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US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

theguardian.com

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Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#721

Post by necovek »

Ireallyapart wrote: post #649
jerf wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust . I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sor…

>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "e…

> ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them.

That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).

We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust.

When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?

At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#722

Post by mustacheemperor »

no_wizard wrote: post #434

Alright HN, we all know that this is likely untrue, from a rational angle, and this thread is full of reasons why, but play this mental exercise with me for a minute: What if its true ? What repercussions would having alien technology have on civilization? Would this fundamentally change beliefs? Influence religion? EDIT: someone pointed out to make this more stimulating we need constrains, assuming the following is…

I’m curious to speculate on the most boring possible outcome. Let’s say there is wreckage, from an unmanned craft like a sensing probe dispatched at some unknown time in the past by an unknown creator, including potentially millions of years ago by a species that’s long extinct. There would be a clamor for private business and the general public to get research access, but maybe there’s very little we can actually learn yet. It could be possible these craft reached this solar system very slowly, with no sci-fi FTL propulsion. One way or another there would be a finite amount to glean, and other than any technological benefits how much would it really change life? Organized religion has proven resilient - I honestly doubt the revelation that there was at some point intelligent life distantly far away in the universe would upset their apple cart too much.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#723

Post by hugh-avherald »

op00to wrote: post #473
newZWhoDis wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is a psyop that’s still huge news. These are fantastic claims from a highly ranked and decorated member of the IC, released with official backing/DoD preAuth Someone has some explaining to do

What official backing?

He applied for permission to disclose this to journalists and that application was approved by the Pentagon.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#724

Post by narrator »

alehlopeh wrote: post #621
jerf wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust . I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sor…

A credible alien threat would give world leaders a super easy excuse to demand emergency powers, impose martial law, and assume total control of all aspects of life, in the name of the war effort. Said world leaders really really want these things, so you can safely assume there isn’t a credible alien threat. You don’t have to trust them, just trust that they’ll act in their own interests and work backwards from ther…

What if it's much more boring and sad than that? Like we're a contained invasive species. They're peaceful, and they respect our rights to this planet cause we evolved here but they're scared of us getting off the planet and running roughshod over the rest of the galaxy which is pretty full of intelligent life and there's no final frontier to speak of. Meanwhile our government is busy trying to reverse engineer what scraps we've managed to get a hold of so we can somehow practice galactic imperialism. I call this the "crowded galaxy" resolution to the Fermi Paradox.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#725

Post by necovek »

jfoutz wrote: post #631
Aperocky wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't pass the occam's razor. The simplest explanation are mental illness, shameless fame seekers and confused people who saw rocket debris or some supersonic fighter.

Not really getting that the speed of light is a universal speed limit is simpler. I want to believe. So I'll spend more time than is wise evaluating evidence. But, like, it's gotta be some really good evidence.

So far, all of the "laws of physics" have turned out to be true, if they were considered an approximation applicable with a certain set of preconditions.

My only hope for human kind travelling interstellar distances is to figure something orthogonal out, as even speed of light is too slow (perhaps we extend our lifetimes to span millenia combined with teleportation? :).

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#726

Post by blowski »

osigurdson wrote: post #486
zoogeny wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities. For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence…

We need to stop using the term “conspiracy” alone. Instead a conspiracy probability should be associated with every such theory. As a strawman, a conspiracy which requires 10K people or more to pull it off gets assigned 0.0, while a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0. So anytime someone tells you about a conspiracy theory, ask them to estimate the conspiracy factor. Examples of high conspiracy factor theory’s w…

> a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0

By definition a conspiracy involves more than one person.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#727

Post by keskival »

petesergeant wrote: post #688
blazespin wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious watching how HN upvotes insane theory instead of crazy theory. Wild times! There is a very very simple explanation, which is that everything he says is true. There is a secret program, they did reverse engineer, they did withhold it from congress, and people did tell him that there is alien stuff. Why make up silly make believe? The guy isn't claiming 'oh i saw aliens'. He could simply be telling the a…

> There is a very very simple explanation I’m not sure an explanation that presupposes FTL travel is very very simple

Why would faster than light travel be presupposed in any way?

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#728

Post by misja111 »

twobitshifter wrote: post #439
JKCalhoun wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their ship that came here and crashed ... I guess I'm not too worried about them.

Could have been intentional and likely unmanned

Sure, they sent a spaceship that had to travel many lightyears to reach us, then intentionally let it crash.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#729

Post by keskival »

marstall wrote: post #467
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extend that too: a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky Seriously people underestimate the ludicrous energies involved in near-c travel. Even with engines off at those speeds the interstellar dust undergoing nuclear fusion off your hull will give you away

with coldsleep technology, or a species evolved or self-engineered for ultralongterm hibernation, speed might not matter.

Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case. Not implying this is what we have here, just a general observation. It's weird people believe space travel requires pilots.

Re: US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles

#730

Post by Ireallyapart »

necovek wrote: post #721
Ireallyapart wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "e…

> ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them. That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous). We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust…

>That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).

Nope. It is how you gain extraordinary trust. It really depends on what they are famous for. There are many famous people or scholars who you respect and trust due to their fame. You trust them, because others trust them.

Fame can also cause distrust too. But it does cause trust as well.

>When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?

This is too much speculation. There are an infinite number of explanations here. Better to follow the the chain of events from the anomalous claim and start piecing together things forwards rather then just claim it's impossible because you can't think of any valid way for it to happen.

Additionally the claim itself is "extraordinary" so basically there is likely no mundane explanation for it if the claim is true.

>At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.

So that's the first step right? They believe what they are saying. So from their perspective they witnessed extraordinary evidence. So what made them believe it? What did they actually see? Are they correct? Even if following this thread leads to something different then their claim, one can still learn something interesting.

Closed mindedness often involves logic that works backwards. You need to move forwards. If you see a path, moving forwards means following the path. Moving backwards means ignoring the path because you made a guess that there's nothing at the end of the path.

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