Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 673 posts

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#631

Post by tsimionescu »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #367
jtriangle wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, the more I see the government leak little tidbits about aliens, the less I believe there are aliens.

The government is not leaking anything. If you watched and knew about the people who testified today, they are whistleblowers. They are going against the government. And they have been administratively terrorized. That’s their word.

I honestly don't understand how someone can look at David Grusch speaking and come to any other conclusion than that he's crazy or lying. His whole demeanor reminds me of the infamous Tom cruise Scientology interview.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#632

Post by tsimionescu »

likeabbas wrote: post #318
mmcwilliams wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the context, but what I'm asking is; do US intelligence officers make completely truthful statements as a public as a practice? Or is their expertise rather in acquiring, analyzing and compartmentalizing information.

> do US intelligence officers make completely truthful statements as a public as a practice? No. Intel (especially counter intel) officers are, trained to give information to convince someone of a certain context. Whether that information is true depends on the situation. But it’s certainly not common for anyone to lie under oath, especially when they are testifying that specific people and corporations are involved…

I think there is a pretty good record of high-level intelligence officials lying to Congress under oath, and a similar history of no consequences whatsoever when the lie was later revealed. WMDs in Irak and the inexistence of the PRISM program were both testified about in Congress, and later turned out to be lies. Which high-level intelligence officials were ever even investigated for perjury?

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#633

Post by danenania »

ilaksh wrote: post #458
wildermuthn wrote: post #377

I’m a huge skeptic, but I’ve been following this very closely over the past few months. Fermi’s paradox has two good answers — we don’t see aliens because they don’t exist, or we don’t see them because they are here already. They should be here already. The paradox is about why we don’t see them. Being skeptical is different than doubt-by-default. A skeptic is curious and slow to judge. So with great curiosity, I’ve…

It's convenient that he doesn't have first hand knowledge because that gives him an out when people ask for proof. Which there is none. He still works for intelligence, obviously. Aliens and UFOs are a well-known and obvious cover story for experimental aircraft. It's his job to spread this story. Note that I'm not suggesting most things people claim to be UFOs are actually experimental aircraft. A few may be. But of…

"He still works for intelligence, obviously. Aliens and UFOs are a well-known and obvious cover story for experimental aircraft. It's his job to spread this story."

Without commenting on the likelihood of any hypothesis, I don't see how this makes sense. If we assume that it is a cover story for advanced tech programs, top secret programs in general are now going to have 10,000x more scrutiny by the media and Congress, and will be far more likely to have details leaked. Drawing attention like this is the exact opposite of what you'd do to keep something secret.

If "cover story" really is the explanation, it seems unlikely that Grusch is in on it--more likely would be that he was also fed the cover story, and that his going public really is resented by the military since it brings so much unwanted outside attention.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#634

Post by likeabbas »

tsimionescu wrote: post #632
likeabbas wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do US intelligence officers make completely truthful statements as a public as a practice? No. Intel (especially counter intel) officers are, trained to give information to convince someone of a certain context. Whether that information is true depends on the situation. But it’s certainly not common for anyone to lie under oath, especially when they are testifying that specific people and corporations are involved…

I think there is a pretty good record of high-level intelligence officials lying to Congress under oath, and a similar history of no consequences whatsoever when the lie was later revealed. WMDs in Irak and the inexistence of the PRISM program were both testified about in Congress, and later turned out to be lies. Which high-level intelligence officials were ever even investigated for perjury?

Even still, you’ve completely ignored the other half of my comment. Grusch is alleging specific people and corporations are involved in illegal activities. The corporations should have no trouble suing Grusch for false accusations and defamation, which in this case would be equivalent to jail time. So even if congress didn’t refer him to the justice department for perjury, those corporations absolutely will sue Grusch if he’s lying.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#635

Post by danenania »

constantcrying wrote: post #588
soligern wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time travel to the future is extremely exciting. Being able to pass a 1000 years in a year or two means you could observe the long term evolution of mankind over millennia. I’d much rather see that than the past if only one of the two were an option.

Time travel forward is comparitively simple, relativity basically tells you what to do. The implementation is hard but no need to break causality.

> Time travel forward is comparitively simple

So simple, in fact, that all of us are already doing it.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#636

Post by danenania »

likeabbas wrote: post #634
tsimionescu wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a pretty good record of high-level intelligence officials lying to Congress under oath, and a similar history of no consequences whatsoever when the lie was later revealed. WMDs in Irak and the inexistence of the PRISM program were both testified about in Congress, and later turned out to be lies. Which high-level intelligence officials were ever even investigated for perjury?

Even still, you’ve completely ignored the other half of my comment. Grusch is alleging specific people and corporations are involved in illegal activities. The corporations should have no trouble suing Grusch for false accusations and defamation, which in this case would be equivalent to jail time. So even if congress didn’t refer him to the justice department for perjury, those corporations absolutely will sue Grusc…

It's also a very different thing to lie to Congress with the backing of the IC (as happened with Clapper, WMDs, etc.) compared to lying to Congress against the IC's wishes. You are astronomically more likely to be prosecuted for the latter.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#637

Post by chiefalchemist »

dontlaugh wrote: post #570
chiefalchemist wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we spend excessively on DoD, that doesn't "help the US gov", unless slitting our own throats is help.

