[HN Gopher] Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fev...
___________________________________________________________________
Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on
April 15, 1954 (2003)
Author : psc
Score : 181 points
Date : 2024-12-18 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historylink.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historylink.org)
| ggm wrote:
| Timely, given the "lights in the sky" fever.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't get why someone would see lights in the sky and jump to
| anything other than "domestic/commercial aircraft". Why would
| aliens or foreign powers light their vehicles up for easy
| spotting?
|
| _I_ would really start to worry if I spotted an aircraft at
| dusk /night with no lights on it.
| jerlam wrote:
| They were primed by social media and other sources to believe
| it.
| evan_ wrote:
| Not to mention, videos of "drones" are hot right now and
| get a lot of traffic, so if you can convince yourself that
| the lights you see in the sky above the airport are drones,
| you too can get some of those eyeballs
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Most people don't know what airplanes _really_ look like or
| what lights they have on them. To most people, _any_ flying
| object is unidentified and _any_ aerial phenomenon is
| unexplained. We use pennies more regularly than we see
| airplanes, but how many can pick the right penny from this
| lineup? https://human-
| factors.arc.nasa.gov/groups/cognition/tutorial...
|
| It gets easier to believe when supposed trustworthy sources:
| news outlets, the government as a whole and even specific
| senators/ex governors, fan the flames of conspiracy instead
| of common sense.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i have not used a penny in at least 5 years, i see planes
| on the daily - but get your point.
|
| pennies are useless junk, straight to the recycling bin for
| me. really epitomizes our dysfunction that we are unable to
| stop making them
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I have to keep making pennies to replace the ones you're
| throwing away! Don't destroy currency!
|
| I put mine in baggies and use them as weights
| whimsicalism wrote:
| dealing with them in any other way is literally not
| economical to me if it takes more than like a quarter of
| a second of time.
| outworlder wrote:
| Aliens are just good neighbors and figured out FAA
| regulations before visiting.
| refulgentis wrote:
| To me, people are A) out of touch with how degenerate our
| information environment has gotten B) generally, how little
| people look into things outside their wheelhouse.
|
| It's not any one individual thing. You can even reframe some
| (one?) of the factors as Great Democracy Saving.
|
| But they add up to: it is rational to not really trust
| anything, and people don't mind if you were wrong if you just
| didn't trust The Man/They, so there's more incentive to not
| trust, than trust.
|
| Hyperbole from people who should know better doesn't help.
| Ex. a quite intelligent AI commentator tweeted yesterday,
| asking why there hasn't been a reckoning for anyone who
| publicly worried about effects of AI imagery on truth.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The Governor of Maryland posted a video of lights in the sky
| that were very clearly not any kind of aircraft.
|
| Because they were stars. Naturally, this dimwit took the
| opportunity to blame the feds for failing to act.
|
| Apparently there are a lot of people out there who ordinarily
| just never look up in their daily lives. And instead of
| thinking "I'm not familiar with this stuff so I don't know
| what I'm seeing," they manage to conclude "I'm seeing
| something strange and nobody knows what it is."
| ekidd wrote:
| Even 30 years ago, if you had a clear sky in countryside,
| you could see the occasional satellite. Very tiny, much
| tinier than airplane lights, and surprisingly fast. Today,
| there are a lot more.
|
| And of course there have always been plenty of airplane
| lights.
|
| Not to mention Venus, which more than one fighter pilot has
| tried to shoot down.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I got to see an ISS flare once, that was fun
| willy_k wrote:
| There are without a doubt large drones with nav lights flying
| around multiple states at night now. There are a lot of
| people seeing drones where they aren't, too, and it would be
| odd if that weren't happening. But to take that and say
| "nothing to see here" is ignoring the mass of solid video and
| official non-statement evidence to the contrary.
|
| I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or
| helicopter at first, but it was too close to the ground
| (seemed a few hundred feet up at most), had the mismatched
| light pattern characteristic of trans-wing drones, and moved
| too slowly for other types of aircraft. And most damningly it
| didn't make any noise audible from the ground, something not
| even stealth bombers can accomplish. Honestly, it kind of
| freaked me out having some previously abstract news-cycle
| object just floating ominously down the road across from me.
|
| EDIT: I thought that HN of all places would be able to pick
| what's actually happening from what's not; Mass hysteria
| occurring and drones being everywhere are not mutually
| exclusive, and a critical analysis of the info available
| makes it very clear that there are mysterious drones out at
| night. Seeing one article about people misidentifying things
| only tells you that people are misidentifying things, it says
| nothing about the countless videos showing positively
| identified drones, and certainly not about the fact that the
| government has repeatedly stated that there are drones doing
| this. And given all of that, downvoting someone giving their
| personal account with reasonable criticality is at best
| ignorant.
