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The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

nytimes.com

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Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#251

Post by fapjacks »

valuearb wrote: post #230
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it was 2006, and "everybody's phone has a great camera" was several years off. The article does mention someone may have snagged it on a plain digital camera. Not taking a side, just pointing that out.

Phones had cameras back then. Disposable Cameras were available at every airport shop. And Someone allegedly photographed it, but no one bothered to examine or release the photos?

Well, faced with all this suspicion and negativity, what incentive would anybody have to present their photos to the public? And so let's just scrap this whole incident at the airport. No pictures, no video, no UFO. There is still a substantial body of photographic, video, expert reliable witness accounts of unexplained phenomena happening in our skies going back decades. The government's chief skeptic guy that headed up Blue Book eventually changed his mind over the years in the face of this relatively small but very reliable subset of witness accounts [0].

The vast majority of people are looking at Venus or the moon or streetlights or drunken hallucinations. But we don't care about those people. We care about the 0.0003% (or whatever) of people that check all the boxes on a long list of reliability factors. And yet, that still isn't good enough for some people, because of the hugely negative pseudoscience context that this carries with it. "It's folklore!" In fact, I'll assert that a strange enough advanced aircraft could fly nuclear weapons over this country, and until our pilots shot it out of the sky and spread the wreckage across three states, it would hardly get any attention because of the context this subject carries.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opini...

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#252

Post by vadimberman »

gfodor wrote: post #167
vadimberman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that they are here but are just not making overt obvious contact Exactly. There's simply no reason to, except maybe sheer curiosity or some legal issues. What would we want from an uncontacted Amazonian tribe? But even if they wanted, from the political point of view, who would you even talk to? People of the planet Earth, bypassing their governments? Every government of…

I'd imagine it just would try to maximize utility -- remaining undetected in all scenarios may come with its own costs and risks. Alternatively, maximizing utility may require a certain minimal level of detection. It's hard to predict what cost function is being optimized. Given what is now common knowledge about AI game theory, it's super hard or impossible to actually ascribe any form of motives, ethics, intent, et…

> I'd imagine it just would try to maximize utility -- remaining undetected in all scenarios may come with its own costs and risks.

That's true, and there could be "rogue actors" who care less about the detection. But - again, borrowing the X century analogy - there's a lot of tools that can be employed to eliminate the witnesses and such.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#253

Post by toomanybeersies »

rdtsc wrote: post #197
gfodor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading "The Dark Forest" I've leaned towards the idea that we are under pervasive observation (likely by hard-to-detect autonomous AI agents of some form, the origin of which is relatively inconsequential) and once the probability tilts towards a non-zero value that we are a threat beyond a certain blast radius we'll be wiped out. If that were true, and the message of that being the case were delivered somehow…

> the message of that being the case were delivered somehow to our governments, That would make a fun plot for a movie. But having worked with the government and then also having observed leaks of top secret information and tools coming out the supposedly most secretive government institutions, I cannot believe they would be competent enough to keep that information under a tight lid for long. Someone, somehow would…

That sounds similar to the plot for The Day the Earth Stood Still (in particular the original 1951 version), except that it wasn't a secret message.

I seem to remember reading a story that was more similar to what you were describing, but can't remember the name or much about it.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#254

Post by noetic_techy »

dwaltrip wrote: post #40

Where is the HD footage that actually shows features of the mysterious "unidentified objects"? Why is all the evidence grainy and obscured? The prospect that life from another star system traveled hundreds of trillions of kilometers, only to hide for the past few decades, peeking out briefly for low-quality photoshoots, is beyond absurd.

Do you think ants look up at us and say to themselves "We'll surely if they were highly intelligent they would contact the queen!"

The truth is, IF (big if) it is super advanced aliens, they would have more reason not to contact us. This notion that we deserve formal contact is whats absurd. What exactly would they have to gain that they couldn't glean from stealthy observation and even deception to keep us off thier track?

