I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents. So, at best his testimony is hearsay.
All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop. My belief is that for some reason, the US government used psychology tests to identify a select few people who naturally "want to believe". These individuals would take vague evidence and through their own nature would exaggerate and fill in the blanks. They then nudged those individuals with carefully curated credible fake evidence. Then they just sat back and waited for a few of those guys to "leak" the information.
Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some small but significant portion of the population is mentally ill, and it seems likely a few would hear a joke ("we keep the alien space ships through that door, I'd show you but I'd have to kill you"), take it way too literally, and it becomes the focus of their mental illness. That seems not only possible but probable given the size the military industrial complex.
Also people who don't understand what is or is not possible easily get confused about what is impossible / difficult versus possible / easy.
My guess is that a substantial fraction of otherwise competent American adults don't realise VTOL jet aircraft are a thing we can and have built for example, and that if one of them saw a prototype like the Flying Bedstead (Rolls Royce experimental platform, which doesn't look at all like an aeroplane since it doesn't need to) and was told (in jest) that's an alien spacecraft, they absolutely might believe that.
Angels, ghosts, UFOs, miracles all have the same characteristics. A person who seems very reasonable says they are sure that saw the thing, and they provide SOME circumstantial or grainy photographic evidence, but no one actually got a full resolution picture of the angel or ghost or UFO.
I doubt these people are lying. They actually saw something. Miracles are the easiest example to explain. Someone couldn't walk and then a saint said a prayer for them and they could walk again. It is pretty easy guess that it was a placebo effect or coincidence that the medical issue got better at the same time.
We have never seen someone with a X-Ray of a severed spine regain full walking ability after a prayer from a saint.
UFO's may exist, but it seems more likely that a combination of reflections, radar issues, tiredness/stress, "wanting to believe" caused them to see "something"
It seems likely to me that “seeing things” is consistent with the predictive processing model from cognitive neuroscience. To summarize: the retina error-corrects a simulation provided from the cortex.
Let’s say some visual details are fuzzy.
With a strong enough Bayesian prior (e.g. belief in UFOs), the human perceptual apparatus could subjectively see things that look like UFOs.
Mind bending, but this seems to me a credible and popular theory of brain functioning. I’m no expert and new to the theory. Please correct me if I’m butchering it.
P.S. Like anyone, I often detect motion in my peripheral vision without much detail. Maybe once a year (or less), I see weird things that seem implausible, but only for brief instant. When I look, there is nothing unusual. Yes, bring on the “what are you smoking?” comments… but I assure you the answer is “nothing”.
> Recent empirical work from independent laboratories shows strong, overly precise priors can engender hallucinations in healthy subjects and that individuals who hallucinate in the real world are more susceptible to these laboratory phenomena.
First of, this is completely off-topic, since the whistleblower reports being briefed on non-human technology in possession of the US, which is being intensively studied. Further, their related "sightings" are corroborated by multiple sensor systems simultaneously. And multiple pilots as well.
Now, your idea of hallucinations being an explanation for such sightings, obviously impossible due to said sensors systems in the first place, is utter bogus since not only do you not have "strong priors" in such a situation, you also do not employ people suffering from hallucinations as pilots for mulit-million dollar fighter jets to begin with.
Your article finally describes an entirely different phenomenon than "seeing an object consistently for an extended period of time". Which is what is relevant here.
You are not the final arbiter of what is on topic. Topics are subjective and connected cognitively differently by different people.
Also, in my view, my comment is directly on topic to the message it replies to. [1]
I’m curious about your user experience with Hacker News. Do you use the normal web interface or some other UI? I’m sorry to ask the obvious question, but I do want to rule it out: do you realize that comments are situated relative to the parent comment, right? Now, after factoring this in, do you see how my comment is a response to its parent?
If you’d like to think about it mathematically, try this. The original post could be characterized as having a topic vector in a many dimensional space. Each subsequent reply can be characterized similarly. As you get deeper in the conversation tree, the topic vectors diverge significantly. This does not mean a somewhat distant (in topic vector space) comment is “off-topic”. Quite to the contrary, it means the original post has generated a rich variety of discussion.
This said, I take your point that transitory perceptual errors do not explain all UFO sightings, nor do they directly bear on the whistleblower’s main claims.
One can make such a point without being prickly about it. I’m sorry that you seem upset here and in your comments generally across the threads here. I can relate to some degree; there is is a lot to be concerned about when it comes to the topics of evidence and people’s ability to evaluate truth claims.
I can also relate to prioritizing factual assessments at the expense of tact and empathy towards others. For many years of my life I did this, and it did not serve me well.
It is your responsibility to not take out on your frustrations on me or anyone else. Treat us with respect or your reputation may suffer.
If you manage a civil tone, I will engage with you further. Otherwise, I don’t see it being productive enough to warrant the effort.
To be specific, I suggest reviewing the HN Guideliness. In particular, strive to ask charitable clarification questions and avoid emotionally charged claims; e.g. that what I’m saying is bogus.
Lastly, you are making many assumptions which you then use to knock down straw men arguments.
Notes
[1] I say this based on a larger number of upvotes than I would expect on a comment this deep in the tree. This information is asymmetric; I recognize that you do not have access to it. I wonder what your assessment of this will be.
- If you think I’m lying, this would confirm what you want to believe about my comment being off topic and bogus.
- If you think I’m telling the truth, it would challenge your claims.
Sorry for digressing but having a formal tone comes off as predictable and like you've used AI to help you type. The best manipulation tactic when "responding to someone being dumb" is making the response sound like it came from an actual human and not from a professor or robot. And most UFO sightings are classified because other countries will assume that we are lunatics. America must keep the image of "we are strong and intelligent" to the public. Even hallucinating a weird tiktac in the sky without documentation is a UFO due to the acronym meaning Unidentified Flying Object. It's Unidentified. Doesn't mean it's an angel or alien, one could obviously be sleep deprived yet write about it like crazy, it's a flaw of entitlement. People assume they'll be the first to see it, so they start seeing things.
While this is not a well studied phenomenon, as in to the extent of having well formed theory, we do know that eyes constantly perform micromovements.
One of the prevailing hypotheses states that due to low inherent resolution of the retina these micromovements are used to create sort of sub-pixel resolution. Hence, visual cortex inherently works in predictive/generative mode with constant feedback correction. This hypothesis is sometimes used to explain phenomena like pareidolia and might as well be used to explain perception of UFOs.
> I often detect motion in my peripheral vision without much detail. Maybe once a year (or less), I see weird things that seem implausible, but only for brief instant. When I look, there is nothing unusual.
I want to elaborate on one personal experience I alluded to above. I am curious if others have experienced anything similar.
While driving at about 20 mph across some train tracks, I noticed in my left peripheral vision a parked vehicle with its rear door open. For a tiny instant, I perceived it roughly like dirt was “flowing out” of the car. When I looked more closely — and again, this happened in a fraction of a second — it was clear that a dog, probably a golden retriever, was jumping out.
So my first fleeting perceptual experience got the motion roughly correct (movement out of a back seat onto the ground) and color (light brown) correct. It got the object wrong.
From what I can tell, this is a consistent subjective experience with the predictive processing model. It seems to me if one did not subscribe to the predictive processing model, one would expect the brain to only register a vague blur.
I think it is also worth mentioning that in the days leading up to that experience I had a DIY project where I dug a deep hole, and I put a bucket in the bottom which I filled before lifting it out and dumping it. (This was more efficient than doing one shovel load at a time.) This digging was not an expedient process which could have led my brain to spend energy processing better ways to do it.
First, your tone comes across as unnecessarily uncivil. Your comments could be rephrased to better promote curious discussion.
Second, I will respond in terms of the charitable substance of your comment. I think there is some useful back-and-forth to be had.
Please be specific: part is “complete nonsense” to you; which of the following applies?
1. You reject the predictive processing theory? Why?
2. You reject my characterization of the theory?
3. You reject my application of the theory to the example of seeing UFOs? For the reason you gave? Is there more?
4. What research have you done to support your knowledge and claims?
5. Have you read “Hallucinations and Strong Priors” in Trends in Cognitive Science [1]? I referenced it in nearby comment as well.
Penultimate point: correctly or incorrectly, I am using facts and reasoning in my above comment; I don’t see how this qualifies as “hallucination” in terms of an AI or human phenomenon.
Final point: there is considerable nuance and skill required to criticize effectively. In asking questions 1 through 3, I’m offering an example of a better way.
Curious discussion is engaging on the topic at hand, not on completely unrelated nonsense, that you are no expert on anyway (as you professed yourself).
As already stated, the whistleblower does not fall at all in the context you are discussing here, as he reports having been briefed on research programs that study non-human technology.
Now, in the case of those sightings by military pilots, you have multiple sensor systems and multiple pilots involved simultaneously. Clearly impossible to be explained by your idea here.
But even in cases of single eye-witnesses, their sightings are often over extended periods of time, entirely incompatible with your paper.
> Curious discussion is engaging on the topic at hand, not on completely unrelated nonsense…
1. No. This interpretation of one HN Guideline is not accurate. Such a view would justify being non-charitable, which is incompatible with the guidelines more broadly.
Curious and charitable conversation should not stop because you think my comment is off-topic.
2. Regarding topicality; as I explained at length in another comment, as conversations evolve in a tree of comments, there may be considerable distance (in terms of a topic vector space) from the root. This is a normal and useful.
I’m certainly open and appreciative of someone adding to the conversation. You made a connection from my points to what you see is the central point. Your connection was ‘negative’ in the sense that you suggested my points about perceptions and priors does not apply to the original post. This sense of negative is not a problem, even though I disagree with some of your logic. But the way you did it — quite harshly — was unnecessary.
3. Each time you say “utter nonsense” or “bogus” (and the like) it comes across as insulting. Are you aware of this?
There are clearer phrases and terms to use that are not insulting. Depending on what you are trying to say, you might try:
- you could say you disagree (in the sense of a value judgment or a subjective matter)
- you could say that I’m making a logical or rational error
- you could say that something is not true, factually
- you could say that particular claim of mine is inconsistent with another claim
- you could say that I am not providing evidence or support for a claim
Onto a different point. You wrote:
> not on completely unrelated nonsense, that you are no expert on anyway (as you professed yourself).
4. Stating that I am not an expert in a particular cognitive science theory does not inherently disqualify the logic of my argument. It merely suggests an openness to learning if there are mistakes. Such an openness is indicative of humility and a tendency to not overreach.
As you can see in my other comments, I have recognized and agreed with some of your points. But these points have not contradicted or disproved what I wrote.
> Most UFO reports fall into the Optical Illusion category
Indeed. Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident you can listen to the audio recording of some soldiers investigating what happened at the site of a proposed UFO landing, where they observe weird lights and scorch marks on trees.
There's another page some guy set up where he posts photos he took himself at the site and even used screenshots from a TV interview of one of the witnesses of the event to clearly show that those lights were easily explain by surrounding structures (light house etc) and the marks on trees were probably left by lumberjacks.
I'm baffled how a bunch of trained soldiers investigating over several days can just "conclude" that it was all very mysterious stuff going on and that, despite it being clearly debunked, this event is still seen as THE UFO event in the UK.
Then again I have no idea how these latest videos of flying objects can be explained. To a lay person like myself it just seems completely crazy. How can a pilot claiming to see things fly at supersonic speeds doing impossible maneuvers be explained by a problem with the lens and / or "it's just a weather balloon". The "explanations" of it being ufos seem completely believable to me.
I did not jump to that conclusion, you are putting words in my mouth.
The whistleblower reports of the existence of a research program that he was briefed about. He testifies this program was stuying non-human technology, among that functioning craft, aka "flying saucers".
The determination of it being non-human in orgin was due to extensive material analysis, evident morphology and working characteistics of those devices.
> "Someone claims that someone else told him material exists that is from aliens."
I think I take your point: he doesn't have firsthand experience seeing the evidence.
That said, the quote "Someone claims that someone else told him material exists that is from aliens." doesn't by itself convey the significance of these other people being high ranking intelligence officials. A trained intelligence professional has much more analytical skill and credibility than a person randomly sampled from the U.S. population.
> The Debrief reported that Grusch’s knowledge of non-human materials and vehicles was based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”. He said he had reported the existence of a UFO material “recovery program” to Congress.
> “Grusch said that the craft recovery operations are ongoing at various levels of activity and that he knows the specific individuals, current and former, who are involved,” the Debrief reported.
> In the Debrief article, Grusch does not say he has personally seen alien vehicles, nor does he say where they may be being stored. He asked the Debrief to withhold details of retaliation by government officials due to an ongoing investigation.
Maybe so, but presuming such a visual hallucination phenomena exists, who said it's limited to aliens? xpe didn't say it only manifests as UFO sightings. Besides UFOs, you've got tons of people claiming to see big foot, ghosts, monster fish, angels, ball lightning, etc...
Really low chances that the cameras and other 70 sensor arrays located across an entire fleet of the US Navy are hallucinating simultaneously that they seeing, detecting an UAP.
Or 20 UAPs zooming around, in and out from water, up and down from low Earth orbit in seconds.
You have the math backwards. It would be like saying that someone who guesses your 4 letter pin code is a mind reader because the likelihood of that is low.
You are not factoring in how many times he has tried to guess other people's pins. Or if some pins are more common than others.
Similarly here you are not factoring in how often an entire group of sensors has the same big and repots incorrect data at the same time in the same way. You are Cherry picking the one time the data looked like it might be a UFO. This is also a form of confirmation bias.
It's less of a hallucination and more like a mirage - there's some real stimulus but the mind grossly misinterprets it. Most people don't see mirages regularly, but anyone could see a mirage under the right circumstances.
> The idea of whole departments in the US government being staffed with them is absurdist nonsense.
Someone who works in astrophysics for a govt entity in the US told me they have such massive budgets that it's not uncommon to throw some of it to some weird department just as a favor or to keep up the public's interest in "space stuff". Another person (working at ESA) confirmed it, they both rolled their eyes and claimed it was all BS.
UFO sightings are much less interesting then abductions. Sightings require almost no effort and ultimately can be explained away. But people who claim to be abducted basically are giving up the assumption they will ever be taken seriously again. So why tell others? Are there some subset of abductees who were actually taken? We certainly do the same to other animals so there's no reason why it wouldn't be done to us.
Some people just like having the attention of other people, so it could still be an invented story just to have a great story to tell to the few that believe it.
I mean, there sure are a lot of mentally unstable people who actively choose to detach from reality. To some, living in a fantasy land is as simple as ignoring the truth around you.
“We need to increase tourism on the Town. Cowille business is booming since they had that Virgin Mary apparition. Anne-Marie, could that shape that you saw while tending the sheep be the Spirit of Saint Peter?”
Tangential, but we tend to bring up the placebo effect pretty quickly in medical discussions about what works and doesn't but actually a lot of what people say is the result of placebo is just not even placebo but "natural" resorption, that is your body doing the work.
Placebo is measurable, it's whether taking a "fake" cure is better than "natural" resorption. For some affections, the effect is surprisingly important for others quite negligible.
Yes. I was discussing something related to this with one of my young-adult children and I said something along the lines of "Some people don't actually like abstract or self-reflective thought. They prefer to just believe what they want to, or what's comforting to them, and not to think about it." I believe it hadn't really occurred to them so starkly before, and I felt kind of bad for that.
I am usually one to treat EVERYTHING with a very healthy dose of skepticism, but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not? I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
The US Military released rather intriguing, yet unexplained videos of objects outmaneuvering our top jets. You should go check those out. I've yet to see an explanation that covers all the data those jets collected.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but instantly writing things off as 'tin foil hat' while the guy has an actual legit legal retaliation case going on seems a bit premature.
>but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not?
This is the tragic sentence which is letting the parade of carnival animals in through the back door. In some sense it's true that intellectual humility is necessary as we allow ourselves to be challenged by ideas we thought not possible. But it's true the way hallmark card quotes are true, as vague generalities.
It does no work as a specific response to a specific set of facts, which should be determined by all kinds of specific contextual examinations. In that setting, it's an open-ended, unrestricted invitation to completely suspend all disbelief without any restraint or distinctions.
If the problem is not outside the bounds of known physics, then it should be considered plausible.
Otherwise, it is certainly not impossible, but pointless to speculate.
If you enjoy speculating about such things, fill your boots, but realize that you are only doing it for your own amusement.
I think you mean possible rather than plausible? But otherwise I would say you're right, it's an exercise for personal amusement. But I think as you can see from elsewhere even in this thread, people slip into this mode of half-joking where they might as well be describing their ideas for Deus Ex fan missions, and the dividing line between serious engagement with evidence and make believe is breaking down.
I would argue that play is a highly valuable intellectual activity. Speculating for one’s amusement falls into that category and is therefore not worthless. A lot of great ideas come from playing around with strange ideas that aren’t obviously useful.
A thought experiment. The universe is extremely large and billions of years old. Let's imagine life has developed within a few of those billions of galaxies out there, then imagine this started 1 billion years before us. How advanced to you think we could get in another billion years (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves)? What's really impossible?
We have a pretty good idea about physics and can say with very high confidence that interstellar travel needs a lot of energy. That makes aliens visiting us with small crafts for fun an unlikely theory.
We think we have a pretty good idea about physics - just as cats have a pretty good idea about scratching posts and ants have a pretty good idea about scent trails.
Cats literally can't understand what the Internet is, and ants can't understand what a cat is.
It's astoundingly naive to assume we don't have equivalent cognitive limitations.
I don't think that article is really addressing the same argument. The argument Asimov is addressing seems to be whether human scientists will always disprove the previous century's human scientists.
The argument the poster above is making is that human scientists may be cognitively limited, and our species objectively stupid. You can't really definitively argue against this in an essay, because if you are a stupid person who is a member of a stupid species, your reasoning skills can't be trusted. You might argue it pragmatically makes sense to assume your species is smart enough to understand the universe, but that's a different argument than Asimov is making.
Asimov seems to assume humans are objectively an intelligent species so his reasoning skills can be trusted, which of course may not be wrong, but is pretty hard to prove.
If there were cognitive limitations you'd expect big holes in the theories we come up with unless you believe that for some reason we happen to be limited in a way that we observe a subset of the universe which is strangely internally consistent and shows essentially no signs of interaction with an bigger universe, yet alien species can somehow use the bigger universe to interact with our subset of the universe in a way that appears to be magic. I find that pretty far fetched.
There are big holes in the theories we come up with. The inability to reconcile QM and relativity is the most famous one. M-theory requires 11-dimensional spacetime, but no one has ever observed most of those dimensions. Recent astronomical measurements, if confirmed, may falsify parts of the standard model. The list is pretty long.
Well it pretty much goes without saying that we don't know what we don't know. But we could actually be getting close to learning everything there is to know about the laws of physics. Finishing them up in the next century or two doesn't seem like a big stretch.
I'm not a scientist, just a dumb dude watching Youtube. But there is a problem in physics with tests not being avaialble for stuff they're theorizing about. From my limited understanding, string theory currently has zero path to empirical research to prove or disprove. So it might take a bit longer than a century or two for that reason.
Maybe all you need to travel from one star to another is just a pair AA batteries, and a 5 min. journey. Hence, very small UFOs would be essentially drones managed from another star.
How could it be possible, well, you have to take a closer look to the probably underlying physics you can infer from the UFOs behavior. Probably the still secret videos from DoD have a lot more to offer than most of the currently available videos.
But for now we have these phenomena reported:
- UFOs can go to full stop instantaneously, even if they are travelling at several times the speed of the sound
- UFOs can go from fully static to several times the speed of the sound, instantaneously.
- UFOs can remain fully stopped, seemingly unamovable, even under a hurricane.
- UFOs can submerge almost instantaneously, almost with no "splash", even if they do at extraordinary velocities.
- UFOs can travel underwater at the speed of the sound, or even more faster.
- UFOs have been reported to go "into mountain bases", decades ago.
- and the most important, UFOs have no apparent source of energy nor thrust, nor anything seeming usable as wings to remain in the air, or some rotors to move underwater.
Then, the physics? The UFOs are probably superdimensional entities / vehicles / vessels.
What we are seeing is maybe a fraction of the actual vessels, most of it located out of our three dimensional space, and you can see "here" is a small sphere of "metal". Maybe this spheres are just small arrays of sensors, from a way bigger unobservable vessel.
The evidence is empirical at most yet, maybe the still secret videos from DoD actually show clearly stuff or moves that reveal the superdimensional features, like a UFO "crashing" into solid rock, just to "re-emerge" from solid ground a couple of miles farther. Or maybe some time-related movements, like appearing / disappearing "from nothing".
If the UFOs are superdimensional capable vehicles, and our three dimensional universe actually has upper dimensions, maybe time itself is a physically traversable dimension, from a hypothetical 5th dimension. Hence, you could actually have FTL - Faster Than Light - travel, but without breaking any physics rules from the three dimensional space. You could be just "fastly walking" a couple of kilometers in maybe 15 minutes in the 5th dimensional space, and you could be displacing yourself several light years in the three dimensional space.
Then the energy required to do a multiple light year travel would be trivial, and the time required to displace yourself in the three dimensional space, too.
You could "jump" from star to star in maybe 5 minutes, using the energy from two AA batteries.
The consequences go far beyond that if the time is a physical dimension: you could go back and forward in time, just like you displace yourself in the three dimensional space. Hence the "time travel" thing remains impossible in three dimensions, but it is easily doable in 5 - or more - dimensions. Even closed loops are possible, because time as physical dimension would imply that "everything is happening at the same time", hence you could travel "backwards" in time and change something, and going back "forward" you'd find some things have changed.
