There are graduate studies programs shorter than that article.
What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
21–30 of 173 posts
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#22"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.
With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation.
I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelligence effort or the military is doing something and wants to involve others in "sightings," probably to gauge the success of certain programs. If it's not some sort of clever projection, those UFOs probably have US markings on them. Otherwise, the belief it has something to do with aliens is probably wishful thinking.
I'd recommend listening to John Michael Godier's top 10 lists regarding alien messages, first contact, or SETI [1] if you want a healthy dose of realism. In particular, his "10 SETI messages that we may not want to receive" [2] is especially good, even if the first part is rather depressing.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEszlI8-W79IsU8LSAiRbDg/vid...
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
See also Hitchens' razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
Check the original source. Note that these videos are pushed by "To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences". On other parts of The Internet it's known as a UFO organisations and other “mysteries of the universe", plus there is the $37.4 million of debt; https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/all-the-dumb-things-...
Interesting. So there's both ability and motive.
It doesn't surprise me to be truthful. I believe the plurality of so-called "UFO researchers" are selling something. Be it books or speaking engagements.
I confess my opinion may be colored by the fact that I live not far from the Roswell UFO museum.
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#24"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.
>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, it doesn't require extraordinary evidence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7
The mere mention of the word "extraordinary" is presumptive and asserts a line of reasoning that must be defended if one requires claims to be interpreted through it.
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#25"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.
With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation. I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelli…
Try photographing a bird with a phone camera. Then try it with no advance notice, whipping it out and shooting as fast as you can. You'll get a blur, just like the crappy phone camera photos of "UFOs" all over the Internet.
It's an extraordinary claim, sure, but it isn't impossible that some fraction of UFOs are someone else. "They are here but are not making overt contact" is one potential Fermi paradox answer. The apparent abundance of possibly habitable planets demands some answer here I think.
There are many rational reasons an alien intelligence would avoid overt contact with some being altruistic (prime directive type thinking), some neutral (same reason we decontaminate space probes), and some selfish (we are aggressive and capable of rapid technological progress).
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#26If these incidents were aliens, I would expect a lot more reactions from the military, politic, and financial markets. All reactions seem muted. Secondly, why would aliens reveal themselves in such a way? Either land on the White House lawn or stay out of sight. This 50 year UFO appearances, with some but not really a lot of witnesses, don't make sense for me.
I think we have so many expert people with professional equipment looking at the sky daily yet we never get any sight from them with verifiable data. It's always personal anecdotes from amateurs.
> we never get any sight from them with verifiable data
This is false. In the above example of the Nimitz, we have sighting by two professional pilots, and radar/scanner readings. This is not a lone example.
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#27I have a lot of biases in my vision. Optical illusions are clearly one example of exploiting those biases.
I suspect there are a lot of biases in processing return signals from radar, an expectation of motion like things actually move.
So, if i had the resources of a nation, and some idea of how radar actually works, i could build a device that actually made a steady turn from, say west to north, look like something else.
I know very little about how radar works in the nitty gritty details, but i know a little bit about how our eyes are fooled by optical illusions. dynamically changing color, and maybe some little helper parts that fly away and change color or produce smoke would really mess with my eyes. it's weird how fireworks always fly right toward you no matter where you stand, right?
Extending that to radar and infrared seems totally reasonable. Also, my eyes have a lot of evolution both adding biases, and ensuring those biases don't mess up very often.
Automated systems don't even have 80 years of engineering effort to accurately represent what's happening.
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Secondly, why would aliens reveal themselves in such a way? It is a possibility if those “aliens” are biological humans in possession of technology far superior to anything we have now. Then you’d want to keep it a secret.
Why keep it a secret? If we somehow where able to meet humans with a technology level below ours, wouldn't it make sense to give them technology to better themselves?
When has the human instinct ever been to give away an advantage over others?
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#29"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.
>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, it doesn't require extraordinary evidence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7
The appears to be an argument about semantics, enabled by Sagan's failure to precisely define "extraordinary". For the sake of argument, I'll define it here as "breaking the laws of thermodynamics". A reactionless thruster, which is one of the "scifi" technologies alluded to by the article, breaks the first law of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics is so fundamental to physics that it is "extraordinary" that anything violating it is correct, i.e. the prior probability of the supposed violation being correct is extremely low, and low enough that we have to consider unlikely alternative explanations, e.g. failures of the research process itself. For non-extraordinary claims, we can assume that the scientists are not lying or insane, but when the prior probability is low enough, these possibilities are no longer ignorable.
Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?
#30I'm not really one for compilation videos, but I stumbled across this one when looking for info on the tic tac incident and it's pretty interesting - 4 Most Compelling Videos Of UFOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7pgMfzTEZc