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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

#71

Post by epilys »

smcl wrote: post #18
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 have one counter-example for you - North Sentinel Island. This is a small island in the Indian Ocean where people live who are completely isolated from the rest of the world and as such are probably the least technologically advanced civilization on earth. They're able to remain this way because it's generally been agreed that we should leave them alone (you can't go within 5 nm, of the island) but India does try t…

Very interesting. I wish there was a way to share basic medicine etc to improve their life quality without further damage to their existence. It's a shame to have means of reducing suffering and not share them with your fellow beings.

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

#72

Post by ALittleLight »

bl4ckm0r3 wrote: post #61

Why does everyone assume the belligerent nature of aliens thinking they evolved as we did? Maybe aliens evolved from a capybara and all they are looking for in the universe is a warm lake to bath in.

Warm lake tech likely comes before interstellar travel in the tech tree.

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

#73

Post by tgflynn »

notahacker wrote: post #27

The whole thing is a masterpiece of bizarre statements dressed up as reasoning Take: Second, between (Ca) spontaneous decentralized hoaxes and lies, and (Cb) hoaxes and lies coordinated by a big central organization, (Cb) seems much more likely. Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. You don't need to be an Oxford research associate writing about overcoming bias to re…

> Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels.

Fairies, ghosts and angels don't show up on radar or FLIR and the Inspector General of the DoD has never launched an investigation into how they have been handled by that department.

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

#74

Post by mjburgess »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #56

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 anyt…

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel.

The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by".

The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings peak in the era of Star Treck, and space races.

P(All life is organic | All known chemistry) ~= Very High

P(All intelligent organic life degrades) ~= Very High

thef.

P(Alien Life Lasts Long Enough To Travel | Above ) ~= Very Low

Physics & Chemistry basically rule out alien contact.

Once you insert these priors into your reasoning the "D - it's aliens!" becomes extraordinarily implausible.

It's remarkable this author finds D-Aliens more likely than D-SecretSociety. The latter only requires plausible localised advancements in knowledge and conspiracy; the former requires believing everything we know about biochemistry and physics to be radically incorrect.

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

#75

Post by iamacyborg »

StavrosK wrote: post #62
dragonelite wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> UFO stuff seems mostly driven by the west This is what smells the most, to me. Why are almost all the sightings we hear about in the US? You'd expect them to be evenly distributed.

Probably because you speak English and don’t engage in communities that aren’t in English.

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

#76

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

ThalesX wrote: post #10

tl;dr; just a story of how I saw a UFO when I was young, nothing actionable... I feel somewhat bad for sharing life stories on a technical forum, but here it goes. As a young boy, 5-ish, I was sleeping with my mother and father in the room, and my grandmother rushes in, all pale, shouting something which directly translates to "Flying body! Flying body!". I distinctly remember having nightmares afterward with flying…

Was it translucent? Maybe it was a circular beam of light from the local discoteque reflecting from the clouds :D

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

#77

Post by bluesign »

mbnull wrote: post #32
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…

Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better. Alien intelligence would also be alien enough if it wasn't interstellar. Interplanetary, inter-dimensional or subterranean would be alien by my standard, too. The Videos might have been plausibly explained, but i would a…

"Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better."

Actually this is problem with the simplifying Occam's Razor. It is not about simple solution, it is about fewer assumptions. Actually with each assumption you are limiting the domain of the question.

Actually before we observed more (like before we knew better), earth being flat is the correct solution vs earth being round.

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

#78

Post by smcl »

epilys wrote: post #71
smcl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one counter-example for you - North Sentinel Island. This is a small island in the Indian Ocean where people live who are completely isolated from the rest of the world and as such are probably the least technologically advanced civilization on earth. They're able to remain this way because it's generally been agreed that we should leave them alone (you can't go within 5 nm, of the island) but India does try t…

Very interesting. I wish there was a way to share basic medicine etc to improve their life quality without further damage to their existence. It's a shame to have means of reducing suffering and not share them with your fellow beings.

Yeah it's gotta be hard to figure out where the line is between helping and interfering. A few accounts of the Sentinelese suggest they don't want any help but I think some of the peaceful exchanges in the past show that they don't mind contact and are happy to receive packages of food and bits of iron for tools. All I know is that I'm not gonna be the one to reach out, an American preacher repeatedly tried to do so a few years back and ended up killed as a result. It was 100% his own fault, on one of his attempts a Sentinelese kid fired an arrow at him that struck his bible which if I was religious I would have taken as a sign to GTFO ...

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

#79

Post by Mizza »

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…

That sounds nice, but is it true?

Weren't the Vikings, later Normen, far less advanced than the places they raided? They absorbed the technology, the land and culture and used it to conquer and form what is present-day England.

Maybe we'll beat the aliens with our savagery.

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

#80

Post by MobileVet »

mjburgess wrote: post #74
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #56

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 anyt…

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel. The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by". The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings pea…

While I agree with your assessment of known modes of travel, this also assumes we know everything. I believe it is a safe assumption that we do not.

There are potential modes of travel via worm holes or similar inter-dimensional transits that could account for vast distances shrinking to zero without violating our known physics laws.

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