What happens if you can also "travel" in time just as fastly, years in minutes, using just a pair of AA batteries? What if you can go back and change history? You could be changing stuff continously, improving at exponential pace. Maybe the aliens have done so, and they don't have "billions" of years of evolution, but have found a way to make the process faster.
Similarly, the implications of the existence of upper dimensions for the humans in its current level of technological evolution would be amazing. If you can displace solid matter like a plane, using an upper dimension, you could make traverse solid matter in the three dimensional space, maybe even not interacting at all with the solid matter: you could make vehicles capable of travelling throug solid rock mountains, or even traverse across the planet.
Some implications are just wow, if you can travel through solid matter in the three dimensional space or you can build vehicles capable of not interacting with mass in the three dimensional space, automagically most of the weapons and defense systems in the world became meaningless overnight. You could go inside any bank, any militar base, not worrying about missiles, bullets. You can't defend yourself by staying in three dimensional space, but in the upper dimensions you'd can't either: the enemy could travel in time and change its strategy to win this time, they'd just need some observer far away from the theather, assessing if the actions have had success or not, if not, go back, advise and repeat.
So, maybe the "first contact" isn't really the problem, but what happens if humanity suddenly realizes about new, radical advances in physics, available not only to super-powers and super-rich entities, but to anyone with a pair of AA batteries?
Almost no upper echelons of power in anywhere in the world would likely want the entire population know about as radically prone to sudden and profound changes in societies, as a discovery of the existence - and cheap accesibility - of upper dimensions, beyond the three dimensional space.
So you - maybe any super-power, nation states and private groups of powerful people - keep aliens out of sight from the general population, UFOs are psychological operations, not a thing like UFOs actually exist, whatever.
For that reason. You want nothing to change from what it is right now.
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
haha, could be, after all our kids play with ants,
and the ants most probably think that we are highly advanced entities.
and it doesn't take the kids too much energy nor technological resources - for the human technological level - to play with ants, but ants probably would see the kid's resources as incredible advanced, well beyond its current technological capabilities.
So yeah it could be 5th dimensional kids playing with us (ants from their perspective).
As far as we know there is no extradimensional space where you can hide matter/energy. So I find it unlikely that UFOs are "superdimensional entities". How would these dimensions interact with the dimensions we know?
I'm suggesting the UFOs could be the first widely public evidence of upper dimensions beyond our three dimensional space.
I'm thrilled about UFOs happily breaking several laws of physics in front of us, and we should be thinking about what are we missing, what's out of sight, beyond our current understanding of physics that the UFOs obviously manage and exploit.
The upper dimensions is just a - pretty obvious - hypothesis.
"How would these dimensions interact with the dimensions we know?"
I don't know, but whoever has built the UFOs, certainly knows.
Some ideas: because you should not be able to impact the ocean surface at mach 4 without obvious physical consequences, and not submerging almost with minimal to absent "splash", maybe those UFOs are just leaking some photons into our three dimensional space,
hence "submerging" could not be precisely what they are doing, maybe they are just re-locating the "output" of the vessel out of sight of the humans.
Also those "metallic orbes" look amazingly similar to some kind of "black hole" or singularity, maybe those things are not vessels at all, but just a hole opened to our three dimensional space, to watch us, study us. That would make sense about the "orbes" doing nothing but keep running from us, appearing aparently everywhere with some interesting stuff to look at.
Yeah, it's very plausible that if another civilization exists some 10 light years away, the vehicle they use to travel 90,460,730,472,580 Km in order to get to Earth has the size of a compact car and copies the design of a 1950s experimental aircraft.
> I've yet to see an explanation that covers all the data those jets collected.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest. Mick has thoroughly investigated the most cited videos and shows them to be of entirely terrestrial origin - often atmospheric effects combined with optical lens, digital stabilization and thermal imaging artifacts. He even cites the technical documentation for the military camera equipment and often provides convincing demonstrations of the artifacts through recreations.
> So you're telling me, some random game developer was more competent than the US military guys who literally are hired for such analysis?
In the case of the most-cited "Gimbal" video, all the military has officially said is they can't determine for sure what the object the glare shown in the video is from. But everyone already agrees on that point. No one can tell from the video whether the glare shown is caused by an airplane many miles distant or some other object. No one representing the U.S. government has ever said the video could NOT be a magnified thermal glare from a distant airplane. Remember, the pilot never saw the object with his own eyes, it was far too distant to see visually even as a spec on the horizon. All the pilot ever saw was the same auto-tracking thermal video we've all seen.
> I suppose, having coded some "parallax effect" is sufficient in your book?
I don't know what you're referring to but it doesn't sound like Mick West's analysis video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs. Also, Mick only assembled the video. He acknowledges the evidence shown in the video is the work of many independent researchers working collaboratively over many months while iteratively sharing their data for peer review. There are links to all the source data shown as well as the entire open analysis discussion and review. The summary video is concise and only 20 minutes long. I challenge you to watch all of it and respond specifically. Which of the four points evidenced from the on-screen camera do you think is incorrect and why?
IMHO, it's inarguable the detailed analysis provides conclusive and verifiable evidence the object is precisely consistent with a glare from an extremely distant object with a thermal imaging 'halo' artifact around it. The apparent rotation and erratic movement of the thermal glare observed in the highly-magnified video is a combined artifact of a) the Raytheon multi-axis camera tracking gimbal system used on that jet, b) the optical stabilization system, and c) the digital de-rotation system.
If you respond, please at least give a clear "yes" or "no" as to whether you agree the apparent rotation is created by the rotating camera gimbal (which was then automatically digitally de-rotated) vs actual rotation of the distant object. If not, how do you explain all the obvious signs of gimbal rotation in the on-screen numeric data and the rest of the video frame around the center glare (eg the background clouds and sky)?
For example imagine I told you I own a pencil. Would you ask me to prove it or doubt me? Even you don't know or trust me, probably not. Why? Because pencils exist, it's easy to get one, and I have no reason to lie (in this scenario).
Now what if I told you I have an invisibility cloak. You'd call me a liar and want proof, hell probably an in person demonstration. Think about why.
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"I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach."
Whether or not aliens exist is not the same as not reaching space. Say it's the year 1876-
1. Aliens may or may not exist, it's unknown
2. it's a true fact that humans haven't gone to space.
I get that you mean the amount of technological advancment in the last 300 years has been crazy.
The reason the burden of proof is on whether something occurred or exists is because the number of events that haven't occured and what doesn't exist is infinite.
Finally you also ask about who is to say and I assume you also mean "why not". There's always a downside to believing false things, maybe it's small for some people or maybe a crazy person adds aliens to the pile of "government lies" then decides to shoot up some government agency.
> I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
Tsiolkovsky developed his rocket equation in 1903 and in 1928 he published The Will of Universe dedicated to space colonisation. He clearly new it’s within reach of human mind.
Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon and given that his works are some early examples of science fiction and not a pure fantasy, one could say even Verne envisioned space travels as possible.
> The US Military released rather intriguing, yet unexplained videos of objects outmaneuvering our top jets.
Those videos show no such thing. All the stuff about outmanoeuvring is a fantastic narration.
Videos show only dots which can be (and were) explained as a bird from above, plane from behind and glitchy camera mount with a bit of optical artifacts on top. Which is infinitely more plausible than aliens from another star or another dimension.
> but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not?
I feel like learning physics increased my ability to tell possible from impossible things tremendously. Second factor is learning as much as you can about scams and liers.
With those two foundations you should have a solid capacity to appreciate reality
To me, if you watch videos of what amateurs can do with the maneuverability of a $300 racing FPV drone it is most likely those are military drones of some sort.
Even a $300 racing drone looks pretty alien if you have never seen one. A $3 million dollar one would absolutely look like it is from another planet.
The USAF and the Pentagon themselves released those videos, labeling those recording as "unexplainable".
Let me point them, and the fighter jet pilots, to "Scotty79-from-the-internet", so that they can all understand that what they all saw or recorded were in fact birds. :p
Just unexplained, which means noone there bothered to explain them seriously enough to create an official document. Which was correct (lack of) action to take because those observations were irrelevant for anyone except the most keen ufologists.
> Let me point them, and the fighter jet pilots
Jet pilots are good at flying jets. It's kinda hard so they don't have much capacity left to be good at anything else. Like explaining visual glitches and unusual outputs of highly complicated machinery.
> to "Scotty79-from-the-internet"
That weren't my explanations. I was merely citing the ones given by a guy with doctorate in physics and expeirience with IR cameras. There are others. All infinitely more plausible than "it's aliens".
Of course, it's possible. Almost anything is possible on some abstract level if we allow our imagination to roam freely. I'm all for asking the US government: "Do you hide alien UFOs?"
The question is how you react when the answer is "No." If you keep insisting the government is lying, then you're more and more getting into 'tin foil hat' territory, especially if you're a government employee and have no evidence other than alleged hearsay. It depends on your strength of belief in the contrarian opinion. Saying that it's possible is one thing, saying "they're doing it but I don't have proof" is another.
For almost hundreds of reasons, if any government, but specially super-power government would have UFO's tech hidden, and everybody else is almost certain UFOs are a myth, some wacko-level talk for internet forums
They would be strategically obligued to deny everything, so the answer would "No, no such a thing like UFOs here".
i.e. what happened with the NSA programs, most were almost fully known for the "conspiracy wackos" except by the name of the program, even decades before Snowden. But just were confirmed to be real maybe 30 years after the first mentions in the 70s,80s,90s.
Alternatively, if you had access to an immense and unassailable technological advantage over everyone, wouldn't you want to leverage that? Wouldn't it be nice to tell our enemies "we don't care how many nukes you have, we can do whatever we want with impunity or else we'll use our alien tech to protect ourselves and destroy our enemies" or to tell our allies "stick with us we're gonna be rolling out a stream of inventions that will each dramatically increase our prosperity for decades to come"? You only keep your strength hidden if it could potentially be negated - i.e. that they could develop the same technology or an effective counter without having access to alien spacecraft.
You're right mostly, there are also some special cases where it makes sense to hide the UFOs (or any radically new, advanced tech), some examples:
- the alien tech isn't really and/or fully available, they are half way in the reverse engineering efforts, and maybe other powers are in the race too
- the alien tech intrinsically reveals some currently hidden aspect of the universe/reality, if you present the technology publicly, it will be obvious that there's something new, and everybody will pursuit advances related to these new physics.
i.e. imagine discovering the eletricity in the XV century, it would have changed everything.
You're sure that in 1923, space was "something we would never reach"? That's about ten years before a German guy starts his work on liquid rocket fuel technology, work that will (via a Nazi terror weapon) go on to result in the US manned space programme.
If you said 1823 maybe I could sympathise, in 1823 they don't have everything together, they don't know about the Noble gases or dozens of other elements, they thought atoms were indivisible (hence the name), they don't have the First Network (the Universal Postal Union, yes, in 1823 you could not write a letter in say, Edinburgh, write an address in Berlin, and just post it, that idea hadn't been invented yet).
But by 1923 they're in a much better place. Their atomic model is still wrong but it's like the model you're probably picturing in your head, the one where electrons are little whizzy balls orbiting a nucleus. Wrong, but not wrong enough to cause big problems for everyday purposes. Kurt Gödel hasn't come up with his clever trick yet, but the problem is right there and people are thinking about it.
You say the videos are objects but I don't see evidence of objects. Just because you see a shape doesn't mean you saw an object. Did you know shadows can move faster than the speed of light? Because you see a shadow isn't a thing, it's just our mental model of events, and there are no limits on that model. We have plenty of ways to make a shape seem to move much faster than we can make an object move.
In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers flew through the skies for the first time ever in a hot air balloon. It wasn't even sure if humans could survive being in the air so the King wouldn't let them send humans aloft until test animals survived first.
Later that same year, the hydrogen balloon was invented and that one was flown to an altitude of 3 km high.
And yes, the idea that you could write in Edinburgh and have it delivered to Berlin had already been invented much further back than after 1823. The Roman Empire had the Cursus Publicus which handled mail delivery between the Provinces and Italy.
Do you mean someone of a high enough rank could have official communications and military dispatches delivered, or do you mean any person could have any letter delivered to any home? I think tialaramex was writing more about universal civilian letter delivery, and particularly about universal (well, global or near-global) addressing, rather than letter delivery between officials within an empire.
There would only be a need for that with ubiquitous literacy. The Roman system may well have been close enough to universally accessible and offer delivery throughout their territory for Roman citizens who were literate.
I don't think it realistically did - it included a system of authorisation that implied a demand that was intentionally denied, however there are multiple other old postal systems which definitely did (e.g. the Imperial Mail of the Holy Roman Empire [1] being one of the significant ones, but that itself built on older systems). A more defensible claim would be the strictly limited claim that the idea of attempting to create a global postal system with global addressability is a new idea. But even long before the UPU, a lot of countries had treaties to allow for forwarding of post, so I think it's unlikely that this idea was new as well, just previously impractical.
If something has been invented, the idea "the exact same thing but cheaper" has definitely already entered peoples' minds. They may not know a good method to do it, but they can imagine a world in which it exists.
For sure. Even if we can't explain how or why some phenomenon occurred, the conclusion "we don't know of anything on Earth that does this, so it must be aliens" is so much less likely than "it is something on Earth we haven't figured out yet".
I'm pretty convinced space aliens send the cosmic rays down that cause the bizarre runtime bugs in my software. I have never found a more amenable or rational explanation.
>I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
Far from it! From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne was written in 1865, and was a reasonable attempt at hard sci-fi. More scientifically, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published "Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" in 1903, some 6 years after deriving his famous rocket equation; it advanced the basic concept of the space rocket, that we all take for granted today. In 1923, exactly a century ago, Hermann Julius Oberth published his book "The Rocket in Interplanetary Space", a thoroughly practical treatment in which he argues that human-rated rocket-powered space flight was not just theoretically possible but feasible and maybe even profitable.[0]
So century ago, not only was space firmly established as a place we could go, but also enough groundwork had been done that it was known how we would get there.
I don't know what you've seen, but the 3 video released a few years are mostly parallax, optical phenomenon (the "tic tac") and sensors trying and failing to track tiny objects (birds, balloons and similar) at distances of a few kilometres.
It’s incredibly hard for people to say “we dont have an explanation.” Either it’s unexplained therefore aliens or an equally speculative yet mundane dismissal.
What about Occam's razor? Think about the reports as well. It's not like some alien was seen walking around by hundreds then disappeared we are talking about unexplained visuals and mass moving in an unexplained way. Why even go right to aliens? Because people already believe it's true and are looking for anything that can be attributed to it.
I think you’re noticing the big five trait called “openness.”
Some people are very open, some not at all.
I’m happy I’m open to things. God, Love, Art. Some people tell you it’s all make believe, there’s no free will, just machines acting out biological imperatives in a world that’s so well understood by science that we’ve reached the end of history. No way!
The vast majority of Americans have seen TV news videos of VTOL jet aircraft (AV-8 Harrier or F-35B Lightning II). A large fraction have even seen them in person at air shows where they have been top attractions for decades.
> If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence
It is not incompetence - it is orthogonal. I worked with an excellent software engineer who was rather smart - way above average. However, he believed in "Overunity energy" and paid actual money to attend conferences and buy the books. Some folks are predeposed to believing conspiracies and seeing order where there's chaos.
(1) the Google engineer who "knows" what sentience looks like when chatting with a low-grade AI chatbot
(2) the articles by Kevin Roose and other professional reporters about AI chatbots, believing they witnessed authentic confessions from ChatGPT that it wanted to become skynet, evincing a stunning lack of understanding of the function of large language models.
(3) NASA Astronaut Edgar Mitchell who came to believe in UFOs and became cited by conspiracy theorists for decades.
People at the centers of professional, institutional respectability who didn't have the wherewithal to step back and put thier impulses under the light of rational examination.
It's not without precedent, and we don't have anything other than second order interpertation of information that hasn't been revealed, but we do have a blizzard of breathless reporting enteratining presumptions that are way ahead of any actual established facts.
You can’t say that Bard isn’t sentient until you define sentience. UK just declared that lobsters are sentient. Why not Bard. I think Lemoine did the world a favor by giving it a good few months head start.
From his podcast, it is obvious that Roose knows exactly what he dealt with in the Sydney affair. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t unnerving.
Conspiracy theorists (important: multiple) often have one or more of the following attributes which is why you see a wide range of intelligence in the group.
1. People with mental illness.
2. People with low intelligence who are unable/don't understand logic, the scientific method, and concepts like ecree, They are easily fooled by others. They may also have a bias like hating or mistrusting the government.
3. People who are insecure. Being a conspiracy theorist makes you feel smarter than other people as you are part of a select group of who know the truth. The masses are stupid or as they say now "asleep" but you've figured it all out via Google.
This is why much of their talk is less about how they can prove their claims and more about the people who don't believe. They refer to them as "sheep" or "not awake. The focus for them is that they are right which may help with their insecurities.
4. People who don't feel they have a purpose in life and are looking for a meaning. Want to be a part of a group that is bound by something important and there's almost no effort to join? Bam, now your job is to get that information out there and covert the masses, a goal that will never be finished and thankfully take up your entire life.
5. People who were originally lured in because of the other reasons and no longer believe. Because they made it their life, maybe spent excess money, wrote books or made absolute claims they don't want to look stupid so they never admit their change. This is especially an issue on the internet where the whole world can fest on your failure.
Interesting that you could s/conspiracy theorists/religious group and your argument sounds as convincing. "People who are insecure" might expand differently. "One or more" of your list items are probably truisms for any group you can think of. Train enthusiasts?
Actually it's s//cult leaders, the established religions are quite open about the ideas and texts underlying their beliefs (then some of them insist you need a cleric for interpretation). In cults that information is hidden and only accessible once someone has risen to the inner circle of the cult.
Besides (4) people looking for a meaning what other attributes would be common with enthusiasts of a hobby. I also don't see an issue with people finding meaning in hobbies because the effect is often isolated to themselves
One of the brightest guys I ever worked with believed the earth had enough food and resources to support ONE TRILLION people. Just because you're one of 1000 people in the world that understand how to make a qubit doesn't mean that domain knowledge transfers. Feynman knew this (Degrasse Tyson kinda doesn't).
What makes you believe that Earth cannot support one billion people, given another 1000 years or so of technological development at our current pace?
Assuming of course:
- We've "solved" fusion, and can produce near-unlimited amounts of electricity
- Per person energy/resource consumption is cut to an absolute minimum. Most tools, machines etc are designed to last virtually forever, instead of having planned obsolescence
- We build farming buildings that are 100 stories tall, and produce light from electricity instead of relying on sunlight to grow plants.
- Recycling processes and other activities that are labor intensive today can be made 1-3 orders of magnitude more efficient by AI and better access to cheap energy.
- We are able to handle the sociological aspects of such population density
Earth's population density is currently at 16/km^2, or 62500m^2/person. If we multiply the population by 100, that's still 625m^2/person.
We clearly have enough space, and probably enough atoms (of each type) to support one billion. So I think if we have enough energy, technology and organize it perfectly, it should be technically possible.
In fact, given the fact that each American already spends almost 100x more energy than most people did 500 years ago, it may be even easier than is assumed above, if we assume that resource consumption is cut to near subsistence levels.
Obviously, such a world would be quite dystopian, making the USSR seem positively cheerful. But impossible?
I guess the real question is, when do we stop, when everyone has 2 cubic meters of space to live in? Is that where we draw the line? Because then we could build a borg cube the size of the solar system and fit a 1 nonillion people.
I mean anything is possible (for additional nightmares: look at factory farming of chickens).
Just not livable.
He was making the argument as a response to being triggered by "liberal" policies about climate change and human footprint.
For certain values of "food and resources". Incoming solar energy is 7000x humanity's energy consumption, while one trillion is merely 125x the current population, so it's physically possible. Probably the biosphere would have to be converted into a food-producing chemical factory, along with substitutes for oxygen generation, waste recycling, etc.
Add that people today on average consume 10x-100x more energy than strictly needed for survival, and energy consumption may only need to go up about 10x.
Now, if on top of the solar energy, we assuem that we will have fusion energy available within a few 100 years, energy available may easily grow way more than 100x of today's production.
Also, if efficiency continues to increase, for instance due to AI development, nanotech, biotech, etc, we may be able to build almost any amount of infrastructure given the atoms we have available in the Earth's crust. Including multi-story farms, feeding electric lighting to power photosynthesis.
In fact, I'm not aware of any hard limits anywhere near this side of 1 billion people. As far as I know, there are billions of billions of kg of most critical elements available on earth, or in the order of 1+ billion kg per person, even if we're 1 billion people. Our ability to organize these atoms into whatever combination we want (including human bodies) is primarily limited by energy.
And even with 1 billion people, it will take a while before we run out of hydrogen for fusion power.
Pretty sure we'll stop wanting to reproduce at the required rate long before food/resources becomes the real issue (which isn't to say starvation etc. isn't likely to be a major problem for much of the world's population in coming decades, but it'll make less of an impact on population growth than the rate we choose to reproduce at).
Beyond the clouds, the sky is always blue. But look further, and space is black as night.
Humans are a species of animals. Recent environmental changes has caused a sharp decline in evolutionary fitness (=reproduction rate) for this population. This has happened to millions of species in the past, and in many (if not most) cases, the population adapted to the new environment, and the fitness grew back to or beyond replacement rate.
