UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by king_magic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

tgflynn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are we talking about the three US military videos that surfaced in recent years? I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. In one case, you could literally use the numbers on the recording and some middle-school level geometry skills to calculate that the tracked object is a bird. And it's quite easy to guess why these videos were released. They're technology demonstrators. The general public can t…

> but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter"

I don't really buy that. I don't think some sort of fancy high resolution, possibly AI-driven bird (drone/jet/etc.) tracking is a particularly impressive capability that would have the Russian & Chinese militaries shaking in their shoes.

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

#142

Post by garbagetime » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #125

mrfusion wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious what the argument is. They would certainly be able to resupply raw materials if needed. Just plan a stop at a promising star system. Why wouldn’t a long lived nuclear power system provide the energy for food and life support? Beyond that, even five or ten generations is enough to get somewhere at .1C.

I recommend reading the novel. The key line in it is “Life is a planetary phenomenon.” Basically, the argument is that at less than planetary scale, you would be confronted with things like waste products building up too quickly to sustain human life. For example, the generation starship struggles with an excess of salt (which in turn affects food production). The limited confines of the ship also produce deleterious…

Maybe he had to make his argument into a novel because it isn't good enough to stand up to direct inspection. Deleterious effect of species on small islands are (a) maybe not always present? E.g. kakapo (b) due to factors which needn't be unaddressed in generational ships

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

#143

Post by milanandreew » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #134

See, this is why it is always so hard to take these rationalist arguments seriously. They assume their own competence, at the same time as pretending not to. The most likely alternative is obviously E: something we (personally) don't know. That doesn't depend on time travel, extra dimensions, or aliens. It's not a clear majority, > 0.5. But to fail to mention it amounts to a big hole in the argument.

Why wouldn't that count as A?

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

#144

Post by king_magic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

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…

Anytime I try to take a good nighttime photo of something small far away, it looks awful & is quite difficult to make out - even on my iPhone XR.

I really don't buy the argument that our advanced phone cameras are capable of capturing conclusive images of anything unexplainable, since they can barely capture good images of things that are explainable.

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

#145

Post by thwarted » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

mrspeaker wrote: post #120

oxymoran wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen a flying orb along with a complete stranger who also saw it, there is no time to just pull out my phone and snap a picture. Additionally, seeing something that is seemingly unreal is spell binding. And let’s be real, if there was a high quality photo, you would just claim it was photoshopped. You need to see it to believe it, and that’s fair.

Not to deny your orbs (though, orbs are pretty "common" - like ball lightning)... but I saw 3 flying orbs in the 90s that I thought were ufos (or, one ufo) - like they were kind of linked, but moving independently. Weird looking. I woke my parents to come and verify I wasn't crazy. I called the telephone operator (lol, trust me, they were a thing once) to get the number for the observatory and the operator said "You…

I saw 3 flying orbs in the 90s that I thought were ufos (or, one ufo)

This terminology is all screwed up. You did see "unidentified flying objects". But you thought, and were ultimately hoping, they were "identified flying objects": identified as extraterrestrial in origin.

Which is to say that there's a lot of confusion over when a "ufo" implies "alien".

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

#146

Post by krapp » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #122

throwaway316943 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't even know if we can argue that there is an economic point to enslaving other humans (look at rates of industrialism in ex-slave owning regions).

There are more people in slavery now than there were during the transantlantic slave trade. It's a multi-billion dollar trans-national black market economy. Neither the Industrial Revolution nor abolition have even slowed it down.

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

#147

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

garbagetime wrote: post #142

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend reading the novel. The key line in it is “Life is a planetary phenomenon.” Basically, the argument is that at less than planetary scale, you would be confronted with things like waste products building up too quickly to sustain human life. For example, the generation starship struggles with an excess of salt (which in turn affects food production). The limited confines of the ship also produce deleterious…

Maybe he had to make his argument into a novel because it isn't good enough to stand up to direct inspection. Deleterious effect of species on small islands are (a) maybe not always present? E.g. kakapo (b) due to factors which needn't be unaddressed in generational ships

He made his argument into a novel because he is a writer, novels are what he does. But he tends to write around the scientific ideas he has been reading and his work often serves as convenient summaries of those ideas for a broad audience – mentioning a KSR plot is standard fare on "news for nerds" sites like this one.