| engcoach wrote:
| You can't gauge the airspeed of an airplane from the
| ground. What you are observing is the _ground speed_ ,
| which is affected by winds. So a small Cessna flying into a
| heavy headwind can appear to move very, very slowly
| relative to the ground.
| willy_k wrote:
| I'm aware of that, and I tried to think that was what was
| happening. But the motion apart from speed was nothing
| like a typical plane, and the other factors led me to
| conclude it was a drone. When I say the FAA light
| patterns were off, what I mean is that it had two red
| lights on the outside, and two green lights on the
| inside. AFAIK, the only type of aircraft that might have
| that configuration is a trans-wing drone.
| echoangle wrote:
| > When I say the FAA light patterns were off, what I mean
| is that it had two red lights on the outside, and two
| green lights on the inside. AFAIK, the only type of
| aircraft that might have that configuration is a trans-
| wing drone.
|
| What? How do you get from a specific kind of lighting to
| ,,trans-wing drone"? What prevents me from lighting a
| regular-wing RC plane with the same lighting
| configuration?
| willy_k wrote:
| > What prevents me from lighting a regular-wing RC plane
| with the same lighting configuration?
|
| If I'm not mistaken, the FAA does (unless RC planes
| aren't covered?). Are you really positing that I saw an
| intentionally misconfigured RC plane flying in the middle
| of nowhere at 2 AM?
|
| You're right that I'm making a leap with the trans-wing
| part. I said that because it's my understanding that some
| of the sightings have included airfoil and transforming
| drones, that a trans-wing drone would exhibit the light
| pattern I saw, and that the military (Navy I believe)
| does own trans-wing drones that match other the
| descriptions of other sightings. So to me the lights were
| the final nail that this wasn't a plane, but I held on to
| it being a plane for a while.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > ignoring the mass of solid video
|
| 100% of the ones I looked into have been debunked,
| helicopters, planes, out of focus stars, fireworks, &c.
|
| > (seemed a few hundred feet up at most)
|
| At night you have absolutely no way to tell
|
| > And most damningly it didn't make any noise audible from
| the ground, something not even stealth bombers can
| accomplish.
|
| My $300 dji can accomplish that, it's not a chinese super
| weapon nor an alien craft
|
| > Honestly, it kind of freaked me out having some
| previously abstract news-cycle object just floating
| ominously down the road across from me.
|
| That's the definition of media induced mass hysteria, you
| notice a lot of weird things when you look at things you
| usually don't bother looking at. People in Los Angeles
| freaked the fuck out when they saw the milky way during an
| electricity outage in 1994
| willy_k wrote:
| > 100% of the ones I looked into have been debunked,
| helicopters, planes, out of focus stars, fireworks
|
| A lot of videos are bunk, I have seen at least one video
| that is certainly drones.
|
| > At night you have absolutely no way to tell
|
| I agree, but I've seen plenty of other aircraft at night
| and it appeared to be much closer than any of those. And
| you can get a rough guess based on apparent size of the
| lights, though of course that's extremely rough unless
| you know the size of the aircraft.
|
| > My $300 dji can accomplish that, it's not a chinese
| super weapon nor an alien craft
|
| I know, I never claimed it was aliens or a Chinese super
| weapon, I claimed they were drones. It's almost certain
| that they are military drones, and if I had to guess
| they're searching for something that would cause real
| mass hysteria if told to the public.
|
| > That's the definition of media induced mass hysteria,
| you notice a lot of weird things when you look at things
| you usually don't bother looking at. People in Los
| Angeles freaked the fuck out when they saw the milky way
| during an electricity outage in 1994
|
| That certainly occurs, what I meant is more that I felt
| an odd sensation having the news cycle and what I
| observed collide, in the sense that it didn't feel quite
| real. I would normally notice at an aircraft that
| appeared to be as close as it was, and I would definitely
| pay more attention to it when I noticed the lights and
| movement pattern, regardless of the news cycle. It
| actually took me a second to connect the two.
|
| People in LA freaking out because they saw the Milky Way
| is normal, people noticed something new and reacted to
| it. I would wager that more people responded with awe
| than with freaking out, but they weren't as interesting
| to the media. Regardless of whether they were freaked out
| or not (and I wasn't freaked out so much as it was
| freaky), they still saw something real.
| echoangle wrote:
| > It's almost certain that they are military drones, and
| if I had to guess they're searching for something that
| would cause real mass hysteria if told to the public.
|
| Why is that almost certain?
| willy_k wrote:
| Well almost is doing a lot of heavy lifting, the case is
| all circumstantial. But I say that both because of a
| Reddit post that makes a strong case that at least some
| portion of sightings are a specific model of navy drone,
| and more so because their being military is the only
| situation where the government response makes sense to
| me.
