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As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

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Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#301

Post by ggm »

The great thing about perception is that "Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence." uses one word (fly) in a way which can be read as implying they are there. Sorry. You saw something. your sensors reported something. Was it there? Good question. it IS a question.

Really what I think a good editor would have done is intrude like this: "Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities are routinely perceived to fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence.

You could add (if any) at the end if you wanted to maintain the skepticism.

There are so many reasons why these things are routinely perceived: CCD errors. Optical in-lens problems. Wind shear effects. Differential lighting and occultation. Mis-attribution of large distant objects to smaller fast moving near objects and vice-versa. Bugs on the windscreen.

Being a "US Navy fighter pilot" doesn't somehow insulate you from perceptual problems in the system, or systemic bias. I would suggest that the certainty of decision making vested in a fighter pilot might very well actually re-inforce the "I know what I saw" aspect here.

Here's an example of receiver bias: Why are they seen flying over the military bases? Let me ask, if this is the predominant place that US Fighter Pilots would expect to see anything: Why yes, it is. Thats their main focus of alertness in take off and landing, performing their job.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#302

Post by [deleted] »

Fezzik wrote: post #161
snickerbockers wrote: post #145

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

The close-minded approach is to accept someone’s fantastical claim because you want to, or just because the claim is being made, when the claim is contrary to mountains and centuries of evidence. The open-minded take incorporates all the possible evidence to reach the most likely conclusion. And the conclusion is never, so far, either aliens or magic. It’s just silly to conclude that an observation that has no immedi…

[deleted]

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#303

Post by WalterBright »

nvarsj wrote: post #227
WalterBright wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time one of those fantastic items gets explained, it's always mundane and boring, and never dampens the enthusiasm for the next one. I recall one about B+W photographs of "wood elves" taken around 1910 or so by a couple girls. The girls insisted it was genuine. Photographic experts declared the photos were genuine and could not have been faked. When the girls were in their 80's, they finally confessed that the…

Quite a bizarre strawman [1] that doesn't prove your point at all. Here we have multiple professional pilots reporting similar events, with recorded evidence from the tracking systems on their fighter planes. And enough evidence that even Congress has authorised to look into it further. It probably is all some natural thing happening, but it's not some hoax by teenager girls in the 1920s. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Professional pilots are not trained observers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34670921

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#304

Post by LarryMullins »

rgbrenner wrote: post #296
Jenk wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

That's not the source for the claim though... he said "engineers who actually knew how the sensors worked." And you linked a video by a video game dev.

Who cares what his credentials are? His arguments are rational and make more sense than any other explanation. It sure is weird how much UFO-ologists suddenly care about credentialism as soon as a video game developer starts shitting on their party.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#305

Post by ricardobeat »

nprateem wrote: post #242
godelski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?). The Tic Tac UFO? That's probably one of the best explained events (debunked). Short answer is that there was sense misreading and a gimbal lock. Some people even simulated it[0]. I wouldn't call this an elaborate hoax, but an optical illusion and an event that took some expertise to understand. Expertise that a pilot wouldn't have. I should add that finding that link was nontrivial.…

And how does a gimbal lock simultaneously show up on multiple sensor systems across warships?

Your retort is phrased poorly, but I don’t understand the downvotes here - the footage from this episode was made by fighter jets who were dispatched to investigate a radar signal, and the pilot said they had visual contact. That’s three distinct records and/or a whole lot of marines fucking with us.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#306

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

flatiron wrote: post #256
themanmaran wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they're observed over military facilities because that's the only location with a rigorous surveillance system.

Or from foreign entities wondering what’s up with our military facilities.

The calculus would be very strange because adversaries run the risk of losing the mint if it's shot down.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#307

Post by hackerlight »

joe_the_user wrote: post #185
snickerbockers wrote: post #145

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights? I mean, I GN an adult Dungeons and Dragons centered on multiple worlds and I love considering different worlds and how they might work. But the people who extrapolate the unexplained to a claim that there's some fantastical things that science is suppressing seem so starved for "the fantastical" that they're distorting the entire situation. Science isn't there to squash…

> What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights?

The claim in the article is stronger than just "lights". He used the word "objects" which suggests these UAP are being detected on multiple modalities.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#308

Post by dylan604 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #247
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many experienced sailors once reported seeing mermaids? Until we understand the source of these sightings, it's entirely plausible pilots are all seeing something that doesn't actually exist for some reason or another. We won't know why until the phenomena is no longer mysterious, but there's always a high likelihood a given unknown is mundane, as opposed to fantastical or extraterrestrial. The article is right w…

Well they are seeing something There is video evidence which makes the mermaid analogue a bad one.

What the huh? Have you never seen Splash? Or the little mermaid? We have all sorts of video evidence. /s

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#309

Post by hackerlight »

Fezzik wrote: post #161
snickerbockers wrote: post #145

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

The close-minded approach is to accept someone’s fantastical claim because you want to, or just because the claim is being made, when the claim is contrary to mountains and centuries of evidence. The open-minded take incorporates all the possible evidence to reach the most likely conclusion. And the conclusion is never, so far, either aliens or magic. It’s just silly to conclude that an observation that has no immedi…

> The open-minded take incorporates all the possible evidence to reach the most likely conclusion.

But that's not what's being done per the article. The evidence isn't even being looked at because of the aforementioned closed mindedness.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#310

Post by gfodor »

driggs wrote: post #214

> Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence. Occams Razor suggests that if these objects appear almost exclusively over US military facilities and US military training ranges, they're most likely operated by the US military. (Sorry to the Navy pilot whose security clearance is too…

A much simpler explanation than these are objects operated by the US military is that there is a selection bias with public awareness and media reporting on reports regarding the US military. I can think of at least a dozen plausible explanations as to why such selection bias would exist.
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