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UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

bbc.com

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Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#31
What I find frustrating is that the committee members state that out 800 cases in their database, only 2%~5% of them show "truly anomalous" properties, that they only have a limited number of sightings with high-quality data, and yet instead of showing that, they only show examples of low-quality data with no "anomalous properties".

We all understand that the vast amount of the examples they have will be misidentified jets or balloons, it is only to be expected, but that is of no interest to the audience. If there are high-quality observations of anomalous objects, that is what should be showcased, even if they remain unidentified.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#32
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this gibberish and how are people replying to it as if it is a serious comment that makes complete sense to them? FWIW, I checked spk-17's profile - there's no key or trick mentioned to help the clueless like me decipher this.

I don't understand, this particular comment doesn't even show up in the comment page for that use profile? It's so bizarre haha. somebody should @ dang and ask edit: I think the sequence of events was this: - user posted a genuine comment - people replied to the original comment - user edited the comment and changed it to that random sequence of letters and digits - replies now appeared out of context - the edited po…

Sounds plausible. Didn’t think that the comment was possibly edited after the fact.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kirkpatrick doesn't count those flying spheres as "really anomalous". I don't know why... Your "It's not clearly real or airborne" is interesting. Technically, you are correct, but it's a remarkably absurd stretch here. The level-headed approach would clearly be, to assume it was real and attain better data.

You never assume a claim as just real. You take the approach of a skeptic and attain all information before coming to a factual conclusion. If no conclusion is reached it is put in the pile of I don’t know.

You are describing ignorance, not skepticism. A scientist's occupation is examining that very pile of "I don't know".

I said, you assume the observation to be real. That does not say you already knew what it was.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kirkpatrick doesn't count those flying spheres as "really anomalous". I don't know why... Your "It's not clearly real or airborne" is interesting. Technically, you are correct, but it's a remarkably absurd stretch here. The level-headed approach would clearly be, to assume it was real and attain better data.

The level headed approach is to handle an extraordinary claim with skepticism until an extraordinary level of evidence is presented. Why are these videos always so grainy, out of focus, and otherwise unclear? Perhaps when clear and unambiguous video is captured there is no mystery…

"Extraordinary" is no scientific category, it's purely subjective bias based on limited knowledge, aka "ignorance". Basing (in)actions on ignorance and faulty logic is never advisible.

These objects exist in a domain of low observability due to common limitations of our sensor technology. Additionally, you assume them to be entirely passive and observed by uniform chance alone. Which presumably should lead to them turning up in somebody's living room. That is nonsense of course.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#35

Idle comment: the popular UFO/UAP discourse, has a major new strand predicated on the hypothesis that the phenomena are associated not with ETs in the "these are the ships they flew here in, or away craft from their mothership parked elsewhere in the solar system," but rather with some civilization whose presence in the solar system and indeed on earth predates our own, which shades over in one subset, into a set of…

Idle response: physics as we know it make using metal bricks to travel between star systems vanishingly unlikely. It's way too costly in terms of both energy/materials and time.

What I believe "wrap speed" technology will turn out to be, as well as the truth about the nature of life and ultimately our civilization, is that ancestral intelligence forms have learned to use much more ephemeral expressions capable of harnessing quantum entaglement-like interaction to travel and manipulate reality. Getting even more outlandish: I think this solves Fermi paradox as well as the enigma of how fast hunter-gatherer apes suddenly went from farming villages to orbital stations. We are a colony of such beings into more hoarse matter. They found an ecosystem, and figured out a way to inject people into it as a way to maybe imprison and/or re-educate unruly types.

And now our material techniques have advanced far enough that we can actually begin to detect some of their activities.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of people you know who have already had close encounters is incredible, it cannot be that they are all crazy, something has to be true How many people in this world claim to have had close encounters with supernatural entities-deities, spirits, angels, demons, ghosts, etc? It cannot be that they are all crazy, something has to be true If you aren’t convinced by that argument, you shouldn’t be convinced b…

You could use this argument to either support or refute all world religions. I don’t understand how you could argue that large numbers of people can’t be wrong (see most of history)

That is the same point made in the post you are replying to.

Re: UFOs: What we learned from NASA's public meeting

#37
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level headed approach is to handle an extraordinary claim with skepticism until an extraordinary level of evidence is presented. Why are these videos always so grainy, out of focus, and otherwise unclear? Perhaps when clear and unambiguous video is captured there is no mystery…

"Extraordinary" is no scientific category, it's purely subjective bias based on limited knowledge, aka "ignorance". Basing (in)actions on ignorance and faulty logic is never advisible. These objects exist in a domain of low observability due to common limitations of our sensor technology. Additionally, you assume them to be entirely passive and observed by uniform chance alone. Which presumably should lead to them tu…

"Extraordinary" is absolutely a scientific "category", used to describe ideas that not only lack explanation given current understanding, but also substantially upend that current understanding.

These "objects" do not exist simply because recorded measurements could be explained by their existence. Without also providing a way to fit the existence of these objects into reproducible, falsifiable explanations that globally conform to all other theories of physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, etc., what you have is nothing more than a wild claim.

In other words, "extraordinary" is a euphemism for lazy pseudoscience. Do the work before making the claim.

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