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The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

vice.com

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Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#21

Post by subsubzero »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

I couldn't agree more wth you, how dumb do they think people are to write off dozens of eye witness accounts to hysteria, And I really disagree with this statement Vice makes:

">That’s because the drones never existed."

is absolutely not the same as:

">CDPS confirmed no incidents involving criminal activity, nor have investigations substantiated reports of suspicious or illegal drone activity."

Basically it could have been legal drone activity by either a company or Govt. agency. My thoughts when I initially heard about this was this could have been a mapping startup or maybe something a larger tech company is testing out.

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#22

Post by GhettoMaestro »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

> This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice.

Water is wet. News at 11.

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#23

Post by driverdan »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

Learn about mass hysteria. This is exactly what happens. It's very easy for our brains to misinterpret things to match our expectations. If you believe there are swarms of drones you'll see them in things that aren't drones.

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#24

Post by Johnny555 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

"Mass hysteria" is an explanation that seems hard to swallow

It sounds like people were making independent reports, it's not like they were all listening to a "War of the Worlds" broadcast and then reporting based on what they heard on the radio.

Can it really be called "mass hysteria" if the individuals didn't know about each other's reports?

From the original description:

On Friday, Myers said he watched eight of the large drones flying along the Yuma County border near the intersection of U.S. 385 and County Road 54. At the same time, a single drone hovered about 25 miles away over the town of Paoli — it didn’t move all night, just hovered over the town — and eight more drones flew over Haxtun, about 10 miles down the road from Paoli, Myers said.

It sounds like military drones, which probably wouldn't be unexpected in Colorado given the amount of military bases there.

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#25

Post by ALittleLight »

dmix wrote: post #10
nkrisc wrote: post #9

Thirty years ago it would have been aliens, right? I'm a little surprised no one reported being abducted by the drones.

Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky". This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago. Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...

I'm not sure what you would expect to see in a photograph of a drone at night. A white light certainly seems like a reasonable thing. My drones have lights on the bottom.

If you photographed a drone without a light it would look like the night sky. If you photographed a drone with a light it would look like a light in the sky.

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#26

Post by ALittleLight »

driverdan wrote: post #23
ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

Learn about mass hysteria. This is exactly what happens. It's very easy for our brains to misinterpret things to match our expectations. If you believe there are swarms of drones you'll see them in things that aren't drones.

I have read about mass hysteria and it doesn't seem plausible to me.

If this were a crowd of people witnessing something and jumping to a strange conclusion where their beliefs were reinforced by each other's behavior - e.g. we both hear a car backfire, you look scared so I start to run and before you know it we're all talking about how we survived a mass shooting, then sure, I'd accept mass hysteria.

This is very different. It is many independent people over many days making reports of strange, but completely natural phenomenon. Nobody is seeing vampires, they are witnessing drones do the kind of things drones do. That a government agency can't find evidence of illegal drone activity after the fact is interesting, but it's absurd to conclude that this is mass hysteria.

If I flew a drone over you at night, and the police showed up a month later to inspect and found no evidence, would you believe that you had been suffering from mass hysteria?

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#28

Post by Trombone12 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #24
ALittleLight wrote: post #15

This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice. On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report real…

"Mass hysteria" is an explanation that seems hard to swallow It sounds like people were making independent reports, it's not like they were all listening to a "War of the Worlds" broadcast and then reporting based on what they heard on the radio. Can it really be called "mass hysteria" if the individuals didn't know about each other's reports? From the original description: On Friday, Myers said he watched eight of t…

He said "drone", and surely it wasn't simply a point light that Myers observed, but rather a perceptibly extended object at least?

So did this credible Myers also demonstrated the about 6 cm diameter binoculars needed to resolve a 20 metre "drone" 25 miles away? Or maybe he was using a 30 cm telescope to resolve a 5 metre drone?

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#29

Post by Trombone12 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #25
dmix wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky". This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago. Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...

I'm not sure what you would expect to see in a photograph of a drone at night. A white light certainly seems like a reasonable thing. My drones have lights on the bottom. If you photographed a drone without a light it would look like the night sky. If you photographed a drone with a light it would look like a light in the sky.

And how do you tell it's not one of those lights we've had in the sky for ages if you're driving in your car?

Re: The Colorado mystery drones weren’t real

#30

Post by Trombone12 »

dmix wrote: post #10
nkrisc wrote: post #9

Thirty years ago it would have been aliens, right? I'm a little surprised no one reported being abducted by the drones.

Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky". This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago. Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...

Bit weird to not use spell check, but when writing a mail to a crank... eh, whatever.

I'm honestly more surprised the vice editor left out a [sic] after "fdar", did they really miss that one?

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