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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

#691
post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think aliens and magic belong in the same category though. Magic/supernatural by definition is contrary to physical laws and scientific understanding. But the existence of aliens would in no way contradict any physical laws or scientific consensus. It would be a shock, obviously, just like it was a shock when we discovered that other galaxies exist, or black holes, or that nuclear fission is possible. If inte…

> Magic/supernatural by definition is contrary to physical laws and scientific understanding. Many of the "UFO" observations fall into that. As is "under known physics it is impossible explanation"

The observed behaviors do appear to contradict physical laws.

My point is if we’re looking for an explanation, it’s either some natural phenomenon or illusion that we don’t understand, human technology, or alien technology.

In either of the latter two options, we are either talking about new physics or very advanced spoofing tech that looks like new physics but isn’t really.

For human tech, we’ve never seen anything resembling a leap like that being accomplished by a government in total secrecy. It’s hard to imagine. I think this holds even if it’s just crazy advanced spoofing, given the details of the various encounters.

But for alien tech: if intelligent aliens do exist and they did visit us, it would follow that their technology and scientific understanding are far beyond our own. It’s basically impossible that they wouldn’t have knowledge of new physics that we have no current inkling of, just as a scientist from a thousand years ago could have no inkling of relativity or black holes. In this sense, strange inexplicable phenomena that break the laws of physics (as we currently understand them) are consistent with aliens.

So to me, the real question is whether we can figure out a natural phenomenon to explain this. If it is something natural, it seems like it has to be something pretty weird. If it’s not, aliens seem like a valid candidate, pending further evidence.

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

#692
post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was real, it would not be called “supernatural”, by literal definition.

Quantum effects, like those used by the LEDs on your computer, used to be "supernatural" until someone figured out the physics behind them and invented devices capable of exploiting these effects. If you could bring an LED back in time to the year 1500 and show it to people then (with a power source and current driver of course), they would surely call it "supernatural".

Breaking Special Relativity is not some 15th century "oh, there's some lovely dirt down here" impressionable pleb. We have machines that can confirm SR to within ridiculous level.

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

#693
post #596

Mick West's breakdowns of the Pentagon UAP videos was the nail in the coffin of this era of UFO hype for me. https://youtu.be/Le7Fqbsrrm8?t=665 These were supposed to be the smoking gun evidence. UFO believers inside the DoD and as high up as US Senators fought for years to get them declassified. As soon as they were public, they were all quickly identified as sensor glare, bokeh, or mis-understood perspective. More…

I deeply hate the laziness that is behind those arguments and the people that follow.

Here are some claims of something extraordinary. We have multiple High End sensors Witness this. Your Government is not even recording this data, let alone give it to you. They don't want you to investigate it, they don't want to investigate it themselves yet multiple independent people on different ships and official documentation all tell the same story: Something extraordinary happened.

The response? Let's google "$event + debunk" and believe the first Result. Mick Wests Explanation has many issues and straight up ignores multiple facets of the event. But it sure had a great chilling effect on actually figuring out what that was. And why? Because the possibility of something extraordinary happening is unpalatable to the reflexive skeptics. Things are a priori declared to be ordinary and any evidence that doesn't fit that get's ignored.

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

#694
post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn’t, it’s what’s happened. The recordings released a couple of years ago were also breathlessly reported to be classified smoking gun evidence, confirmed by analysts, that would change everything. Except when we got to actually see them, what we saw was video of pilots patently misreading the sensor data shown in the same recording, and some fuzzy lens flared blobs that could be anything.

That's exactly what's in the article. I could quote it, but I'd basically just be copying and pasting the whole thing. Every element of my previous comment is in the original article. Either the pilots, Senators, and intelligence officials are lying (or absurdly incompetent) or it is as they say.

> or absurdly incompetent

This is your error.

There is no "absurdity" needed, as we didn't evolve for accurately perceiving phenomena seen while manoeuvring in transsonic flight, and we don't develop a perfect "common sense" for them either.