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#255

Post by jim_combinator »

Harry Reid is as crooked as a dog's hind leg. In fact, that democrat putz is so crooked they'll have to screw him into the ground when he dies. Anyway, I hope his buddy Robert Bigelow the male gigolo finds something interesting and shares his wares because something's going on up there.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#256

Post by King-Aaron »

remir wrote: post #247
rdtsc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Captain of the 1st rank on a nuclear submarine in the Soviet and maybe even Russian Navy During the 70's or 80's Soviet subs were detecting these "quacking" sounds in the Antarctic. They were puzzling and many thought that it was the aliens or super secret Western technology. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... It turned out to be whales. There were other sounds like the "Bloop" which tu…

>On a more serious note, I can't believe any government can keep a tight enough lid on something like that. Someone, somewhere is bound to defect or to leak it is somehow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtmpaM0PqyI

This is something that I wonder about - the Disclosure Project assembled some people that seemed to be fairly plausible witnesses. Was this press club disclosure ultimately discredited?

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#257

Post by King-Aaron »

mrspeaker wrote: post #116
madaxe_again wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s totally anecdotal, and I’m just some guy on the internet, but I’ve seen these, or at least something similar, twice - once above Bath, UK, in 2012 - the first hint something was up was a pair of sonic booms as two typhoons hurtled into the airspace over the city. Needless to say, ran out of the office to gawp, and the fighters were circling a thing hovering at about 20,000 feet - bulky ovular object with greeble…

Doesn't sound the same as yours, but I saw the "triangles in the sky" in the late 90s in Australia. I came home from work at about 1am, and noticed three lights up in the sky moving at the same slow speed in a triangle-ish formation (For a while I thought they were connected, but then seemed to move independently, and just looked... odd). I watched them for a couple of minutes go across the sky, then had to go and wa…

In 1996 (Around June I think), myself and around 200-odd people at the Karratha drive-in cinema witnessed a nearly identical phenomenon as you describe. It was about 9pm - 10pm, and I have fond memories of everyone around us staring straight up, instead of at the cinema screen.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#258

Post by simooooo »

karolist wrote: post #218
gfodor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading "The Dark Forest" I've leaned towards the idea that we are under pervasive observation (likely by hard-to-detect autonomous AI agents of some form, the origin of which is relatively inconsequential) and once the probability tilts towards a non-zero value that we are a threat beyond a certain blast radius we'll be wiped out. If that were true, and the message of that being the case were delivered somehow…

Why not wipe us out now though? Observing you risk missing the "danger" point in our evolution, wiping us out now eliminates that risk. I suspect there's more to it than that.

They are betting on us like greyhounds in a cosmic TV show back at ther ship

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#259

Post by pharke »

valuearb wrote: post #152
pfisch wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai... I'm not saying it was an alien craft, but there are a limited number of plausible explanations for an event like this and none of what you listed is a plausible explanation.

Too bad no one at an entire airport had a camera or took a picture.

Also, it wasn't seen by 'everyone at the airport'

>"The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it."

It also apparently was not visible on radar or visually from the control tower. Who cares if it was 'aliens' or not, it's a damned interesting phenomena that should be studied for it's own sake.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#260

Post by otempomores »

glenstein wrote: post #141
frankquist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say that you are interested in investigating puzzling phenomena, and you have the money. What more logical step is there than to approach your senate majority leader friend? Such oddball connections are probably the only the way such a program would ever get funded. Edit: well, obviously he didn't have the money. Misspoke. I meant the means (a company with the required infrastructure).

For me, the logical next stop would be to pause and think very long and very hard about why the subject isn't treated as legitimate by mainstream science.

Even unplausible claims can be derived from plausible observations. Ivestigating non plausible claims to discover realistic hidden wonders.. worth it! Remember the fairys and cobolds pilots saw above the clouds over thunderstorms.
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