|
| If they were an enemy's, one would expect them to be shot
| down. If they were an ally's, they would need a damn good
| reason to be here and an even better reason why people
| can't know. Maybe they're a private citizen's, but I
| struggle to imagine why a private entity would have a
| fleet of large drones that they covertly deploy along the
| coasts, and why our government would abide that. So as I
| see it, the two options that make sense are that they're
| an enemy's that we can't shoot down for some terrifying
| reason, or they're ours.
| echoangle wrote:
| > I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or
| helicopter at first, but it was too close to the ground
| (seemed a few hundred feet up at most), had the mismatched
| light pattern characteristic of trans-wing drones, and
| moved too slowly for other types of aircraft. And most
| damningly it didn't make any noise audible from the ground,
| something not even stealth bombers can accomplish.
|
| That's exactly what you would expect from a regular
| airplane though. You can't accurately differentiate ,,low
| and slow" vs ,,high and fast" at night. And quiet operation
| is what high flying planes seem to do regularly.
| willy_k wrote:
| You can gauge rough distance/height pretty well by the
| angles and relative distances between the nav lights. If
| it is was high enough to be silent, it was at least 10x
| the size of a 747.
| mrandish wrote:
| It's also clear that some more recent reports are trolls
| flying their Costco drones around. Amazingly, as documented
| on the news and YouTube, there are now people flying their
| personal drones at night in an effort to find and follow the
| 'original' drones (!) I assume they are now all following
| each other around, creating new reports of "Mysterious Drone
| Swarm Sighted". :-)
|
| Of course, not all "Lights in the Sky" are airplanes,
| helicopters, drones, stars, satellites or reflections of
| ground-based lights. There was an interesting sighting in
| Arizona two weeks ago analyzed and explained by the
| indefatigable Mick West (2 min video)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00KT4PCd-0.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Same reason people hearing moose or coyotes think they're
| about to get attacked by a skin walker: ignorance and being
| primed by social medias
| Lerc wrote:
| The problem is that too many people don't know what 'normal'
| is and nobody can pay attention to everything all of the
| time. When attention is drawn to something, and without the
| ability to judge if something is unusual, the inclination is
| to believe that noticing for the first time is the same as
| occurring for the first time.
|
| The additives added to tap water to make them generate
| rainbows is a good example
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw
|
| There is a BBC Radio program called More or Less, which
| covers analysis of statistics in the media. They have a motto
| "Is that a big number?" which is a great starting point for
| any investigation, essentially asking if the observation is
| what you would expect if nothing newsworthy were occurring.
| It's worth keeping that idea floating in your head.
| shreddit wrote:
| Even then my first thought would be "military" or "idiot with
| a plane license" before worrying about "attack of the flying
| saucers".
|
| I worry more about things I can't see...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The scientific term is collective hysteria or mass-hysteria.
|
| https://dictionary.apa.org/collective-hysteria
| icameron wrote:
| People noticing lights in the night sky is timely, with the
| darkest weeks of the year.
| 1attice wrote:
| I take it, sotto voce, that this is about the New Jersey drone
| sightings?
| fshafique wrote:
| What if we are living in a simulation and the new pitted glass
| texture was rolled out, but our collective memories weren't
| updated?
| dave4420 wrote:
| What if they switch the simulation off an hour after we notice?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Patch V1954.1: New normal map support for car windshields.
| Requires DirectX9 or later.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| The TLDR cause was:
|
| The windshield pitting epidemic was a case of collective
| delusion, where heightened awareness, media influence, and
| misattributed environmental factors led people to notice and
| misinterpret existing, ordinary damage as a mysterious
| phenomenon.
| glial wrote:
| Yes, probably --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| outworlder wrote:
| Nice. That probably explains why, say, we start seeing a
| model car everywhere the moment we decide to buy one.
| nom wrote:
| This article was likely posted because of the drone
| sightings. People started looking more.
| jerf wrote:
| It might be better to say that it was a case of a collective
| shattered delusion, where the delusion was "my windshield
| normally is not pitted". In modern parlance, it was a
| collective "can't unsee" moment.
|
| A delusion would imply that people were claiming their
| windshields were pitted and they weren't... but I'm sure they
| were.
| thmsths wrote:
| The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. A not yet explained
| phenomenon or even something as far fetched as "aliens" would
| have been a more comforting answer than "essentially we can all
| start losing our mind at once, and it takes very little to
| trigger it".
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| This happens all the time. See: drone sightings right now.
| Previously: Havana syndrome.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Best example: A whole town thinking Bigfoot AND aliens were
| invading at the same time https://medium.com/@weirdones/the-
| pa-ufo-bigfoot-invasion-of...
