A reasonable take would be asking “why are there stories of a giant bipedal ape told around the world by different cultures?” Could they be based on actual creatures like Gigantopithecus whose existence may have been recorded in oral histories for thousands of years? It doesn’t have to mean maybe they exist now but it can serve as a good motivation to do anthropological and archeological research.

Totally agree. I don't want to be the guy who's trying to have the last word and comment on everything here. I guess I just want to engage on this topic where I feel like I got so much to say. I'm sure there are other people here have more to say than me, I hope to try to create a sort of welcoming environment for those people come and engage too by removing or stopping some of the incorrect negativity and dismissals that I see around this topic.

I think we should all be engaging in this topic critically and openly. With curiosity rather than certainty, when none exists. I think we should not be so casual or strident in just dismissing or discounting other human beings personal experiences. Especially when there are so many people with stories. These humans are valuable, and their stories are valuable. We shouldn't dismiss that, or disrespect them. But also, in aggregate, with other evidence, we should consider it and be curious. Not rush to conclusion either way. Be wary of the theorists and commentariat, but be curious about it. I think you see this, that's what you're saying too, I think. Except the "default toward not existing" is the crazy thing. You should just default toward "not understanding". To me, being sure that it's whatever your theory is, and being sure that it's all just fabricated, are both equally wrong. Just calmly face the evidence, think about it if it interests you, don't rush to opine.

I never really understood this line of argument. It’s possible to engage with something openly, yet reach a conclusion about what the available evidence says about factual circumstances. Interpreting someone’s account of an experience differently than they do themselves does not mean they didn’t have the experience, or that you are dismissing them.

For example, I’m an atheist, but I don’t doubt that many people frequently have religious experiences. I just think that there are more likely explanations of those experiences than that they are caused by a god. I still find religion and accounts of religious experiences fascinating, and I very much respect that it’s a fundamental part of many people’s lives.

Having an opinion doesn’t mean you dismiss everyone who has a different opinion.

No way. Modern research has demonstrated how unstructured and unscientific our reasoning is, easy to fool and game, falling prey to a plethora of biases. If anything, rejecting your own and other people's personal experience should be the default, because the information we gather when not taking the utmost care to calibrate our instruments is pretty much garbage. A quick example of this would be how unreliable eyewitness testimony is in trials, but of course the sightings of various unproven phenomena(sasquatch, loch ness monster, etc) are also a great example of our "personal experience" being put to the test and found to be useless.

To me, it's more plausible to believe that the world we "experience" practically does not exist, and our memories and perceptions very rarely match reality, than to concede that these particular collective personal experiences amount to evidence of anything.

no offense but I think you're unfairly and inconsistently dialing down your personal reliability for your subjective experience in this topic because this topic has the implications and emotional and psychological baggage that it does but you would be much more likely to trust yourself in your everyday life with the things that you already know. And I think that's reasonable. if I had some experience where there was a UFO or aliens I would definitely be doubting myself. But I think given time, or given repeated experiences, or given other people who had similar experiences and if I reflected on it I could definitely come to trust that what I experienced was true. Maybe that makes me unreliable... I mean I am unreliable my memory is unreliable my logic is unreliable my interpretations are unreliable my senses are unreliable. But I still have to piece together an existence just like everyone does. Just like I think you'd believe the things that happened to you in your everyday life. and I don't think we can discount other people's experiences so easily. Particularly if yeah so many experiences. Even if you have an unreliable sensor or sparse signals you can reconstruct an accurate picture, particularly if you have enough sensors. I'm not saying that all of the people's experiences means that it must be aliens I'm just saying it means that something is happening and I don't think it's honest for people to judge that as oh well this just means these people are unreliable. If that's true then it's just as equally likely that your judgment of them is unreliable too. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Theory and Observation in Science: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observatio...

Convincing is your value judgment for you. And that's fair enough but just because you don't find it convincing doesn't mean we as in everybody should default towards not believing. Or discounting that it's possible. to me the large number of people who have personal experience is extraordinary evidence. I think that definitely means something's happening but I don't know what that something is.

keeping the middle ground is just remaining open-minded. Not discounting any possibility. I think that logical argument you make is a trap and I don't really understand it. Why assume non-existence is a default position. It seems kind of stupid and arrogant that because God hasn't come down and shown you something personally because he hasn't personally convinced you then the smartest thing for you to do is to believe that it just simply can't exist. No offense and you're not the only one who thinks like this but I just think that's kind of stupid and arrogant. I don't think you're stupid I think you're a very smart person but I don't understand why people think that default not existence position is smart. I mean to put it in an engineering point of view just because you haven't seen a bridge failure or just because your software hasnt experienced a particular failure mode yet is not a smart reason for you to believe that it's impossible. I'm sure without an eye blink within one heartbeat you would accept that statement so I don't get why you contract away from this notion as applied to other areas particularly areas where we have no fucking clue what's going on. No offense

my feeling in general is that people contract away from that because the implications emotionally psychologically are too scary. But I don't think that subjective emotional reaction to a possible implication should guide the primary response. maybe I'm making too much of it maybe it doesn't matter but I just think it's an important topic it's an important question. I don't think whether it's decided one way or another I don't think that will have all the answers for us as a species I just think it's interesting and it would be interesting to know.

Being uncertain is in the middle. It's a position that too few humans are willing to take on any issue, treating it as if it were madness. If you are uncertain your options are to either ignore the issue or explore all the options.

That’s the point though, isn’t it? Many people have devoted their entire lives to “exploring the options” and still come up with basically nothing.

No, that's not the point. That what your think, and i think, it's a little harsh and dismissive for you to judge someone else's life work or experience or what they amount to and say they've achieved nothing. I bet a lot of other actual human beings would reject your characterization of them. I think you should think of that and I think not enough people remember the human in this topic. And I think that's selfish and cruel

To be fair though, that can also be said about a lot of actual historical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs.

I’m much more willing to accept this corollary with Aliens than Bigfoot. Two very different topics.

Yeah there aren’t three fixed points of either disbelief, true middle ground, or belief. It’s a spectrum and I fall more towards the disbelief point in this case, but that doesn’t stop me from critically evaluating the possibility that I’m on the wrong end of the spectrum

That's all I'm asking. Good on you and I think it's courageous to do that in a topic where there's so much stigma