Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

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> It does seem odd that people would put their reputation on the line by making up a story about seeing a UFO.

Why does this seem odd? People embellish or make shit up all the time. Trump loved to tell transparently goofy "sir" stories (https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/sir-trump-telltale-w...).

"But no genre of Trump story is more reliably sir-heavy than his collection of suspiciously similar tales about macho men breaking into tears of gratitude in his presence."

> For example, why would this guy lie about it publicly...

Might not be a lie. False memories exist, and misidentifying things in the sky at night is hardly uncommon. I was once in the Adirondacks and observed what could only be described as a UFO - a bright, silent, slow moving light in the sky - until a minute or two later that C-5 flew loudly over the lake we were staying in, presumably to land at Fort Drum. Size, shape, speed, etc. were all impossible to accurately identify.

Trump is Trump, I wouldn't use him as an example personally.

The guy who wrote this article in the Boston Globe is "a professor of philosophy and director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College" - seems like it wouldn't be worth him making this up.

And he doesn't describe seeing distant lights in the sky, but a flying saucer hovering over him and aiming a light on him- what could he be misidentifying?

> Trump is Trump, I wouldn't use him as an example personally.

He's a perfect example of how not everyone cares about getting caught lying.

> And he doesn't describe seeing distant lights in the sky, but a flying saucer hovering over him and aiming a light on him- what could he be misidentifying?

Shit, it could've been a realistic dream; I've had dreams I was certain were real. Or, more mundanely, maybe it was a helicopter with a searchlight.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/07/30/206946740/m...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopp%E2%80%93Etchells_effect

hmm, he does say he was camping on a beach in Plymouth, MA. On the map I see a municipal airport not far inland and a bit to the south a coast guard air base. I could imagine a coast guard helicopter out patrolling the coastline taking a closer look at someone on the beach at 2am.

I can't read the full Boston Globe article due to the paywall and offer no opinion on the author's state of mind, but if you assume some small percent of outwardly functional people have "eccentric" personalities, it would not be surprising that you would occasionally hear about a college professor doing something eccentric. Why is any further explanation needed than "some humans have quirky personalities and do quirky things..."

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