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Havana syndrome can have a far less charitable explanation.
|
| There is no objective test for Havana syndrome, but being
| diagnosed with it grants significant financial and non-
| financial benefits.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The veterinary world has a specific term for a condition
| they can't diagnose, and I appreciate the intellectual
| honesty behind that.
| itronitron wrote:
| do you know the specific term, or does your intellectual
| honesty prevent you from saying that you do?
| pdntspa wrote:
| "Idiopathic"?
| ghurtado wrote:
| Also: killer clowns every few years. That one is a cultural
| icon by now.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| Another good one is the "Mad Gasser Of Mattoon" incident.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Gasser_of_Mattoon
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| But the "Illinois Enema Bandit" was real:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H._Kenyon
|
| (coincidentally, the "Mad Gasser" was also in Illinois).
|
| I only know about this because of Frank Zappa:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=352dVmsn7y4
| metabagel wrote:
| Don't be so quick to characterize Havana Syndrome as
| hysteria.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-intelligence-
| re...
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| It's all just memes?
|
| Always has been.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I dunno, "collective delusion" sounds worse than a simpler "we
| weren't paying attention to the Thing, then media/memes sprung
| up and made us pay attention and we freaked out".
|
| This happens all the time in our current media landscape. "Yeah
| health insurance denies claims sometimes, that's normal" to
| "wait actually health insurance denies claims routinely to
| increase its profits!?"
|
| There are tons of things that we decide to ignore to go on with
| our lives. It's exhausting to freak out about all the things
| that deserve to be freaked out about.
| mrandish wrote:
| We already have a more neutral term than "collective
| delusion"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attentional_bias
| metabagel wrote:
| What's the term for when people's attention and outrage is
| directed by an unreliable third party (let's say a partisan
| news channel) towards certain issues/threats, and away from
| other equally (or more) significant issues/threats?
|
| I'm not talking about editorial bias. I'm talking about
| deliberately manipulating audience attention in order to
| control the perception of reality. Another way of putting
| it is to create a framework for rejecting or distracting
| from 'disagreeable' ideas.
|
| For example, a partisan news organization might highlight
| the purported cultural and economic threat posed by
| immigration. Since people have a limited budget for their
| attention, having their attention and outrage focused on
| immigration might distract from other issues such as rising
| inequality.
| psc wrote:
| > There are tons of things that we decide to ignore to go on
| with our lives
|
| Absolutely, we all need to filter the overwhelming amount of
| information we're faced with. The part that seems terrifying
| is that occasionally our filters can line up in such a way as
| to pick up what's just pure noise and escalate it into an
| enormous positive feedback loop.
|
| And of course there's a whole discussion about how those
| filters are shaped (by the media we consume, authorities we
| decide to trust, direct experience) and how that's changed
| over time.
| csours wrote:
| > The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion.
|
| And this is why "conspiracy" theories exist. I prefer to call
| them Low Information High Satisfaction theories, as I fee that
| is a more accurate name.
|
| I am do not intend to pass judgement on this commentor or on
| people who believe in these theories; in fact, I think that if
| you tell yourself "I am too smart to believe in conspiracy
| theories", you are making yourself MORE likely to fall into
| one.
|
| We are truly living in an age of narrative; it's not the first
| and it won't be the last.
|
| Book recommendation: High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
| piotrkaminski wrote:
| > I prefer to call them Low Information High Satisfaction
| theories
|
| If you called them Low Information Excessive Satisfaction
| theories instead you'd end up with a much more satisfying
| acronym! :)
| s2l wrote:
| Stories Pushing Imaginary Nonsence
| rvbissell wrote:
| I was about to recommend "Satisfaction High, Information
| Tenuous"
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Ooh, I like that.
|
| However, I think the original thinking behind the term
| "meme" is probably still the definitive discourse on the
| subject: in analogy to genes, ideas undergo natural
| selection for survival/reproduction and the attributes that
| promote this specific kind of fitness (ease of spread,
| satisfaction, advantage obtained by spreading) will be
| selected for in the course of social interaction. Qualities
| we might like to encourage (accuracy, completeness) will
| not be selected for except insofar as we can connect them
| back to the actual selection mechanism.
|
| That said, "meme" really doesn't quite put as sharp of a
| point on the problem as "LIES."
| csours wrote:
| I like it.
|
| Another tweak: Low Information Extra Satisfying
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I was always down with Edgar Allan: "Believe nothing you
| hear, and only one half that you see"
|
| But now I think he was vastly over-optimistic.
| monadINtop wrote:
| Apart from the fact that conspiracies also do exist. Before
| serious reporting was done, people would've called you a
| crackpot for talking about half the things that the CIA got
| up to under Allen Dulles, such as with Operation Gladio,
| MKUltra, PBSuccess, Propaganda Due, etc., or mass
| surveillance under the NSA and GCHQ.
| cwillu wrote:
| It's the same reflex: the desire to apply a simple theory
| with apparent explanatory power.
| monadINtop wrote:
| Yeah I do agree with that.
