1. TRADITIONAL TYPE I ERROR: NULL HYP IS TRUE BUT REJECTED
2. TRADITIONAL TYPE II ERROR: NULL HYP IS FALSE BUT ACCEPTED
PUT MORE COMMUNICATIVELY:
3. TYPE I ERROR:
A) The TRUE/objective/tangible/real SITUATION is that NOTHING is there.
B) But the conclusion is that THAT belief is WRONG.
4. TYPE II ERROR:
A) The TRUE/objective/tangible/REAL SITUATION is that THERE REALLY IS SOMETHING THERE.
B) But the conclusion/BELIEF is that NOTHING IS THERE.
With regard to the UFO etc. stuff. . . .
The naysayers typically have the bar--the level of confidence, belief, proof--however one cares to put it--that SOMETHING IS THERE sooooooooooooooo high, that it's virtually a certainty that they will fall victim to a TYPE II ERROR.
Most hereon sound like
They will NOT accept that ANYTHING is there unless and until it lands in THEIR front yard at 12:00 on a Saturday when the Mayor, High School science teachers; nearest college physic profs; CNN, NBC, ABC Presidents and news crews and the New York times science editor all just happen to be over for a BAR-B-Q 30 min before the UFO appears and hangs around for 3 hours sharing BAR-B-Q and giving a presentation on faster than light travel that even Marge Simpson would understand.
WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, EXCUSE ME!
They're going to be waiting a long time for THAT set of contingencies to BE THERE.
UFO's could have landed on the Capital Mall and marched the congress, the bureaucracy, all the lobbyists, the Supreme Court and all the military personnel for a 100 miles around into their huge mother ship and carted them off to Alpha Centauri fully carried live on CNN and THAT contingency would STILL not have happened. And some naysayers hereon sound like they would STILL be crying--DIDN'T HAPPEN! NO PROOF! YADA YADA YADA.
This sort of mentality has always baffled me somewhat, even as a psychologist. Why so much cluelessness? Why does extreme avoidance of a rattlesnake convince them that it's wonderful to play with a Water Moccasin?
BOTH ERRORS ARE DEADLY!
One has to set the criteria realistically. Yet, naysayer after naysayer does NOT DO SO. Why?
Often, it seems truly like pride and an addiction to a mindless sort of religion of scientism. This false conclusion; this false construction on reality that "OBJECTIVE" reality that one can touch and handle and measure with a micrometer is the ONLY REALITY--is absurd.
Smugness based on an extreme TYPE II ERROR is still stupid. One can be just as smugly dead from a TYPE II ERROR as from a TYPE I error.
Court cases demonstrate day in and day out convicting folks to death that expert testimony is a valid route to truth. yet naysayers hereon routinely disavow at a 100% level 100% of ALL expert testimony. That's dumb, stupid, clueless.
Then they sound all super scientifically righteous and erudite in their tones and wording when, in fact, they've just demonstrated abject stupidity--swallowing virtually a certain TYPE II ERROR hook line and sinker without a bobble of awareness that they've done so.
Color me underwhelmed. I'll take my 47 years of honing my screening criteria for puzzle pieces over such blind, mindless addiction to a TYPE II ERROR probability, any day, week, month, year, decade, century, millenium.
The unfortunate difference in our positions is that you could prove me wrong and end the debate by coming up with proof. I can never prove you wrong because I really can't prove a negative (namely, that aliens have NEVER visited earth, or that, at the very least, there is no credible evidence that they ever have). And so you can go on and on and on, pontificating about Type I and Type II errors, and going through all sorts of logical contortions which conveniently avoid having to prove anything. Lots of people have made lots of money over the years off of people like you.
Maybe I should create and sell a radio which I'll claim will allow people to contact aliens. It would be based on information gathered from abductees (har-har) as to the correct frequencies and such, although conveniently for me, you could never be sure which of the multitude of frequencies used by the aliens (according to the abductees, har-har again) they might actually be listening on. So, although I made the radio and sold it to you, and assured you that it could indeed be used to talk to the aliens that we both *know* are out there, the thing never actually works for you. And so you sit in your back yard, playing with your knobs, while I sit on a beach somewhere sipping a Mai Tai paid for with your money, which you willingly gave to me in exchange for a bogus "alien radio" made of spare parts from my last 3 PCs.
Voila! I'm Stanton Friedman II! I'm just hawking "alien radios" instead of books.
Whatever. Maybe some day, you'll be vindicated when the greys finally decide to beam down and say "Hi".
Excuse me, but I thought a hypothesis meant it's a theory. A supposition. A proposal. In other words, unless or until it's proven, it's guesswork!
Therefore, your robotic mewling about Type 2 "errors" is itself an error. You are imperfect. You must sterilize!
