Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

fakenous.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#51

Post by RobertoG »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #46
abnry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the scenarios in my mind are bad. Either (1) we have actual aliens, which in bad inasmuch it is freaking crazy and novel; (2) the government is incompetent in identifying the physical effects manifesting in the sensors and is okay in exposing their incompetence; (3) a non-US nation-state has superior technology, which suggests a potential bad future geopolitical outcome; or (4) the government is running a psych-o…

Judging by the way the UFO rhetoric was suddenly ratcheted up several years ago by the US Govt, I feel that #4 is probably the most likely. My gut is telling me something isn’t right.

I have this feeling too, not so much about the pilots testimony, as about the way the videos came to light.

If I put my conspiracy theorist hat, this "To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science" smells to me to a "Intelligence Community" front.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#52

Post by boomboomsubban »

dau wrote: post #27
ncallaway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not think that is what is going on but it is certainly a possibility. Very remote, of course. I agree and put in Bayesian terms it seems to me that the prior for “aliens are here, and are hiding from us, but are hiding badly” should be non-zero but very low. The kind of evidence we have seen should just our priors upward very slightly, but has too many other (more likely) potential explanations to have a signi…

How do you come to the conclusion that they are hiding badly? Assuming they are there and they are in fact hiding, I think they are pretty good at it. Or do you have reliable photo or video evidence that suggests otherwise? :-)

They don't come to that conclusion. They think the chance that extraterrestrial life could both travel to earth and be rubbish at hiding is very, very low

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#53

Post by creamytaco »

I find these superficial debunkers even more tedious than the aliens are here crowd, since they selectively focus only on evidence that supports their POV whilst conveniently ignoring everything else.

Given eye-witness testimony by trained pilots there are two possibilities that I see:

+ Pilots are telling the truth, the phenomenon is real, the actors unknown (could be the US, foreign adversaries, ..)

+ Pilots are lying and this is some sort of prank or government propaganda / psychological operation.

What's not at all probable given the facts, are the explanations that fakenous.net put up.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#54

Post by carapace »

I didn't see it mentioned here yet but this went by three days ago: "‘Something’s going on’: UFOs threaten national security, US politicians warn"

> Some members of Congress were given advanced details about Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 June

> A group of senior American politicians have warned that UFOs pose “national security concerns” after getting a confidential briefing on a highly anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena that is set to be released later this month.

> Some members of Congress were given advanced details about the contents of the Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 June, and several said they are deeply worried about the findings.

> “Clearly, something’s going on that we can’t handle,” Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, told TMZ.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/17/ufos-us-repo...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27542883

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#55

Post by ArtDev »

Recall that "earthquake lights" were not recognized by science until recently. The sometimes giant balls of lights (proceeding an earthquake) were the source of many UFO sightings.

These Navy videos are not glitches, human error, or aliens.. or foreign tech. I think these are meteors with qualities yet to be undiscovered!

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#56

Post by egfx »

creamytaco wrote: post #53

I find these superficial debunkers even more tedious than the aliens are here crowd, since they selectively focus only on evidence that supports their POV whilst conveniently ignoring everything else. Given eye-witness testimony by trained pilots there are two possibilities that I see: + Pilots are telling the truth, the phenomenon is real, the actors unknown (could be the US, foreign adversaries, ..) + Pilots are ly…

> since they selectively focus only on evidence that supports their POV whilst conveniently ignoring everything else.

Sounds like the New York Times model. I think journalists basically feel the need, in fact it’s their job to do this because they think the narrative is paramount to everything else.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#57

Post by RobertoG »

jodrellblank wrote: post #34
ctvo wrote: post #13

A person without actual expertise dismisses numerous accounts by trained pilots who saw this first hand by Googling for YouTube explanations and calling these witnesses liars or incompetents. Does this person happen to work in tech?

The author is a professor of philosophy at Colorado University, no he doesn't work in tech. The people he is calling liars and incompetents are journalists and news media, not pilots.

True, he doesn't even mention what the pilots say they saw, what is curious for the case that he is discussing.

I don't blame him for his anti-alien position, but his "there is nothing weird here" position is kind of unsustainable. If instead, he would say: "there is no reason to explain this with aliens" and stopped there that would be a perfect rational position.

But he solved the problem like this:

>>"Utter incompetence: It took me under an hour on the internet to find the above explanations. I looked for explanations on YouTube, and the first video I found referenced Mick West. I then looked up Mick West’s web site, which lists all his videos. That was my research."

That was his research. Mr. West also forgot to explain (in the Tic-Tac case) the pilots testimony and, if I remember correctly, the previous radar signatures from the ships.

So, a professor of epistemology solve the problem estimating his priors from how he feels about the issue, an argument from authority (because he didn't bother to check if Mr.West get his facts right) and selecting only the evidence that fits his theory. Wonderful.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#58

Post by analog31 »

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #5

Aliens are like angels and demons in 12 century Europe- they're everywhere but you'll never see them.

For better or worse, science has enjoyed 400+ years of arbitrarily ignoring phenomena that are simultaneously profound but also irreproducible, while agreeing by convention that those phenomena are the realm of theology.

Science has been an incredibly fruitful pursuit, but it has left itself utterly un-equipped to deal with aliens.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#59

Post by thaumasiotes »

jamesdmiller wrote: post #47
dau wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ridiculous the ET assumption is depends on the amount of plausible alternatives. And for the Nimitz encounter to be something mundane, several very different things must have glitched or been missinterpreted and one has to put how ridiculous THAT would be into perspective.

Yes, if it's aliens or a 1 in 10,000 glitch it's the glitch. But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens.

> But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens.

That's still not true. It's more likely to be one glitch you haven't thought of than three successive glitches that you have thought of.

Re: There Are Aliens, but Probably Not Here

#60

Post by thayne »

abnry wrote: post #44
soared wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP's point is in that situation the government should/would have data gathered from onboard sensors about the UFOs. A fighter jet costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so we'd expect there to be various sensors with recordings of these objects, rather than just pilot's eyesight and memory.

All the scenarios in my mind are bad. Either (1) we have actual aliens, which in bad inasmuch it is freaking crazy and novel; (2) the government is incompetent in identifying the physical effects manifesting in the sensors and is okay in exposing their incompetence; (3) a non-US nation-state has superior technology, which suggests a potential bad future geopolitical outcome; or (4) the government is running a psych-o…

Why is having aliens bad? If there really are extraterrestrial entities on earth, and they aren't making any acts of aggression, that seems like it could potentially be a good thing, although there is the big question of why they would hide from the general population but allow themselves to be seen by the occasional pilot...
Post reply on HN