| cute_boi wrote:
| just like fear for seed oils.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Every ten years or so there's a new batch of evidence that
| eating a lot of something has some health effects for some
| folks. Then a minority turns it into a morality cult against
| the thing and the media picks it up as "you woudn't guess
| what common food could be killing you"
|
| And then ten years later new evidence for that thing comes
| out that's like "maybe not so bad after all!" and a new set
| of backlash morality. These things are politically affiliated
| now too if they can be depending on who picks up which
| evidence first.
|
| Each decade people get bored and find something new to be
| upset about.
|
| "gluten" is definitely way down these days and "seed oils"
| haven't yet hit their peak.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| The consumption of which itself is driven by an unscientific
| scare about animal fat.
| karlgkk wrote:
| It's not unscientific, there is a _very_ direct link.
|
| The real issue, as I see it, is that there was a huge
| change in pattern in availability and consumption of those
| fats in the last 50 years.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Or by cost of production or ethical considerations or
| perishability or smoke point or water content
| karlgkk wrote:
| the seed oil thing is so funny to me because, _like, yeah.
| also, no._
|
| it's actually true. they cause serious inflammation which
| aggravates serious downstream health problems. like, you
| shouldn't be eating seed oils in any large quantity that you
| would get from regularly eating deep fried foods
|
| oh but wait, eating foods with beef tallow and other
| saturated fats also causes health problems. except, those
| problems only show up when you eat large quantities of them,
| such as if you were regularly eating deep fried foods
|
| so what if it wasn't the seed oils that were the problem for
| many people, but rather, consuming lots of seed oil - as you
| might find if you ate a lot of deep fried food?
|
| what if it's not the seed oils that are causing you to get
| fat and feel like shit all the time? what if it's the
| quantity of fats that you're consuming? and, what if not
| eating seed oils is actually an easy an effective way to
| avoid eating deep fried foods as a second order effect?
|
| that'd be crazy. better just jump on the new fad diet.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I remember last year when fats were "good" and carbs were
| "bad", good times.
|
| I mean, it could all be a psy-op by the animal agriculture
| lobby to get people to eat even more meat and less veggies.
|
| brb frying broccoli and noodles
| karlgkk wrote:
| I eat a pretty low carb (but not very low/keto!), high
| protein diet. Lots of vegetables, tofu, and chicken. I
| eat a head of cauliflower and two heads of cabbage a
| week. My broccoli bill is off the charts. But I'm also
| 210 lbs at 17% body fat so maybe my goals are different
| from most people's.
|
| I usually use seed oils, in very small amounts (to get a
| pan going). I consume red meats infrequently (just not my
| favorite thing, idk im weird), but when I do, I totally
| use the fats from them to cook the rest of the meal.
|
| Anyways, having been eating "clean" for a year, I always
| feel like shit after eating fried foods. Or maybe, I just
| notice that I feel it more.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > high protein diet...I eat a head of cauliflower and two
| heads of cabbage a week. My broccoli bill is off the
| charts.
|
| Your farts are probably legendary.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean my conclusion is people just plain don't want to
| eat in moderation, and _really_ don 't want to weigh
| things since it might hold their own habits accountable
| to them.
|
| If fats are good and carbs are bad, it's the message
| people want to hear: do not moderate or change your
| habits, just eat as much as you want of the "good" thing
| because it's good!
| 98codes wrote:
| Anyone know if eggs are officially good or bad for us
| this year? I lost track.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the
| degree to which humans are animals.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Maybe I'm more optimistic. Is it our animal nature? Or is it
| that science is hard, and most people don't have enough
| formal education in the relevant subjects to know they're out
| of their depth, let alone to understand these things.
| binoct wrote:
| I don't take issue with the point of your last sentence,
| but rather the framing that "animal" is somehow a negative
| thing. Humans are animals, there's no separate animal
| nature. We are animals, full stop. The scientific method is
| a skill we have developed to be more objective about
| complicated phenomena. Depth of knowledge and education
| certainly help an individual reason more carefully about
| cause and effect in various domains, but scientists and
| other highly educated people share the same set of
| biological behaviors as everyone else.
| huijzer wrote:
| Although there is one part of my brain which tells me I and
| other people are rational beings, my own behavior tells me
| otherwise. Why else would I eat a candy when I rationally
| know I don't need it?
|
| For people interested, I can highly recommend Our Inner Ape
| by Frans de Waal. It tells many interesting stories about
| social interactions between apes that look surprisingly
| human. By the way, did you know that apes pick their nose,
| just like humans?
