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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

overcomingbias.com

191–200 of 260 posts

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

#191

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:…

This is an unfortunately common phenomenon. People vote for headlines not for articles. Not new though.

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

#192
That essay completely misses the simple quantum truth of the matter which is that it's all of the above.

It's all clearly just the universe acknowledging that, with all of our ramped up observational capabilities and all of our beaming radio waves into space, it's becoming more and more likely that we should have had some encounters with advanced spacefaring civilizations by now.

The logical conclusion is that any given Schroedinger's Spock is more or less likely to be a mistake, some new government tech, a hoax, AND traveling aliens whose DNA both is and isn't a branch off some human ancestor's...until the autopsy.

'Cause when you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do!

Forget it, Marge, it's Chinatown.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Nimitz incident apparently took place over an entire week. All that instrumentation was wrong... for an entire week? Doesn't pass the smell test.

> They were logged as high as eighty thousand feet, and as low as the ocean’s surface. After about a week of radar observations, Commander David Fravor, a graduate of the élite Topgun fighter-pilot school and the commanding officer of the Black Aces squadron, was sent on an intercept mission.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentag...

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

#194
post #146
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should adjust your numbers for population growth.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I've seen those twice on the west side of Puerto Rico. Spooked the hell out of me at the time because they fly very low and make virtually no sound.

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

#196
It seems to me that aliens as an explanation for UFO sightings is inherently contradictory.

If you assume they came and are attempting stealth, then they've done a terrible job of what should have been a trivial task. Assuming they have the technology to detect intelligent life on our planet from many light-years away, one would think they could safely observe us from inside our solar system but outside the atmosphere, where they would be virtually impossible to detect. If they do need to enter our atmosphere, it should be easy to set some rules on movement (acceleration limits, etc) such that, at the very least, they do not immediately strike a casual observer as an unusual phenomenon. Instead, they have managed to be seen and recorded so many times that they have not only been sporadically observed, but have actually inserted themselves into our cultural zeitgeist.

On the other hand, if you assume they are here but do not care about being observed, one would expect much better documentation of them. For that matter, if they do not mind being observed one would expect they would hover or land near objects of interest: cities, planes, near world leaders, etc. Instead, UFOs always seem to have almost a furtiveness to them, quickly accelerating away when they realize they are being seen.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intelligen…

People have also claimed, hunters may have been smarter on average. BTW, DNA sequencing does not tell you much. You would need an extremely big sample for comparisons, and even this would exclude methylation patterns and other things.

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

#198

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…

I am not following your reasoning here. Is there some property of organic matter that is necessary for intelligence, are you arguing that intelligence can only arise via natural selection, or something else?

While I agree we are no where near creating general artificial intelligence in a way required to found an interstellar civilization, I don't see how it would violate the laws of physics. Which is more likely: it is impossible to create actual artificial intelligence or we just haven't been trying for long enough?

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

#199

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…

This is just another thing to add to my book of reasons the "neorationalist" community is just sophistry for the 21st century, in terms of both the rhetorical turns that it takes as well as sociologically what segment of society it appeals to.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm Greek and live in Greece, I don't know of anyone here having seen an alien spaceship or anything that looks like one.

I'm sure there are plenty of Greek folks who think they've seen an alien.
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