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NSA UFO Documents Index

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Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#101

Post by deeeeplearning »

Pyramus wrote: post #60
NationalPark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can pretty summarily dismiss all of this with, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Given that every inch of the developed world is now covered with high resolution cameras, and UFO sightings via these devices have suspiciously not exploded in number, it's pretty clear that these reports were misidentifications, lies, and counterintelligence operations. Would it be cool if aliens were han…

You are confusing two crucial things: UFOs doesn't mean aliens, it's simply unidentified objects. Unless you really do want to speculate about aliens ... > "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" The evidence gathered by David Fraser et al. is actually quite compelling. Definitly there seem to be natural phenomena that can't be explained by our current scientific understanding.

It's really not, its almost completely eyewitness based and regardless of their "expertise," eyewitnesses are almost completely worthless and certainly do not qualify as "compelling evidence" in the arena of Science.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#102

Post by mr-wendel »

remir wrote: post #81
motohagiography wrote: post #35

Went through the CIA one as well, and it's almost designed to be opaque and vague. UFO's create interesting ethical questions and can be useful thought experiments for contemporary issues. A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any other civilization these recent space arr…

It costs them nothing to wipe us out and spare the universe the trouble, so what must they believe about life, the universe, and everything to not do so. Economics may be universal, etc. Perhaps the world is highly valued in terms of its bio-diversity and life-supporting resources. There's a possibility that native civilization like us are being monitored and on some level "protected" from conquests if they show they…

My pet theory is they're already here and don't care at all about environmental issues. Planets like this are a dime-a-dozen to them.

However, nowhere else in the universe have they come across music like ours. They are madly obsessed with it and dare not intervene in our affairs, lest they taint the source.

I have absolutely no evidence for this. I just like the idea that Freddie Mercury just might have been an intergalactic superstar.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#103

Post by ikrenji »

at_a_remove wrote: post #91
subsubzero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed of light is a constant but we are still very behind in terms of understanding the universe and physics, we still do not have a unified theory which bridges general relativity to quantum mechanics. We know next to nothing about dark matter(haven't found any yet), also in terms of energy production we have not achieved - room temperature superconducting and fusion reactors. We can barely get rockets outside o…

In literally every protracted discussion I've had about FTL since before I got my physics degree, someone has brought up the "science doesn't know everything yet" angle. Here's the thing: science is never done, it will never know for finally and for certain. And yet two of my objections will remain unaddressed: 1) FTL implies CTCs, that means paradoxes. How are those going to be resolved? Because the Cosmic Censor st…

1, without having a mechanism for FTL how can we say for certain that it implies CTCs? maybe relativity is an approximation of a more complete theory which allows FTLs without CTCs...

2, didn't the universe itself expand faster than light during inflation? what does relativity have to say about that? if we can't use relativity to explain inflation, why do we so comfortably use it to forbid FTL?

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#104

Post by vageli »

jrowen wrote: post #96
motohagiography wrote: post #35

Went through the CIA one as well, and it's almost designed to be opaque and vague. UFO's create interesting ethical questions and can be useful thought experiments for contemporary issues. A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any other civilization these recent space arr…

I don't think these are dumb questions at all They're not, but they're also somewhat orthogonal to "UFO culture." You're describing a philosophical/sociopolitical discussion that isn't really informed by a blip on a grainy video frame. The question that's more relevant to UFOs, in my opinion, is "Why would these aliens, with their unimaginably superior technology, travel all the way here and reveal themselves in such…

> I just don't see it. I fully believe that, if there were aliens out there with such capabilities, and they came to earth, they would either conceal themselves fully or reveal themselves intentionally (and not just to a handful of people in a remote area).

After having read Roadside Picnic, I'm inclined to disagree. If sufficiently advanced aliens ever happened upon us they might treat us as we treat ants in our backyards—that is, they don't really notice or care for us at all.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#105

Post by INTPenis »

ikrenji wrote: post #99
INTPenis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent example. Thanks for finding it. I'd rather believe this was a combination of natural phenomenon and instrumentation failure than an alien visiting us from far far away. After reading the text that doubt is definitely still strong. It starts with conflicting reports from people on the ground. They are never able to identify what it was. And also the text reads as if it was written by a "believer" i…

the report is from over 40 years ago and all the involved are iranian personnel, not american ~ i wouldn't expect any of them to come forward if they are still alive... there is no natural phenomenon that fits the description. one passage says that the UFO landed and illuminated land around it in a 2-3km radius. there was a radar return, multiple aircraft involved etc. im not saying its 100% aliens, but im pretty sur…

They would be old, which is a perfect time to come forwards.

