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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

#901

Post by hgsgm »

XorNot wrote: post #358
danenania wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what we’ve learned about the challenges of interstellar travel, it’s safe to assume that any civilization capable of visiting us would be thousands of years beyond our current understanding of physics. If you compare our current understanding of physics to what humans knew thousands of years ago, it’s logical that the technology of an interstellar civilization would be as far beyond our understanding as a nucle…

This is not remotely a safe assumption. We know interstellar travel is resource intensive, but it's within the capabilities of todays technology. It was probably doable with some effort with 1960s technology. This is the same basic error of reasoning where people say because the moon landing happened, faking the moon landing was also possible (it wasn't: video editing technology of sufficient capability did not exist…

Space is 3-dimensional and astronomically, cosmically huge. Getting from a planet to space is trivial compared to getting from space to a planet.

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

#902

Post by ikrenji »

godelski wrote: post #179
runjake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?). Extremely detailed visual and sensor events. Tons of human witnesses. Tons of activity. There was a detailed Reddit thread on the incident from a Seaman many, many years ago long before news of the Tic Tac came out. I’m on mobile but perhaps someone else can paste the thread URL. Could be an elaborate hoax but that’s one heck of a long con game.

> 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.…

i love military footage debunk videos, where the debunker makes layman assumptions about how a particular highly classified sensor works and the idiot pilots just don't know how to use it properly

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

#903

Post by wpietri »

danenania wrote: post #896
wpietri wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 religiou…

> 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.

Nah. All of those were things that there were specific reason to believe based on theory and evidence. But it can be a fine line. Look at how quickly quantum mechanics went from abstruse high theory to being used to support absolute woo. [1] Or look at how black holes went from interesting mathematical concept to magic plot device. [2]

Do I grant the theoretical possibility of intelligent life somewhere? Sure, and I never said otherwise. Do I believe it's a lock? Not at all. If we somehow survey the universe and discover we are alone, then our theories will adjust just fine. There is no evidence to the contrary to be overcome.

So yes, in terms of an explanatory device for phenomena observed on earth, aliens and gods are in exactly the same category of "unevidenced anthropomorphic agents that people have been inappropriately using as explanations for millennia". Because people are like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism

[2] e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole_(1979_film)

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

#904

Post by ikrenji »

crubier wrote: post #821
kapral18 wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the debunk of the debunk :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBt4CNHyAck

What a poor debunk of the debunk. I had respect for David Fravor but listening an ex F/A-18 pilot say confidently "There is 0% chance that I'm wrong" and keeping using argument from authority convinced me that he's just wrong.

well he literally saw the object with his own eyes. do we have a debunk for fravors mark 1 eyeball sensor?

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

#905

Post by ikrenji »

simonh wrote: post #885
ctvo wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because I ... lack trust in institutions. I think I'm smarter than experts, and know better with 1/1000th the training, and 0 context they have access to. See my other contributions on covid or the war in Ukraine. (Not targeting you specifically, but the general sentiment)

You can jab at me personally as much as you like. It doesn’t change a data recording of tracking a bird into evidence of UFOs.

but how come the pilots and other experts who use the system daily and have seen hundreds of hours of it in operation (with and without birds present) don't realize its a bird and some random dude on the internet correctly identifies it as a bird from a 90 sec video?

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

#906

Post by wpietri »

ostenning wrote: post #898
wpietri wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

No, I think you're missing the point here. Because one, that's an unevidenced hypothetical that is basically a fantasy. I am not obliged to give it any weight. And two, if I did, it does not explain why UFOs have remained always liminal despite our rapidly advancing technology to track and record things. If shy aliens were vastly superior, we'd never detect them at all. If they were at some lower but constant level of technology, we'd detect them more over time. But for some mysterious reason, they were just as detectable in 1953 as they are in 2023. Your "aliens r smart" theory does not explain that at all, and so it's not helpful. And it's especially not helpful as a reply to my original point, which you do not yet seem to have taken on board.

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

#907

Post by ikrenji »

wpietri wrote: post #515
danenania wrote: post #265

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…

>But the existence of aliens would in no way contradict any physical laws or scientific consensus. The existence of aliens, sure. But the presence of aliens on Earth pretty much does. There's no reason to think FTL travel is possible, and it's economically unreasonable to think some species is going to invest in generation ships to cross the great interstellar gulfs just so that they can fuck around with pilots and a…

until there is a theory of everything i don't think its reasonable to rule out the possibility of FTL travel. even physicists got all worked up few years ago when they detected FTL neutrinos at CERN (which turned out to be a sensor malfunction but still)

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

#908

Post by ikrenji »

godelski wrote: post #848
mikrotikker wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly its a bit arrogant to think that we know it all or that we can know it all.

There's a big difference between claiming we know it all and that our understanding is incomplete. There's also a big difference between claiming something is incomplete and that something has to be rewritten from the ground up. I believe our knowledge is incomplete, I do not believe there is something out there that requires us to rewrite everything. The problem here is that to go down this path you need to violate…

millennia? modern physics goes back a couple hundred years tops. relevant physics that aka prohibits FTL travel is less than a hundred years old (theory of relativity)...

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

#909

Post by ikrenji »

epistemer wrote: post #36
hwillis wrote: post #6

Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe they have far more time in the air. It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest in our military capability. Even ignoring the technological implications of interstellar flight or the ability to enter our atmosphere without being detected, these objects are apparently massively more capable than any kind of vehicle we have. To them a fighter…

On the navy video I remember one of the guys mentioning they think it is a drone. It such hubris to believe those are alien craft and not foreign military drones. As if alien craft is the more probable explanation than another country having drones the US Navy does not.

you seriously claim this after we all witnessed russia - the supposed number 2 or 3 military power in the world loose a hundred thousand soldiers to ukraine in less than a year? the reality is that the USA has the most advanced military and no one else comes close... so yes, aliens are far more likely explanation than china having anti-gravity drones

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

#910

Post by graderjs »

simonh wrote: post #626
runjake wrote: post #8

I worked on stealth aircraft that would occasionally cause civilian UFO reports. It was common for the reports to mention that these UFOs maneuvered unlike any man-made aircraft, which was always a good chuckle because they were usually just flying straight or banking normally. However when seasoned military pilots like Fravor speak on the matter, I listen. When a bunch of them speak about the same incident, I take t…

The now debunked sensor recordings were also reported by seasoned military pilots. You can even hear them discussing their observations on some of the recordings. In one of them they are patently misreading the sensor data displayed in the video. I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t thoroughly and permanently discredit this line of reasoning, I don’t know what will.

Are they really debunked tho? Hardly. Not conclusive, unless you want it to be.
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