Also, this can happen quite a lot faster than some seem to imagine. While it takes a long time for completely new mutations to make it into the gene pool, the gene pool already contains a huge diversity of genes coding for different types of traits, including mental traits. Often, all that is needed to adapt to a new environment, is for the relative frequency of these genes to change.
For instance, many people seem to have a built-in oxytocin response when around young children. A boost in frequency to all genes promoting/strenghtening this mechanism may eventually make the need-to-have-baby emotion in most women stronger than the need-to-have-orgasm drive in the horniest of 18-year-olds.
And if these genes are already in the gene pool, just with a low frequency, they could easily become dominant over 10-40 generations.
In other words, if at some point the kinds of environmental change that cause population decline slows down, I don't think it's likely that the birth rate stays below replacement forever. (If it does, we'll go extinct, of course).
Sperm count has to fall quite a bit further before it becomes a bigger limiting factor than women actively chosing to not make babies.
Also, I'm not making predictions about "forever". Rather, my prediction is that the reproduction rate is likely to come back above the replacement rate very quickly, compared to evolutionary time.
My guess is somewhere between 100 to 1000 years, if human societies go on approximately like today, and we don't have some kind of apocalypse, AI takeover or totalitarian world government.
Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities.
For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence agent independently confided in him the same details as well as the same project name. He claims that ultimately he was furnished documentation evidence of this project which he refuses to provide to media (due to national security issues) but which he has provided to congress.
I'm relating what he said in the interview. He could be making that all up. However, if he is relating actual events then there is a coordinated group of intelligence agents working towards the same goal.
I don't understand why someone would have the docs and choose to hold them back while still going public. It ultimately weakens the story and his credibility, and if it is true, there's not much stopping the powers that he crossed in the process from coming after him anyway. The government isn't gonna go light on this guy simply because he didn't go to the press. They send a message to anyone who might be thinking about doing the same thing.
Maybe he avoids getting charged under the Espionage Act this way, but history shows very clearly that the pre-Snowden whistleblowers all had their careers ruined and still faced criminal charges. Love him or hate him, but Snowden went for the jugular and brought receipts while preventing the most damaging intel to human life from being leaked.
I mean, I agree that he should have leaked it publicly because I'm "publicly" and I want to see it. But I think it's pretty unarguably true that if you feel it is incumbent on you to leak classified materials and are unwilling to go Snowden and flee the US, then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation, then not go to the media so the Pentagon doesn't hate your guts.
> then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation
Congress wouldn't protect him from retaliation anyway. Thomas Drake was raided by the FBI and indicted even though he didn't leak any intelligence. You're making yourself an enemy of the government the moment you open your mouth, regardless of whether or not you bring documentation.
A1: Man, that Jekins is so gullible, he'll believe anything. Wanna help wind him up some for the lols?
A2: Lol yeah, you're right. I'm in, that sounds like fun.
A1: Okay so I told him that we've got some alien spacecraft in the broom closet under a project named meatball. I'm pretty sure he believes me, but if you tell him the same thing, I bet he'll really go nuts!
A2: Ahahaha awesome. Okay I'll take him aside next Tuesday. This is gonna be great! I haven't had this much fun at work since the time Brett got his had stuck in the vending machine.
Well, A1 and A2 are clearly conspiring, co-ordinating their activities. So some of his claims, even if you _don't_ believe them, point towards coordinated activities.
We need to stop using the term “conspiracy” alone. Instead a conspiracy probability should be associated with every such theory.
As a strawman, a conspiracy which requires 10K people or more to pull it off gets assigned 0.0, while a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0.
So anytime someone tells you about a conspiracy theory, ask them to estimate the conspiracy factor.
Examples of high conspiracy factor theory’s would be sports with a single, extremely important player (a goalie) for example since only one person needs to be corrupted.
An example of a low conspiracy factor theory would be the Moon landing as 1000s of people would need to be corrupted.
I'd argue that a 'conspiracy factor' of 1 is not a conspiracy, just like a road with an occupancy factor of 0 doesn't have any cars on it, and I presume this was exactly the point of the GP.
Fair, a conspiracy requiring just two people to pull it off is assigned a conspiracy factor of 1. 10K or more is assigned 0.0. Use it in conjunction with other factors to determine overall probability.
I'm on the side of wanting to believe, it's just important to stay skeptical because if it were all true it would probably be one of the most important things to happen to humanity. We're not alone after all.
That Intel official is in trouble then. I can't imagine this guy's IPsec was that good. They'll dump his whole digital life and find 'the leaker' in minutes.
More likely the UFO is just a 6 or 7 the generation stealth aircraft 'they' are keeping secret because otherwise you would be asking why they government is spending money on this and not health care
From what the commenter you're replying to said, it sounds like the guy was shown deeper evidence than just a joke. The tendency to assume that conspiracies don't ever happen is just as fallacious as the tendency to assume that they always do.
In the particular case, the coverup would not be challenging (only a handful of people would be aware that it's "fake"), there would be motive (convincing China, Russia, etc. that new aircraft we experiment with might actually be extraterrestrial + convincing them to chase ghosts + generally messing with them), and there would be means (the theory that previous-commenter just expressed, where agents selected from psych test results and shown fake classified information). Not to mention US Intelligence's recorded history of doing some very outlandish and "conspiratorial" things.
Of course, no theory in particular (conspiracy or "grounded") is going to be anything more than speculation given limited the level of evidence that's actually on the table.
Also, he was in a position such that people would have confided such evidence to him.
We're not talking about an Apache mechanic overhearing random conversations. He was on the team investigating UAPs for the gov, and people came to him with evidence regarding UAPs.
I also read he was a GS-15 (civilian equivalent to a colonel). Not just anyone ends up at that level. Colonels in the military command large units, think "senior director" level in industry.
I believe this guy is probably acting out of a duty to root out what he believes is unlawful behavior (hiding activities from Congress). I don't believe the ET claims personally.
The idea that this Grusch guy just doesn't get jokes and brought some offhand comment all the way to whistleblower status is pretty funny. Honestly this guy seems pretty competent and I'd sooner believe a psyop or Meta paying someone off to throw off press coverage during the Apple event than that. A couple of offhand remarks wouldn't drive someone this far.
Yeah, the number of people that seem ignorant of the circumstances here is astounding. He's given classified briefings to Congress on a subject matter he was tasked with investigating (UAPs). The fact that people seem so quick to dismiss that as "some people joked and he didn't get it" is kind of wild. That would require a "Weekend at Bernie's" level of ignorance at more official levels than I'd be willing to entertain of the bat.
Don't neglect the people who are not mentally ill, but still can't tell the difference between "Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (stuff we couldn't accurately ID for a variety of reasons) that's classified (because some of it legitimately need to be secret, and we over-classify a lot)" with ""Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (little green men in flying saucers) that's classified (because we're part of a conspiracy hiding the existence of intelligent alien life)".
And the people who are not mentally ill who think that being an authority on the US's UFO programmes is a nice retirement gig that comes with none of the downsides of actual whistleblowing...
Just to stay grounded in reality, yes there is intelligent non-human life in space. No, based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them. Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception - either that or the guy with the big shirt who says we have alien spacecraft in warehouses is a nut.
> based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them
It's probably too an obvious question to ask but seeing how knowledge is continually expanded can that claim really be made with known unknowns and unknown unknows and all that? Or are we really at the edge of all knowledge of astro/physics?
> Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception
That's not how I read it. It seems to me that there are rather a lot of sane, intelligent people in the USG and especially the US military who believe in aliens with flying saucers, and alien abductions. From my perspective, it looks more like a "mass psychosis" than a conspiracy.
I suspect the abduction stories are related to evangelical beliefs in The Rapture.
QAnon tales of satanic pizza-parlour basements in a building with no basement seem to have many believers who are bright, and have no history of mental illness.
This. It's annoying that people forget or ignore that. Within any population large enough, it's a matter of basic probability that you're going to see a number of inexplicable deaths, suicides, rare diseases, mental illness, bullshitters and notorious liars, disgruntled employees out for a revenge, conspiracy theorists, Qanon followers, and so on and so forth.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Perhaps people simply aren't prepared to accept the implications of the government lying about this - as well as successfully covering it up - for so long. It's a big impact to a persons world view.
Perhaps people are tired of the same story playing out every few years. Someone got told by somebody else there’s a massive coverup and they definitely have the documents but they’re withholding them for reasons and no we can’t see them but we should absolutely take this story at face value because they have or had a career in the military so are a Very Reliable Person we should take very seriously.
We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around.
The most boring thing about the alien versions of the story for non Americans is its always the US military the aliens are buzzing.
Perhaps the aliens are really diligent about avoiding leaving any artefacts behind in the sort of state where some mid ranking official would happily sell the evidence for the price of a new Mercedes or the military would turn up three weeks after international journalists, or the sort of state whose closely-guarded treasure chest full of alien artefacts would have been burst wide open when the government was overthrown.
UFOs are not a US only phenomenon, certainly not a US military only phenomenon. Major events have happened (or been claimed to have happened) in many other countries, including several of the most famous events (Redlesham, Westall, Ariel). There are plenty of reasons to doubt UFOs are real/interesting, but that's just not a valid criticism.
We're not talking about sightings though[1]. We're talking about secret programmes to amass collections of hugely valuable alien detritus wherever they happen to land. One of the key protagonists of this story even insists that 'retrievals of this nature are not limited to the United States'
But for some reason not only have shadowy government agencies been successful at preventing alien artefacts from circulating in India, France, Zimbabwe, the former USSR and multiple regimes whose demise was much more violent than the breakup of the USSR, those states and their descendant states have actually kept a better lid on their programmes!
[1]though I'm not sure your other cited sightings also involving English speakers immersed in Western culture exactly undermines the implication that its a cultural phenomenon driven by US media. But perhaps aliens can't communicate telepathically in Shona or Ndbele...
Is your argument that governments have kept the secret well? That's just not true. There have been claimants from the USSR and France (you can find documents about either on theblackvault). Materials have been claimed to have been recovered by South American people, even recently. China shut down an airport due to a UFO just recently.
The veracity of the above are all suspect, but the fundamental claim that this is something only Americans think about or only happens here, just doesn't reflect reality.
That’s GP’s entire point. If this sort of thing were happening to the scale being claimed—worldwide, instead of magically being confined to the US—we’d be swimming in verifiable evidence of alien artifacts being found across the world.
Instead it’s the same grainy, out-of-focus footage, data from sensors out at past their maximum useful range, and substance-free “leaks” with nothing hard to back them up.
People keep saying "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something".
And then someone says something, and they respond with: "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something"
You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence besides one guy saying someone else overheard a conversation where another person described our secret ET program.
One crank making headlines every few years with nothing that actually backs up their claims doesn’t cut it. By that metric you might as well believe the hundreds of “leakers” claiming the government is made of lizard people.
> You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence
There is evidence however, things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bt6_Potk5Q which are becoming more and more common as time goes on. There does seem to be an increasing willingness to disregard evidence all the while demanding more evidence. Recently the pentagon stated they had hundreds of documents/photographs/videos and what has been released publicly does make this appear legitimate.
Is it an alien spaceship? Probably not. Is it an object flying across a warzone that could potentially be a threat of some kind? Quite possibly.
> One crank making headlines every few years
The interesting part of this news is that this person is not "one crank", he's an actual expert in the field employed by organisations to research this exact phenomena. Recently we have had several such experts come along and make these claims. To dismiss that off-hand doesn't seem particularly reasonable these days.
Nobody denies that military sensors have picked up unexplained phenomena. Does that make it evidence of little green men visiting in spacecraft? Not even close.
> The interesting part of this news is that this person is not "one crank", he's an actual expert in the field employed by organisations to research this exact phenomena.
And yet here we are again with this one person’s word and nothing in the way of actual evidence.
At this point the earth is blanketed in radar and high definition cameras. Wake me up when there is evidence past a 240p out of focus video or something odd on an infrared sensor 100km away.
I want to believe. I read every book I could find about UFOs when I was a kid. But here we are 30 years later playing out the same tired storylines over and over again.
That can have many reads. For example from the article:
"The report followed a leak of military footage that showed apparently inexplicable happenings in the sky, while navy pilots testified that they had frequently had encounters with strange craft off the US coast."
I read it as, "We detected several times a military aircraft, that a country expected to be undetectable, flying over our territory, we send you the proof that such plane could have been knocked down; stop doing it" at same time they don't admit such other country violated the territory having to rise up a conflict.
I think the concerning thing is that could well be the case - and there is still a very large number of people in here just saying "nope this guy is crazy".
The group of people who just off-hand deny this is happening is kind of staggering.
I'm perfectly prepared to accept that - they're already lying about tons of other stuff. I'm just gonna need something a little more solid than, this guy claimed a few other guys told him some stuff and showed him some papers about how there are totally aliens. Let's see the papers, let's see some close-up high-quality videos of this stuff. Everybody has a HD video camera with 24x7 net connection in their pocket at all times now, how come we haven't seen anything like this yet?
It's trivially easy to keep covering something up, even with information leaks, if the vast majority of the public disbelieves the entire premise from the get-go.
If there are alien craft flying in a manner even remotely alleged by most UFO people, then we as a civilization are dead. D-E-A-D. Our best hope is compliant slaves or an interesting zoo.
Because it implies essentially effortless arbitrary military and economic exploitation access to our planet. Craft that defy gravity, instantly accelerate in arbitrary directions? Presumably cross light years of distance? They could drop an asteroid on us at will. They could bring our civilization to its knees with simple smart rocks.
Sufficiently advanced technology is magic, and this would indicate that level of advanced technology that we find magical.
Either the civilization is rapacious, or, if they aren't, they will take one look at our history books and realize that we are rapacious.
> If there are alien craft flying in a manner even remotely alleged by most UFO people, then we as a civilization are dead. D-E-A-D. Our best hope is compliant slaves or an interesting zoo.
No, we're not. You clearly haven't read The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Robert-... . One of the startling broad-reaching conclusions you will reach after reading this book is that cooperation even between entities or groups of disparate power is always better in the long run assuming future contact will occur. That last part is the tricky bit, and is why (for example) divorce proceedings are so acrimonious. So sure, if you enslave someone, or a bunch of people, you will get a quick fix. But in the long run you will both gain far more cooperating, because cooperation enables people to contribute more to each other.
IF these beings expect to deal with us for the foreseeable future, THE ONLY wise choice is cooperation. Period. And if that was NOT their goal, then I would submit that we'd already be 1) exploited for all we were worth already and then 2) killed or imprisoned by now.
UFO reports (of the disc-shaped, wingless, noiseless, impossibly-performing standard kind) have been occurring since WW2( "foo fighters"). We're clearly VERY interesting; possibly the newest kids on the block, as it were...
The interesting thing about this is that there is now evidence (see: Navy videos), and we have also seen what the US government does to people who try to show classified documents as evidence (see: Snowden, Manning, Assange, etc)
Snowden et al looks like counter evidence to me. People who release evidence of secret programs involving UFOs end up doing book tours. People who release evidence of secret spying programs end up in exile.
What is interesting to me is that I don’t see any angle where the government isn’t lying or not fully divulging what it knows about this topic in some fashion.
Whether aliens, not aliens, our own tech, whatever…there is value to the government creating deception, misinformation, and disinformation.
There's a simple, rational explanation: The man needs to make a living. Lectures, documentaries, a book.
> He left the government in April after a 14-year career in US intelligence.
A government pension requires 20 years IIRC. Grusch is only 36.
The formula: Tell the truth where possible, be vague but suggestive about the rest.
And of course there were secret UFO programs -- if something from Baikonur shows up here, wouldn't it be better if the Kremlin thought it might still remain secret? So sensing, reporting, collecting efforts would be classified.
My mom would 100% buy anything this guys says. It's a clever business idea.
Especially with all of those recent flaky gov videos people are eating up wholesale, without any concept of what it actually means to do interstellar travel while simultaneously having invisible motherships. And the only 'evidence' comes from US pilots in a particular height in the sky, never on the ground or visible in space via telescopes... Curious how that works. Just spacecraft zipping around at 30k feet all day in random directions and never going visibly above or below that.
Some guy misinterpreting documents about foreign or unknown materials or objects is probably par for the course here. It's also funny/predictable aliens would be discovered exclusively in the US and withheld from Congress by black suits.
From the comments, you desperately want to believe in this non-human thing for whatever reasons. No one else believes that is actually true. So far, your arguments are that Grusch is telling the truth and no one is listening to him. You have ignored all the contrary evidence including the fact there is nothing documented, he has repeated what someone has said to him and that our sensors and our senses are not infallible.
The better question is why do they still believe yet another indirect claim by an alleged single “reputable” human source when every single time it turns out to be a big nothing. History is littered with examples.
If they can’t grasp the obvious pattern here and determine that it requires far, far more than some random guy claiming some agency is lying to the rest of the entire US gov then there’s probably not much to dig into with OP. The rationale is always paper thin deep borderline conspiracy stuff aka “I’m just asking questions” and any further you find a poor (or unwilling) grasp of science and a naive perspective on how the world/governments work.
Surely this time is different. All the movie stereotypes about hidden black alien programs always-US run were really true!
It's hilarious watching how HN upvotes insane theory instead of crazy theory. Wild times!
There is a very very simple explanation, which is that everything he says is true. There is a secret program, they did reverse engineer, they did withhold it from congress, and people did tell him that there is alien stuff.
Why make up silly make believe?
The guy isn't claiming 'oh i saw aliens'. He could simply be telling the absolute truth.
Why so many people told him there were aliens, I dunno, but who cares. Those people aren't the ones whistleblowing and so it doesn't really matter, does it?
I for one believe the guy, 100%
My only complaint is that perhaps he should probably be a bit more circumspect about what actually exists.
They could be von Neumann probes having travelled for a long time. Even without FTL travel, von Neumann probes could colonize an entire galaxy in reasonable time (a few million years). Even just a single successful civilization somewhere in the milky way or even a neighboring galaxy could've accomplished that
Especially since at the point any civilization starts to develop technology, it happens really exponentially. Even just 1 million years, which is nothing compared to geological time scales, is an absolutely insanely long amount of time to develop technology after the initial spark.
Our 300,000 year old species didn't even settle down until a mere 12,000 years ago, we didn't really develop proper government systems until 2-3,000 years ago and learnt flight only ~120 years ago.
Within the last 120 years we went to the Moon (!), developed the integrated microchip, the Internet, AR/VR and built deep space solar communications infrastructure, got smartphones, MRTs... you name it.
Even among all of these marvels, we still poop though.
but if you want a list of hypothetical alternate origins, and don’t have access to the wealth of programming generated by Prometheus and made available on Discovery Networks, thanks to some of the minds of our time, this light summary might help…
* center of the earth is actually hollow, “aliens” are just inner earthlings
* one of the other planets or otherwise within the solar system isn’t so dead after all
* it’s just us - from the future
* it’s just us - from the past
* no space travel, no time travel, but parallel earths or dimensions or something
* they have always been here, we just are too dumb to see them
Everything we know about the biology, chemistry, physics and astrophysics makes alien contact with the earth an extreme improbablity. Everything we know about government and intelligence agencies makes a global, mutli-national, multi-government, mass conspiracy to hide aliens an extreme improbability.
Against these mountainous-weights of incredibility one needs more than a retired 36 with a shiny badge who has "heard but not seen" some things.
The improbability of his claims is so vast that even "CIA psyop" becomes plausible against them -- not, least, since it's extremely likely the USA exploited the UFO mass hysteria to disguise its air force development programmes.
Nevertheless, the most probable explanation is that government employees in these agencies are often paranoid believers in the folk mythologies of these agencies --- and are able to maintain these superstitons because they never get senior enough to see they are false.
> I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents
Wasn't he in charge of or in the higher end of the government led agency to investigate these things? He doesn't seem to be a nobody just saying he saw things, it was his job to investigate it for the government?
And if the Inspector General is involved, along with the dudes lengthy time in front of congress, surely it's likely that evidence was presented to higher levels of government that the public still can't see legally. I get that this may be a psyop kind of thing, but writing it off as 'he didn't see anything' seems like an incorrect position to hold.
Grusch also brought these people in front of Congressional oversight committees to testify. There should be more info from Grusch dropping soon on NewsNation or the Need to Know podcast. They did a 7 hour interview with him, as they talk about in this behind-the-scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjbFZT9_EM
However, one thing that every government employee knows is that they can't arrest you for fictional stories. In contrast, if you're saying the truth, then you're facing decades in prison. So what are you going to do if you need to make some money with books and talks, etc. Tell the truth or lie?
Ugh, I was 100% with you until this point. This is speculative, fantastical, and I think serves to discredit the sober and calm pushback of the type exhibited in the first half of your comment. And that is desperately needed in a moment like this.
No it's really not fantastical. We have no physical evidence of extraterrestrials but we do have physical evidence that the CIA engages in sometimes ridiculous operations to psychologically manipulate people. I mean if you told someone the CIA did mind control experiments in the 60s they'd think your nuts. But we know today with certainty they did, often with tragic consequence.
So, the bayesian priors, given that in the course of humanity or even prehistorically there is no certain evidence of aliens, and plenty of evidence of weirdo government manipulation and innumerable examples of propaganda, should be skewed in the favor of any new fantastical governmental claim to be yet another silly operation by some three letter agency.
Until someone procures a body or craft of certain non human origin, this is the only reasonable course of action.
> We have no physical evidence of extraterrestrials but we do have physical evidence that the CIA engages in sometimes ridiculous operations to psychologically manipulate people
That’s true. And I would even say a CIA psyop is more likely than aliens. But its still purely speculative.
