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

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

#171

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

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.

This reminds me of the allegory of the cave, and one observation I've had, or maybe stolen?, of it.

Who is anyone to invade another's life, uninvited, and tell them how they're living wrong?

Would their subjective life experience really be better if they were chasing the next iPhone, pickup truck, opium den, bonus, or sexcapade?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

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

#172

Post by _ph_ » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:38 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…

Yes, it is an odd coincidence, but as you write, a bad battery or just a weak contact is the likely explanation.

The alternative would assume that there are aliens, which are able to disable your smartphone from the distance, but are not able to make their vehicles somewhat look like current human vehicles. At minimum, they should paint "Pepsi" or "Nike" on them, and no one would notice them :)

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

#173

Post by simonh » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #109

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…

Mick West's explanation of the FLIR1 video (the one from the Nimitz incident), that it was an ordinary aircraft, makes zero sense because given the quantity and quality of situational awareness data available to the pilots who captured the video it would require an extraordinary degree of incompetence to make such a mistake. I'm no expert on naval technology but given my limited understanding of carrier strike group…

It doesn't take incompetence to make a mistake, any of us can make mistakes even in things we're highly competent in. Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for.

Take Go Fast for example, they're highly competent experienced aviators, but they still very clearly completely misidentified what, in hindsight, is obviously a bird. Clearly if trained operators can make a mistake like that, other mistakes are possible, so you can't just discount the possibility as absurd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8

I can easily see someone thinking an image is of a near object when it's actually a far object, and we know for a fact that highly trained operators can make terrible mistakes using complex tracking equipment.

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

#174

Post by zionic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #95

This article didn't really live up to my expectations based on the title. What I would say, based only on information that almost everyone should agree on (ie. public statements and a very small number of authenticated videos) is that there are three possibilities. 1. Surprising government incompetence This would be the case if all reported military encounters with UAP's could be explained by misinterpretations and m…

I for one look forward to the hacker news posts titled "How did we get it so wrong for so long?" analyzing the systemic and sociological failures that lead to the "taboo" which blocked progress/investigation for so long.

The comments of course will be how it was obvious, documented for decades, and how they knew all along.

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

#175

Post by PopsiclePete » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

015a wrote: post #167

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…

Go back in time a thousand years and tell people that one day man will fly faster than a bird and land on the moon.

FTL is not impossible. The only thing physics say is that you can’t accelerate a particle that has mass past c because that would require infinite energy. But accelerating an object doesn’t have to be the only way to move “faster” than light.

Look at our civilization today and compare it to what it was a thousand or two thousand years back. Now imagine a civilization that’s had three hundred thousand year head start on us.

Who’s to say they haven’t mastered wormholes or bending gravity or harnessing dark energy to accomplish things that are purely in the realm of science fiction today?

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

#176

Post by dsugarman » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

The author doesn't present a single logical argument that I could follow. The entire piece is just hand waving with a self proclamation of logic. I'm confused how this could reach the front page of hn. My best guess is people just want to discuss their own theories on UFOs and it presented a forum for that, but it feels like we are collectively giving this piece credibility.

The first line sets up the entire charade:

Sometimes I pride myself on my taking an intellectual strategy of tackling neglected important questions.

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

#177

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #15

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…

> ...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…

I think it's more likely that any sufficiently advanced civilization capable of monitoring earth, relatively undetected, has evolved beyond the types of problems that compose the way we view everything. Assuming that mundane explanations have been systematically and thoroughly refuted I'd posit we're the curiosity of the extraterrestrial version of something along the lines of a zoologist, student, or voyeur.

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

#178

Post by jeffreyrogers » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:45 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…

Could've been this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentine...

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

#179

Post by zionic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #6

ladzoppelin wrote: post #2

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenomenon What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery. It would take crazy technology and time for anything to travel from another galaxy and be able to handle this environment without slowly studying and incorporating our DNA into theirs over a period of time.(60 years is nothing when you thin…

> What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery To be fair that's also true of Lord of the Rings :) But being serious, the scientific mindedness of army personnel and politicians is not widely reputed. I find it still far more likely that they are overblowing simple flukes for fear of dismissing a legitimate threat, than I find it th…

>The fact that these sightings are almost always happening at high altitudes and in stressful situations

But that isn't a fact. I strongly recommend you read up on the complete timeline of the Nimitz incident. It happened over several days and was recorded on an entire suite of sensors including multiple sets of human eyeballs.

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

#180

Post by zionic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

graderjs wrote: post #84

ladzoppelin wrote: post #2

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenomenon What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery. It would take crazy technology and time for anything to travel from another galaxy and be able to handle this environment without slowly studying and incorporating our DNA into theirs over a period of time.(60 years is nothing when you thin…

I'm with you on this. What I think is crazy tho is how ready and willing many people are to discount, absolutely discount and say, "well that is crazy" the experiences of so many people, who open themselves to ridicule and share some weird thing that happened. And these people are prepared to judge, discount, minimize and dismiss, these other human beings, because....it didn't personally happen to the person judging?…

I think the sad reality is a sizable portion of the population is waiting for permission from mainstream sources before acknowledging the new reality.

The normalization campaign has already begun (2017 NY Times report) and the next big push is the June 2021 release.