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Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

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Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits. I personally put zero faith in them, because quite a few are obvious fakes, and the rest are just completely unverifiable, so they are not worth thinking about. But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...

> There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits. I don't think you got the point. Before camera phones were ubiquitous, the bulk of reports were very elaborate and fantastic tales where the so-called witness played a central role in the story. Once everyone started carrying a camera, all we see is questionable light shows taken fr…

No, I get what you're saying.

To be clear, I don't believe we're being visited by aliens.

If we are, though, they're obviously extremely advanced. To put it mildly. So clearly they would know that relatively high quality cameras are now ubiquitous, and adapt their behaviors accordingly if they preferred to remain unknown to the general public.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#162
post #106
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his knowledge of physics... ...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. Us trying to 'inte…

> solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we co…

> Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years

This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds.

> If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist.

That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered. It was already 'outside' our understanding then, and it still is. We take some things 'just as they are' and accept them, like quantum entanglement. We think we explain them through some unproven theories to avoid admitting the fact that they upended our earlier paradigm of how things are.

A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial. For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what…

> One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. By this line of thinking we can never put “100% confidence” into anything at all. But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”, therefore this is just a cheap argument to say we must assign every clai…

  >But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”
That's not the issue. It's not even consistent.

You (and all others) conflated my argument with the tired old trope that all knowledge 'might' be wrong. Yes I agree: yawn.

However in this case we actually have positive knowledge that our current physics must be incorrect. This is a far far stronger epistemic claim, of course.

Funny how for something so uncontroversial, it can be so controversial to remind people of it!

  >fancy language and big words
Sorry for using big words.

  >the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as...
Finally meat and potatoes. Anyone have a handy source for this debunking content?

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#164
post #162
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we co…

> Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds. > If you think objectiv…

> This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'.

And by thinking within the boundaries of our paradigm, we can conclude that this particular combination of technology and culture has not spread throughout our galaxy.

> Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds.

If that is physically possible. Which we have fairly strong evidence against.

> That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered.

Right! Physicists found evidence to support revolutionary findings, and it was believed because other physicists reproduced the evidence for themselves.

Keep your mind open, but not so open that your brain falls out. By all means, there is more physics to discover, but pinning one's hopes on superluminal spacetravel without a shred of evidence is folly.

> A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.

Yeah, I love science fiction, too. It's really fun. But you're so frothy about the possibility that physics is wrong, that you aren't considering that a small number of poorly-instrumented observations are wrong.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#165
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it strange? I'd say it's fair to assume that potential alien visitors (...) Just because you personally can't provide an explanation for a photo or a video, which I might add can very well be fake and often are, that does not mean you can fill in the explanation field with nonsense. That's what nutjobs and conspiracy loons do.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic. That's no better than what nutjobs and conspiracy loons do.

> Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic.

The faulty logic is undoubtedly jumping to conclusions that just because you personally don't know the origin of something, that automatically means it's a fantastic story. It just means you don't know. That's it.

That's how you get lens flares being described as aliens.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#166
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic. That's no better than what nutjobs and conspiracy loons do.

> Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic. The faulty logic is undoubtedly jumping to conclusions that just because you personally don't know the origin of something, that automatically means it's a fantastic story. It just means you don't know. That's it. That's how you get lens flares being described as aliens.

Again, I'm not disagreeing. I thought I repeated "I don't believe aliens are visiting us" in my comment often enough to make that clear.

I am only commenting on your point:

> Before camera phones were ubiquitous, the bulk of reports were very elaborate and fantastic tales where the so-called witness played a central role in the story.

> Once everyone started carrying a camera, all we see is questionable light shows taken from a very long distance.

> Strange, isn't it?

This argument is not based in logic. Don't argue against "aliens" and the like by making points that are not based in logic. Find arguments that are based in logic.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#167
post #164
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds. > If you think objectiv…

> This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. And by thinking within the boundaries of our paradigm, we can conclude that this particular combination of technology and culture has not spread throughout our galaxy. > Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds. If that is physically possible. Which we have f…

> And by thinking within the boundaries of our paradigm, we can conclude that this particular combination of technology and culture has not spread throughout our galaxy.

Yep, its basically what the relevant xkcd comic explains:

https://xkcd.com/638/

> If that is physically possible. Which we have fairly strong evidence against.

We don't. Our science is not all-encompassing.

> superluminal spacetravel without a shred of evidence is folly.

This sentence and your sentences preceding this one contradict. Solely the very concept of quantum entanglement broke all the preexisting notions about how existence worked. Its something that shouldn't have happened according to all the 'hard' evidence we had beforehand.

Apparently, the evidence we had before wasn't so 'hard'. Just like how the evidence we have currently is not.

> But you're so frothy about the possibility that physics is wrong

Leaving your choice of words aside, physics is !regularly! wrong just like all the other sciences.

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ty :) this is definitely a topic that's too taboo for most people to touch, but the allegations of the DoD withholding information from congress is very serious and this should not be overlooked. If his claims are true, our democracy is in peril imo

Ur welcome! :) Totally, it is something which majorly does not look good. I think people in power should just come clean and say "We have no idea what's going on." But how can people in power admit something more powerful is toying with them? It's pretty hard, but I think their honesty would build credibility and begin the path not just of healing but of figuring out: what it is, do we need to respond, and how to res…

Totally agree this is something the world needs to investigate together. That's why Grusch asked DOPSR for clearance to talk about the 1933 Magenta, Italy crash. Him and Elizondo have been working with Italian government officials regarding the official reports of the crash.

But, ultimately, I think one of the major powers has to own up to the reverse engineering programs for this to be taken seriously by the public.

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