Yes, it really is fantastical. Six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style associations to unrelated historical events, just to motivate fan fiction writing about psyops is not healthy engagement with the state of reported evidence, much less the only reasonable course of action. I can think of another, refraining from entertaining in elaborate explanations born of speculation unsupported by evidence. Boom, done.
The fanfiction writing serves to validate the manner of thinking that would motivate people to believe the most extreme possible interpretation of this reporting, effectively extending a vote of approval toward people inclined to look at this and put themselves in a headspace of entertaining speculative beliefs without evidence.
I don't think it's charitable or polite to refer to GP's argument as fan fiction. They're making a genuine argument about what they think could have happened, not writing a made-up story, regardless of how unlikely you think their psy-op hypothesis is.
If you define aliens as a long separated branch on the tree of life with significantly more advanced technology, then alien encounters are more common in history (hawai’i in 1790’s being most recent i can think of).
So mathematically its rare, but perhaps an experience of 1% of societies . And perhaps strongly correlated with one branch undergoing a rapid technological advance.
i think it’s perfectly rationale and not fantastical, as long as its kept in mind that its a low probability event.
A psyop doesn’t have to be a super advanced operation. It could be some low effort opportunistic thing that helps objectives.
The “declassified” UAP videos so far are rote footage containing easily debunked garbage. Why would the military release lens flare videos and claim they’re UAP? They could be blithering idiots not knowing they’re looking at lens flare, which is probably less likely than knowing it’s BS and claiming it’s UAP with some ulterior motive. So, psyop.
> The “declassified” UAP videos so far are rote footage containing easily debunked garbage. Why would the military release lens flare videos and claim they’re UAP? They could be blithering idiots not knowing they’re looking at lens flare, which is probably less likely than knowing it’s BS and claiming it’s UAP with some ulterior motive. So, psyop.
A more mundane possibility: Someone thought, "Hey, you know, if there are aliens doing thing secretly, we'd want to know about it, right? And also, there are always going to be these stories, and if our answer is always, 'No that's probably lens flare', people are going to think we're trying to cover something up. So how about we just make a policy, that any time someone has unexplained phenomena, we log it properly? Either we'll get a long track record of nothing-burgers, or we'll actually find something. Or, maybe we'll have 50 years of nothing-burgers, followed by something actually different, and we'll have a solid 'baseline' from which to look into the new phenomenon."
That makes sense, but it’s pretty insidious to release lens flare videos as UAP knowing they’re lens flare. Either they’re not actually analyzing these videos or they’re going pretty far into psyop land with this mundane operation.
Do you really put aliens and psyops in the same league of fantastical speculation? One is advanced beings from light years away or other dimensions, and the other is military information campaigns for which there is plenty of precedent.
I share the opinion that it is psyop and it is a very long running project. At one level it is a nice psyop platform - like Star Trek for the psychological warfare professionals. Over the years they have influenced American thought about the government to a great degree. X-Files. For example, most Americans, and this “whistleblower” here, now accept that elements in the US government are operating entirely outside of the overview and control of the government, where the executive and legislature do not have “the clearance” to be informed about it.
Emotionally it is also slowly preparing humanity for the possibility of a confrontation with a power that we possibly can not resist and must obey. Aliens may turn out to have strong theological and sociological views that they want to share with us. This is more than just slowly boiling the constitutional frog in the cauldron of “national security”. Somewhat /g more far fetched but definitely one reason to have ex intelligence grandees from Mosad and CIA (and now this man) come and tell us all about aliens in our midst.
Unless there exists some really simple way to do FTL travel that we're soon to discover, any civilization advanced enough to visit Earth should be able to wipe us out as quickly as humanity can burn an anthill.
So, assuming members of such a civilization is actually here, they're likely to be friendly, and any psyop similar to what you describe would be staged for our benefit.
Using X-files or Star Trek as representations of what the future is likely to be like, is just as obviously improbable as using The Lord of The Rings to understand Medieval Europe.
Sorry, how long is this supposed to take? You're saying we're going to be dominated by aliens and must be prepared for that? That's not how conquests normally work is it? There's no consent involved. And you're also saying this 'preparation' has been happening for 70 years? How long have we got before they actually arrive and how much prep do we need?
There is no invasion as there are no aliens. It is psyop. A genre (“platform”) of psyop has been tried out over the years, and a developing thread (based on other propaganda channels, such as fiction, and film) is the coming ‘encounter’. Here “US is urged to reveal UFO evidence” is published by a major Western establishment press, The Guardian, based on 2nd hand information and not on actual personally witnessed evidence.
The issue of having “major world religions” that are not in accord (per orthodox understanding of respective faithful) remains an issue for establishment of a uniform social order on the planet. It’s going to be difficult to have a world government without a unified world religion. “Aliens” can help with that.
As a thought exercise, imagine aliens have landed. Aliens could inform us that for example ‘angels’ were really the aliens and that we sadly misunderstood their messages. Various syncretic efforts have also been ongoing since at least 19th century (“new age”) so the ground has been well prepared. To conclude the exercise, ask yourself what impact this will have on your belief system.
This is my thinking as well. Though the entire Admiral Byrd, Antarctica, supposed Nazi tech and Operation Paperclip, Werner von Braun founding NASA lends some credibility to the idea that there might be a weirder angle the tech aspect at least. Combine "alien tech" with a tumbling empire and this would get ugly.
Not a believer myself, but it was an interesting deep dive.
> I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents. So, at best his testimony is hearsay.
This is the same MO as Stephen Greer's grift about the same thing. Greer claims that he was given access to classified documents and information that say the government is hiding their knowledge of, and interactions with, aliens and UFOs.
I have a family member who won't stop consuming everything about Steven Greer on youtube, and I don't know what to do about it. It is driving me crazy and I just have to tell someone, sorry.
I have a good friend who went down that rabbithole instead of seeking help and it's consumed him. The obsession is so bad that he lost multiple jobs and became homeless so he can focus on literally talking to aliens using the methods Greer sells. He gives what little money he has to grifers like Greer and the cottage industry that popped up to take money from those with the beliefs he promotes.
I'm familiar with the hopelessness, there's really not much you can do but try to help nudge them into healthier directions without being overt enough for them to shut you out for denying their beliefs.
I've had some success with things like Mirage Men and Mick West's work in helping them understand that there's a lot of manipulation in that space and that not everything can be assumed to be aliens, and it's helped a little, but I've found that they just integrate that information into their belief system. Those people are lying about aliens/UFOs, and that UAP was just a weather balloon, but everything else is real. They've been more discerning about who they give their money to, though, which is a good thing.
JFK conspiracy theory content is second to the "antigravity technology stolen from aliens" on her list, so you're not wrong, but Steven Greer has the same reach as those fricken JFK conventions. He'll never go away...
In the beginning he seemed to get a significant number of credible witnesses to essentially say what the USG admitted last fall- UFO's are real, and no, we do not know what they are.
I'm sure that at some point he became unhireable and needed to make money any way he could... and that's when the grifts began.
I think he's a mixed bag who unfortunately had to taint himself in order to actually make some money.
In this case, I agree. I usually try to avoid conspiratorial thinking and conspiracy theories, but the DoD and related agencies have been putting out all kinds of information about UFOs in the past few years. My question is: why? The DoD isn’t known for their public relations.
My best speculative guess is that they’re claiming they’ve found alien craft and exotic alien materials because the US is testing aircraft that appear alien with exotic materials and don’t want other nation states to assume it is even terrestrial so they don’t attempt to replicate the technology.
There must be a reason behind the UFO media blitz that has happened lately, it’s not like they’re releasing the info to keep the public informed. Anyone have other ideas? It could be grifters looking to sell a story, mentally ill people misunderstanding jokes or inventing things out of whole cloth, etc.
P.S. I believe intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but that we’ve never been visited and will never be visited due to the distances involved.
Operating an aircraft carrier is extremely expensive. Wikipedia says 6.5m PER DAY
> In 2013, the life-cycle cost per operating day of a carrier strike group (including aircraft) was estimated at $6.5 million by the Center for New American Security.
Well normally if someone wants to make money off you they need to give you a cut. Thats not savyness from the DoD. Thats par for the course. They would be wildly incompetent if they let the film makers use the Navy for free.
This is just sad. I'll lay this on you, yes there is a classified crash
retrieval program, it's a SAP. It is about retrieving crashed UAVs from
adversarial countries and has nothing to do with aliens. Don't be a sucker
folks.
Both things could be true though. There are tons of SAPs out there that cover a multitude of very specific things. Most aren't aware of the others either, by nature of the SAP.
But who is the messaging intended for? Foreign military intelligence agencies can draw the same conclusions, that this is some kind of misdirection, and that it's more likely a cover for US or Chinese weapons tech, they're not dumb.
His actions would have seriously bad consequences for him if he was lying.
Several reputable people have gone on record testifying for his (mental) integrity. Even some scientists actually.
The whole premise of that guy being easily discredited is absurd. Its lazy thinking plain and simple. Go read the actual article and corroborating information on 'The Debrief'.
Given the choice between ‘a guy is lying/mistaken and so are a few others’ and ‘a worldwide conspiracy has existed for 80 years to cover up the existence of alien visits to Earth’, I’m going to apply Occam’s Razor and go with lying.
It's unclear what the distances involved are. It might just be a few years or months of travel time, say for a loitering Von Neumann probe from the Kuiper belt.
> I believe intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but that we’ve never been visited and will never be visited due to the distances involved.
I suspect that at least one and perhaps many alien intelligences have been here on Earth for a very long time and are observing us, but they're very good at staying hidden so probably we have never observed them and never will.
In the unlikely event that they ever did accidentally reveal themselves, probably they would cover it up to the extent possible while continuing to remain hidden.
Since these aliens will never interact with us in any significant manner, for practical purposes it doesn't matter whether they exist or not, and therefore I don't care very much whether they exist or not. Nevertheless, if, hypothetically, I had to make a bet with equal odds, I'd bet they do exist.
> There must be a reason behind the UFO media blitz
They already told us exactly why. Because there are unexplained phenomena which may pose a risk to national security, and they want to know more. Their intent is to reduce the stigma so that pilots and others are less afraid to report unusual sightings for proper investigation.
You don't have to believe in aliens to see the sense in this.
You are missing the complaint he filed because he was a victim of retaliation. This is first hand evidence that the inspector general of the intelligence community found credible and urgent, and the main point of the story.
Wait, that David Grusch guy never saw those stuffa despite that he led the analysis? This is weird. How can you do analysis without seeing the real thing?
You're confusing the legislative branch with the intelligence community and other participants in the military industrial complex. Yes, Congress is full of incompetent elected officials who "can hardly pass a budget." But the MIC is comprised of highly specialized professionals with careers spanning multiple presidential administrations and dozens of congressional sessions. It is a mistake to assume these people are incompetent.
If the military industrial complex is so competent, how come it failed so hard in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Even the "true" conspiracies, like mkultra ... What did all that abuse accomplish? Not much. Unethical? Yes. Murderous? At times. Competent? No. Bumbling fools.
The term "military industrial complex" was meant as a warning about corruption, not that they'd manage to be good at it.
Why do you believe that? Having been in and worked around it, its success is a function of money and will. I would not call it competent, but that is a personal opinion having worked in competent effective organizations in the commercial sector.
I guess I believe they’re competent enough to have figured out a video of lens flare is of lens flare and not of alien craft. Though I was on the fence. They could be incompetent or too lost in bureaucratic clusterfuck to even look at these videos. But there are other factors indicating they are probably engaging in psyop.
I have no idea on the specifics for this particular operation, but in the general case [1]
The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives.
In the context of UFOs, UAPs or whatever ... some possibilities are to hide advanced defense programs or to confuse potential enemy intelligence efforts. In fact, for an operation like this I would guess there are probably a dozen strategic objectives and not just one.
To spook enemies of the US and create a mystical aura of superiority around the US military and its capabilities. They're literally creating the impression that the US military has technology beyond the "Clarke threshold." (The Clarke threshold refers to Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")
To shake out moles, spies, and unreliable people / leakers.
As a cover for very terrestrial extremely advanced technology such as hypersonic weapons, drones, laser and directed energy weapons, etc.
To repeatedly float the idea of "alien disclosure" and then dash everyone's hopes in order to discredit the idea of extraterrestrial life and visitation. Why? Maybe they're concerned that we will eventually detect aliens and they want to blunt the cultural impact by making the public skeptical. Maybe they actually do have evidence of aliens (but maybe less sexy than crashed UFO parts) and want to keep it quiet, so they want the topic to be discredited and marginalized. Maybe there's some ideology at play like religious fundamentalism. Why knows.
All I can say is that IF there ever is an irrefutable visitation from an alien civilization in the future, it will be shit-show that will never end.
I have zero confidence that any government or their populace will be able to handle that realization without going completely bonkers. We simply can't handle it as a civilization. For every sane person who is curious and wants to interact positively with the artifact/being there will be a dozen different types of maniacs out to destroy whatever it is.
And if you believe that governments reflect the neurosis of their people, it fundamentally impossible for any government to deal with something like this rationally.
Realistically no one would care. I honestly think some of the 'if we meet aliens there will be moral panic' sentiment is the biggest psyop of all. Most humans realistically would not care unless there was a threat posed.
How do you know how people would react? It's never happened before. This is just paternalistic manipulation which by extension means the government should have much more power over people's lives 'for their own good'
the US military have been caught off guard several times with newer tech, showing that they’re actually well behind the curve. I don’t think there’s much evidence that they have any advanced tech.
They probably both have advanced technology and are caught off guard by other peoples' advanced technology. With China we are already back in a multipolar world.
It's a conspiracy theory that exalts the government/military and a narrative that they control. Why wouldn't you want skeptical populations thinking that they can trust you, that you're skilled and competent, and for whom you can use slight of hand to easily influence and distract?
US adversaries can easily turn their drones into a panic when they fly in US airspace, and I believe that the instances where actual drones are involved, those are attempts at adversaries to surveil our military and government and to scare the populace. That's to say adversarial drones have an additional use as psyops weapons against civilians and military members. Being able to send whatever you want into US airspace and the US being unable to do anything about it can be perceived as being threatening and scary.
A counter narrative to that involving some UFO/alien mystery can quell panic and instead foster wonder and distraction.
You're the fnord sensei so you ought to know best. ;)
When I hear about this alien stuff or other "big government" conspiracies I'm always reminded of this saying, not sure where it's from.
"Behind every vast conspiracy theory is a sincere hope that somewhere out there, someone knows what they're doing."
(i.e., conspiracy nuts in a sense really want to believe in an all-powerful government because it would give them an assurance that someone really does know what's going on).
The military industrial complex is pretty powerful (arguably it's the most powerful organization on the planet), and is plenty capable of engaging in ongoing conspiracies and psyops. It's naive to believe that the same government who created nuclear bombs with the secret Manhattan Project, and that inserted intelligence agents into media companies in Project Mockingbird, is not continuing to conspire at levels of grand strategy equal to or exceeding those of its past projects.
I can't imaging trying to hide a Manhattan project today. They hid an entire city containing tens of thousands of people and consuming a serious whole segments of the total US electrical grid and federal budget.
Modern civilian OSINT would have been adequate to deduce fission work was being performed, assuming no one posted centrifuge schematics on their gaming Discord.
And it still didn't succeed, the first world leader to learn that fission weapons work was Stalin.
You're referring to Operation Mockingbird which afaik was completely unrelated to Project Mockingbird (an illegal wiretap by the CIA on a US journalist)
"... the conspiracy theory Project Blue Beam, which concerns an alleged plot to facilitate a totalitarian world government by destroying traditional religions and replacing them with a new-age belief system using NASA technology."
Schizophrenia and pranksters both exist. Also people who want to get notoriety by saying anything they can to get attention.
Certainly much of the whole present "flat earth" popularity was driven by a bunch of people who thought it'd be funny.
I take just as seriously people who insist UFOs are aliens as those who insist the world is flat. I'm sure you can find somebody on youtube who has been "shown some documents" about how the world isn't round.
I am calling it as 90% probability non true based one of the two techniques you can use to validate these type of claims. My claim uses Method B
Method A: Extensive analysis if this is a first account of facts or hearsay (here is the latest anyway). Extensive analysis of evidence, specially with metadata correlation between evidence arriving from different sources and timelines.
Method B: Analysis of instinctive and immediate body language reactions to focused questions.
Body language cannot be used as evidence in a court of law, but you bet your ass detectives use it effectively as cues all the time during investigations.
It’s not debunked, it’s just has to be used as a piece of the puzzle not the whole thing.
Body language across a lot of samples and people can show patterns between this body language and lying. A single instance of someone displaying body language in a given context says virtually nothing. "Tells" vary wildly between people for a million different reasons as this study shows, and unless you study a specific individual very carefully in a scientific way, there is nothing you can gather from their body language.
Other than working for the US Government, this guy doesn't seem to have brought anything, so I'm amazed this story has gotten the traction it has. It's not like it's been a slow news week or anything.
My experience with military people is that they all put in an impressive veneer of seriousness and respectability -- but some of them are just as nutty as anyone.
It's funny to see how far into the absurd people are ready to go in order to discard UFO recordings. Sure, live space travel across light-years sounds crazy. But what you are ready to come up with in order to tell us that army radars, USAF pilots, etc, are all delirious, like giant "psyops".... is even crazier.
Just look at his eyes during the interview. The guy is CLEARLY lying and spelling out learned phrases. It's all a big show. There are no UFOs and there never will be.
I'd also assume this is just a psyop, though more in the more general propaganda sense. You want other countries to both overestimate and underestimate you.
If other countries think there's a serious possibility that the US has alien technology then they'll be extra cautious. I doubt anyone buys it, personally.
But propaganda operations definitely have unintended consequences, I'd personally guess that experiments on the population's willingness to believe the government is at most a side effect. After all, there's wacky stuff like flat earth or refusing to believe in irrational numbers that has no meaningful international relations impact.
> All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop. My belief is that for some reason, the US government used psychology tests to identify a select few people who naturally "want to believe". These individuals would take vague evidence and through their own nature would exaggerate and fill in the blanks. They then nudged those individuals with carefully curated credible fake evidence. Then they just sat back and waited for a few of those guys to "leak" the information.
It's ironic to use a baseless conspiracy theory to accuse someone else of a disinformation conspiracy.
I feel sad to see that in the top post of an HN discussion.
Nice point. But why is it even considered probably fake immediately when people speak about probable extraterrestrial intelligence encounters? Isn't this a cognitive bias? I would have little doubt in possiblity of advanced extraterrestrial life if not the hype - the universe is so vast and ancient, the idea Earth and humans are so unique seems much more incredible.
The argument isnt that we are unique but that we are far, far away.
It is considered fake because the perceived difficulty of space travel combined with the complete lack of direct evidence despite the ongoing search for it.
Why are we so confident in our understanding of reality being so perfect nobody in the whole universe could have found a way to transcend the limitations it imposes? I would totally expect an advanced alien race to consider our physical science ridiculous.
It is illogical to build confidence on top of lack of evidence of your wrongness. In a virtually-infinite (relatively to your size and age and the limits of your senses and cognition) universe there always is some evidence you just don't know about. Our science is quite decent from our perspective, doing a great job describing the reality we perceive, but it seems absurdly naïve to consider it the ultimate knowledge. As history shows it changes regularly and will change a lot more someday in future.
Am I missing something or is the only thing that makes this different than so many other "insider" claims is that this guy has a career history that implies he isn't just another crackpot spewing theories?
It reads just like so many claims like we have heard in the past, but this time people think the guy is more reliable.
I'd love to think that alien contact is possible, but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly.
Consider this hypothetical: A person in intelligence knows something you would rather didn't get out, but you suspect there's a chance they will leak it. Maybe they have a personality that leads you to believe they can't in good conscience keep that secret, or maybe you're just callous and paranoid, doesn't really make a difference.
One thing you could do is convince them of something completely ridiculous that no one will take seriously. Even easier if there is a large existing community of nutters that already believe that (possibly you manufactured that too, just for such an occasion). Put on some little shows, make sure they see some documents they "weren't supposed to", and when they've bought into it enough have someone all but confirm it to them in person.
Then, if they're in a leaking mood, they'll discredit themselves for you.
What if it was against his will? What I mean is what if he has served his purpose and the government did something to make him slip into borderline insanity?
Not saying that I even remotely believe this, then again. . . It's not like the US government hasn't carried out horrible, immoral, and unethical experiments before.
Seriously though, it' one of those fun Black Mirror-like plots that pop in my head occasionally. Since everyone is throwing out all kinds of what-ifs I thought I'd try to have some fun too.
I'm pretty sure there are documented, widely-recognized case of this happening. Can't remember the details, but I think it was an amateur radio operator that found a secret broadcasting station, and was thrown off the trail when said station decided to broadcast fake stuff about aliens. And another case where the government needed to test animals for radiation following a nuclear test, so secretly stole them from farms in a way that suggested UFO abduction?
I can't remember where I read/heard this, but sure it is on the internet somewhere.
The part that you quoted was me summarizing what I thought they were saying and kind of asking if that was what they were saying. I've never met the guy. And by the way, yes, I do think crackpottery is an equal opportunity condition.
> but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly
As if humanity's knowledge circa 2023 is the end-all of things!
