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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

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

#231

Post by simonh »

tgflynn wrote: post #222
simonh wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure which case you’re referring to, but in the FLIR1 incident they were tracking something optically while nothing appeared on radar. The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away. Cameras are just as much, if not more susceptible to optical effects than human eyes. It’s quite plausible that a plane could be thought to be say 20km away, wh…

If you read my comment that you initially replied to you would see that I was talking about the FLIR1/Nimitz video. You're the one who brought up Go Fast, I have made no comments about that here. > The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away. I don't know which "proposed explanation" you're referring to but in a recent debate between Mick West an…

Cameras, like human eyes, have effectively infinite range. All it takes is an image bright enough, and as I’m sure you are aware, atmospheric effects can induce huge amounts of magnification and even project images from beyond the horizon. Unless you know something special about the ATFLIR camera that makes it specially limited in some way?

At any given time an AEGIS system is going to be tracking dozens of targets. All we can say about nothing showing on RADAR is they weren’t tracking anything where they thought the object was. If that’s not where it actually was, then the issue is moot.

My reference to Go Fast was a counter to your argument that experienced operators and aviators can’t make misidentifications. FLIR1 is a harder case because all we have is a blurry camera image, but in the case of Go Fast it’s perfectly clear the aviators were mistaken, therefore such mistakes are possible.

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

#232

Post by graderjs »

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 would agree with you if I accepted your framing of this. I think the framing is too narrow and doesn't do justice to the issue but within this frame your logical argument definitely makes sense.

I'm sure you may object that your frame is simply a semantically equivalent restating of what I was saying. So I would counter that that's simply your interpretation.

by the way I love your phrasing two equally unreasonable cults that's exactly what I think. the reason I think your framing is wrong is because there's not an equivalence, which I think you are assuming, between people's individual experience and people without that experience. So I'm not asking you to be a member of either of those unreasonable cults I'm not asking you to believe in aliens and I'm not asking you to believe that experiences fabricate their stories. I'm just asking you not to discount people's experiences and upon hearing those to keep an open mind.

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

#233

Post by graderjs »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #220
mensetmanusman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many thousands of people would have to agree on a sighting (that you were not a part of) for you to consider?

Not so many if any of them were working at any of the many companies and institutions that would detected such a thing and had measurements to support it. A 100 years ago if a few thousand people all swore they saw a flying saucer over Stonehenge it would be rather convincing. Nowadays, such a sighting is impossible to witnesses without the object also being caught on any number of detectors around the globe, so if t…

But I suspect you've convinced yourself with explanations that the sensors of the Navy around those released UAP videos were somehow invalid, or the many, if you search, nightvision UFO video, are also invalid. it would be cool if humans really had silent anti-gravity triangles, and if people see those or have an experience with them I think it's wrong to say well given that one of the possibly interpretations is aliens therefore this evidence must be discounted in these people must be crazy. I'm not saying you're saying that but I think there's definitely an incorrect trend in that direction

Something interesting about this stuff is that there's not perfect cover across all sensors always. Maybe sometimes you have people seeing something that's not on radar. Or you have something that's on radar but not on other types of sensor. Or you have something that's in the infrared but not in the visible. I'm not asking you to believe anyone interpretation just to be open and consistent I think that if you're willing to believe the sensors are malfunctioning and creating ghost tracks it's also reasonable to consider that the sensors are not capable of picking up some sorts of technology. I understand that depending on your pliers there's different takes have different probabilities to you but I don't think it's okay to rush to certainty and discount any of those interpretations and say that anyone who suggests as much or obvious for those is out and out crazy. that's offensive and abusive to people and not I think in the spirit of investigation and curiosity.

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

#234

Post by graderjs »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #184
ericmay wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the middle of “something definitely exists” and “nothing exists”? Seems like it would err on the side of “maybe something exists” which doesn’t quite feel like a middle ground. Replace UFOs with Sasquatch. “Sasquatch exists and here is the picture and Sasquatch tracks to prove it!” “You made that up. It’s a guy in a costume. Why can’t we find any single dead Sasquatch? Why are all the pictures and videos crapp…

A reasonable take would be asking “why are there stories of a giant bipedal ape told around the world by different cultures?” Could they be based on actual creatures like Gigantopithecus whose existence may have been recorded in oral histories for thousands of years? It doesn’t have to mean maybe they exist now but it can serve as a good motivation to do anthropological and archeological research.

Totally agree. I don't want to be the guy who's trying to have the last word and comment on everything here. I guess I just want to engage on this topic where I feel like I got so much to say. I'm sure there are other people here have more to say than me, I hope to try to create a sort of welcoming environment for those people come and engage too by removing or stopping some of the incorrect negativity and dismissals that I see around this topic.

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

#235

Post by graderjs »

thrav wrote: post #185
Atlantium wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being uncertain is in the middle. It's a position that too few humans are willing to take on any issue, treating it as if it were madness. If you are uncertain your options are to either ignore the issue or explore all the options.

That’s the point though, isn’t it? Many people have devoted their entire lives to “exploring the options” and still come up with basically nothing.