Anyways, I'm not saying I can identify which natural phenomenon it is, I'm just using the process of elimination.

Because let's assume this was a sentient thing, at least sentient enough to know that these aircraft posed a danger to it.

Well that's where the paradox starts because this thing apparently has the ability to disable the instrumentation of a fighter jet with such precision that it does not damage the aircraft, it does not damage the aviators and it can be restored after leaving its sphere of influence.

So one must ask, why would an object with such power be afraid of these aircraft?

So you might say, "it's merely an effect of being near the object, not a deployed capability against these aircraft".

Ok fine but that's a very specific non-conscious effect to be flying around inside Iranian airspace with. If this particular object has that effect then why don't all UFOs disable all instrumentation in a sphere around them all the time?

How come only these particular planes that were heading towards it, like in a movie or a novel.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#106

Post by at_a_remove »

ikrenji wrote: post #103
at_a_remove wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In literally every protracted discussion I've had about FTL since before I got my physics degree, someone has brought up the "science doesn't know everything yet" angle. Here's the thing: science is never done, it will never know for finally and for certain. And yet two of my objections will remain unaddressed: 1) FTL implies CTCs, that means paradoxes. How are those going to be resolved? Because the Cosmic Censor st…

1, without having a mechanism for FTL how can we say for certain that it implies CTCs? maybe relativity is an approximation of a more complete theory which allows FTLs without CTCs... 2, didn't the universe itself expand faster than light during inflation? what does relativity have to say about that? if we can't use relativity to explain inflation, why do we so comfortably use it to forbid FTL?

1) Oh, it turns out that the mechanism for getting CTCs out of FTL is completely irrelevant. Construct your light cones, see the results. Warp drive, wormholes, whatever, they all produce CTCs. You can look into it if you don't believe me.

2) None of the matter in the universe was expanding, the spacetime was. You're not the first person to think of this. Probably the first question that popped into anyone's mind when variants of the concept were being kicked around. Anyway, the expansion doesn't generate CTCs because there's no information and/or matter to circle around, it's just the stretch between these.

Now, you'll probably ask about -- well, why can't we shrink spacetime selectively to get around all of that? Ah, that requires some exotic matter, matter with negative mass-energy. No, anti-matter does not have negative mass-energy (first thing people reach for). In fact, we've never found anything with negative mass-energy and that concept itself raises a ton of fun paradoxes which I could get into. And you still get CTCs.

There's probably a large tree of arguments out there on the Internet somewhere which addresses all of these common objections.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#107

Post by ikrenji »

INTPenis wrote: post #105
ikrenji wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the report is from over 40 years ago and all the involved are iranian personnel, not american ~ i wouldn't expect any of them to come forward if they are still alive... there is no natural phenomenon that fits the description. one passage says that the UFO landed and illuminated land around it in a 2-3km radius. there was a radar return, multiple aircraft involved etc. im not saying its 100% aliens, but im pretty sur…

They would be old, which is a perfect time to come forwards. Anyways, I'm not saying I can identify which natural phenomenon it is, I'm just using the process of elimination. Because let's assume this was a sentient thing, at least sentient enough to know that these aircraft posed a danger to it. Well that's where the paradox starts because this thing apparently has the ability to disable the instrumentation of a fig…

i wouldn't think they would be afraid of human aircrafts...

