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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

#891

Post by likeabbas »

reso wrote: 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…

There's compelling evidence that Mick West's assumptions are wrong. https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1598090777950793729

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

#892

Post by wpietri »

anon7725 wrote: post #818
wpietri wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how the spiritualists sounded in their day. They had facially plausible theories of the phenomena they claimed to observe with no actual evidence described in ways that fit in with the gaps in understanding of the moment. I too consume a lot of science fiction, but it's important to remember that it's just writers making shit up. Perhaps FTL is possible. Perhaps angel are real. Both are things people…

Did you happen to notice the phrases “it’s conceivable” and “perhaps” in my reply? I’m not making any categorical assertions. I think people who make categorical assertions in the negative regarding other life in the universe and its potential capabilities are engaging in scientism.

Lots of things are conceivable. Gods are conceivable, as are angels and demons. It's conceivable that you are the only sentient being in existence besides me and that I am a vast superintelligence controlling everything you see and hear, posting little reminders of the truth like this just to fuck with you.

However, I doubt you're going to spend much time on that, and I'm not going to spend much time on other things that are merely conceivable.

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

#893

Post by wpietri »

ostenning wrote: post #874
wpietri wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, now substitute "angels" for "Aliens" and you could ring doorbells on Sunday. Have all the fantasies you like, of course. But don't please don't mistake it for a serious argument about what we are compelled to believe from evidence. What we have is a long history of humans taking liminal phenomena and using it to justify believe in quasi-anthropomorphic entities that are just out of sight. Fairies, angels, demon…

You made the assumption that our human technology could outpace aliens, you said it yourself. The context of this discussion is based on unidentified aerial phenomena in our sky's as disclosed by the US government and so we are naturally making assumptions based on this evidence. That is all this discussion is about, its not based on some mystical religious gap filler. My argument is predicated on that if the evidenc…

Ok? And if pigs had wings they'd be pigeons. If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

I agree you can imagine an alien that continues to neatly fit inside the evidentiary gaps despite the rapid pace which those gaps have evolved over the last couple hundred years. I can do that too. My imaginary aliens are just jerks who like taunting us. They always had the capacity to be unobserved, but have consistently maintained a level of liminal, unconfirmable hints because they are here to fuck with us. Please look for my book, "4chan of the Skies" which will come out in April 2024.

But I don't anybody should take either kind of aliens-of-the-gaps seriously, because I think the much simpler explanation is that it's the same kind of fill-the-gaps-with-boogeymen that humans have been doing since Zeus was dreamed up to explain thunder.

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

#894

Post by wpietri »

krageon wrote: post #775
wpietri wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how the spiritualists sounded in their day. They had facially plausible theories of the phenomena they claimed to observe with no actual evidence described in ways that fit in with the gaps in understanding of the moment. I too consume a lot of science fiction, but it's important to remember that it's just writers making shit up. Perhaps FTL is possible. Perhaps angel are real. Both are things people…

The fact that there is no way to know means that at most we should say "no idea". It is also the least knowledge we should pretend to have on the subject.

Well, we do have some idea.

Take gods. Even most theists don't believe in most gods. An atheist, as the saying goes, is just a person who disbelieves in one more god than average.

In theory, everybody has to admit that all gods are possible. Does Zeus exist? No idea. Does Bast exist? No idea. Does Yahweh exist? No idea. It's not like we can prove that they aren't out there somewhere.

But what we do know is that a lot humans have made up a lot of gods. We know that people make up and believe in all sorts of things with no evidence at all. So if something fits the same pattern, then we actually have reasonable evidence that it's just another one of those things.

So in a world of people who will take "no idea" as permission to rant more about their theory of chemtrails or ZOG or how the true Messiah lives in a heavily fortified compound outside of Waco, TX, I think an honest and accurate "no idea" isn't enough. Would that it were.