I'm extremely skeptical, but open minded too. until I see actual evidence, I won't believe it, but ftl isn't needed per se, warp drives supposedly could create worm holes or little folds in space they could jump through to essentially go as far as ftl with fractional speeds. if a worm hole opens between two distant spaces, does time dilation still work the same way? Maybe there's some shortcut through a parallel universe that takes people through space faster, ... I'm obviously not a physicist, but there's plenty of exotic science we don't yet know about, so this is definitely suspect and Occam's razer and all, but that's still like 1 percent or so that it is possible. I would've said 0.0001 percent 4 years ago.
This arrogance underpins so many comments on here. We don't know whether some breakthrough is possible that makes interstellar travel viable using hitherto unknown physics.
If dark matter and dark energy are real. While it is generally accepted that they are, dark matter's existence isn't a a closed case yet. Look into the MOND theory.
I personally don't have the education to state a theory with confidence, but I like the idea the physicists saw galaxies rotating in a way which seemed to break the rules of physics they knew and so they said, "our rules can't be wrong, there must be something there we can't see or measure or prove what it is." When it is possible (emphasis on possible) that maybe the laws of physics as related to motion and acceleration are different at scales that include multiple galaxies. Maybe they are rotating at the precise rate they are supposed to and there are undiscovered laws of physics at great scale. They are different rules at the quantum level and we haven't found quantum gravity yet. Is it possible the rules of gravity could be not as concrete at the largest levels of existence? Einstein said large masses bend space and time and we see that as gravity. Could the unexpected rotation of galaxies that is now explained as proving dark matter exists actually be caused by galaxy sized massed bending space and time at a different proportion. I dunno, but wouldn't it be fun if the explanation was so revolutionary and simple?
Disclaimer because this is the internet: I have no clue is this theory could be real, and it is mostly based on other theories by actual, real physicists--which I am not.
Sure they aren't open minded, but I mean thinking that our current state of knowledge defines the limits of what is possible, which is more specific than just closed-minded. It's crazy how often people make this mistake.
It isn't close minded at all. I would LOVE to have my thinking changed.
After listing to people who research this area like Martin Rees, Sabine Hossenfelder, Matt O'Dowd of PBS Spacetime, it just seems unlikely to me that the logistics of such travel--especially in a small craft that would just carry several beings--seems like it is just too hard to do and will remain so difficult for many, many generations to come.
Extend that too:
a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky
Seriously people underestimate the ludicrous energies involved in near-c travel. Even with engines off at those speeds the interstellar dust undergoing nuclear fusion off your hull will give you away
Extend that too:
a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky
b) then crash
Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case. Not implying this is what we have here, just a general observation. It's weird people believe space travel requires pilots.
> Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case.
Counterpoint: biology is a machine in itself.
Our machines of metal and microchips are incredibly primitive compared to where they'll be in 100, 500, 1000, 10K+ years from now - and when a machine has the ability to to self-replicate, have autonomy, and to protect itself from microscopic threats, then it sure looks a lot like life-as-we-know it.
Having just finished Iain Banks excellent The Algebraist, this is immediately what came to mind: we have no idea what timescales aliens would operate on.
Idk what’s so special about the speed of light/causality, in an alien universe it may not even be relevant. When talking about alien intelligence and technology literally everything is on the table.
I'm not sure we will ever know if this is the only universe. However it seems highly unlikely that aliens could travel from another universe and, even if they could, bring their own laws on physics with them.
Even at non-relativistic speeds self replicating robots could have visited every star system in the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years. We haven't seen any evidence.
Everyone has the most advanced cameras in history in their phones and there's exactly zero indisputable pictures of UFOs, ghosts, fairies, chupacabras, Nessie, Bigfoots, Yetis, and so on.
If aliens can travel even a light year, they almost certainly also have the technology to not crash.
Agree with everything you’re saying except the cameras in phones. Cameras in phones are advanced but most do not have kind of optical zoom. Try to take a picture of a plane flying overhead with your iPhone or a bird. It’s hard to get a clear photo of something so far away.
>Everyone has the most advanced cameras in history in their phones and there's exactly zero indisputable pictures of UFOs, ghosts, fairies, chupacabras, Nessie, Bigfoots, Yetis, and so on.
This is key in why I was much more optimistic of finding any of those paranormal items than I was 10 years ago. I hope I'm wrong.
There are zero indisputable photos of 99.9999999% of things that happen on earth. I mean, even if you have 10 separate people seeing the same thing and someone videoing, that's still disputable. You'd need a stadium of observers and several camera rigs before photo/video evidence would be the necessary level of "sure" to be considered indisputable when it comes to UFOs.
Can't there be a c) of "Who the hell knows, but there's a lot of evidence piling up." I'm with you in that I don't believe that an alien civilization that has overcome challenges of FTL, etc. would come to Earth to apparently joy-ride. There's something else that's causing trustworthy individuals to make these claims. At this point I just call it "magic" until a better word comes along.
One theory is that these bogeys have been here as long as we have and are basically automated tests, sort-of like the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It's ridiculous, but less ridiculous than a). The more I think about it, flying octopuses from Europa is less ridiculous than a).
Oooh I didn't catch that. I think that's funny. Given the limitations of FTL, etc., that'd be the equivalent of me canoeing across the Atlantic to spy on a nest of rather dull shrews. I should clearly read what he's saying.
To be fair, COVID escaping from the one and only lab capable of doing that kind of research in the area seems the most likely too. However, the best evidence so far points elsewhere. Sometimes the unlikely circumstance turns out to be the real one.
I assume that interstellar travel is really difficult for any civilization. That assumption is based on my knowledge of physics (relativity in particular).
First you need an incredible amount of energy to get even a modest mass out of the earth's gravity well. Then you you need a truly fantastic amount of energy to get it up to a fraction of the speed of light. Then you need an equally fantastic amount of energy to slow it down again at it's destination. Then you run into time dilation effects, which diminish the usefulness to the sender of any information they are going to get back (due to the delay).
Going slowly has it's own issues. If it takes you 100,000 years to cross the space between 2 stars, you are going to need a lot of energy/food to keep your crew/robots/computers going - because there isn't going to be much solar energy available. Also is any civilization going to invest the effort to create a probe/mission that they are not going to hear back from over that sort of time-scale?
Very true, but the point is it just shows there's a lot we don't know still that an advanced civilization might and likely have already discovered and learned to harness/control.
> I'd love to think that alien contact is possible, but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly.
With all the absurdly crazy complexity that has arisen in our universe, and the tiny primate brain you were born with, and the mere 10k years of civilization in our multi-billion year old universe which may be one of a near infinitude stretching back for eternity, you've figured out with high likelihood what is and is not possible. Right.
I’ve not taken a side yet, but to answer your first question, the original journalism outlet that published his story is The Debrief (who are pretty widely respected in the defense world), and they documented the source checking they did on Grusch:
even if he and the sources all know a friend a work on these teams, it's still not enough evidence. im very skeptical at the same time, I'm not completely shut off to the idea, I mean I'd say 98 to 2 percent are the odds differential but that's up from like 0.00000001 percent previously, before all the ufo releases.
I'm warming up, and I'm not naive enough to claim what a civilization a million years now advanced than us with bigger and more efficient brains(or ai) could accomplish in large enough time scales.
This is definitely the just trustworthy source to date, perhaps, but still the evidence isn't enough to blindly just say, yes it's definitely aliens.
There is the fact that Grusch gave sworn testimony to congress on it, he's going to prison for perjury if he's lying. Doesn't prove it, but it's more than just saying it in an interview.
People lie to Congress all the time without any consequences. That depends more on the political necessity of having a scapegoat/figure to tar and feather than the actual law.
"does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
"No, sir."
"It does not?"
"Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."
So, do people lie to Congress all the time? Not wittingly, but in the sense that this phrase means "absolutely yes, all the damn time."
I personally believe FTL is likely impossible so I think the only realistic hypothesis is if we encounter aliens, that they're von Neumann drones on the vanguard edge of a colonization wave from an alien race that's been doing it for millions of years.
If we survive for long enough as a species, either we'll meet races in this manner or we'll be the ones doing it.
For the record I still only assign a fairly low probability that this is what is happening, it's more likely that UAPs are craft from terrestrial origin.
I'm no body language expert, but I did notice him shaking his head when he says something to the (opposite) effect that "we categorically have non human craft".
Games within games. Insiders playing credible dupes.
I had an encounter with a UAP while I was with some friends in a park. We all saw the same thing. It was so black that its darkness was the only reason we noticed it against the night sky. It loomed over us, maybe 100 feet above the ground, and followed us when we walked away from it. It stayed for about 10 minutes and then flew away. It never made a sound, I never saw any lights, never felt any heat, but it was able to hover. It was hard to tell the shape, but roughly a disc, maybe a sphere.
I never reported it or anything, mostly due to not knowing who to call and lack of evidence (cell phone cameras were primitive at the time and it was too dark). We still talk about it occasionally, not really knowing what to make of it.
I created an account just to chime in . Had the same experience happen to me around 30 years ago in a rural area. I think the only reason I was able to distinguish the round shape against the night sky was because there was almost no light pollution. In my case it was a small group of them flying in a v shape Formation just passing by.
Thanks for chiming in. It is oddly comforting to hear that others have had similar experiences. When it was happening, the first words out of my mouth were “You guys see that, right? I’m not hallucinating?” It was so obviously not normal. I rubbed my eyes, questioning whether it was me or not and it was a relief when they saw it too.
The size of the one I saw was large and it was already extraordinary and alarming. A formation would be astounding.
It is very difficult to estimate the sizes of objects in the sky. I once saw an odd machine-like object in the sky of Shanghai, China in broad daylight. I thought, why is nobody concerned, or even looking? After awhile I saw it sway a bit and realized it was an anchored kite. I thought it was huge but it was just close. At night it lit up like this: https://youtu.be/O_UrmvcJ9T0
Thanks for going against the HN grain and submitting a description of this experience. For a site with so many well-educated users I am disturbed by the volume of comments that suggest that things like this only happen in the US, or they have only happened since WWII, they are only reported by military pilots, or that this can't be real because FTL travel is not possible without considering that it isn't even necessary nor has it ever been claimed in any account AFAIK. I first started reading about things like this decades ago (after Pascagoula) and over the years I have read a lot of reports filed with outfits like MUFON. I am open-minded about all this and willing to consider that some of it could be true. Personally I tend to believe older reports filed by people who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by making an extraordinary claim yet still chose to inform their peers about something that they saw or experienced because they needed to understand it themselves and if they told the story maybe someone somewhere could fill in the blanks for them.
Someone that I have known for decades told me a few years ago that they were part of a small group that had an experience with something similar to what you are describing. In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual. These are college educated people enjoying life in a rural area.
While in college, I also taped a story that a fellow student told one day. I always taped the lectures and transcribed them after class to help remember things and on this particular day the subject somehow turned to UFOs. I would have to replay the tape to know how the segue happened but anyway, if I remember right the professor commented about UFOs not being real and this student interrupted and told his personal encounter story. From memory, he was out with friends riding ranch roads across the part of west Texas where he was raised when one of them pointed out a set of lights over a part of the ranch where there were no roads, buildings, etc. They all saw the lights and decided to investigate and so they followed ranch roads towards them and as they got closer it was apparent that the lights were part of something really unusual and large that was not on the ground but was in the sky. As they got closer it zipped straight up and away and was gone in a couple seconds. I still have the tape but no way to play it. I always recorded over the previous day's lecture after transcribing but for that one I decided I would keep it and start another tape. I know this person to be an ordinary person who got a great education in geoscience and took that into a career with a multinational company eventually as a VP. He was always a no bullshit person.
In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual.
Sounds like ... a cloud? Combined with some kind of local changes in temperature/pressure/ionization sufficient to distract the animals for a bit? (I live partially in nature - sometimes the critters are very active; other times, one can hear a pin drop).
I would think that people who spend a large part of their lives outside working a small farm/ranch after their day jobs would recognize a cloud if they saw one no matter the time of day.
I acknowledge that a cloud would block the view of everything behind it but in this case I'm pretty sure it wasn't a cloud.
The thing is clouds sometimes have unusual formations, appear at surprising altitudes and move very quickly (or appear to, if one misjudges the altitude).
As I'm sure they've been told already. I'm not denying their perceptions; and of course I wasn't there. It's just that my threshold of proof for extraterrestrial vehicles is ... quite high.
And sometimes unexplained observations are just that -- unexplained.
I understand the high bar that people set for situations like this. I am a geophysicist by education. It wasn't clouds. They've seen a lot of clouds and stars etc. and grew up around machines and animals.
I left out some of the details on purpose since the whole story is not mine to tell. They told me because they knew that I had done a lot of reading about the subject when other friends had something odd happen to them and they hoped that my physics studies would help them understand some of it better.
Some things are just unexplainable with our conventional knowledge. Over time that should/could change. If we already knew everything there would be no more need for science as curiosity about unfamiliar things could be satisfied by a simple query of existing knowledge. It would be a boring reality with no novelty or mysteries. In the worst case, a small group of people would control access to knowledge, withholding key information that would empower the rest of the people by helping them understand how all the mysteries of the world fit together to form our boring reality where every question has a clear, unique answer. Luckily we are nowhere near that point and there are many things left to be discovered.
You’re welcome. FWIW, this is getting a lot more upvotes than I expected. Maybe it’s just that there is a lot of traffic on this thread. But it could be that a lot other people have had similar experiences and just don’t want to talk about it. I can certainly relate to that - there are some people in my life who I haven’t told simply because of what they might think. It’s easier to talk about with strangers or super close friends.
I think you are close when you propose that other people who have had an experience like this are not willing to share because society stigmatizes them so that in the end, only those who knew them at the time or those who have become trusted friends ever hear the story.
This is certainly true for the people that I know. With the exception of the fellow student who felt compelled to tell his story, almost every one of the others that I know avoids talking about it and will even try to deflect conversation if there is anyone who hasn't already heard about it present.
One old friend still regularly communicates with me as I am one of the only people they trust to be non-judgemental since I knew them a long time before they had their experience. I get photos, short videos, descriptions of events, attempts to tie their experiences in with other reports, etc and so I dutifully check it all out to try to help them come to terms with what has become for them a lifelong process of dealing with an emotional trauma that ended up stigmatizing them back in the small town where we grew up. Long-term friendships are critical for helping people manage some of these experiences.
Events like this are relatively rare and so it is easy for someone who doesn't personally know or who has never personally had an unusual event happen to automatically default to the conclusion that the one reporting the event has some mental issue, is unreliable, etc. Another poster suggested that somehow the subjects of one thing I mentioned must have been confused by clouds. People look for the most likely explanations and tend to ignore the fact that many of these observers have more than enough experience to understand when they are seeing something remarkable. I can say that I know several people who have had strange things happen in their lives and that among that group there is not a single one who actively went out looking for that to happen. All were just ordinary people and some were still in grade school. I am open-minded about what has happened to these people and in some cases I saw the immediate changes in their personality and demeanor. Something different happened to them. I am not qualified to say what it was but I know it was not something that anyone would consider normal. I'm just trying to be a friend to them - a sounding board when they find themselves thinking about it again.
This would’ve been around 2010-ish. I could maybe buy that it was a stealthy military drone, although I kind of doubt any drone is that big or stealthy. But then, why would a military drone be interested in some random young adults hanging out in the park? I considered that it might’ve been testing the limits of its stealthiness. But then why did it hang around after we started talking about it, pointing at it, and trying to record it? No, it felt a lot more like we were being studied. Especially in the way it followed us. Slowly, smoothly, and with a little distance.
Definitely crazy any way you look at it; something was observing you, whether man or otherwise.
I personally could buy the "autonomous alien probe sent 10,000 years ago" narrative, but just seems like we'd have more concrete, widely distributed evidence by now.
Isn't the whistle blower stuff considerably less interesting than this:
But some insiders are now willing to take the risk of coming forward for the first time with knowledge of these recovery programs.
Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
huh? This is a current NASIC officer saying “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” - isn't that in itself extremely weird/surprising?
Yes, that along with the last sentence. It sounds like what you are ‘supposed’ to say when this type of revelation is made because we’ve heard it many times before in movies and books over the decades.
Could be generic crap from crash sites of test drones, aircrafts, missiles, satellites etc if its secret stuff are ppl going to inform everyone on the planet?
Just never ending mindlessness thanks to the Attention Economy giving morons too much attention.
Seeing the massive amount of fraud and dishonesty in science, especially when it comes to getting material published, combined with the government’s track record of lying and incompetence, the simplest explanation for all of this is dishonesty or incompetence
The astonishingly solid track record of utter Buffoonery coming out of people who work in that building (leading to millions of people killed, maimed and tortured), spanning multiple decades -- might have something to do with it.
> Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
A career like this won't protect you from belief or developing an mental illness. Hope he is fine.
If there was some Vegas sports book I'd bet the odds are in the direction he's a bit loony or lacks analytical skills at a minimum, or had any real data.
Gov jobs in intelligence isn't exactly an exclusive club for intelligent people after all. Which is usually where the bulk of credibility is built on.
> As our chart shows, the federal government grants top secret security clearance to large numbers of government employees and contractors: 1.25 million according to the latest publicly available figures.
Here's an analogy ... one of the core devs of some important language finds a bug that would have wide ranging security implications world wide but doesn't really want to reveal evidence of it and his colleagues certainly don't either.
Imagine some smart pilot or govt official (with no knowledge of our field) saying "it's not like these guys work in some exclusive club for intelligent people" ?
There is zero public evidence across the entirety of science and human knowledge that suggests any of the claims are even possible. Everything we know about the universe and technology on earth says this isn’t possible. Either the government that isn’t even capable of keeping it spy secrets secret manages to keep this evidence secret along with every other nation on the planet, or someone is being dishonest or ill.
We now know that exoplanets and the conditions for life abound in the universe. Where the conditions for life abound, the null hypothesis ought to be that life abounds. In discussions of alien life and intelligence, we are often biased by earlier states of knowledge about the universe and our position in it. When we first started digging up dinosaur bones, we came up with fantastical notions of creatures to explain these artifacts that were mysterious to us. Notions that fit into our existing worldview, drawn from folk knowledge and cultural history. Once archeologists started studying the bones carefully, they gave us stories more fantastical than we could have ever imagined in the framework of our folk knowledge. I suspect the same will turn out to be true of UAPs.
For example, UAP stories are often ridiculed on the premise that intelligent alien life would not bother to come all this way just to hide out in the ocean. That's our folk knowledge of aliens: they like to travel, are eager to make contact with other life forms and are capable of doing so. But the elusive behaviour of UAPs is exactly what we would expect from an "unmanned" scientific probe. The home planet would be dozens or hundreds of light years away, so the craft would need to be completely autonomous in the absence of any communication system. Where does an autonomous probe go to look for signs of life? Oceans.
Very very big and very very old. Take the probability of an intelligent being evolving, multiply that by the probability of it being on a planet that had vast amounts of practically free energy stored from the last great extinction and figured out how to use it, multiply that by the probability of them not running out of that energy until they can develop new sources (without destroying each other in the process), then multiply that by the probability of them figuring out space travel, multiply that by the probability that they are within reach of us with that technology, multiply that by the probability that they care enough to come over here, and finally multiply that by the probability that this occurs within the 2000 years or so when we aren't too ignorant to appreciate it.
With vastness comes separation. The more vast it is the more likely there is life elsewhere, and the less likely its in travel rangeor would be able to identify life on earth.
The possible shapes of life are much bigger than the universe.
The chances of intelligent life existing outside Earth are lower than the chance of that same intelligent life speaking flawless Swedish. We might as well send some Europop records to space as signals to aliens.
"Intelligence" is a human invention created by humans to describe humanity. It only applies to humans and human-like beings.
Trees and crabs and birds appeared very recently in the timeline of life on Earth and will probably get extinct eons before shrimp or tardigrades know what happened.
Life is likely plentiful in the Universe. Earth-like life is almost certainly unique.
Intelligent life might happen on every 10,000th planet or it might only happen in every 10,000th universe.
As long as we know of only one occurrence of intelligent life we have no clue of the probability. And human intuition on what's right doesn't help us here.
We still have only one data point for life and one data point for intelligence.
It's absurd to claim intelligent life doesn't exist, as we know it does on Earth. And it's absurd to claim any level of probability for other intelligent life until we have one more data point.
> We still have only one data point for life and one data point for intelligence.
Don't we have many points for both? There are ~8.7 million species on the planet. What we only have one data point for is a planet that contains life and intelligence.
Regarding oceans, I want to add that the overwhelming majority of our land is in the northern hemisphere. Add the speed of light time lag, and anyone starting with a southern perspective will see a water-world with no technosignature whatsoever.
If one were to send a probe, one could wisely plan on purpose to land it in the ocean, deploy submersibles with flight technology and have them just go around and lay low.
They would hide, lay low and their aerodynamic performance might simply be their idea of a modest, basic platform. They would otherwise be wholly unprepared to make contact or perform in air to air combat.
Sounds like Grusch is upstanding, but I suspect he's been trolled by the rest of them.
You can just imagine; "hey Eagle, the UFO guy's coming to ask about that UAP report, you know, the one where the IR tracker locked-on to a speck of dust. Let's mention the (nudge, hehe) black-ops alien testing site we saw when we went to file the report"
While I think I believe this whistleblower, the CIA is _definitely_ willing to troll someone to the point of letting them go testify under oath to the IG. I'm pretty sure they _have_. Not to mention all the LSD they dosed people with.
It also seems like you’d need to troll someone extraordinarily thoroughly for them to have enough material to testify to congress for hours. Even assuming ET is the least likely explanation, it’s at least very curious what else could have resulted in the testimony described in the article.
