.
What, people pointing out to you (accurately) that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, and you treating it as a personal affront of some sort?
I didn’t say the memories would have faded away, I said the details would not all be correct.
This isn’t something that is directed at you, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the memories are of something that seemed alien or paranormal to you. Any memory from 50 years is suspect with regards to the fine details. Likewise any memory from a high tension or traumatic situation. Some details may be spot on, some others will have been distorted by time, selective recall, combining of memories, etc.
This is true of all of us. Unless you’re willing to say that you’re a one in millions who has perfect recall in these instances. As Telemark points out, we all have this problem. Memories that seem rock solid and certain turn out to be off in some respects. Sometimes just small details are wrong, sometimes memories have been created wholly.
What was said (and I’m going by memory) is that there is no way to tell what happened to you 50 years ago because there is not enough information. Your own memory, good as it may be, will not be correct on all points.
Someone trying to investigate based on that would likely never be able to say anything other than “Yep, you saw something you couldn’t explain.” And since further information most likely does not exist, your statement that no one can explain it is likely correct. Not necessarily because it was something of alien origin or paranormal, but because of the lack of complete information.
I make no claims about what it was. I do not know.
As Schaeffer points out in The UFO Verdict, Carter’s observations sem to have been accurate. And he didn’t say he saw a “Flying Saucer”, he said he saw an unidentified object. Which it was – he simply didn’t identify it properly as a planet.
As for the rabbitm, the film shows that a swimming rabbit did indeed approach the president while he was canoeing. Carter was understandably concerned that the rabbit might be rabid, since a rabbit swimming TOWARD a boat is aberrant behavior. He avoided the rabbit. Prident behavior, in my opinion. What should he have done? Smacked it with the paddle? Helped it into the boat?
I can’t see anything wrong with Carter’s actions in either case. What would YOU have done?
This is a little bit of an aside, but all the speculation that any other life form, on Earth or anywhere else, may be “intelligent” strikes me as extremely anthropocentric. Isn’t “intelligent” in this context just shorthand for the specific set of behaviors and ways of thinking that have evolved in tool-using post-arboreal primate mammals? Even if other life is “intelligent,” I see no reason to think it would be intelligent in anywhere near the same way humans are, or that “intelligence” would ever lead to science and space travel except in one very specific case.
The very idea of alien-piloted UFOs visiting Earth or anywhere else is giving extremely human-like characteristics to the most un-human like beings imaginable.