No, that's not the point. That what your think, and i think, it's a little harsh and dismissive for you to judge someone else's life work or experience or what they amount to and say they've achieved nothing. I bet a lot of other actual human beings would reject your characterization of them. I think you should think of that and I think not enough people remember the human in this topic. And I think that's selfish and cruel

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

#236

Post by graderjs »

superduperycomb wrote: post #226
Atlantium wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being uncertain is in the middle. It's a position that too few humans are willing to take on any issue, treating it as if it were madness. If you are uncertain your options are to either ignore the issue or explore all the options.

Yeah there aren’t three fixed points of either disbelief, true middle ground, or belief. It’s a spectrum and I fall more towards the disbelief point in this case, but that doesn’t stop me from critically evaluating the possibility that I’m on the wrong end of the spectrum

That's all I'm asking. Good on you and I think it's courageous to do that in a topic where there's so much stigma

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

#237

Post by graderjs »

ericmay wrote: post #94
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’s the middle of “something definitely exists” and “nothing exists”? Seems like it would err on the side of “maybe something exists” which doesn’t quite feel like a middle ground. Replace UFOs with Sasquatch. “Sasquatch exists and here is the picture and Sasquatch tracks to prove it!” “You made that up. It’s a guy in a costume. Why can’t we find any single dead Sasquatch? Why are all the pictures and videos crapp…

Convincing is your value judgment for you. And that's fair enough but just because you don't find it convincing doesn't mean we as in everybody should default towards not believing. Or discounting that it's possible. to me the large number of people who have personal experience is extraordinary evidence. I think that definitely means something's happening but I don't know what that something is.

keeping the middle ground is just remaining open-minded. Not discounting any possibility. I think that logical argument you make is a trap and I don't really understand it. Why assume non-existence is a default position. It seems kind of stupid and arrogant that because God hasn't come down and shown you something personally because he hasn't personally convinced you then the smartest thing for you to do is to believe that it just simply can't exist. No offense and you're not the only one who thinks like this but I just think that's kind of stupid and arrogant. I don't think you're stupid I think you're a very smart person but I don't understand why people think that default not existence position is smart. I mean to put it in an engineering point of view just because you haven't seen a bridge failure or just because your software hasnt experienced a particular failure mode yet is not a smart reason for you to believe that it's impossible. I'm sure without an eye blink within one heartbeat you would accept that statement so I don't get why you contract away from this notion as applied to other areas particularly areas where we have no fucking clue what's going on. No offense

my feeling in general is that people contract away from that because the implications emotionally psychologically are too scary. But I don't think that subjective emotional reaction to a possible implication should guide the primary response. maybe I'm making too much of it maybe it doesn't matter but I just think it's an important topic it's an important question. I don't think whether it's decided one way or another I don't think that will have all the answers for us as a species I just think it's interesting and it would be interesting to know.

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

#238

Post by graderjs »

Sacho wrote: post #133
graderjs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should all be engaging in this topic critically and openly. With curiosity rather than certainty, when none exists. I think we should not be so casual or strident in just dismissing or discounting other human beings personal experiences. Especially when there are so many people with stories. These humans are valuable, and their stories are valuable. We shouldn't dismiss that, or disrespect them. But also,…

No way. Modern research has demonstrated how unstructured and unscientific our reasoning is, easy to fool and game, falling prey to a plethora of biases. If anything, rejecting your own and other people's personal experience should be the default, because the information we gather when not taking the utmost care to calibrate our instruments is pretty much garbage. A quick example of this would be how unreliable eyewi…

no offense but I think you're unfairly and inconsistently dialing down your personal reliability for your subjective experience in this topic because this topic has the implications and emotional and psychological baggage that it does but you would be much more likely to trust yourself in your everyday life with the things that you already know. And I think that's reasonable. if I had some experience where there was a UFO or aliens I would definitely be doubting myself. But I think given time, or given repeated experiences, or given other people who had similar experiences and if I reflected on it I could definitely come to trust that what I experienced was true. Maybe that makes me unreliable... I mean I am unreliable my memory is unreliable my logic is unreliable my interpretations are unreliable my senses are unreliable. But I still have to piece together an existence just like everyone does. Just like I think you'd believe the things that happened to you in your everyday life. and I don't think we can discount other people's experiences so easily. Particularly if yeah so many experiences. Even if you have an unreliable sensor or sparse signals you can reconstruct an accurate picture, particularly if you have enough sensors. I'm not saying that all of the people's experiences means that it must be aliens I'm just saying it means that something is happening and I don't think it's honest for people to judge that as oh well this just means these people are unreliable. If that's true then it's just as equally likely that your judgment of them is unreliable too. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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

#239

Post by JPLeRouzic »

Mizza wrote: post #79
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…

That sounds nice, but is it true? Weren't the Vikings, later Normen, far less advanced than the places they raided? They absorbed the technology, the land and culture and used it to conquer and form what is present-day England. Maybe we'll beat the aliens with our savagery.

There is a funny Sci-Fi book by Poul Anderson on this topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Crusade

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