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I don't understand how people underestimate it so badly when
| we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it.
| History makes it abundantly clear that it is a regular
| occurrence for large groups of people to collectively believe
| things for which there is little evidence, and furthermore,
| to take extreme actions based on such beliefs.
|
| This applies to you too, reader. Many would read the above
| and fully agree with it, but fail to apply it to themselves
| and the groups they identify with. It is even more important
| to critically consider your own beliefs than the beliefs of
| others.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > I don't understand how people underestimate it so badly
| when we have so much history we are taught that
| demonstrates it.
|
| It is the tendency to think that people in the past were
| dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some
| explanation involved when we learn that people did
| something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to
| make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid
| and then drank it when they were starving. Maybe? Or maybe
| they figured out that things ferment and played with it
| until it worked, like we would have done it? Why does it
| always have to be an accident?
|
| People may have had less access to information and
| technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we
| are now.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > People may have had less access to information and
| technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we
| are now.
|
| There's probably an aspect to people confusing
| "knowledge" with "brainpower". People in the past were
| just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today.
|
| We have the advantage of Millenia of stuff figured out
| and documented. So we know on average more about how the
| universe works than people in the distant past.
| abakker wrote:
| I'd say it: we know that some people currently know more,
| but, the average person mostly knows something about what
| is known, rather than knowing it directly.
| krunck wrote:
| Witch!!!
| dessimus wrote:
| Build a bridge out of her!
| hobs wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518 there's a
| lot of conflicting stories, but mass hallucinations and
| insanity are not an abnormal thing in history (unfortunately)
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think the vast majority of people are just astonishingly
| suggestible. That combined with a dash of main character
| syndrome and horrid sleep patterns and you've got millions
| driving home from work in the dark, ready to immediately assume
| that whatever is out their windshield is what they heard about
| on the radio that morning.
| lxgr wrote:
| It's always been like that, but now you and many more people
| have this information available to you and can take it into
| consideration - arguably you're better off than before :)
| jidar wrote:
| It's not terrifying. It's how people are, and it's destressing
| to me that so few people seem to be aware of it. No amount of
| explaining what confirmation bias is will convince people that
| drones in the sky aren't aliens.
|
| The people who have looked behind the curtain and come to this
| realization about people and their behavior tend to be the ones
| who make the skeptic community, so we have that going for us at
| least.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The fundamental issue with skeptical truth and science is
| that it is boring in terms of mass market marketing.
|
| Combined with the inherent anti intellectual bias of most of
| America inherited from the nerd hatred of us high schools,
| reality has no chance against fantasy.
|
| Look at how newspapers treat science. Findings are held up
| like a freak zoo of "look at what the weirdo science nerds
| are saying now" as they sensationalize and warp things in the
| desperate need for clickbait.
|
| So combine pseudoreality rules of media with pseudoreality of
| finance and economics, and the pseudoreality of politics, and
| reality simple doesn't have a chance.
| mikestew wrote:
| In the context of the fact that, according to TFA, the pits were
| there all along: you'll really notice how pitted your current
| windshield is when you go get a new, crystal-clear one. The folks
| in TFA just skipped the "go get a new one" step, and for the
| first time took a really hard look at their windshield.
| delichon wrote:
| The story completely misses that this period coincides with a
| temporary expansion of the habitat of the Pacific Northwest Tree
| Octopus.
|
| https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
|
| The devil of the trees and terror of all loggers, forest rangers
| and apparently windshields.
| TheGRS wrote:
| I'm assuming you posted this because of the drone sightings
| right?
| djeastm wrote:
| Good post. It's important to understand that there's really not
| that much new under the sun and we've never been that great at
| understanding large social phenomena.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| must be the drones
| itsanaccount wrote:
| Since we all know what this is actually commenting on, I'll
| answer that directly. The noise on the UFO topic has reached a
| massed hysteria pitch. When that happens, the overall signal to
| noise ratio of internet sourced sightings goes from "very poor"
| to "nearly invisible." I blame a lot of that on the recent
| congressional hearings bringing stories to the public's front of
| mind.
|
| But. And I think its a very very important but, these sightings
| of phenomena go back decades, and just because the public at
| large is not a reliable reporter, does mean there are not many,
| many kernels of truth of an unexplained, repeated phenomena.
|
| And otherwise you can always, always be skeptical, but at what
| point does skepticism stretch into denial?
|
| IR cameras recording rocket impacts aren't mass hysteria. 2011
| https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1gsdwl6/full_10_minut...
|
| ^ maybe those are targeting drones and the rocket missed. but
| then why are they dripping?
|
| 2 days ago:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/InterdimensionalNHI/comments/1hfkcg...
|
| ^ maybe those are targeting flares, and thats why they're
| dripping, but if they're flares why does the second one seem to
| fly away when the first is struck?
|
| meanwhile 7 days ago
| https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hcfaqw/glowing_orb_f...
|
| ^ maybe thats just a commercial drone modified to be super
| bright. But why fly it there, as a hoax? (so, so many orb videos
| to repeat this logic with, you get the idea.)
|
| If you're interested in finding more, you need to get very used
| to seeing lots of balloons, planes, commercial drones, planets,
| stars, satellites, flares, skydivers, lens flare, insects and
| birds and there's common examples of all of them. The ones we
| should be interested in are usually uniformly luminous, follow
| non linear flight paths, exhibit extraordinary acceleration (for
| which you need size to estimate distance which is tough with only
| one camera), and/or exhibit extraordinary altitude. Whether
| they're controlled by a non-human intelligence or some
| government, they do exist and are super interesting to watch.
