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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

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Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#91

Post by garbagetime »

mjburgess wrote: post #74
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #56

So I'm reluctant to post this but here we go.. In this case it is most probably high competence. Coming out of WW2 it wasn't difficult to take national security extremely serious. I thought that there wasn't much to the crash(es) near Corona in 1947 but the witness testimonies are just very very convincing, I actually changed my mind after reading up on the subject recently (before I would have said I don't know anyt…

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel. The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by". The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings pea…

Your priors seem way off

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#92

Post by T-A »

mjburgess wrote: post #74
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #56

So I'm reluctant to post this but here we go.. In this case it is most probably high competence. Coming out of WW2 it wasn't difficult to take national security extremely serious. I thought that there wasn't much to the crash(es) near Corona in 1947 but the witness testimonies are just very very convincing, I actually changed my mind after reading up on the subject recently (before I would have said I don't know anyt…

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel. The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by". The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings pea…

https://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/why-alien-life-will-be-ro...

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#93

Post by chmike »

atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

This reasoning is excessive extrapolation. Any civilization that master interstellar space travel must be far more intelligent than us. The rules followed by such civilizations may not be the same as the rules we know.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#94

Post by ericmay »

graderjs wrote: post #68
notahacker wrote: post #27

The whole thing is a masterpiece of bizarre statements dressed up as reasoning Take: Second, between (Ca) spontaneous decentralized hoaxes and lies, and (Cb) hoaxes and lies coordinated by a big central organization, (Cb) seems much more likely. Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. You don't need to be an Oxford research associate writing about overcoming bias to re…

It's possible that your bias against believing this means your interpretation is a lot of bizarre takes dressed up as the only possible conclusions. What I don't get is the arrogance of every side about this subject. We have no answers. We have no understanding. The government seems to be about to admit as much. But the true believers are sure, and the true debunkers, yourself included, are sure. To me, you're both j…

What’s the middle of “something definitely exists” and “nothing exists”?

Seems like it would err on the side of “maybe something exists” which doesn’t quite feel like a middle ground.

Replace UFOs with Sasquatch.

“Sasquatch exists and here is the picture and Sasquatch tracks to prove it!”

“You made that up. It’s a guy in a costume. Why can’t we find any single dead Sasquatch? Why are all the pictures and videos crappy?”

“Why can’t you meet me in the middle and at least admit it’s possible that Sasquatch exists??”

Personally I’m open-minded and find the topic of aliens quite interesting. But there isn’t a single ounce of convincing evidence and it would require a gigantic coverup with tons of complicit actors. There needs to be extraordinary evidence before anyone needs to agree to meet anywhere in the middle. Until then we should default toward it not existing. In other words, your null hypothesis is that it doesn’t exist. So far the evidence has failed to cause someone to reject that hypothesis.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#95

Post by tgflynn »

This article didn't really live up to my expectations based on the title.

What I would say, based only on information that almost everyone should agree on (ie. public statements and a very small number of authenticated videos) is that there are three possibilities.

1. Surprising government incompetence

This would be the case if all reported military encounters with UAP's could be explained by misinterpretations and mistakes (possibly including failure to identify foreign adversarial technology), as people like Mick West propose, and the government has been unable to determine this.

2. Surprising government competence

This would cover scenarios where the government has either created the UFO phenomenon from scratch as some kind of disinformation campaign (for unclear reasons) or has secretly developed technology far in advance of the publicly known state of the art and has kept it hidden for many decades.

3. A real phenomenon unknown to science

This covers aliens in the broadest possible sense of the term as well as unknown natural phenomena that somehow seem to exhibit intelligent behavior.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#96

Post by mjburgess »

mrfusion wrote: post #85
mjburgess wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel. The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by". The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings pea…

You seem to ignore Von nuaman (sp) probes, generation ships, non carbon based life. And that’s before we consider that our understanding of physics may not be complete.

I didn't ignore them. It may be clearer to write all probabilities above as being conditioned on "our best knowledge of the universe".

P(All intelligent life is organic | Our best knowldge) =~ 1

Who knows the actual P(All intelligent life is organic).

My point is that OP seems profoundly ignorant of "the facts of the matter" as our best theories describe them.

Such facts make D-AnythingOtherThanAliens vastly more likely than D-Aliens.