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

#895

Post by newZWhoDis »

vallanceroad wrote: post #360
newZWhoDis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nimitz event is far from “debunked”. We have multiple naval aviator eye witnesses of the physical object, with testimony (fravor and the female wingman, I forget her name) We have testimony of the Princeton’s AEGIS radar operator that these things were “popping in at 80k feet and dropping to sea level in a few seconds”, that “they disappear on radar and the sub would get a ping in the same area tracking 200+ knot…

> the female wingman, I forget her name Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich

That’s it, thanks!

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

#896

Post by danenania »

wpietri wrote: post #890
danenania wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to 'imagine' aliens though. We can deduce from the size of the galaxy/universe and the fact that we ourselves exist that they are at least reasonably likely to exist, and some of them are reasonably likely to be more advanced than us. There is no similar chain of logical deduction based on empirically observed facts that can lead you to the existence of gods or ghosts or demons. Aliens are not like 'god…

There is absolutely zero data on the presence of life in the universe. You are imagining that life out there. Which is fine! I sometimes imagine it too. It's fun to imagine, but we are just filling in gaps with imagination. As an example, note that people imagined life on Mars based on "evidence". Life with canals and everything. [1] But once our telescopes got better, those same alien civilizations got pushed back j…

According to your reasoning, black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves were also like gods and angels before we found physical evidence for them. This is a weak argument.

You can doubt the existence of intelligent aliens. But they obviously aren’t in the same category as religious beliefs. On the other hand, assuming we are somehow special and must be the only intelligent life is quite in line with religious thinking.

We do have data on life in the universe: earth. Very few natural phenomena occur a single time and never again. Apart from early universe events like the big bang and expansion, I can’t think of an example.

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

#897

Post by hgsgm »

somenameforme wrote: post #645
reso wrote: 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…

Mick West has one major problem. He takes a video, and works to create any sort of elaborate explanation with zero consideration given to probability or externalities. If he can create the same visual effect he then declares his concept as the "truth", and everything else "debunked." Zero effort is made to challenge his own conclusions or assess their probability. As an example in the Gimbel video [1], he concludes t…

I don't think that recruiting UFO chasers is going to raise the intellectual caliber of the military.

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

#898

Post by ostenning »

wpietri wrote: post #893
ostenning wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made the assumption that our human technology could outpace aliens, you said it yourself. The context of this discussion is based on unidentified aerial phenomena in our sky's as disclosed by the US government and so we are naturally making assumptions based on this evidence. That is all this discussion is about, its not based on some mystical religious gap filler. My argument is predicated on that if the evidenc…

Ok? And if pigs had wings they'd be pigeons. If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. I agree you can imagine an alien that continues to neatly fit inside the evidentiary gaps despite the rapid pace which those gaps have evolved over the last couple hundred years. I can do that too. My imaginary aliens are just jerks who like taunting us. They always had the capacity to be unobserved, but have consistently m…

I think you are really missing the point here. I'm not debating with you if aliens exist or not, my original comment was simply a thought experiment about what state of technology aliens would have access to in the hypothetical scenario that they were here, an assumption, and this is based on the idea that they likely have technology that is superior to ours, because they likely traversed millions of light years to get here.

Is it really that hard?

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

#899

Post by hgsgm »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #579
DSingularity wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have nothing to back that up and your gut goes against the closest thing we have to evidence... If I was an alien race sending probes far and wide I would absolutely focus my attention on hotspots of military presence rather than the relatively benign nature and civilian existence.

What does an alien military look like?

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

#900

Post by midoridensha »

epgui wrote: post #873
midoridensha wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

They were never supernatural. They were just not known or not understood. Physics is by some definition the study of the natural world. There is a lot we don't know about the natural world, but what we know and don't know aren't what make something "supernatural".

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

LEDs were absolutely supernatural. As I said, go back in time with one and show it to Medieval serfs and see what they say. Supernatural is anything that you can't explain given your understanding of the universe.

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