It helps the ruling class of the US, the bourgeoisie. It doesn't help the government or people of China, though. So they have no reason to help.

You can split hairs all you want about the ruling class and the gov but the latter is the sock puppet of the former. That is, they are effectively one in the same. When that duo screws the proles - and it does, often - that IS good for China. aka Communist China.

Balloon = "new red scare" = "we need more DoD budget" = "we don't have money for X, Y, and Z" = "let them eat balloons"

It's a tired and known pattern. But proles being proles don't get it. FFS, most on HN don't get it.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#638

Post by dontlaugh »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #637
dontlaugh wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps the ruling class of the US, the bourgeoisie. It doesn't help the government or people of China, though. So they have no reason to help.

You can split hairs all you want about the ruling class and the gov but the latter is the sock puppet of the former. That is, they are effectively one in the same. When that duo screws the proles - and it does, often - that IS good for China. aka Communist China. Balloon = "new red scare" = "we need more DoD budget" = "we don't have money for X, Y, and Z" = "let them eat balloons" It's a tired and known pattern. But…

I'm a communist, I don't need convincing.

The bourgeoisie in the US is the ruling class because they have state power. They use that power to exploit the proletariat of the US, but also to super-exploit the proletariat of the rest of the world.

In China, it's a bit different. The proletariat has won state power and is using it to constrain their national bourgeoisie. Part of why their bourgeoisie is tolerated for now is precisely because of western (US-led) imperialism, so China is allowed to trade with the rest of the (capitalist) world and so they don't get nuked by the US.

US war mongering hurts the proletariat of the US, but is far more dangerous for us proletarians of the rest of the world, including in China.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#639

Post by StrictDabbler »

rdtsc wrote: post #530
kromem wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why no one ever throws out time travel as an explanation over extraterrestrial. Given the limit of the speed of information and the expansion of the universe, there's a VERY small area that would even be aware of the signals we've started sending out over the past century to come looking. But Earth would be an extremely interesting destination....for future Earth. Though personally the most likely answer…

Since the earth, and the whole solar system, along with the galaxy are moving through space, I can imagine some clever scientist discovering time travel, firing up they time machine, only to then find themselves in vacuum of space in a place the earth had long passed by already. Others try to calculate and predict the position. But they didn’t use enough floating point precision bits and ended up in the earth’s crust…

There's an Isaac Asimov story from the 50's that I wonder if you've read. It's called "Blank!"

In the story the scientist takes a friend forward 22 hours, but outside the time machine door there's nothing. Total darkness.

The friend asks if the scientist forgot the movement of the Earth and the galaxy, but the scientist assures him that no, that motion has been accounted for.

Instead it appears they've arrived between quantum periods, stuck forever out of phase with ordinary time like an elevator stuck between floors and frozen by the lack of momentum.

I ask because that's the first story I read that drew attention to needing to travel in space to keep up with the planet.

Re: Former intel officer says 'non-human biologics’ found at alleged UFO crash sites

#640

Post by zikzak »

tsimionescu wrote: post #629
pmarreck wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presumption among all of this skepticism is that the speed of light is the ultimate limitation. The problem with this stance for literally the past 20 years is that the Alcubierre drive, which has yet to be disproven in concept (despite requiring exotic matter and high amounts of energy) has been known about since the 90’s, and at least makes FTL travel, theoretically possible. This is why I am skeptical about mo…

First of all, the Alcubierre drive only works if several things that have never been confirmed to exist do in fact exist. Secondly, even if it turns out that exotic matter and such exist somewhere in the universe, the Alcubierre drive only works in their presence. So, it can't be used to travel FTL to a place where they don't exist, such as the Earth.

When von Neumann probes were proposed, we did not have working AI or 3D printers. They were merely concepts with some proof of concept systems in various states.

We now have those technologies. It is trivial to extrapolate how effective they will be in say 10,000 years if we avoid blowing ourselves up. By then maybe we'll even have a sustainable Fusion reactor, general AI, and atomic matter deposition.

Do you accept that von Neumann probes are a realistic proposition and that they could have easily blanketed the galaxy by now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

> It has been theorized[3] that a self-replicating starship utilizing relatively conventional theoretical methods of interstellar travel (i.e., no exotic faster-than-light propulsion, and speeds limited to an "average cruising speed" of 0.1c.) could spread throughout a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years.

Half a million years. How long is that, really, in the grand scheme of things. And how close would we have to be to a civilization who released not one but millions of self-replicating probes for one to have visited us by now.

I am not saying this happened, but please consider it could have, it might have, and what if it did.

What if we are seeing these right now?

Post reply on HN