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

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

#151

Post by Loughla » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #131

mrfusion wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your thinking but this still bothers me: > P(All intelligent life is organic | Our best knowldge) =~ 1 Even looking at ourselves, we are somewhat close to AI and it’s a reasonable belief that we’ll have something smarter than us within a few decades. Why are non organic aliens so unlikely to you?

I equally think P(Inorganic AI) is also vanishing low. What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". It's a system of manipulating electrical abacus beads to follow patterns of interest to human observers. Has very little to do with building systems that have relevant intrinsic properties. A digital computer does not weight more in virtue of simulating weight. A simulation is just a…

>Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems

Why are human brains real, which are just meat full of electricity, but computer brains cannot be real, which are just metal full of electricity?

>Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence.

I would argue: so far. We didn't start with Ultra-high-definition televisions. Grandpa had a tv that was barely discernible as a picture, and probably caused massive cancer. Now I have a high def screen in my pocket.

>What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI".

I do agree with this, but I certainly do not know enough about it to speak intelligently.

I guess what I'm saying is, your argument comes across as - we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible. That just smacks of being wrong.

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

#152

Post by tgflynn » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #150

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 ha…

> what are some examples of the top 10 hardest to explain ones?

The Nimitz 2004 incident taken as a whole seems to be in a category by itself in terms of how difficult it is to explain.

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

#153

Post by mekkkkkk » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

Eupolemos wrote: post #137

_ph_ wrote: post #55

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…

Not really. A lot of the cases have always been hoaxes or ignorance. Slow moving lights in the skies photographed by exited "believers". The few remaining good cases are difficult to document. First of all, go out and take a picture of a bird. You get just one chance and it must be flying fast. Your result will not be very good. This our baseline. Now look at the Nimitz incident. They measured a move of stationary at…

That measurement came from a radar cluster for which an update was being tested the same day. The radar data that was quickly grabbed from the strike group (tinfoil explanation: coverup), was actually retrieved for diagnostics and post-mortem for the test which had apparently failed.

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

#154

Post by thwarted » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

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…

There is nothing "simple" about the concept of flat earth. It's one set of exceptions on top of another set of exceptions, ad infinitum.

To use the pre-enlightenment list of exceptions: It's flat, but not infinite. It's a disc. Ringed by mountains. Held up by giant elephants. On the back of a turtle. On the back of another turtle.

The modern "rationale" for flat earth is just as complex (not simple) an explanation of exceptions upon exceptions. The Copernican, Galileo-an and Newtonian attempts to explain things are much closer to "simple", despite being incomplete, because they are experimentally gathered and predictive and not just mentally created from whole cloth.

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

#155

Post by Loughla » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #127

saberdancer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suggestion is that they did conclude that. Best proof is that there is no widespread research into UFOs funded by the government or the military. Military even released couple of videos captures by their own aircraft, if it was anything sensitive or secretive they wouldn't release these videos to the public (and to the adversaries).

> My suggestion is that they did conclude that. Then why haven't they said so instead of telling the American people and Congress that the objects shown in the videos are considered unidentified, to the extent that Congress has ordered a report on UAP's and that an investigation by the DoD Inspector General has been initiated ?

Because funding? We need better equipment, better sensors, and more data due to the investigation. That requires more funding.

Call me cynical, but I legitimately believe anytime a government agency releases information like this, it is just a cash grab.

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

#156

Post by thwarted » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

dragonelite wrote: post #149

thwarted wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why even come to this solar system when the amount of minable resources that isn't our solar system is so much greater?

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

#157

Post by mjburgess » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #107

mjburgess wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system ? We sent two probes in the 70s and they're already out of our solar system, they're definitely going waaaay slower than the speed of light https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46502820

Depends how you define "solar system". I was taxing a maximal definition of the outermost region where the sun's gravity has a meaningful effect; but also, it wouldnt be 1000 light years, I agree.

A more relevant number would just be distance to nearest system with planets of a relevant type. Or, likewise, the distance between this and the nearest galaxy (25k light years).

Space is "big"; much much bigger than its maximal speed. Light is only fast "around here". Traversable space is tiny for everything; and minute for living things.

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

#158

Post by dogma1138 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

antibuddy wrote: post #42

BlueTemplar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fascinating theory, but also quite a wild claim which seems to be hard to falsify ? (And the link with the matter at hand is even more tenuous, since it's only partially genetic.) It's a bit like if you were saying that you couldn't teach a prehistoric child to read (but even more exaggerated) ?

Everything so far ago is at least hard to prove/falsify, however this is true either way. I think every possible scenario (prehistorics being of more, less or equal potential) is at least plausible. At least it's easy to come up with arguments for each of these cases (and a hidden one being of different brain specialization).

Not really since we do have DNA sequencing of prehistoric humans.

Whilst we don’t understand the correlation between genetics and intelligence on a sufficient level there aren’t that many genetic differences in fact you can’t necessarily distinguish the age of the sample that easily either unless you are looking at very specific groups.

And as far as modern hunter gatherers go we know that they aren’t less intelligent than urban humans.

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

#159

Post by mjburgess » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #151

mjburgess wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I equally think P(Inorganic AI) is also vanishing low. What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". It's a system of manipulating electrical abacus beads to follow patterns of interest to human observers. Has very little to do with building systems that have relevant intrinsic properties. A digital computer does not weight more in virtue of simulating weight. A simulation is just a…

>Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems Why are human brains real, which are just meat full of electricity, but computer brains cannot be real, which are just metal full of electricity? >Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence. I would argue: so far. We didn't start with Ultra-high-definition televisions. Grandpa had a…

> we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible

Has nothing to do with anything I said.

I said no systems have properties in virtue of being computers. Nothing is a program, let alone intelligence.

>meat full of electricity

Meat grows. Intelligence is just a strategy many animals have adopted as a means of rapid adaptation to their local environment. It is maximal in humans because our motor systems are maximally adaptive, to the extreme degree that we literally learn to walk.

Each cell of the body is an entire universe of factories. And the body a synthesis of trillions providing a "terminator-2"-like plasticity from-top-to-bottom. Each of these trillion cells is capable of unimaginable scales of adaption, let alone the whole body.

I have no idea why people suppose any of that is a purely formal "algorithm" which any old thing might do. Beads of wood, or electrical switches. I can only assume, like the people to watch films for the first time, we apes are easily fooled.

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

#160

Post by user-the-name » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:07 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…

> We have no answers. We have no understanding.

This is factually incorrect. We have plenty of answers and understanding.