I'm not going to try to come up with something counterintuitive about flight, because I don't even do flight simulators.

But I can say this general category of us doing things we didn't evolve for is also why so many people — even smart people — struggle with the Monty Hall paradox, even though it's fairly simple probability.

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

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the one with Lex Fridman. https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y

If the places to learn this info are JR and Lex Friedman, it can't possibly be true.

Podcasts are just a form of easily digestible popular media.

If you're actually interested in learning see UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean.

There are many such books with independent accounts of those who have experienced strange phenomena, that are all consistent with each other. These books are well researched and highly sourced with credible witnesses.

I suggest you reserve judgement on what is possible or not if you haven't engaged with the available evidence.

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military budget of the rest of NATO combined is much smaller than that of the US. ... Why would aliens be interested?

My guess is if there was aliens they would be so totally disinterested in us they wouldn’t even distinguish between military and civilian. Just zipping around taking their measurements of the mineral deposits.

Minerals are plentiful. If anything is interesting about Earth at all, it's its lifeforms and cultures.

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

#697
post #166

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…

For the longest time we didn't know the lightning event we now call sprites occurred. Pilots had said they saw such things bit without evidence at the time no one had any idea if they were real or not. Probably plenty of other explainable events that we've not captured yet out there.

And when we had the evidence we changed our minds. Just like it should be.

So the question should be why are so many people believing in aliens when there is so little evidence for them?

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

#698
post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its speculation that it was sensor glare, boke etc. Hardly convincing at all considering its some YouTuber basing his research on grainy video. Speculation that also does not factor in multi eye witness accounts and radar measurements.

They exhibit all the characteristics of bokeh and sensor glare, and it’s speculation that they are anything else. As for instrument measurements, the track that turns out to be a bird is identified as such mainly by simply correctly interpreting the instrument data. So we’re back the square one. All the ‘smoking gun’ evidence turns out to be a damp squib and now we’re just expected to believe unrecorded ‘radar measur…

Simon H, your inter-galactical mission has failed!

People of planet earth KNOW, that YOU and your friends are HERE and we will not submit to extraterrestrial leadership!

Your denial of an obvious fact is evidence of you being part of the extraterrestrial gang that tries to stay in the dark - but it is too late, you can hide in Antarctica or in the oceans, we still know that YOU are here!

BTW - would you please like to support us in building better polyphonic analog synthesizers? This technology is stuck in the 80s and we still have limitations in total voice count and number of modulation sources - we need some serious evolutionary jump in this area. Thanks!

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

#699
post #693
post #596

Mick West's breakdowns of the Pentagon UAP videos was the nail in the coffin of this era of UFO hype for me. https://youtu.be/Le7Fqbsrrm8?t=665 These were supposed to be the smoking gun evidence. UFO believers inside the DoD and as high up as US Senators fought for years to get them declassified. As soon as they were public, they were all quickly identified as sensor glare, bokeh, or mis-understood perspective. More…

I deeply hate the laziness that is behind those arguments and the people that follow. Here are some claims of something extraordinary. We have multiple High End sensors Witness this. Your Government is not even recording this data, let alone give it to you. They don't want you to investigate it, they don't want to investigate it themselves yet multiple independent people on different ships and official documentation…

Have you read Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World book from 1996? Because this kind of crap always turns out to be garbage. We live on a rock circling a star.

The only thing that makes the world more interesting than it really is is our brains that love to make crap up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.™

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

#700
post #209

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…

Yeah, exactly. Galileo was persecuted for stating the earth revolves around the sun. Anything fantastical is immediately seen as taboo and this still happens today. I personally find UAPs/UFOs fascinating. There's some unexplained phenomema going on and no one knows what it is. There's a massive taboo around claiming aliens/intelligent life, which makes it a subject few will admit to or investigate seriously. Then yo…

This is a ridiculous way of looking at things. Galileo was persecuted by The Church not other scientists who supported him.

Fermi's paradox isn't what you've stated.

Listen to the scientists. Not the politicians. Not the military.

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