MovieChat Forums > Is It Real? (2005) Discussion > Why do skeptics always choose easiest to...

Why do skeptics always choose easiest to replicate?


Watching this show on the Bermuda Triangle I could help but wonder why the CSICOP Skeptic chose the bottle and fog as example of a hoax. I would have like to see the jelling metal or the jelled liquid floating upward as shown in the video. Just because one video can be explained it does not mean it's fake or the others are as well. It like the Roswell UFO. I will believe CSICOP's reasoning just as soon as they explain to me how a US RAAF Major can mistake a crashed space ship / airplane for that of a weather balloon. The skeptics are always saying to use common sense. That does not pass the common sense test. I am getting a little tired of skeptics treating the public like uneducated morons.

In saying that I personally think 99% of the Bermuda Triangle can be explained by weather it’s the 1% unexplained I am interested in.

reply

People are easily fooled. So long as you refuse to accept that basic fact, you ensure that you will remain among the fooled.

Remember, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

reply

Well, in the business of explaining things you tend to begin with the easy stuff first. In so doing you can demonstrate how a person can misunderstand what's going on. In cases like the Bermuda Triangle it's a bunch of little incidences that add up to make the whole of the perceived phenomenon. By picking away at the little events piece by piece you begin to realize this big, hulking phenomenon may not be as sinister as it appears to be.

As far as Major Marcel goes, he apparently said--31 years later--that it was possible the government was covering up an ET alien crash. It's also possible that as a Counter-Intelligence Officer he didn't know the first thing about what high altitude balloons look like.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4079
http://www.csicop.org/si/9507/roswell.html
http://www.nmsr.org/roswell.htm

reply

it sounds like the UFO episode to me - they picked up some examples that are easy to explain (f.e. this silly story about circles of mushrooms being places where UFOs landed) and just didn't mention those which could be tough to find reasonable explanation (f.e. the advert movie with some British plane, Comet I suppose, where something was flying up and down)

besides they quickly moved on from the basic meaning of UFO - UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS - which could by practically anything that we can't explain - andjust rushed into 3rd kind encounters which are much much harder to take serious and basing on that fact they just make the whole thing a joke

and since you are asking to use common sense - if there is something in the air and you don't know what it is - THIS IS ACTUALLY UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT and you can't just jump into conclusion that this is something from outer space, it's just means that it is a object that is moving above ground and you can't tell what it is...

the point that really makes me angry in those movies is that they take a piece of eyewitness words and just say "nah, he didn't saw that", "no, he was confused", "he was in shock, he don't know what he saw"... oh come on, some j*rk wrote a book and that makes him expert on everything and he knows absolutely everything - in this point you should also use your common sense - does it make sense that EVERY EYEWITNESS is idiot, is in shock or is halucinating??

reply

because they cant explain the hard ones, duh. they only speak about what they can explain, all other they ignore as if it never happen. welcome to modern science. This show is very sceptical, instead of trying to find out truth it tries to deny everything it researches in every way possible.

----------
In this universe, there's only one absolute... everything freezes!

reply

There are so many shows out there trying to make people believe this crap is real, trying to make supernatural and otherwise sensational stories seem as real as possible. This show wasn't about that; it was to show people that things that seem unexplainable can be explained.

reply

While it is true that there are many way out there shows, there are also shows like this that seen to be way out there in the other side. When they do a experiment on film that proves one thing, and 5 minutes afterwards narrator is telling us it didn't prove it or it proved something against it it just gets hilarious.

---------------------------------
Best way to deal with trolls is to add them to your ignore list.

reply

The show is clearly from a skeptics standpoint even though they attempt (and fail miserably) at making it seem impartial at times. I noticed the same thing that they seem to pick the easy stuff to explain and what's funny is that on some of the shows the "real explanation or proof it isn't supernatural or weird" explanation is as hard to believe as the phenomena they are trying to debunk itself.

reply

Worst offence thought is when they actually pick up an experiment, it fails misserably then they claim it suceeded and this proven that the thing in question isnt real. if your lieing at least dont show evidence to the contrary 5 minutes back.

---------------------------------------------
Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

reply