It is possible to "imagine" a world in which non-carbon-based life develops to an intelligent point (somehow with evolution...? adaption? ... organic growth...?)...

And it is possible to Imagine they develop space ships, can travel near light speed and survive for billions of years without severe issues (again: how could an intelligent life develop which "thinks on small time scales" enough to build ships, but not be severely affected by having to live for billions of years?).

And its possible to imagine such a species has been exploring the near infinite vastness of space for long enough to have found earth and contacted us in a bizarre series of ways that routinely have little in common.

Etc.

But this imagined scenario is based in exactly zero physics, chemistry, biochemistry or anything else.

That such a novel can be written weighs nothing on whether we ought actual count it as a possibility.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

tgflynn wrote: post #73
notahacker wrote: post #27

The whole thing is a masterpiece of bizarre statements dressed up as reasoning Take: Second, between (Ca) spontaneous decentralized hoaxes and lies, and (Cb) hoaxes and lies coordinated by a big central organization, (Cb) seems much more likely. Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. You don't need to be an Oxford research associate writing about overcoming bias to re…

> Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. Fairies, ghosts and angels don't show up on radar or FLIR and the Inspector General of the DoD has never launched an investigation into how they have been handled by that department.

Are we talking about the three US military videos that surfaced in recent years? I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. In one case, you could literally use the numbers on the recording and some middle-school level geometry skills to calculate that the tracked object is a bird.

And it's quite easy to guess why these videos were released. They're technology demonstrators. The general public can think UFOs if they want, but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter".

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#98

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

mrfusion wrote: post #85
mjburgess wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed of light essentially prohibits space travel. The fastest possible speed for any material object to travel at is incredibly slow compared to any meaningful distance. It is millenia just from the sun to the edge of our solar system, let alone to anything "near by". The universe is not the kind of place where living things can travel "between worlds". This is scifi -- and it is no coincidence UFO sightings pea…

You seem to ignore Von nuaman (sp) probes, generation ships, non carbon based life. And that’s before we consider that our understanding of physics may not be complete.

Generation ships may not be possible, at least for biological lifeforms. Kim Stanley Robinson wrote his novel Aurora in large part to argue this.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#99

Post by graderjs »

ericmay wrote: post #94
graderjs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that your bias against believing this means your interpretation is a lot of bizarre takes dressed up as the only possible conclusions. What I don't get is the arrogance of every side about this subject. We have no answers. We have no understanding. The government seems to be about to admit as much. But the true believers are sure, and the true debunkers, yourself included, are sure. To me, you're both j…

What’s the middle of “something definitely exists” and “nothing exists”? Seems like it would err on the side of “maybe something exists” which doesn’t quite feel like a middle ground. Replace UFOs with Sasquatch. “Sasquatch exists and here is the picture and Sasquatch tracks to prove it!” “You made that up. It’s a guy in a costume. Why can’t we find any single dead Sasquatch? Why are all the pictures and videos crapp…

I think we should all be engaging in this topic critically and openly. With curiosity rather than certainty, when none exists. I think we should not be so casual or strident in just dismissing or discounting other human beings personal experiences. Especially when there are so many people with stories. These humans are valuable, and their stories are valuable. We shouldn't dismiss that, or disrespect them. But also, in aggregate, with other evidence, we should consider it and be curious. Not rush to conclusion either way. Be wary of the theorists and commentariat, but be curious about it. I think you see this, that's what you're saying too, I think. Except the "default toward not existing" is the crazy thing. You should just default toward "not understanding". To me, being sure that it's whatever your theory is, and being sure that it's all just fabricated, are both equally wrong. Just calmly face the evidence, think about it if it interests you, don't rush to opine.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#100

Post by saberdancer »

tgflynn wrote: post #95

This article didn't really live up to my expectations based on the title. What I would say, based only on information that almost everyone should agree on (ie. public statements and a very small number of authenticated videos) is that there are three possibilities. 1. Surprising government incompetence This would be the case if all reported military encounters with UAP's could be explained by misinterpretations and m…

I don't agree with #1. Why would it be surprising government incompetence? Government is not one person with infinite knowledge, plenty of them are elected officials with questionable level of understanding of various phenomena.

Most sightings can be easily explained with misinterpretations and mistakes just like Mick West shows.

Recent number of videos (gimbal, tic tac, ...) are probably released to muddy the waters and the Navy knows what they are showing.

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