I'm pretty sure they would be able to identify threatening aircraft from non threatening, humans can do this too.

as for their motivations of floating around random places around earth ~ could be literally anything

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#108

Post by fpgaminer »

joombaga wrote: post #84
fpgaminer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit like us diving into the ocean to observe algae. We don't do it because we're concerned about its imminent sentience and potential to "cause trouble". We just do it because we're curious; we want a better understanding of our world and universe. We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed "visitors". Us being a threat is unl…

> We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed "visitors". What's feeding your intuition here? I wouldnt have thought they'd likely be _that_ advanced. But I'm not sure where tens of thousands of orders of magnitude puts them on e.g. the Kardashev scale, and I'm sure being a huge Star Trek fan has affected my own intuitions :)

I love Star Trek, and that being a possible future is nice to entertain, but doesn't take into account an AI singularity. The latter, to some approximation, seems more likely to me. And that puts a Moore's law on intelligence. Not just for us, but for any potential space faring race. And it doesn't have to be just "AI"; as soon as a race has the capability to recursively improve their own intelligence they'll hit that exponential curve too.

So by the time a race gets space faring and solves FTL travel, it's likely they're at least a good step onto that exponential intelligence curve. Hence a vague estimate of "tens of thousands of orders of magnitude".

For example, as is we should be capable of building a GPT-human within 20 years (1). About the same time frame that, if we put all our effort into it, it would take for us to barely colonize another planet in our solar system. Given another 20 years and we've got an AI that's 1000x more intelligent than us.

I see our trajectory as hitting that exponential curve before we even get out of this solar system. So I just imagine any potential "visitors" to our planet are much further along.

(1) This is calculated using Moore's law: how many doubles of compute will it take before GPT-3 can be naively scaled to the estimated number of parameters of a human brain. That doesn't necessarily imply human level intelligence, but our studies so far indicate that there's strong reason to believe that GPT-human will be something approximating 1000x smarter than GPT-3. Human or not, that's terrifyingly intelligent. Remember that Transformer like architectures are the ones that "solved" protein folding last year. And none of this calculation takes into account the potential for continued improvements to architectures and efficiency over that time span. So while I don't think GPT-human will start an AI apocalypse in 20 years, I do think GPT-human will be better than every other human on this planet at doing ... AI research. And that's where the spark of singularity begins.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#109

Post by resu_nimda »

vageli wrote: post #104
jrowen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these are dumb questions at all They're not, but they're also somewhat orthogonal to "UFO culture." You're describing a philosophical/sociopolitical discussion that isn't really informed by a blip on a grainy video frame. The question that's more relevant to UFOs, in my opinion, is "Why would these aliens, with their unimaginably superior technology, travel all the way here and reveal themselves in such…

> I just don't see it. I fully believe that, if there were aliens out there with such capabilities, and they came to earth, they would either conceal themselves fully or reveal themselves intentionally (and not just to a handful of people in a remote area). After having read Roadside Picnic, I'm inclined to disagree. If sufficiently advanced aliens ever happened upon us they might treat us as we treat ants in our bac…

I’m not familiar with the book, but

1) I don’t think the analogy of ambling around our backyards holds for space travel. Space is vast and largely empty, it would be astronomically unlikely for anyone to casually wander over to earth from another star or galaxy.

2) We only treat ants that way because we already know about them. People have noticed them and studied them at great length. A person who doesn’t know that other animals exist on earth would probably be incredibly fascinated by them and likely try to communicate with them.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#110

Post by INTPenis »

ikrenji wrote: post #107
INTPenis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would be old, which is a perfect time to come forwards. Anyways, I'm not saying I can identify which natural phenomenon it is, I'm just using the process of elimination. Because let's assume this was a sentient thing, at least sentient enough to know that these aircraft posed a danger to it. Well that's where the paradox starts because this thing apparently has the ability to disable the instrumentation of a fig…

i wouldn't think they would be afraid of human aircrafts... I'm pretty sure they would be able to identify threatening aircraft from non threatening, humans can do this too. as for their motivations of floating around random places around earth ~ could be literally anything

That's a very human centric view though. If we see them as balls of multi-colored light then what makes you think they can even grasp what an aircraft is, let alone radio signals.

Sure they might have been studying us for centuries, and that's how they can disable our instrumentation precisely without damaging anything. But then again that raises the question, why? Why even let us detect them in the first place if they have no message to send.

And if they have a message to send, how come they have complete control of our technology but can't convey their message?

Nothing adds up here.

To me as a skeptic the only common factor is human imagination.

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