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Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

arxiv.org

91–97 of 97 posts

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#91
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well hey, one possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that there isn't one.

I like to think the reason for non-detection is that an alien civilization already had their AGI moment. The AI proliferated throughout the galaxy, to several galaxies, and ultimately found a way to "break" our classical and limited understanding of physics. That the reason we're not seeing them is because we're looking for industry and megastructures, waste gasses, EM spectrum activity, etc., but that their needs ar…

If dark forest were true I doubt we would be here. Earth has been broadcasting that it is a likely biosphere since the atmosphere became oxidizing. This much free oxygen is not likely to exist without some process constantly replenishing it and I’m not aware of any natural options for that at planetary scale.

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#92

Reason to be skeptical: For the last 10 years (?) or so most everybody has a mobile phone with high-quality camera in it and most people carry their phone with them all the time. Shouldn't that mean that the quality and quantity of UFO evidence should have exploded since about 10-15 years ago? But I haven't seen any articles about how much more and how much better quality UFO evidence we have now that anybody whose s…

But there is video. It just looks crap or CGI because it's hand held, because who expects to see a UFO, and shot by amateurs.

There is video, there is evidence. I'm juts wondering why the evidence isn't accumulating many times faster now that everybody has a cell-phone and they have good cameras in them?

They are not the best possible equipment for taking pictures of UFOs, but surely they are much much better than what average person had with them 20 years ago. So that means in my calculation that the quality and quantity evidence should be much better now. So really my question is, is there any evidence that the evidence about UFOs is much better now that it was 20 years ago?

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question I have would be, what would we as a species need to demonstrate to be allowed "off leash," in a community of other spacefaring civilizations? What consistent understanding would each person as a random human need to have to be able to be relied upon to interact safely with a spacefaring being? I think that Martin Luther King, Jr. answered this question in 1967: > Modern man suffers from a kind of pover…

It's almost as though every person already has the tools and a manual, and we each have the individual choice whether to become it or not. :)

I agree, but there are also strong societal forces at work keeping us divided and in constant conflict. I think it’s really hard for most people to navigate through this morass, and they either become bogged down in it or end up on one side of the opposing division. The trick is not to give in to one side or the other and to choose equanimity.

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that even as young child I started noticing that all of the photos were blurry. All of them. Focus dispels UFOs just like turning on the light dispels the monster in the bedroom. Not exactly. Jacques Vallée and others have spent a lot of time addressing the question of why UFO photos are always blurry and out of focus. His ideas about it are fascinating. There’s also a lot of photos that aren’t blurry, such…

> 1971 Cote UFO That could be anything. Damage to the film negative is a simple explanation! Any single picture is basically just fan-art. I and many others with a reasonable level of scepticism wouldn't accept anything other than the same UFO or "design" of UFO turning up in many photos, ideally from some sort of scientific sky survey array run by non-UFO-fanatic astronomer types. In fact, several such survey system…

You’re preaching to the choir. I am very much a skeptical materialist. The problem is that there are a significant number of unknowns and unidentified reports that have never been explained. And those are the ones we are talking about.

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is one very powerful argument against the idea that any alien life form has visited Earth since the humanity existed: the humanity still exists.

That makes a lot of unfounded assumptions about the nature of advanced alien life.

Maybe, but it fits 100% with all of the advanced life we have observed so far.

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#96
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think the reason for non-detection is that an alien civilization already had their AGI moment. The AI proliferated throughout the galaxy, to several galaxies, and ultimately found a way to "break" our classical and limited understanding of physics. That the reason we're not seeing them is because we're looking for industry and megastructures, waste gasses, EM spectrum activity, etc., but that their needs ar…

Or they are so advanced that their “bodies” are made up of individual units teeming with nanotechnology components, most of which are atoms wide, working to generate power from atoms absorbed from external environment, self repair and more. Units take on different roles. Advanced energy transport system that stores hydrocarbons and carries around highly volatile elements on iron structures in a liquid directly to the…

It's an exceedingly slow to adapt algorithm. Extinction is a fairly common result for stumbling upon an ecological niche, maximizing fit, and then having that niche disappear.

Novel information sharing is slow, lossy, and the information stores themselves quickly degrade.

Incredibly poor solution in the limit.

Re: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#97
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be covered by the zoo hypotheses[1] I think. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis

The ZOO hypothesis is uncannily attractive, because it a) sort-of humbles our egos and b) would actually be plausible even within humanity itself. If we discovered another human civilization with a living and technological standard of Europe of 1022 AD, we would be able to keep an eye on them without revealing ourselves much. An occassional slip-up would be possible (a crashed drone), but most of the time, we would b…

Something similar exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
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