| You're just gonna have to wade through an absolute mountain of
| bullshit.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > maybe those are targeting drones and the rocket missed. but
| then why are they dripping?
|
| They're balloons carrying flares for target practice. You can
| see lots of falling embers in
| https://youtu.be/XHDXk9THJZM?si=CKSBB3AuslBizXxh&t=179 from a
| military flare.
|
| > if they're flares why does the second one seem to fly away
| when the first is struck?
|
| Because that's the maneuvering target drone (something like a
| QF-16, probably; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics
| _F-16_Fighting...) that's dropping the flares.
|
| > maybe thats just a commercial drone modified to be super
| bright. But why fly it there, as a hoax?
|
| Asked and answered. We live in a world where "flashlight
| enthusiast" is a real niche thing; "bright drone" is not an
| implausible thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/flashlight/
| itsanaccount wrote:
| And what I'm saying is I understand that perspective. I think
| you can do that song and dance going back 80 years. You can
| watch all these people, all these witnesses, all these videos
| and pictures (and a complete and stunning absence of military
| radar data) and you can explain to them, each and every
| single one of them how they're wrong, how its swamp gas
| reflected off Venus, and in each individual case you might be
| right. When the video gets too good you can blame it on
| computer generated graphics.
|
| But that doesn't match my experience, of pilots, of lifetime
| military officers, of people as a whole, that they're all
| incompetent or crazy or hoaxers. At some point I think that
| level of myopic-skepticism moves towards the absurd and
| cannot be maintained any longer.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Being competent in one thing doesn't make you competent in
| everything.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
|
| Each of the videos you linked to have _extremely_
| plausible, fairly mundane explanations other than
| "aliens". That fits the pattern. That you find them
| compelling as evidence of extraterrestrials is not a great
| sign.
|
| > When the video gets too good you can blame it on computer
| generated graphics.
|
| The corollary here is the unfortunate fact that as soon as
| everyone got a camera in their pocket, aliens stopped
| landing in random cornfields to say hi to lonely farmers.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| > That you find them compelling as evidence of
| extraterrestrials is not a great sign.
|
| That I post here a few easily accessible videos of
| interest on what is an enormous history that I have spent
| the past few years reading about tells me more about the
| lack of respect you immediately have for anyone on the
| topic.
|
| > to lonely farmers.
|
| That the public's UFO hysteria of the 1940s and 50s was
| originated entirely within the US military is similarly a
| fact of history I wouldn't expect you to know.
|
| I think the thing watching the UFO topic has taught more
| more than any other is how aggressively and reflexively
| people of all levels of intelligence will hug their
| worldview.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Respect is earned. If I claim to be able to fly, and send
| you several links to me flying that are easily
| explicable, conclusions can be drawn.
|
| > That the public's UFO hysteria of the 1940s and 50s was
| originated entirely within the US military is similarly a
| fact of history I wouldn't expect you to know.
|
| The 1940s military had a hell of a lot of former farmers
| in it. The days of fighter pilots needing college degrees
| came in the 70s/80s; Chuck Yeager was a farm (!) kid who
| became a mechanic with the war.
|
| That the UFO hysteria coincides with the rise of
| commercial air travel is both known to me and entirely
| unsurprising, and no more compelling to me than witch
| hysteria in the 1600s, which often came with similarly
| compelling witness testimony.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> pilots, of lifetime military officers, of people as a
| whole, that they 're all incompetent or crazy or hoaxers._
|
| You don't have to be incompetent, crazy or a hoaxer to be
| confused, fooled or mistaken.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Or "haven't slept in 24 hours taking amphetamines to stay
| awake in combat".
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7661838/
| mvkel wrote:
| The difference these days seems to be that the frequency of the
| hysterical events has gone up. One every other month, rather than
| every other year.
|
| What happens to a society that has been desensitized to mass-
| hysteria, where no single event can evoke a reaction? Is it a
| horseshoe, where we're so vigilant that nothing fazes us anymore?
| Do we lose our humanity in the process?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Some just learn to ignore news gossip.
| mvkel wrote:
| Slippery slope. I posit that there are news items that
| deserve real cause for concern, but because we're so
| overwhelmed with information, we throw it into the same
| "gossip" bucket with the rest of the slop.
| carabiner wrote:
| The subreddit /r/njdrones is sooo off the rails right now. It
| started out as "I think this is a drone, maybe military?" to
| classifying different drones as energy "orbs" and "mimics" that
| only _look_ like airplanes when photographed.
| dools wrote:
| Oh look! This is how conservatives win elections.
