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

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

#161

Post by bitcurious » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

_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…

Here’s a completely bizarre experience I had that I attributed to bad luck.

I saw a weird triangular drone/plane flying close to an airport. I went to take a picture of it (to identify later) and my phone died. Just up and black screened. An hour later I was eating dinner and turned back on with ~43% battery power remaining. It wasn’t a particularly cold day, but I attributed to an old battery not handling the temp well. I don’t think it was aliens, or even a UFO (except to me.)

…but if it was an alien UFO, I wouldn’t be surprised if the folks who traversed space to be here could ID a lens and disable my phone.

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

#162

Post by Swenrekcah » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

badRNG wrote: post #114

graderjs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 just tin foil hat flunkies clinging to your own special precious version of the coming apocalypse. Your own special cult. Generally speaking, it see…

I want to add that I think we should make a clear distinction between (1) “believing” in aliens and (2) believing aliens have visited us.

I am for instance virtually certain that life in general and intelligent life in particular abounds in the Universe. I am even more certain that any accounts people tell and have told of alien sightings are lies or misunderstandings.

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

#163

Post by mclightning » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

bitcurious wrote: post #161

_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…

Here’s a completely bizarre experience I had that I attributed to bad luck. I saw a weird triangular drone/plane flying close to an airport. I went to take a picture of it (to identify later) and my phone died. Just up and black screened. An hour later I was eating dinner and turned back on with ~43% battery power remaining. It wasn’t a particularly cold day, but I attributed to an old battery not handling the temp w…

Same argument could be stretched to say..."same folks could hide themselves from your eyes"

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

#164

Post by zionic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:14 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…

>I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away.

No, you haven't. Every "debunking" has itself been thoroughly debunked.

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

#165

Post by DrBazza » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:18 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:…

> what else is there to do other than troll rando life forms (farmers)?

I would love it if we really lived in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe and "teasers" were really a thing.

> infinite energy, what would you gain

Also "they're coming for our water!" despite more existing in the asteroids and moons outside of our, and the Sun's gravity well. There's literally very few reasons to come to Earth other than to say "hi!".

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

#166

Post by zionic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #86

_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…

Any phenomenon which decreases in rate proportional to our ability to measure it is very unlikely to exist. This reasoning applies to all historical mumbojumbo: ufos, bigfoot, ghosts, etc. These ideas are plausible insofar as they are constructed to be almost unmeasurable. The preponderance of camera phones today means we have 1bn+ people able to measure their environment at abitary frequencies, and all such phenomen…

>Any phenomenon which decreases in rate proportional to our ability to measure it is very unlikely to exist.

Military UFO sightings have only increased as we have deployed more sophisticated RADAR/LIDAR/Thermal/EWAR systems. In the nimitz case they had just recently been upgraded.

AEGIS/SPY-1 detected objects entering theater at 80,000+ ft, that quickly dropped to sea level. The tracks then disappeared from radar and the carrier groups sub gets a sonar hit in the same location of something going 200MPH under water.

We have complex multi-spectrum/multi-system detection events of objects/crafts capable of trans-medium travel, a capability no known adversary has.

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

#167

Post by 015a » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

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…

I agree; especially when you combine a possibility like cognition-altering gas exposure (CO, etc), the brain can do some weird shit; connecting disparate strands of thought between movies you've seen, things you've heard, etc. When a fighter pilot says "both myself and my copilot saw it"... you're breathing the same air, right? Ate the same meal four hours ago? Touching the same control surfaces?

There are certainly some reports that stand up beyond this level of scrutiny.

I don't understand the assertion that "aliens are more likely than (a laundry list of other supernatural things)". The most significant point against modern day alien contact isn't really that "aliens don't exist"; that seems foolish to think. Its that space is insanely vast, and a civilization would need faster-than-light travel to travel across it in any decent amount of time; faster than light travel is roughly on the same level of "physically possible by our understanding of physics" as Time Travel or Dimensional Travel.

So, its a stretch to think its aliens, but you might as well also believe it could be any of those other things. In fact, I could envision a far-out argument for time travel being more likely; if they're both pretty incomprehensible from a physics standpoint, maybe we flipped their improbability. Maybe time travel is actually more possible than FTL travel. And here's one absolute certainty; across the four dimensions, the dimensionally nearest form of advanced, sentient life is You, ten seconds from now.

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

#168

Post by simonh » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

zionic wrote: post #164

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. No, you haven't. Every "debunking" has itself been thoroughly debunked.

The 'debunk the debunkers' videos I've seen are hilariously, worst fringe of flat earth level wrong headed.

They very much reminded me of the attempts to 'debunk' SpaceX rocket landing videos as fake, all of which died out when they landed multiple rockets in daylight in front of tens of thousands of people.

IIRC one of the air force videos couldn't be readily explained, but that was just because there wasn't enough information in the video to calculate scale or relative motion, so it could have been anything. The other two were definitively explained.

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

#169

Post by fallingfrog » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

Sane, rational people see things that aren’t really there all the time. I want proof, or else I’m positive that the answer is a) honest mistakes.

I mean, there are how many cell phones in the world now? And how many unambiguous pictures of aliens or ufo’s?

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

#170

Post by _ph_ » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

choxi wrote: post #136

_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…

Phone cameras have improved in resolution but their optical zoom hasn't gotten much better. The Chelyabinsk meteor is easy to see without any zoom because of the contrail and glow from burning in the atmosphere, but the UFOs that people claim to see don't leave any signatures. They're often reported as just shapes moving in strange ways or balls of light. The few witness testimonies I've seen often estimate the size…

Both the resolution and the optical magnification have gotten better. Initial mobile phones had an equivalent to a 28mm lens in the 35mm format, today you get 50-70mm equivalents too. In any case, a modern smartphone even with a rather wide angle lens does still get more details than an average eye. So what people indeed are seeing are strange lights which move around, which well, are just some lights they can't explain. And the smartphone will show that rather clearly.

And that is just smartphones, that is not talking about all the high-power digital cameras now being quite ubiquitous, one would expect at least some interesting shots popping up on the internet.