As the other commenter mentioned - these people troll each other all the time. It's practically the job description for a large portion of them, in fact.
And it doesn't even have to be anybody is trolling him directly. The trolling could be happening several layers deep. And can be entirely unintentional -- just a matter of a few genuinely naive or deluded people somewhere.
We do have a long, colourful history of "reputable" people (aka "I worked at the gov" or "I have a Harvard degree") making such claims (and not just about aliens but various hidden US gov tech) and combined with that we can do basic reasoning about how the US gov operates, the extreme difficulties/limitations of interstellar travel, how information can turn into a "telephone game", the other 1.25 million people with the same top secret clearance, the claim basically amounting to hearsay with no direct witnesses or participants in the program, etc.
I'm personally not waiting at the edge of my seat.
I find this subject fascinating. As the article states, Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff, along with the various radar feeds, etc. I'm curious what HN thinks of the following:
There are 3 comprehensive possibilities (correct me if you think differently):
1. These crafts are ET origin
2. These crafts are human origin (secrete military tech or similar)
3. This is a psyop
Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Any of these 3 possibilities is very interesting. I have my own take for what is most likely. But I'd like to hear thoughts of others.
The pilots claim they saw a flying saucer that was rotating in weird ways, and provide a grainy video that's kind of convincing. The analysis proves it was lens flare.
There are additional debunked UAP videos released by the military, including one that is lens bokeh around starlight, which is debunked by showing the configuration of the "triangle UAPs" matches the positions of stars at that time, including additional evidence that the camera used on those ships has triangle aperture.
This tells me there's a chance of a disappointing but realistic option 4: military incompetence. They take these videos, they don't know what they are, so they go into some data pipeline and categorized as UAP. Then people/congress become aware that there are "UAP videos", and we go through this declassification song and dance, only to get these bokeh and lens flare videos, that the military themselves do not know they are bokeh/lens flare, and they have to find out about it on YouTube.
Giving the military more benefit of the doubt, the likely option is 3: psyop. They spread UAP rumors to confuse adversaries, knowing these UAP videos they have are BS. When they release these easily debunked videos, the adversaries could be further confused, still not knowing what they really have.
Thanks for linking this analysis, it makes a lot of sense.
It's very funny how this particular video was released entitled "gimbal", as they mention. It seems to indicate that the same analysis was already done internally, but the full report wasn't shared so as to not reveal too much military tech, so all we got was the single-word video title.
Interesting analysis but doesn’t that not make sense since the radar was tracking a fleet of the same objects? Radar wasn’t picking up a fleet of lens flares.
Whereas we have the gimbal video, we don’t have any radar data to look at.
If we’re going to rely on pilots’ conversation as meaningful data, I started to get the impression from the gimbal video that the pilots are fucking around and know it’s a plane, and when they say a “whole fleet of’em out there” (the guy appears to be containing laughter as he says it) they’re sarcastically referring to all the other passenger planes in the sky.
> Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff
Yeah!
I used to work with someone who was a Marine F/A-18 weapons officer (back seat guy; I may have the aircraft type wrong). He knew everything there was to know about air combat & ground attack, but outside that, he was a complete moron. I mean, he seriously believed that we stole aircraft technology from aliens, because "there is no way that humans are that smart."
> As the article states, Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff, along with the various radar feeds, etc.
Watch the introduction to the 4 hour UAP panel that NASA hosted a few days ago[1], they address this.
According to NASA, even highly trained and experienced pilots can easily be fooled, and often reported UAPs are artifacts of the technology that detects them, or are indeed things like weather balloons. For example, NASA even used the example of Navy pilots being fooled by a procession of commercial airplanes queueing to land at an airport 40+ miles away from their base.
They also emphasize that radar, detection systems, etc are not scientific instruments that are suitable for the detection or analysis of this phenomenon. They emphasize that the technology that the Navy et al. use are strictly optimized for defensive/offensive interception of conventional weapons. That's to say that they're calibrated for war and not for accurate scientific observation.
Going back to the procession of airplanes waiting to land, according to the instruments available to pilots and their own observations, those airplanes were doing things that were impossible to do without bending the laws of physics. Yet all they were were just a bunch of airplanes doing what all airplanes do.
> Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Pilots and their system are fallible, you'd have to assume some argument from authority to believe otherwise, which is why I think the military loves this conspiracy theory. It shifts criticism or suspicion of government and power to a narrative that they control and that inflates the military's competence and abilities, and assumes that the military is looking out for us and willing to tell us the truth.
Perhaps number 5 could be partial hypoxia leading to hallucinations and delusions as it pertains to pilots. I would not be surprised if a pilot swore they saw a Klingon bird of prey.
Too coincidental for pilot fatigue/shadows AND instrument malfunction to always happen at the same time in all of these cases. There are hundreds of reported instances in the past few years. This is simply not a serious explanation.
Strongly disagree. The sheer number of flight hours performed by all the world's professional pilots multiplied by the average percentage of a flight that a pilot could be considered to be "fatigued", multiplied by the odds of a cosmetic/minor sensor blip occuring is still an astronomically large number. That confluence of events probably happens quite regularity. This can be acendotealy verified hanging out at any general aviation flight club, and asking pilots about the times they got temporarily confused by some aerial phenomenon that turned out to be a strange reflection off a cloud. Happens literally all the time.
I'd even suggest a good percentage of reports are either deliberate hoaxes themselves or genuine reports of hoaxes carried out by others. If not hoaxes, then deliberate misreporting to cover up worse truths.
Ultimately almost any other such explanation is vastly more likely than advanced alien species having crossed the galaxies (undetected) to visit us only to crash land on our little ball of rock.
A few probably are secret military tech (nothing like antigravity, but I think most people - even in the military - probably don't have a good grasp of what true cutting edge technology is capable of,) but I think there are UFO true believers within the government trying to stir up publicity for funding[0]. To me that is the most intriguing, and plausible, explanation for a lot of this.
Because remember we just went through this with the Chinese balloon shit. "Sources" in the government making the same claims. Rumors about craft defying physics. But it all turned out to be balloons and paranoia and hype.
Probably a combination of 2 & 3 along with weird natural phenomena + the fact that human brains run on error prone wetware, are full of hacks, and make shit up all the time...
In short, given prevalence of aliens in popular culture + brains being predictive machines + existence of things that are hard to explain = it would be far more surprising if there weren't people claiming aliens.
Note 1: actual aliens would be really exciting, but Occam's Razor...
There are probably 5,000 comprehensive possibilities. You could sit around all day making up "what ifs". What if it's a psyop? What if it's some meteorite that crashed into a pile of pine resin and made a composite? What if it's a fake craft two dudes in a covert research lab made to troll an intelligence service with some experimental materials? What if the dude is actually lying?
Who cares? It's not going to amount to anything. Even if it exists, nobody's gonna let us see it.
N+1. They're 25 and they've just popped some amphetamine (now modafinil) to get them through the hangover from getting shit faced on shipboard moonshine last night.
Are the Navy pilots actual eye witnesses to seeing these crafts or are they eye witnesses to whatever is electronically displayed to their HUDS/Helmets/lenses?
It seems every video I've come across, it was all electronic so it has me thinking just a software error.
Every video I've seen, too, has been from some sort of electronic sensor. The US Navy was working on Project NEMESIS at least as far back as 2019, which sought to (and likely did) develop the means to spoof electronic signatures.
They’ve had “drones” (more like gliders) since the gulf war that can fake electronic signatures of different planes. They worked well and were targeted by Iraqi defenses.
It could also be some combination of the three, for example a craft that is human origin but derived from ET bits being presented in a pysop manner for some reason. The Navy's claimed operable AGRAV/room temperature superconductor patents and Salvadore Pais[1] add another layer of huh to the whole thing.
why is it always the navy pilots that always see the aliens, and not the commercial pilots. is it because navy pilots are more likely to be flying at some combination of high speed, bad weather conditions, or darkness that tends to make ordinary occurrences look more mysterious?
Because commercial pilots are in control of aircraft flying over densely populated areas, and often responsible for the lives of hundreds on board. A navy pilot typically just has the expensive aircraft and is somewhat expected to be crazy.
So, if a commercial pilot does see such things, they'd be far less likely to report them, as it may well ruin their career. Navy pilots, on the other hand may well get some commendation for identifying an unusual, or anomalous thing (enemy tech?).
Commercial pilots don't get scrambled to get eyes on radar anomalies in the middle of nowhere. They get paid to go from point A to point B using a pre-determined amount of fuel.
This reminds me of the "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument that religious people use regarding Jesus. Let's not railroad the options, here. There's room for nuance (like combinations or, frankly, just misunderstandings).
That's a convenient argument and a good analogy for the UFO phenomenon, because it omits the fourth option, which is that Jesus never existed outside of a carefully constructed narrative distributed by institutional authorities with the goal of manipulating their taxpaying population.
I do think believing that you are a deity is a sufficiently far fetched falsehood to justify calling you a lunatic. For the sake of argument I suppose I'm willing to accept "profoundly confused individual" as a fourth alternative. But I don't think it helps the rhetorical point against painting arguments for "lord lunatic or liar" as an unjustified demand for absolute beliefs.
And no, you're not a lunatic for believing someone else's bullshit.
I'd say there is a 4th comprehensive possibility: these are one or more natural phenomenon we've yet to document and may have no intelligence behind them at all.
PSYops. What about being a "navy pilot" validates these claims? That's like saying "Police officers have come out on record to say that bad buys have lazer guns". Of course they would say that, they want everyone to think THEY have big lazer guns too!
like any other piece of the military, Pilots are only allowed to disseminate what the current strategy-focus tells them to disseminate.
I do. If it were possible we'd surely see them everywhere. Even if time travel was a one-way trip there's enough future billions of us that there'd be massive numbers with the sort of incurable fascination seth the past that they'd be motivated to travel back and see what it was like.
Doesn't really seem any more or less likely than alien intelligence at any rate.
That reminds me of an amusing story I read in Analog several years ago. I don't remember the name or author.
It was about the first time travel trip. The team that developed the first time machine decided to send the first traveler to visit Shakespeare, figuring that Shakespeare had a flexible enough mind to not be freaked out by the visit.
When the traveler got to Shakespeare they were right that he did not freak out. In fact he took it entirely in stride. The time traveler was a little confused that Shakespeare was taking it so well. Shakespeare even asked what gift the time traveler had brought, saying that "all the early ones brought gifts".
The time traveler had in fact brought a gift--a nicely bound volume of Shakespeare's collected works. Shakespeare looked at it, said something about maybe he could sell the binding, then said probably not, and tossed it on a pile of books, which the traveler realized was a pile of similar books.
Shakespeare noticed that the traveler was now throughly confused and realized that the traveler was in fact one of the very earliest, and explained that most of early travelers brought books.
The traveler was still confused over the idea that Shakespeare had met other time travelers, saying "but I'm the first time traveler!". Shakespeare told him that he may have been the first to leave, but he certainly wasn't the first to arrive, and said at some stages in his life he was being visiting frequently by time travelers, which was actually annoying--although not as annoying as it was for Jesus, who Shakespeare says another time traveler decided to introduce them once.
At that point numerous other time travelers started arriving. They were reporters from throughout the timeline popping in to try to get an interview with the first time traveler. The first time traveller is now close to completely losing it, and Shakespeare says he can handle it and steps in to act as a press agent for the first time traveler.
If backwards time travel turns out to possible my guess is that there will be some limitation that prevents scenarios like the one in that story from happening. My guess is either (1) the time machine will only be able to go back to when it was created (think of it like going back to a save point in a game), or (2) when a time machine goes back to some point in spacetime it creates some sort of exclusion zone in a region around that point that precludes any other time machine from arrive at a point in that exclusion zone.
I suspect time-travelling and Shakespeare is a whole sub-genre, the one I know is one where Shakespeare travelled forward in time and enrolled in a university Shakespeare course - which he then failed...
There must be at least one where all his works were actually sent back in time for him to copy from, leading to all sorts of questions as to who originally wrote them.
BTW...I actually asked ChatGPT (just 3.5, don't have 4 access) what story it might be based on a description. Couldn't do it, gave lots of nonsense answers along the way, but when I prompted it with the name of the author and the word "immortal" it finally got it. Was kinda surprised actually, I'd think that's the sort of thing an LLM should be able to do quite well.
In fact, on further experimentation, my only conclusion is god help anyone who tries to use ChatGPT to help with studying literature.
Well, sure, it's possible my consciousness is one that's travelled along every single branch where the backwards-time-travel didn't happen, but that strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely if there have been even only a fifty such attempts in all human (future) history.
What I mean is when a particle travels back in time, the universe branches forward in parallel, from that particle, at the instant it arrives.
This resolves all paradoxes as the independently instantiated time streams can't interact.
I believe there are present theories of time/space that rely on this kind of idea.
It also might mean any time traveller could never get back to the exact "when" they came from. Though if there was a way to traverse parallel time streams, there'd be no paradox as the moment they arrived "back" would also branch.
Time traveling humans is more likely for the following reason: It requires only one thing: worm hole or some other yet-to-be-invented mechanism for traveling to the past. For this to be alien intelligence, two things are required: First alien intelligence has to exist, and second, they too need a mechanism for speedy travel, to travel to another galaxy such that they can reach the destination within an individual alien's lifetime.
Aliens could exist with or without speedy travel. We can assume slow-traveling aliens must be from long-lived civilizations, but we can't assume fast-traveling aliens are from short-lived civilizations.
Slow-traveling aliens likely come from a long-lived origin civilization (although it's possible that origin civilization went "extinct" millions of years ago, but its descendants continue to reproduce of spaceships traveling slowly outward in different directions, these descendants would arguably be from the same origin civilization, which must definitionally be long-lived).
Fast-traveling aliens might be from a civilization doomed to be short-lived, but they achieved FTL travel so we just happen to meet them. They could have popped up a million years ago, and be on schedule for extinction in another million years. But since they can travel quickly, they don't need to be a long-lived civilization in order for it to be likely that we might encounter them. They could be one of many short-lived civilizations.
In a universe without FTL travel, the probability that we encounter an alien civilization is dependent on the expected duration of an alien civilization; the more long-lived civilizations that exist, the more likely we'll encounter one, because they've had more time to slow-travel. In such a no-FTL universe, there could be a high probability of civilization, but with a low expected civilizational lifetime. So we'd be unlikely to encounter any civilization, despite the high number of them in the universe.
So what I find ironic is that even with a bunch of aliens crashing (regardless of how slowly) onto our planet, we can't actually infer much new information about the Fermi paradox, or whether we've made it past the Great Filter. Either we're encountering civilizations that must be long-lived because they're slow-traveling, in which case there may not be a filter because the paradox was resolved by the lack of FTL travel; or they can be both long-lived and unknowably short-lived, in which case we don't know where the filter is because any civilization we meet could go extinct next (perhaps achieving FTL travel even achieves some prerequisite for a specific class of extinction event?).
So either there might not be a filter, or we don't know where it is. The most informative scenario would be for us to meet a long-lived, fast-traveling civilization.
I'm probably more positive alien intelligence exists than I am that humanity will last long enough to discover such a mechanism. To be clear, I'd say both are quite likely - I just very much doubt the mechanism actually exists.
4. A bunch of well-fed military-industrial complex types, some lying, some naive and sincerely deluded -- stovepiping and embellishing each other's BS as usual.
Functionally, all of these can be classified under the first option, "ET origin", because they all involve the revelation that some advanced intelligence unknown to the mass of humanity is active on Earth.
But there is a fourth:
* These craft are of natural origin
Some very strange analogue of St Elmo's Fire which results in the formation of metallic spheres of unknown composition in the vicinity of jet fighters.
> "These craft are of natural origin. Some very strange analogue of St Elmo's Fire"
"we humans are property of some more highly evolved beings that live in a realm that we cannot see. Those invisible beings are immaterial: they are made of energy and Russell compares them to ball lightning."
Alright HN, we all know that this is likely untrue, from a rational angle, and this thread is full of reasons why, but play this mental exercise with me for a minute:
What if its true? What repercussions would having alien technology have on civilization? Would this fundamentally change beliefs? Influence religion?
EDIT: someone pointed out to make this more stimulating we need constrains, assuming the following is true:
The UFO is likely "rogue" in that it was off course, pilot dead, and we are not currently engaged in hostilities with this other civilization
I never got why the interpretation of „world“ christians choose is so narrow; why can’t it describe the galaxy, or universe? What if the genesis revolves around beings on other planets as parts of the same world?
Saint Augustine discussed a colorful rumour from his time about dog-headed people (cynocephaly). If you look beyond the actual rumour itself, his thinking provides a useful precedent for contemporary Christians to frame discussions about alien intelligence.
(If I remember correctly...) Augustine's thinking went something like this: if dog-headed people exist, then the question becomes whether they are descendants of Adam or not. (See the protoevangelium in Gn 3:15; or the genealogy in Lk 3:38; or the Catechism paragraph 402 and surrounding paragraphs on the Fall.)
If they are, then they are in need of salvation: the Gospel should be proclaimed to them and presumably they should also receive the Sacraments.
If they are not, given that Adam is our actual ancestor, then we might need additional revelation, because no revelation about this was provided to begin with (Jn 10:16 is taken to be a reference to non-Jewish peoples, who are also descendants of Adam and who would also end up worshiping the God of Israel by the sacrifice of the Cross, as predicted in the Old Testament).
I'd say this need for extra revelation would become even more pressing in the case of supposed intelligent life that is extra-terrestrial and, despite its rationality, fundamentally does not share in human nature and the Fall. My intuition (as a Catholic) is therefore that we will never encounter extra-terrestrial intelligence. Or if its existence is proven, then we would only learn about it from distant observations, e.g. through the SETI program, but we would never have meaningful interactions with it/them.
So far, actual evidence lines up with this more skeptical attitude inspired by the Christian faith: consider the Fermi paradox; or the vast size of the universe and our current understanding of challenges related to faster-than-light travel; or the questionable nature of the existing reports, together with very pragmatic but pressing questions like "why on earth would such advanced aliens secretly buzz around on Earth in highly advanced aircraft and still crash"...
The interesting twist (...imho...) is this: "extra terrestrial intelligence", aside from scientific debates about e.g. likelihood and discovery, also serves a cultural purpose. It is one way in which today's non-Christian society tries to think about what "it" might become. This is not unlike how thinking about angels provides Christians with a view of what they may become individually in relation to free will, moral choices and God, things which in angels are completely pure because they are immaterial creatures. The irony is that the reality of extra-terrestrial intelligence is completely unproven and its nature is therefore a matter of pure speculation and fantasy; whereas immaterial spirits actually do exist and we have some knowledge about them, expressed in solid metaphysical concepts.
It could be polarizing, where from a religious perspective, other life doesn't break anything and is more evidence of the divine.
From a political perspective, it is risky because all our current rules are based on a now-obsolete ontology, nothing needs preservation, we are just animals again, all is material. It creates a power vacuum that some people will rush into.
The rationale for that would be, if you don't have to fear the aliens, and we're tiny specs in the universe, why should you fear other men? We are now one species and if you can't get on board with that, there are no moral consequences to shortening your time here, since as we are not the top of the pyramid, we can no longer be held morally responsible to each other - there is only this new power. If it doesn't control us, nothing does, etc.
I think the religious view would be that they must also know God, and the only way you can trust another species enough to relate to it is either it accepts your dominion, or recognizes some similar principles of divine authority. Someone who has a personal relationship with God is perfectly equipped to relate to other beings as best a human can, whereas without that, they'd have to worry about you stealing stuff.
I’m curious to speculate on the most boring possible outcome. Let’s say there is wreckage, from an unmanned craft like a sensing probe dispatched at some unknown time in the past by an unknown creator, including potentially millions of years ago by a species that’s long extinct. There would be a clamor for private business and the general public to get research access, but maybe there’s very little we can actually learn yet. It could be possible these craft reached this solar system very slowly, with no sci-fi FTL propulsion. One way or another there would be a finite amount to glean, and other than any technological benefits how much would it really change life? Organized religion has proven resilient - I honestly doubt the revelation that there was at some point intelligent life distantly far away in the universe would upset their apple cart too much.
Imo the most likely scenario if it's true, is that these are automated von Neumann probes that traveled here without faster than light propulsion and that they're here merely to explore, observe or possibly self-replicate. I believe this is the most likely option because it takes just one successful civilization in our galaxy, or even a close one, that employs this strategy.
Crafts made deliberately to meet us would have to originate from much closer civilizations unless the civilization has both FTL travel and much more sensitive and high resolution observation technology than we currently believe possible.
Supposing it is a von Neumann probe. There may be a planet or nearby system where these crafts are being built, but we're unlikely to be near the main star/region of the civilization. We might be stuck with just handful of these crafts for probably many (hundreds?) of thousands of years before any real first contact happens.
It'd be weird if it turned out that it is an alien aircraft and... that's it. It's too advanced for us to understand, it's too high tech. And we're left with, "Yup, aliens exist. No, we don't know anything more about them." It's like that old movie where an airline pilot drops a Coca Cola can into the midst of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. "Wow, this thing sure is neat. Damned if I know what it's for though."
This is the situation I’m leaning towards. Military has been trying unsuccessfully for 80 years to figure it out. An adult finally walks into the room, sees how hopeless their attempts are, and whistleblows.
As someone who dug deep into the rabbit hole, yes, this is the "in-lore" explanation of it.