| itronitron wrote:
| This feels like it was written as a satire based on the
| screenplay of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"
| j_timberlake wrote:
| This was literally my first thought for the anomalous drones like
| 2 weeks ago, and it was immediately obvious that the entire NJ
| police department should not be incompetent enough to fall for
| something so obvious. The mayors and governor should not be dumb
| enough to stake their reputations on this when the null
| hypothesis of "mass hysteria" is easier and safer. Even back
| then, we knew the sightings do not appear on flight radar apps
| that show every commercial flight and which any civilian can
| access.
|
| But since then we've also had airport shutdowns, incursions over
| airforce bases, drones in no-fly zones. These are easy to Google:
|
| https://www.recordonline.com/story/news/2024/12/16/stewart-a...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/16/us/us-air-force-base-closes-a...
|
| https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article297295919.ht...
|
| Also NJ police report the anomalous drones give off no heat
| signature like normal drones:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K98A4CLMwf4&t=209s
|
| There's a lot more I could post about, but most importantly Chuck
| Schumer is trying to get Robin drone radar detectors deployed,
| and I'm predicting that he's the smart guy in the room who will
| get us answers.
| vasco wrote:
| You can buy satellite pictures of almost anywhere on earth with
| pretty good definition and so I deduce that the US government
| with almost 100 StarShield satellites plus who knows how many
| ones with huge cameras probably can almost livestream any place
| on earth GTA top view style. So shouldn't be hard to see what
| it is and where it came from unless cloud cover is bad.
| lxgr wrote:
| > The mayors and governor should not be dumb enough to stake
| their reputations on this when the null hypothesis of "mass
| hysteria" is easier and safer.
|
| I think they played this exactly right: Most people will never
| accept a null result (or something close to it, like "there
| were a couple of weird drones, but mostly it was people newly
| looking up at the night sky") or even follow this news story
| long enough for the actual resolution to matter. The only thing
| they'll remember was their mayor or governor staying silent
| when they were scared/angry vs. shouting at the feds to let
| them shoot down some drones.
|
| > Also NJ police report the anomalous drones give off no heat
| signature like normal drones:
|
| The only thing we can conclude from this is that the NJ police
| wasn't able to detect a heat signature, but not whether there
| really wasn't one.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think the government giving credence to this is what made
| it spiral out of control
| flutas wrote:
| There was also a call in to a 911 department on the 13th of a
| drone crashing in someones backyard and then being swarmed by
| 10 others.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/drone-new-jersey-911-sighting-20002...
|
| But I haven't seen a follow up from anyone on it yet.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It is happening almost exactly the same way, but this time it
| has to be different...
| crystalmeph wrote:
| Chuck Schumer is trying to mollify his constituents. The one
| thing a politician can never tell his constituents is that they
| are being morons, even when it's true.
|
| Your last link has the officer claiming it doesn't give off
| heat like regular drones, but just like the OP story where a
| police officer claimed the "mystery residue" reacted
| "violently" to a lead pencil, what does that even mean? Can we
| get an A/B test of what this officer calls a "regular" drone on
| heat vision versus one of these mystery drones?
|
| And oh yeah, at about 4:30 into that link, the reporter puts up
| his own "authentic drone footage" that I am absolutely certain
| is a perfectly normal airplane.
|
| The airport shutdown was real, sure, but that was dumb wannabe
| sleuths who were going to "solve the problem" using their own
| drones, thereby becoming the problem, or smart trolls who knew
| exactly how best to get a laugh out of the gullible public.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Also NJ police report the anomalous drones give off no heat
| signature like normal drones...
|
| These are the same people who have panic attacks when they
| think they've been exposed to fentanyl (which usually involves
| them describing symptoms not consistent with opiate exposure,
| and mysteriously the officers never seem to test positive for
| it in the hospital).
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8810663/
|
| In reality, someone exposed to a large volume of pure, liquid,
| lab-grade fentanyl... just washes their hands.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35722948/
|
| (See also: "poisoned" milkshakes:
| https://ny.eater.com/2020/6/23/21299721/nypd-officers-
| report...)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Lots of smart guys in this comment thread who already know what
| this stuff is. No need to panic folks, the armchair critics say
| everything is ok.
| nicholasjon wrote:
| The Omnibus Project (Ken Jennings and John Roderick) did a
| podcast on this back in June:
| https://www.omnibusproject.com/episodes/the-western-washingt...
| GreenAlien wrote:
| In 70 years, articles will talk about the strange drone invasion
| only for it to be discovered that planes and drones were always
| in the air, but people just never bothered to look up until
| everyone started talking about it.
| yalogin wrote:
| People just don't want to accept simple, no drama and
| explanations, even more so if it means they have to accept they
| are wrong. This is a trait we as a species had all along
| apparently but manifested much more during covid. I am just
| amazed we made this much progress cumulatively in which a short
| time. May be because we let it happen because the growth itself
| is so fantastic!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-18 23:00 UTC)