Live data from Hacker News

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

dni.gov

141–150 of 244 posts

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact they don't include "just other normal planes" in that list calls into question the quality of this whole document. It really seems like this document was just thrown together with no real intent to get into the weeds on the reports. It does also seem like they are trying so hard to be vague to avoid running afoul of information classification rules. The White House needs to tell them to stop going so overboa…

If they knew it was just another normal plane then it would not be unidentified. They actually identify countless objects every day. This report was not about them.

They're listing possibilities. Planes are one possibility, just as balloons, birds, and everything else they listed. Planes have been with high confidence attributed to multiple civilian recorded videos posted online (not in this dataset). Planes are a legitimate, high likelihood possibility for some of the reports. It has to be included on any list of possibilities used in investigating them.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#142
post #121

I’m surprised nobody has suggested that these phenomenon could be an advanced electronic interference platform and that they may be able to interfere with the computing systems of multiple remote sensing systems at once.

I think that is what was meant by "These observations could be the result of ... spoofing" in the document just released.

Didn’t catch that. I searched for interference. Good to hear this is on their minds.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#144
post #78

From a first skim, it looks intentionally vague and noncommittal, and in classic form, released on a Friday afternoon to minimize coverage. Also of note: there was no input at all drawn from the CIA, which is the agency most frequently associated with the topic for a variety of reasons, aside from the Air Force. "The majority of UAP data is from U.S. Navy reporting [i.e. not in-the-know] , but efforts are underway to…

> "There is nonhuman intelligence visiting and engaging with Earth. We could not tell you before for national security reasons, but now we can tell you." At least, not without many years of plausibly deniable hints before-hand. Do you really think that'll be the outcome? I'd be shocked. If there is nonhuman intelligence in our solar system, it's orders of magnitude smarter than us, and I'd also wager it's probably by…

> If there is nonhuman intelligence in our solar system, it's orders of magnitude smarter than us, and I'd also wager it's probably by design impossible for us detect.

Likely in the galaxy, seems unlikely there is advanced nonhuman intelligence hiding in our solar system.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#146

Am I the only one who’ve been noticing a shift of narrative regarding UFOs in the past few years? I wonder what the endgame is…

An eccentric billionaire constituent of Harry Reid that was obsessed with UFOs forced the armed services to go on a wild goose chase a few years back. This is the result.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#147
post #120
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you threw out why you feel there is alien activity with a "not looking to debate it" that would be more interesting than saying you think people are going to argue with you. If you've stated reasoning in the past maybe just link to that?

I, for one, 100% believe that at least some of this is advanced, non-human tech. Trying to convince HN about the "why" is at best problematic. I could give evidence from my own observations and experiences, but they would be easily dismissed due to lack of evidence. I'll just say that we, as humans, do not fully understand how consciousness works. I'm certain that there are others in this galaxy who do, and I have pe…

I mean, I’ll believe that something happened to you that has completely convinced you, and it’s a nice piece of data that helps explain why some people believe differently than I do. The goal of every discussion doesn’t have to be to convince the other person, just acknowledging the existence of differences is enough sometimes.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#148
post #126
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anthropomorphizing aliens is a good way to speculate on how they possibly would behave. I really don't have a better system, but I see this tendency in alot of discussions about 'them'. (Disclaimer: I usually play as isolationist in Stellaris)

I don't think it's anthropomorphism so much as logical deduction. Our planet's chemical makeup has been advertising its life-supporting properties for millions of years. Lately we've been (perhaps foolishly) advertising ourselves to the galaxy via radio, etc. Surely it would be interesting to other observers in the galaxy. Perhaps by setting off nuclear weapons, we advertised ourselves as a potential threat, inviting…

In my view, reasoning "this is what we would've done" or placing logical deduction based on -our- understanding of a fantasized encounter is exactly anthropomorphism.

While I'm not a stranger to the notion that eventual intelligent alien beings might in many regards have similar behaviors, wants and needs as humans, I'm personally inclined to think of aliens as much, much higher on the kardashev scale (c.f. ghosts and angels as discussed elsewhere in this thread) than something I personally imagine as a couple of hundred years into-human-future tech.

Autonomous / AI probes is a pretty nice theory and I somewhat adher to it myself as a techie, but it does reek of anthropomorphism IMO.

In either case, all our fantasies are colored by our experiences, I guess what I'm saying is that even though I think anthropomorphizing aliens is bad, I'm just explaining it from my frame of reference, too.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#149

Am I the only one who’ve been noticing a shift of narrative regarding UFOs in the past few years? I wonder what the endgame is…

Its part of some deliberate disinformation campaign. All the videos released thus far have been thoroughly debunked by the likes of thunderf00t. If there are non-debunked videos, I am not aware of them.

Most of the news coverage involves Lt. David Fravor, Bob Lazar or Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell.

Why this stuff is being leaked? I cannot fathom. I assume we are signaling to some foreign entity our ability to track items as small as birds, or angling for more funding.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "There is nonhuman intelligence visiting and engaging with Earth. We could not tell you before for national security reasons, but now we can tell you." At least, not without many years of plausibly deniable hints before-hand. Do you really think that'll be the outcome? I'd be shocked. If there is nonhuman intelligence in our solar system, it's orders of magnitude smarter than us, and I'd also wager it's probably by…

> If there is nonhuman intelligence in our solar system, it's orders of magnitude smarter than us, and I'd also wager it's probably by design impossible for us detect. Likely in the galaxy, seems unlikely there is advanced nonhuman intelligence hiding in our solar system.

> seems unlikely there is advanced nonhuman intelligence hiding in our solar system

Maybe.

I did some Googling, and apparently the human race has produced between 1 and 2 billion cars in the last 100 years [1]. That's an incredible feat!

Assuming a post-biology intelligence has started space manufacturing, they probably have the capacity to produce an incredible volume of intelligent probes.

Wikipedia claims that the Milky Way galaxy is composed of 100 - 400 billion stars. [2] This figure isn't far out of the ballpark for the number of cars we've made in 100 years.

Creating a single space probe to reach a star is probably within their capability, and I'd wager they can match and exceed our industrial capacity for vehicle production. It's not hard to imagine they could send at least one probe to every star. They have a lot of time to do it, too.

Important factors I'm not accounting for are time of travel and interstellar expansion, but I don't think that changes the fact that an advanced race could manufacture and send a lot of probes in all directions.

Maybe they've already made it here. Maybe before we even arrived.

[1] https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way

Post reply on HN