Apparently a secretive clique in the air force take a group of scientists every few decades to see if any headway can be made into reverse engineering the technology.
See "The day before Roswell" from US Colonel Corso Phillip. Epistemic note: the book has been dramatized by the publisher for effect and diverges from Corso's personal notes, and there is some disagreement with the way the story is told from Corso's son.
Still, it paints a certain picture of who the major players are behind this alleged once-cover-up and how it apparently played out.
Not too sure what to make it but it's a fun sci-fi story nevertheless :)
Backed by documents newly declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army, has come forward to reveal his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the Roswell crash. He tells us how he spearheaded the Army’s reverse-engineering project that led to today’s integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers, and super-tenacity fibers, and “seeded” the Roswell alien technology to giants of American industry. Laying bare the US government’s shocking role in the Roswell incident—what was found, the cover-up, and how they used alien artifacts to change the course of twentieth-century history—The Day After Roswell is an extraordinary memoir that not only forces us to reconsider the past, but also our role in the universe.
If we accept the Project Mogul explanation as infinitely more likely and supported by the evidence, there is no reason why anyone who was open-minded to the possibilities should feel contrite.
So the Army Air Force hadn't actually recovered our popular conception of a flying saucer at all...but that's what was suggested by the press release. And when the issue is confused by a dramatic testimony from such an ostensibly credible witness as Glenn Dennis, it seemed there was a solid foundation to place the further evidence in context.
Crash sites galore, wreckage with alien writing, alien bodies recovered and possibly even survivors, autopsies witnessed, a grandiose and cynical cover-up which spanned decades...
But it was clearly a specious foundation. All of it.
This perception of the Roswell story will be doubtless be an anathema to the Roswell fundamentalists.
But it isn't for them, it's for those who are interested in any objective rationalisation of the truth, even, to paraphrase Kent Jeffrey, if it does mean there is no Santa Claus.
This is covered fictionally in Cixin’s The Three Body Problem: When Eart learns the existence of Trisolarians tremendous social and technical changes occur.
I read somewhere that all of our radio signature would fade away to the point that it's indistinguishable from background noise within five lightyears.
Plus, we've been around for ages and only briefly let out a bunch of radio waves. I image we might not even generate that many anymore.
By that logic, you could easily image that the universe is teeming with intelligent life that happens to not have sent a powerful radio signal out here, or whose tech development timeline never included wide public radio signal broadcasting.
Yep radio waves degradation is due to the inverse square law. The strength of the signal is determined by the inverse of the distance squared. So the drop off is pretty extreme.
I used to be greatly tempted by the fermi paradox, but upon learning about limitations we have observing the skies.... I believe the entire fermi paradox talk, is just steeming from the fact that we think too highly of ourselves as a civilisation and the efford we put into observing the skies.
Most people, including myself until recently, don't realise that most of our astrophysics/space science is very limited to our immediate close promixity in the cosmological scale.
Correct me if I am wrong but we are only able to do science around the other stars in the Milky way (e.g. exoplanet observations)
Beyond Milky way, all the light from the stars are collapsed into a single blob along with the rests of the stars in their home galaxy.
> Correct me if I am wrong but we are only able to do science around the other stars in the Milky way (e.g. exoplanet observations)
Oh yeah and on top of that the way we detect planets around stars creates a extreme bias on dwarf stars since a positive detection needs a few transits before confirmation of a planet can be made. And since dwarf planets transit within days/weeks sun like stars take around a year so it would take 3 years of observation to find an Earth around a sun-like star. But I have heard science communicators imply that what we have detected so far is representative of what is out there which is absurd.
If FTL is impossible(which I doubt since it's only "impossible" in some capacity in Special Relativity. But Special Relativity does not describe our universe, General Relativity does and even that has limits),then not seeing Aliens is not a paradox at all considering radio waves only go out a few light years, and the distances are just too great. And if there are any Alien probes in our solar system sitting on IO or some moon we'd have no idea since we have only done flybys and never truly scanned the surfaces.
I thought on this for a few days. The nature of scientific process, forces us to maintain absolute emphasis on our observation, to an extent which we are willfully ignoring the limitations and scope of our observations.
I wonder who is to blame, is this the current state of scientific studies? or they are actually considering these limitations in the papers, but it is ignored by public? then, is it the science communication to the public that's failing?
I feel shy even bringing up such topics among friends, because it is so far out of the common understanding that it will sound like flat-earth conspiracy to most.
People don't like to hear anything that goes like "we don't know some things at all". There is a comfort in knowing somewhere, some scientist are %100 accurate and know it all.
I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that we have hard evidence of aliens crashing here or visiting our solar system, but you’re going completely the other way and making an extraordinary claim without evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The Drake equation? We can see the stars, we can see the planets (and there are lots of them). We can infer the number of earth-like planets. So where's all the intelligent life?
If you look at all the crazy coincidences that were required for life to develop on Earth, it starts to make sense that we're alone. Single star in the system, need a big Jupiter to block space rocks, our target is a rocky planet close to star, but needs to be hit by an abnormally large moon right as the lithosphere is cooling, ripping out 1/3rd of it so that the planet can have giant continents barely covered with water part of the time, then submerged the rest of the time to the cadence of this moon, oh and has to be the right star type, and etc etc etc.
If it takes something like all that for life to spontaneously erupt, we're likely alone.
That's one example of how life is formed. By someone's definition on wiki, life could be defined as
> self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution
Meaning in a different environments with different moons, stars, temperatures, as long as the environment could support abiogenesis (could be different from what we currently know), life would be able to be sustained but it might be a hell of a lot different.
I don't really know what I'm talking about but surely a different life form would've existed at some point somewhere... Right?
Jupiter directs more rocks towards earth than deflects. But life on earth appeared immediately after it cooled suggesting that the process to start life is relatively straight forward. And life by default adapts and evolves based on it's environment, so how crucial the moon is for life says more about how life on earth adapted than how it can possibly form.
We don't know that any of those conditions are necessary. Right now what it looks like is certain chemistry, which happens to be pretty common, an energy gradient of sufficient magnitude, and relative stability.
If we look at it as crazy coincidences, we can say that the earth is in a very unique state due to the crazy coincidences such that theres nowhere else just like it, but then, theres nowhere like anywhere else and everything that exists is the result of crazy coincidences. So, combinations of crazy coincidences that create very unique places are pretty common, ubiquitous even. So there's likely a lot of very unique places out there with very interesting processes going on.
I don't know if we will ever discover life. I don't know if we will ever observe another intelligence that spontaneously developed. But one thing I'm certain of, there are things going on out there that are more interesting than dead rocks circling even bigger dead rocks.
My theory on this is that intelligence, language and culture are surrounded by very high local maxima and we only got over the hump and down into our minima by incredibly slim chance.
So our original evolutionary advantages were persistance hunting & rock throwing (ranged weapons). This gave us such a huge advantage that we had enough excess energy we could start to develop bigger brains, language and culture (tools). For it to be possible we needed:
* Huge evolutionary advantages (rock throwing? fire to cook? walking upright? sweating?)
* Vocal chords that would let us develop language
* Hands that would let us make tools
And once we have that we can start to evolve intelligence and shared culture. But for a very very long time this was evolving a trait that is an actual hinderance. So we also need for that to be our 'peacocks tail'. A costly trait that is selected _for high cost and total uselessness_. And that trait could've been practically anything else!
Imaigne all the worlds where ranged weapons are developed by a species which just can't do language. Or where they can't make tools only throw rocks they find with their evolved longbow like limbs. They'd conquer the world but that would be it. And that world is now too well optimised for another animal to develop intelligence, they can't afford it.
If this is the case life could be wildly abundant but 'intelligence' more or less unheard of. This is infact what we see in the historical record on earth, there were many epocs of dinosaurs, as far as we know none of them shaped rocks for throwing, had language or developed cultures. In the time we've been around no indepdent intelligent species have evolved (we only see evidence of ones with a common ancestor.)
I think the drake equation suffers from the same fallacy that seems to beset everyone talking about AI. Intelligence is over-rated, it is not a linear thing or a super power where more of it is always better and can solve any problem. It's incredibly costly and often quite useless. Our actual problem solving is more down to trial and error at the level of culture than we like to admit to ourselves.
While I don't really have an opinion either way on whether we're likely alone or not, I just want to point out that the blindspot in this argument is that all those things are truly necessary for life.
This is like a form of the anthropic principle [1], where we think that just because those conditions appear to have been necessary for our evolution (and since Earth life is the only example of life we know), that exactly those conditions must be necessary for life elsewhere.
We may only think that because we evolved here and thus think you must need all of that as we can't think of it any other way.
On another note, you probably are absolutely right and we do need at least some of that. Not too hot or cold. No massive asteroids to destroy everything...etc. I think some of the rest may be negotiable though. Like do you need water? I think yes, buuut maybe some other liquid could work?
Maybe it's emptier than it should be because that's how the universe is always made to appear to emergent civilisations at the dangerous and volatile point of evolution we presently find ourselves at?
Being very generous, in my opinion, and assuming 1 in 2 systems has a planet/moon that is inhabitable by life as we know it, and that 1 in 2 of those has tool-building life at some point, in our galaxy you get something like 1 tool-building civilization per 600,000 square light-years spread out over 12 billion years.
The paradox of ufology is that we can't trust the government because they've been covering up aliens for 70 years, but now we know aliens are real because the government says so.
The only fact I know for certain is that the federal government and military industrial complex has a history of lying and waging information warfare on American citizens. If they tell me aliens are here, there's no way I will believe them. As much as I want to believe, I simply can't, unless I personally have some experience with an alien.
And remember... no matter what happens, no matter what the government or the "aliens" tell you... do not get on the ships!
It's exceptionally likely Trump was kept away from as much intel as they could reasonably keep him from. We know that from things that leaked out after the fact, eg by how General Milley behaved (gave orders to disobey nuclear launch commands coming from Trump).
Friedman had an ex CIA guy on his podcast and he explained how the daily intelligence report worked. Basically the president told them which things he was most interested in. That was in the front and the rest was more CIA judgement.
The CIA is (supposed to) serve at the pleasure of the president.
Now why the hell didn't anyone tell me, when I was say age 11 or 12 or so, that a career path existed whereby one might be able to get a job with the FBI which consists of deliberately trolling people into believing that UFOs exist, with access to effectively limitless resources to make it stick. For actual money, including a government pension.
If that's someone's job specifically, it's probably a small part, and not at all fun, in-context. I think it's also safe to say they wouldn't have unlimited resources.
If they brought in some trustworthy skeptical folks with some tools and enough background to know what compelling nothing looks like, and they came out saying, "Oh man. oh wow. I'm trying to come up with another explanation, but it really seems like they have it."
I'd start taking it seriously.
"Guy who seems trustworthy said it's real and he saw the proof" is so very normal, for aliens, ghosts, various religious phenomena.
"Someone was convinced" isn't compelling to me.
"The specific trustworthy non-believers who were given access to the evidence were convinced" would shake me.
That moves it from "might be a delusion or hoax" to "if it's a hoax/fraud, it's a very good one".
Although, "specific physical / recorded evidence made publicly available for study" would be even better if the evidence is strong. Once you're at "if it's a hoax/fraud, the perpetrator has advanced science we don't" it's a world-changing thing; maybe it's not an alien, but whatever it is it's amazing.
Nothing remotely close to that will ever happen, because the people who care about this don't care. In the same way that you want extraordinary evidence to back up these extraordinary claims, they are prepared to disregard any and all evidence to the contrary in order to continue believing all of those same claims.
If you haven't, I recommend watching the YT minidoc "In Search of a Flat Earth" by Folding Ideas. It's not about the aliens, it's not about the earth being flat, it's about the conspiracy and who is behind it. If you dig deep enough, it's always rooted in some racist or antisemitic world view.
Considering the grift between DoD and Skinwalker Ranch, I am sure we can expect similar fraud throughout. New York Post did a 4 part expose that uncovers this. I highly suggest it. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwfaAz9kxcc
Basically Federal agents became "convinced" that paranormal stuff is happening at Skinwalker ranch, but that is/was because of significant conflict of interest where they earn income from entertainment enterprises (like History Channel) by leaking information to them -- even information which is completely falsified.
The absence of evidence of an invisible dragon in my garage absolutely is not evidence if its absence. It may very well be there. I strongly suspect it isn't, but that's not the same as evidence.
I think GP is referring to the idea that there are a lot of (unlikely) conditions that would all have to turn out to be correct in order for there to be aliens. Not that there is evidence of no aliens, but that you can do thought experiments to guess at the probability that there are, and it doesn't look good.
Things like:
* There have to be enough star systems and planets that could support life. Research here is exploding as we discover more and more exoplanets and are able to gather more detailed information about them. But it's still not clear that it's at all common, and might be breathtakingly uncommon.
* Those star systems and planets that could support life have to actually spawn life. And then they have to spawn intelligent life capable of creating and using tools, and capable of intellectual thought and developing theories and application across physics and engineering. This life needs to be somehow "compatible" with humans, in the sense that it can't be so wildly different that they might not recognize us as intelligent life and vice versa.
* The aliens have to exist "right now". A civilization that existed in the past and fell even a few thousand years ago is not one that we would see. Similarly, a civilization that is, say, 10 thousand years behind us, is not one that we would see.
* These aliens need to actually be interested in the possibility of life outside their own world (or at least interested in generally exploring outside their solar system), and mount a campaign to search the skies and look for us.
* Then the aliens have to have found us. That means that they have been looking in the right spot, at the right time (aliens who live 3000 light years away won't see "us", absent some sci-fi faster-than-light viewing device). Also consider that the amount of effort we've spent to search for alien life could easily be insufficient to find any, even if life turns out to be somewhat common in our galaxy.
* The aliens have to have figured out interstellar travel. Our current understanding of physics suggests that this is Very Hard. Assuming our current understanding of physics is correct, it will be expensive and difficult for these aliens to come visit us. Even assuming we don't have the whole picture when it comes to physics (almost certainly true), that would seem to increase the barrier, not reduce it.
* Even if aliens do manage to find and reach us, they have to either a) want to be seen, or b) screw up and be seen by accident. If they want to be seen, then presumably they'd have done a better job of it (despite various Earth governments trying to hide it) and detailed knowledge of alien life would be common. If they don't want to be seen, then a -- perhaps unlikely -- accident must occur that reveals themselves to at least some of us (whom the rest of humanity don't really believe).
That's just a taste; there's a lot more you can find if you go down the rabbit hole. All of this has to work out for it to be the case that aliens have visited our world. If we assume that each of these events is fairly improbable on their own, than the probability of all of it happening is pretty tiny. Even if we assign decent odds to many of these things, the probability of all of them being true is still fairly low. Doesn't mean it definitively hasn't happened, but probability it usually pretty suggestive.
You know this never occurred to be before, but seams obvious in hindsight. It popped into my head while reading your comments.
If you can flash a light bright enough to be seen by other civilization you can communicate with them at light speed. Then once you convince your communication partners to build machines and run programs you send them, your AI's can "travel" at light speed.
Once the AI has arrived it can start communicating without the light speed lag and things really start moving. The AI could build UFO's locally using the science and tech of its own culture.
If your aliens are just data, light speed travel doesn't sound that far fetched.
If we assume GPT4 is a trillion parameters, each 16 bits, then this would require 5000 years to transmit (quite aside from any error correction or the description of how the parameters should be arranged).
I would hope that our AI would be able to bootstrap to FTL in that time.
I hope you have some very good data correction to go with that data transfer. Beaming light/radio into space is going to get a ton of interference and loss.
How is it fundamentally illogical? I mean I'm skeptical as hell, but one possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that there is no paradox because there are aliens here.
I'm willing to put aside literally every mechanical interpretation of probability here, ignoring really poignant questions, in favor of one overarching question:
Do you really, really think a species capable of interstellar travel would have vehicles or crafts that we could recognize as such? That feels more like a technology 100-200 years ahead of us, akin to science fiction, than the reality of a species hundreds of thousands or MILLIONS of years ahead of us technologically, whose existences would simply be fucking incomprehensible to the human eye or mind.
The conception that such entities are travelling the galaxy in dinky little craft is completely absurd.
They could probably scan our fucking souls and create replicas of our qualia with technology from the interstellar equivalent of a Walgreens.
Or, more likely, they simply have technologies that we can in no capacity conceive of or understand at all.
> Do you really, really think a species capable of interstellar travel would have vehicles or crafts that we could recognize as such?
Yes. That is, they almost certainly use objects made out of actual atoms to travel it or whatever the hell. There are almost no hints, with the possible exception of dark matter, in even the most speculative of well -grounded physics, of anything else they could be using. So that's the the null hypothesis. And the mere presence of that object in an interaction is enough to recognize it with high confidence as a vehicle.
People get too obsessed with the idea of technology indistinguishable from magic. Physics is still real, still imposes hard constraints on technology, and our tech is already sufficiently shaped by those constraints that other things within those constraints will at least be recognizable with some effort. We may not know how it works right away, but that's a very different question.
Have you heard of a really smart guy named "Isaac Newton"?
Well, his ideas are only ~300 solar years established and observations in quantum mechanics have opened a realm of complete impossibility to a Newtonian worldview.
You asked, analogously, if he would be able to recognize the F-35 as a vehicle. All it would take is watching one land and seeing the pilot climb out to make it absolutely clear to him.
The fundamental issue is that people really have no intuition as to how unfathomably gigantic space is.
Traveling Mars to Earth would require some decent tech. Traveling from the next star over requires some mind-bending tech. An entity traveling from the next galaxy over would necessarily be in possession of just some truly incomprehensible technology and would probably exist on spatial and temporal scales that just cannot be loaded into our ape brains via our sensory organs.
Just playing devils advocate though: okay, but couldn't they also just have really high-tech ships in a primitive shape (like a sphere, for aesthetic reasons) with really fast engines and really strong hulls, too? Maybe we're simply too limited in our naive essence to understand the technology behind such a simple premise.
I mean, sure, the odds are not zero. But they seem very, very, very, very close to zero (to me).
And then the odds go down further that they have tech that can move them 10,000+ light years in a palatable amount of time/energy for them to visit Earth.
Then the odds go down further by the fact that, if they exist with that broad a view of the universe, Earth is almost certainly not worth visiting.
Then the odds go down further by the fact that we have allegedly detected and recovered them?
Not zero but it really is astronomically low, even if you have high conviction the universe is actually teeming with life.
Its not crazy to me to think that there is something here.
But that it doesn't care if we see it or not. There is not much of it so we just don't see it often.
Who know what we recovered? Perhaps just some discarded waste, perhaps the result of internal conflict. Neither seems crazy.
I like to think the Earth _is_ very special given "life", and that we are just about to start our own exploration of the galaxy (on galactic timescales)
It's really only a few hundred years before we mount an artificial general inelegance in the front of some rocket and shoot it at the nearest sun.
Can you imagine recovering alien technology, and the best we have to show for it is an iphone, with East Asia starting to lap us in things like semiconductor manufacturing?
You'd sure thing ALIUM technology would be useful for Intel to leapfrog Asia's foundaries.
I think a modern jet is similar enough to a bird that animals created millions of years ago (prehistoric birds) can have some basic understanding on how it behaves.
What makes you think just because it’s millions of years more evolved we wouldn’t be able to get the general gist of what it does ? (not how it does it, of course)
That's a mere 2-3000 years of technology with large periods of stagnation.
Give Churhill/Stalin/Hitler an iPhone.
They now have access to a device of unparalleled ability compared to anything they could have conceived of, and they will simply be completely incapable of understanding or utilizing it outside of performing basic tasks.
That's 60 years of the accelerated age of technology we live in.
I'd be happy to explain any of this to Aristotle. "It's a picture that draws its itself. Here, touch it." We do this every day with children. Ten thousand years o development and you're caught up in five. It's fine!
My point is that our relative distance in time and technology is basically zero, yet we're already seeing massive gaps in capability.
Yes, Aristotle would likely be able to pick up on the new monke uptake given that he was a unparallelled mind. That was a pretty weak analogy given it didn't impart the information that I intended.
You can give an infant an ipad and they will figure out how to use it pretty quickly. They will have an understanding of its purpose. You merely extrapolate from our advances of 5000 years that there must be technology that is inconceivably advanced.
Though he did not believe in it, Aristotle was aware of the concept of atoms (that he had no hope of observing). I am sure he would have gotten the gist of quantum physics too.
This is why I dont understand why people expect UFOs to have lights on them. Or when they see lights they go to UFO.
Why ? Why would external lights be helpful when travelling interstellar distances. Then if you have the technology to travel these vast distances so quickly, why would you need lights when darting about at "slow" terrestrial speeds, the technology you must have to navigate and avoid things must be so beyond just lights... You almost certainly aren't navigating in anything that remotely resembles looking out your craft ?
It just makes no sense to me. IT's why I assume if anyone mentions a UFO when talking about lights in the sky I'm totally convinced it's terrestrial in nature.
While I completely agree with you on interstellar travel, I'd like to add the nuance that you seem to assume that there is no life in the Solar system other than on Earth.
That could very well be true... but we're not even confident ruling out life on Mars completely, and we landed there and took soil samples and explored.
Honestly, if there are extraterrestrials on Earth, I'd wager my hat that they're from somewhere in the Solar system. Just because the alternative is even more unlikely -- as you rightly argue.
No local drones or Dyson spheres, but we're cohabitating with a species capable of intra-solar travel?
Seems highly suspect. They'd need to be at roughly our level of technological development, which, if true, would be more likely to believe in a concept of "God" engineering that outcome than any kind of organic alien life.