Also, my post above intentionally says "akin to" and not "identical to".

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

#148

Post by notahacker » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

graderjs wrote: post #68

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…

It's possible that your bias against believing this means your interpretation is a lot of bizarre takes dressed up as the only possible conclusions. What I don't get is the arrogance of every side about this subject. We have no answers. We have no understanding. The government seems to be about to admit as much. But the true believers are sure, and the true debunkers, yourself included, are sure. To me, you're both j…

> It's possible that your bias against believing this means your interpretation is a lot of bizarre takes dressed up as the only possible conclusions.

Robin presented an argument dependent on a false syllogism: if people were lying about aliens then either (Ca) they were spontaneously coming up with the same hoax or (Cb) there was some organization coordinating the hoaxes

I pointed out this syllogism missed the most obvious, commonly argued and evidentially supported alternative explanation for lots of humans telling the same story or fabricating the same evidence - humans copy each other and adapt popular stories, as they have been doing for thousands of years. That's neither spontaneous, decentralized and unlikely nor a conspiracy: it's the essence of shared knowledge and mythology. Regardless of whether I'm biased against Robin's explanation or not, he simply overlooked this in what was supposed to be his list of only possible conclusions

At no point did I discount other possibilities (I mean, I don't think fairies, angels or "greys" are likely but my argument didn't touch on that branch of the argument). I simply pointed out Robin's enthusiasm for a couple of fantastic explanations (government conspiracies to fake aliens, or actual aliens) lead him to string together a chain of reasoning which altogether neglected one of the most mundane. Which is pretty ironic, given that trying to avoid that kind of bias is literally his specialist subject!

> More specifically, in your case, you have an actual mirror case of crank-iness: you have a conspiracy for the creation of all the evidence, rather than a conspiracy for the suppression of it.

No, I specifically attack Robin's suggestion that a conspiracy for the creation of all the evidence is likely [if the evidence isn't true]. You're welcome to argue that my "humans intentionally and unintentionally copy each others' stories" hypothesis is completely wrong or vanishingly unlikely, of course, but that's a stronger knowledge claim than I made.

Perhaps you should heed your own words about leaping logic to arrive directly at certainty...

I'm sorry, but if you're going to lecture people on nuance and not being arrogant after calling them tinfoil hat flunkies, you probably should read the arguments you're commenting on first (including Robin's). Makes meeting in the middle that bit easier (I really don't have any strong opinions either way on what individual reports did or didn't see) :D

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

#149

Post by dragonelite » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

thwarted wrote: post #140

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…

If you can generate almost infinite energy, what would you gain by invading earth vs, say, consuming resources from an uninhabited planet? Earth makes up a small amount of the mass in our solar system. But the inverse is also just as likely (fantastical): if you can generate almost infinite amounts of energy, what else is there to do other than troll rando life forms (farmers)? Both cases do have one thing in common:…

Good point could also ask why invade earth when you have a lot of easily minable resources in the asteroid belt. Given they can already generate almost infinite energy I'm pretty sure they will have mastered space resource extraction.

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

#150

Post by andrewla » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

Words fail to describe how skeptical I am of this, but let's focus on the particular point that the author is making. They correctly assert that if you look at the totality of UFO sightings, then A -- "Honest mistakes: This includes misunderstandings of familiar phenomena, delusions and mental illness, and natural phenomena that we now poorly understand" -- is by far the dominant conclusion.

If we just look at the hardest to explain ones, the author asserts, then that option disappears because that is what makes them tricky; we've ruled out (via multiple witnesses, or very reliable witnesses) that option.

So let's just get to the nitty gritty -- what are some examples of the top 10 hardest to explain ones? I ask because I've never seen one that I would consider "hard to explain" in that sense.