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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

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Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#51

Post by throwaway316943 »

bloak wrote: post #25
atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

I don't think it makes sense to compare interactions between, on the one hand, different groups of primitive humans on Earth and, on the other hand, interactions between interstellar intelligences, which might be (and in my opinion probably would be) some kind of distributed AI which does not think or behave like a living organism, the product of biological evolution. My guess is that an extraterrestrial intelligence…

I still find this notion that all alien civilizations will be meek little wall flowers pussy footing their way around the galaxy as completely unsupported by evidence. Most of the argument appears to be based on a not very good sci-fi novel. If our own history is any guide then civilizations will continue to run headlong into each other with little regard for consequences even when they know better, the motivations driving expansion and exploration are so strong that they overpower any cautions from the sideline. If life is common in the galaxy then it’s probably saturated every star system and all the space between by now and the reason we don’t see it is because we’re still having trouble figuring out how to spot the pebbles in our own neighborhood that might bump into us and wipe us out. Thinking we’d obviously see the aliens first if they were there is like expecting Montezuma to discover Spain.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#52

Post by tsimionescu »

pacman2 wrote: post #33
BlueTemplar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ? I've heard that things might have changed 80k years ago when thanks to cultural progress autism went from negative to positive (for the community), but otherwise AFAIK there haven't been any significant changes since the apparition of homo sapiens 350k-400k years ago ?

There is an argument that the mind of people changed a few thousand years ago, part as a cultural phenomenon, part as a genetic selection process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in... (the genetic selection process is mentioned in the book, the wiki abstract puts more focus on a cultural development)

The bicameral mind is an interesting story, but it is not taken as a serious possibility in any branch of science that studies the human mind, as far as I know.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#53

Post by throwaway316943 »

atweiden wrote: post #35
zhdc1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. This assumes resource competition, which isn't a guarantee. Colonialism was driven by the need for open markets, resources, and vanity satisfaction from a declining class of European elites. It's very likely that we don't h…

> This assumes resource competition, which isn't a guarantee. Colonialism was driven by the need for open markets, resources, and vanity satisfaction from a declining class of European elites. What about enslavement? Here Hawkings / Neil deGrasse Tyson make another interesting point: any civilization which could peacefully colonize a galaxy is not the kind of civilization that would colonize the galaxy at all. The ve…

What would be the point of a galaxy spanning civilization enslaving other species? We’re single planet savages and we’re getting close to building universal robots that can perform all of our labor, at the most it will be another half century. At that point any non bioengineered organism will be slower, weaker, less durable and less replaceable.

It’s much more likely that we just don’t have anything they want.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#54

Post by throwaway316943 »

adrianN wrote: post #41
zhdc1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. This assumes resource competition, which isn't a guarantee. Colonialism was driven by the need for open markets, resources, and vanity satisfaction from a declining class of European elites. It's very likely that we don't h…

We have a planet that is quite suitable for carbon based life forms. Those might be worth something to interstellar intelligences.

Unlikely if you can just build your own habitat. Who wants to live at the bottom of an annoying gravity well on a filthy rock with uncontrollable weather and geological processes that’s infested with non-engineered microbes? Maybe for a weekend camping expedition but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#55

Post by _ph_ »

The discussion is basically answered by this short picture: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374167754404630528

Not only has the quality of cameras increased increadibly in the last decades, especially thanks to modern digital cameras, but in the last 10 years, most of us are carrying a quite good camera in their pocket all of the time. This would easily allow for documenting any strange phenomena. And that this works is shown. When the meteor struck chelyabinsk some years ago, there where plenty of videos thanks to dash cams. When recently debries of a SpaceX second stage reentered the atmosphere near Seattle, there were plenty of videos taken showing this event. This is not even taking into account all the advanced amateurs, who are shooting images of the ISS in orbit, or even any professionals, whose job it is to track the air and space around earth for things. Any metal part in orbit is tracked by NORAD for obvious reasons.

So, where are such videos showing the aliens? It is obvious, that people constantly are seeing things which are not directly explainable, especially to non-scientists. But somehow they are not recorded. One good explanation is: a lot of them are recorded and in the record, they are easily identifiable as what they really are and no longer mentioned.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#56

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

So I'm reluctant to post this but here we go..

In this case it is most probably high competence. Coming out of WW2 it wasn't difficult to take national security extremely serious. I thought that there wasn't much to the crash(es) near Corona in 1947 but the witness testimonies are just very very convincing, I actually changed my mind after reading up on the subject recently (before I would have said I don't know anything about it but I'd be amazed if it was true).

A lot of observations had been made the weeks previous to the crash and gathered a lot of headlines, including the one in Portland that coined the expression "flying saucer". The person in the photo with the weather balloon is on record saying that it was not a weather balloon, that was a cover story, as are a lot of other people involved in the handling of wreckage and bodies in the days after. These are people that didn't come forward but had to be found after several decades.

And this was the press release by the military before it was withdrawn and replaced with the balloon story:

"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County"

I encourage anyone who is interested to look at Stanton Friedman's interviews with witnesses, they are on youtube.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#57

Post by adrianN »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #54
adrianN wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a planet that is quite suitable for carbon based life forms. Those might be worth something to interstellar intelligences.

Unlikely if you can just build your own habitat. Who wants to live at the bottom of an annoying gravity well on a filthy rock with uncontrollable weather and geological processes that’s infested with non-engineered microbes? Maybe for a weekend camping expedition but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Maybe you can't and all you do is send semi-autonomous drones containing DNA and sophisticated 3d printers.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#58

Post by dragonelite »

DrBazza wrote: post #7

UFOs exist. Alien spaceships do not. Occam's Razor. Also, having the technology to fly light years through interstellar space, means that you should surely be able to construct a craft that doesn't crash on Earth (Roswell), or waste your time flying for years to dip into the atmosphere, do a little light show and fly off, or harassing a farmer in the middle of nowhere vs landing in Central Park. The gimbal video and…

UFO stuff seems mostly driven by the west, wouldn't be surprised if it was just a psy-ops. To get some more defense funding for the space force.

If you can generate almost infinite energy to cross deep space to probe some humans I'm not sure I would take such an alien race serious. It would be more like how global factions on earth fight over resources, so I subscribe more to the Dark forest view of things. If they reckon crossing deep space is worth it, they will come over here to invade not to probe and troll farmers.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

noodles_nomore wrote: post #14

UFOs shouldn't be synonymous with alien intelligence. If anything evolved to travel through the universe, wouldn't it be logical to assume that it originated from a place where this ability was necessary for survival, e.g. the edge of a black hole? Such a life form could be quite different from our rock-bound existence. They might be closer to fish than to us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) explores this idea.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#60

Post by TrispusAttucks »

atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

This is true when the other side is a physical equal and of a similar species battling for resources.

I don't think this holds true when one side is far superior to the other, of a different species, and doesn't really require the same resources as the inferior species.

Example: I'm not out to destroy the squirrels in my woods, even though occasionally they do something that inconveniences me, because they are not a threat and I want nothing of their acorn or walnut resources.

They can be very entertaining to watch however.

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