Not only that, but when they're here on Earth they get from point A to point B by actually traveling the distance through the air. Slow enough for us to see. You'd think these aliens with FTL technology would just appear to us as popping in and out of existence when they change position.
They seem a little too domestic. It reminds me of how ancient people thought the Sun rode across the sky in a chariot. Because how else would the Sun get around but the same way we do?
And after they fly across the universe for millions of light years, they immediately crash for Uncle Sam to retrieve them. Or no, actually Uncle Sam immediately shoots them down with his pew pew rockets that travel at infinitesimally low speeds.
Given the enormity of the universe and the seeming[0] impossibility of FTL travel, plus the complete absence of astronomical observation of extraterrestrial civilization, and the incredibly tiny (on astronomical scales) window of time in which we have data, any other explanation for pretty much any phenomena we care to observe will be more likely than "aliens did it".
Even if we pretended aliens wouldn't be able to surpass FTL, Von Neumann probes only take half a million years to spread across an entire galaxy, which is a grain of sand of time in cosmological timescales.
"Let's take a look at one of John von Neumann's most fascinating contributions to science: the Von Neumann probe. Simply put, a Von Neumann probe is a self-replicating device that could, one day, be used to explore every facet of the Milky Way in a relatively small window of time.
The general idea is to build a device out of materials that are readily available and easily accessible out in space, like on rocky planets or small moons. Once it finds a suitable destination, it lands and mines the material it needs to build even more devices, which, in turn, land on other planets and moons and build even more.
The system is very effective, and by some estimates, it would take around half a million years to dispatch millions of probes across our galaxy, assuming each one travels at approximately 1/10th the speed of light, or 18,640 miles (30,000 km) per second (though the real number could be closer to ten million years, which is still no time at all in the grand scheme of things)."
What confidence do we have that we'd actually observe these probes? If one was orbiting, say, Saturn or Jupiter (or one of their moons) right now, would we definitely have seen it? Or if it were something in a wide solar orbit?
And then there's the general time scale. I agree that half a million years (or even 10 million years) isn't much in the grand scheme of things. But it matters to us: what if this alien civilization sent them out 50 thousand years ago? They may not have gotten to us yet. Or what if they were sent out 100 million years ago? It's unclear if they'd still exist today, or if they would have broken down, their repair and replication systems failing after all those years; even if they are still around, maybe the civilization that sent them out doesn't exist anymore.
Also consider that building these probes is pretty much at or beyond the limit of our technological capabilities right now. We might be able to build enough of them as a seed fleet if we devoted tens of trillions of dollars to the project. And accelerating something to 0.1c is nothing to sneeze at either. Remember that they also have to decelerate from that speed in order to find targets for mining in order to fuel themselves and their replication systems, or even just to enter orbit around a planet or star. They'd require some pretty advanced software to run them, too.
I've seen quite a few articles and videos on Von Neumann probes, created by people I respect, but even many of them acknowledge that building these and sending these out would not be a small undertaking. A civilization that did so would have to be at a point where they've solved most of their problems at home (or be in dire need of finding a new home, but at the same time able to wait thousands or millions of years to find one) before they could justify taking this on.
(Remember, the person upthread isn't talking about the mere existence of aliens. They were talking about the improbability of us having some evidence or experience of their existence.)
Here are some things that were, at some point, long considered to be physically impossible:
-Deep sea exploration
-DNA sequencing and cloning
-Flight
-Long-range electric power
-Microbes
-Organ transplants
-Solar panels
I understand the enormity of the proposition of things such as FTL travel. But just saying "it doesn't have a fit within our current framework of understanding, so it's impossible and a moot point" seems a little...conceited, given all the historical precedents of exactly the opposite becoming true, eventually, given enough public interest.
> There's literally no level of evidence I would accept because the premise is contrary to numerous, basic logical inferences
Sounds like you'd accept something that breaks the basic known science then. If they could demonstrate any tech which does not exist, or is wildly outside of the current limits, would that convince you? For example energy use allowing interplanetary travel in a vehicle of unreasonably small size.
It’s not a fancy alien who crashed. It’s a drone from a fleet of paperclip producing ai swarms. It crash landed here, but 1000 others didn’t crash, and they’re already at work secretly converting the earth to paperclips
The paperclip ai swarm’s origin story: some tech startup from 100 light years away screwed up their ai system and went extinct / got turned into paperclips
The universe is devoid of life because all of it, everywhere, has been converted to paperclips by various civilizations badly tuned ai systems. They don’t send out radio signals because, obviously, they need to grow as strong as possible before meeting other paperclip systems; so their kind of paperclips will win
You can always crash, given that mechanic failure happens all the time.
Plus, you might not be able to recover from that failure, e.g. stuck on a planet forever, given that you do not have the material to repair the ship.
You are probably thinking, how come such an advanced species cannot repair its own ship? Well we humans can rarely repair our own ship, we usually rely on professionals to do that. Now that advanced species will have much more advanced systems that no individual can achieve that. Even if they rely on AI, what if AI system broke?
Can someone explain to me why the phone in my pocket is literally 6000 times as fast as my childhood computer and yet still regularly laggy, slow, and broken?
It would seem as though such things would be ridiculous but clearly no matter how far ahead you are in some metric or another, things are still going to be shit now and then.
Are our machines really all that much more reliable than they were 20, 50, 100, 150 years ago? The answer is meh, no, it's a mixed bag. Advancement hasn't made everything have magical quality and reliability. Some things are a lot better, some things are a lot worse.
If FTL exists there is no reason to believe without knowing specifics that achieving it requires a particular level of improvement over present development. It be technologically behind us along a path not taken or just ahead. There is a fantastic little short story exploring this idea its only a few pages.
If FTL isn't a factor its not necessary for them to have survived millions of years. Maybe we shall be ready to undertake such journeys in a century and perhaps suitable targets exist only decades journey away.
Lastly even capable humans sometimes make simple stupid mistakes. No reason to hold our neighbors to infinitely high standards. Centuries of progress didn't stop us from losing a space probe because of a failure to convert units properly.
Humans crash probes into interstellar bodies all the time. “Wreckage” could be fragments of some unmanned craft, like a von neumann probe, creators unknowably many light years away and maybe long dead.
Interesting to consider how that revelation might change life very little overall.
I agree that intuitively it seems to not make sense, but with regard to your specific points, and assuming that there's actually more than a nothingburger behind this whole story:
1. I wouldn't necessarily assume FTL. But even if we assume "arbitrarily technologically advanced," there's no reason to think that any technology will ever have an absolute 0% chance of failure.
2. It only has to be sufficiently peaceful to not wipe itself out.
3. I don't think AI doing things changes either of the previous two points.
What I find harder to believe is that humans would be able to get their hands on a crashed alien craft and keep it.
It's also an assumption that the pilot of the craft is from the same species that manufactured it. Perhaps the technology was gifted to them by a superior civilization, or maybe they stole it, or maybe they're a genetically engineered descendant of an advanced species that died off millions of years ago without recalling its probes with their hibernating pilots.
What evidence do we have that they traveled faster than light rather than, say, leaving a very, very, very long time ago? Or launching something in our direction, in hopes of generations surviving, but they didn't manage to, so there's nobody on board anymore?
Or why couldn't they just have significantly misidentified what it would take to navigate in our atmosphere and have sent a ship that wasn't prepared, and didn't have a way to realize it wasn't prepared?
>What evidence do we have that they traveled faster than light rather than, say, leaving a very, very, very long time ago?
We would see a generation ship coming. It would be big, it would give off waste heat, it would probably have to stay in orbit, if we're assuming it follows physics we're familiar with, it would have to use chemical or nuclear rocket propulsion, dump waste and need constant refueling and maintenance.
So either they have warp drives and magical tech bullshit or they don't exist. Those are the two options.
You're assuming the intelligent species is anywhere close to the size of human beings. And that their generations are anything like our generations. You're assuming that they eat like we do, or weigh as much as we do.
Just because a human generation ship would have to be large, it doesn't mean some other species' generation ship would have needed to be.
To account for the size of the various UFOs that have been seen, if those accounts are to be taken at face value, we don't seem to be dealing with space smurfs.
You can attribute those achievements to entire species, but entire species do not drive vehicles--individuals do. Imagine a species with a mean IQ of 150. If such a species had a IQ distribution similar to ours, around ~2% of them would be as dumb as the average human, with almost half of them being dumber than a human 'genius'--and we don't expect human geniuses to be infallible!
I'm trying to think of any sci-fi stories where the aliens are lost tourists or similar. They are usually presumed to be scientists or government representatives checking out Earth and/or humankind.
Maybe ET? -- I don't think that's explained? It's been a lot of years since I saw it.
The reality is that the government is interested in unexplained phenomenon primarily for security reasons. That statement does not say nor imply "Belief in aliens means you're a nutter!" I just get really tired of people acting like "They study this stuff because they know there really are aliens visiting Earth!"
The novel Waiting for the Galactic Bus is about two immortal energy beings who get stranded on prehistoric Earth while on the immortal-energy-being equivalent of a Spring Break bender, and decide to help these cute li'l apes develop civilization to pass the time.
If true, I'm curious to know how the government even came into possession of such non-human aircraft.
E.g.
- did they shoot it down? (this seems to contradict the claims that the aircraft can perform unrealistic maneuvers like massive acceleration / extreme changes in vector)
- did some random farmer stumble upon the craft? (then why didn't the farmer post photos of it online and/or speaking out about it)
- where was it found and where is it today?
Note: I'm not saying there isn't ET. But some first principle questions seems like they need to be answered before people jump to conclusions.
Aliens are notoriously bad drivers. Have you seen those videos where they just hover in the sky and then zoom off? Homeboy's gonna catch an intergalactic DUI.
My favorite theory is that the government periodically leaks this stuff so that junior military members are less scared to report weird stuff they see (stuff that could be new enemy tech)
“Sergeant, I’m telling you, I saw floating meta orbs - it’s aliens! The pentagon said they exist!”
As I recall this was explicitly spelled out as the reason when the Pentagon first started being more open about their UAP programs. I can't find the source now because "UAP" is ungoogleable now under all the sensationalized sources.
EDIT—found it with "site:*.mil":
> The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.
It would be absurd to think that some organization _doesn't_ have a _plan_, or perhaps even an entire team prepared, for handling retrieval of an unidentified craft, right? Even if it's never happened, surely there's a plan for handling something weird falling from the sky. That's definitely someone's job...
Now, if that playbook is seen by someone and then goes through several games of telephone I wouldn't be shocked if it turned into "we have retrieved vehicles of non-human origin."
My epistemic claim after having dived deep into this topic from a rational and analytical perspective, is that it's all true.
And as crazy it sounds there may also be a mystical component to reality that conventional science cannot (currently) explain.
The topic is vast and deep and may have profound implications about humanity and the universe. But like many, we can only speculate until more hard data is released and further research into this "phenomenon" is conducted.
It is my opinion that the decline in US Christianity has not reduced the underlying religiosity, and the population that would previously have been firm believers in angels/demons/gods/etc. have directed their desire to believe to something else. UFOs are one of many such alternatives.
Several times now I've seen birds that I didn't recognize or planes that didn't look like the normal airliners or small private planes that are common here and taken photos, only to find that the photo is a pretty much unrecognizable blob.
If the rotation of the craft is simply due to a rotation of the camera, why do the clouds not also rotate? I’ve only skimmed the video but he doesn’t seems to account for this relative rotation between the craft and clouds…
As much as I want to believe that the truth is out there. It seems highly improbable that every craft that has crashed ever has done so in the territory of the small number of countries with the motives, resources and strict governance to recover and hide these artifacts with zero shreds of physical evidence.
I’m certain there are plenty of countries and groups that would proudly parade around a crashed UFO if it came down on their soil. Maybe these craft spend 99% of their time hanging out over highly secure US military sites.
Sounds pretty boring to me to come all this way to observe ancient technology.
I'm waiting for either, a) the rug pull after a credulous alternative media piles in, and then some minister says, "see, this is why we need to regulate social media" or b) the triple-down by politicians saying that the existence of aliens gives them a mandate to redistrubte everything immediately, supported by people who believe normal rules of humanity don't apply anymore because they've been told about aliens, and a bunch of other people who stand by and watch hoping nobody will come for them.
It’s exactly this. It’s not just aircraft, either, but aircraft designed to disrupt other aircraft’s instrumentation.
There is a white hat team somewhere in the DoD whose only job is to develop technology and software to make other aviation software instrumentation fail or perform incorrectly. It would be absurd if this were NOT the case.
There's a breaking news blast on at the moment with the uap whistleblower. Thoughts on the following? If anything, whatever that's happening this time really does feel different.
The truth of the matter is that some dude in the military once told a journalist something like "it's hard to control an LLM: if you tell it to kill people, and then an operator tries to override that, it might kill the operator or go for the comms tower" and the journalist reported it as "Air Force drone kills operator if told to stop; destroys comms tower".
Given that, we know there's a lot of people who will claim extraordinary things. So, chances are that some sucker (of which the military will have a whole bunch on account of being so large) completely misinterpreted something completely inane and decided that aliens are here.
Zero specific claims. Zero evidence examined by the person making the allegations. All hearsay.
To top it off, the focus of the story, David Charles Grusch, is a "a former intelligence official."
Pardom me for disregarding this as the diversion it appears to be. The US military has quite a track record on this kind of thing. It's not hard to think of reasons why such diversions might be deployed right now, either.
Maybe some kind of physical evidence - any physical evidence - will be presented. If so, I'm happy to change my mind. Until then, there's zero compelling reason to believe any of it and every reason to think Grusch either a liar or a stooge.
> To top it off, the focus of the story, David Charles Grusch, is a "a former intelligence official."
"From 2019-2021, he was the representative of the reconnaissance office to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the co-lead for UAP analysis at the NGA and its representative to the task force."
> Zero specific claims.
The specific claim is that he has provided to congress documentation on successful non-human craft retrieval programs hidden from congress, under oath. He makes no claims about the projects other than that he was not a part of them and that he was provided said documentation on them.
The U.S. Inspector General called the claims "credible and urgent" and congress is planning a session on them.
UFOlogy would be interesting if it ever made any effort to make engineering, science or biological sense. But these guys always have stories that dovetail with current fashions.
Back in the day I believed in some of this stuff because there were stories from the 60's about alien remains that looked like insects. Because of course they'd have to sustain high g's crossing light years. They'd also be very lightweight, to keep the mass down. Completely sensical.
Then somebody made up warp drives and every account switched to gray humanoids. Every conspiracy is so low effort and lazy now. But millions will believe it.
Aliens just seem to love the USA, don't they? Just like giant prehistoric sea monsters seem to love Japan. It's totally not a cover-up for another black project.
The only thing aliens love more than the USA is to troll fighter pilots and military bases. Somehow despite all of the cameras and tracking technology these vehicles and locations have, the aliens still manage to avoid being caught on camera and only make their appearance obvious to a few first-hand observers.
You might appreciate Superman Red Son which explores what could have happened if Kal-El landed on a Ukrainian farm instead of Kansas. It's obviously got bias but it's fun to think about what happens if all the hero "stuff" didn't happen in the US.
Culturally, Godzilla in Japan very much came out of the fear of nuclear weapons and radiation post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- a monster awakened and empowered by nuclear weapons [1].
I've never been super clear on what the cultural reason for aliens <-> USA is though. Although I suppose it's different in that Godzilla was an intentional fictional creation, while the fascination with aliens hopes they're actually real.
There have been reports of aliens, alien crashes and recovery, etc. all over the world[0]. The reason it's primarily seen as an American phenomenon is that the whole culture and mythos originated in the US, first in the late 1940s with the Kenneth Arnold sighting[1] (where the term "flying saucer" originated) and later Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Whitley Streiber's Communion codified the "grey alien/abduction" motif (although there were prior stories like the Pascagoula abduction[2], notable for the aliens described as looking nothing like greys) and of course the X-Files. The rest of the world likely absorbed the UFO archetype through cultural osmosis. Also Americans simply aren't going to be aware of UFO reports from other countries unless they go out of their way to look for them.
In 1979, Ricardo Vilchez, one of the project team members, sent the photograph to an organization in the United States called Ground Saucer Watch (GSW) which analyzes these types of cases. GSW determined that the image was true and unadulterated, reported CRHoy.
Sierra [a UFO researcher] said the photograph was analyzed in France and the United States by different organizations that studied the case, and all confirmed the object’s existence.
We only have word of mouth from UFO researchers citing unnamed "organizations" to verify this. I'd want to see an independent, accredited and non UFO related team actually study the negatives and such. Otherwise it's just another picture on the internet. It is a really good picture, though. Classic shiny flying saucer.
Although I am concerned about the shape of the reflections in this "high res" version[0], they don't look right to me.
There are very prosaic reasons for the popularity of UFO sightings in the USA.
1. The gdp per capita per cloudless land area is far higher than anywhere else. Africa and Australia have lots of empty sky but relatively no-one is out and about during night time. Plus USA does some have some interesting weather. So the opportunities to see anomalous (yet very terrestrial) phenomena is high.
2. The concern that comes from being the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, that others are trying to infiltrate. (I was almost going to use fear or paranoia instead of concern, but some of the concern is warranted)
3. USA is the center of world culture. Everything American is amplified via Hollywood and music.
Supposing (for sake of argument) they're real, Americans' broad deployment of advanced avionics could mean we're simply more likely to detect them. Secondly, cultural factors could increase risk of leaks, compared to Russian and Chinese detections. Third, tight control of Russian and Chinese media can suppress any serious discourse. That's enough to give an impression that UFO encounters are an American thing.
Off topic but somewhat related... As of late, I've really enjoyed watching FPV racing drone footage on YouTube. And it's made wonder - if commercial drones currently on the market are capable of this:
You gotta love the implied premise that there's a problem to be solved, because of course that's all our government is good for: solving problems it creates.
I think the problem here is the government's tendency to lie to its citizens. The solution is unrelated to aliens.
I think one of the most effective strategies of conspiracy theory content relates to exactly this point. You bypass the examination of evidence, and entertain theories that would take evidence as given. I remember a video my stepdad saw about Aliens On The Moon, supposedly there to harvest H3, that, instead of asking whether it was true, asked "what do they want?", and "what are they intending to do?" And there was a part about a grainy picture of the moon, with a narrator suggesting looked like there was a cannon-style weapon, asserting that "experts believe" it is aimed at Earth, implying that it's to keep Earth from challenging them for the precious H3.
Just like that, you are pulled into a story, with all kinds of psychological threads. You run before you're able to walk, essentially, and you get people caught up running, and you can backdoor the presumption that the underlying premise was indeed established.
So, I completely agree at there's such a peculiar note being struck by this implied premise.
If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research, I’d want to learn about them.
Everyone’s already encountered the starting conditions in most other countries. US is the only one winning Civilization Earth. I’m a naturalized US citizen, for example. Could have ended up anywhere but it’s best here in terms of opportunity and making new stuff.
Depends what you mean by winning. Other countries have different priorities, for instance the health and welfare of the population over individual wealth. That doesn't make one right or wrong, but it really this reflects on your priorities more than anything else. And that's ok! I'm just saying it's subjective, not objective, and there's no reason to believe that some aliens would share your personal beliefs in re: superiority and therefore prioritize observations there.
What other win conditions would you add? The US is not the only country that conquers and exports culture, civilizations have been doing that since the first hunter gatherer planted some cereals on the banks of their closest river.
Some members of the Chinese government take the view that anyone of Chinese ancestry is fundamentally Chinese, regardless of where they live or to whom they pledge allegiance; they would presumably consider "our descendants are X% of the world population" to be as much of a victory condition as "we control X% of the world's surface area".
Some members of the Russian government take the view that anyone who can speak Russian is fundamentally Russian; they would presumably consider "X% of the world population speaks Russian" to be a victory condition.
Many religious groups consider "X% of the world shares our beliefs" to be a victory condition, of course.
I don't share any of these positions, but of course I come from a Western Liberal background.
I can never understand the desire to pretend that human nature isn't the same around the world. I think it's the same instinct that causes people to pine for the good old days.
Right. Like everyone has the same instincts as the Japanese to clean up their spaces after their are used. It’s why our stadiums in the US are so clean and well maintained.
That's not an instinct, it's a cultural norm strictly enforced by societal pressure. You also seem to have forgotten that the Japanese made one of the biggest plays for military dominance in the modern era. They followed that up with a really good attempt at economic dominance.
Well if we’re making silly reductive arguments I’m not sure they’d care how many zeroes are in Warren Buffets brokerage account. But you know EADS/Airbus headquarters is in Toulouse if that’s more your speed. There’s also Alstom and SNCF off hand. TotalEnergies. Hermes. Dior. Sanofi. Schneider Electric. Air Liquide. Essilor. You didn’t think they were agrarians did you? They’re the second biggest economy in Europe!
Definitely. There are some cool badass things in EU. There is also the French military industrial complex, a mini version of US. That said, I was shocked to learn about average software engineering salaries in Europe. Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies? And pay their engineers like kings? That'd be cool and give a strong reality check for California.
For now, I'll honestly take 2.5x salary in US over pretty much any other place. And I love guns (own several).
> Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies?
The regulations are onerous and the taxes are high. Why would anyone take the extreme risks associated with building a high-risk high-reward business when everyone gets in your way and most of the reward upside would just get taken from you anyway?
Because if you fail, you're not destitute and without healthcare - while success still leads to a materially better lifestyle.
Specifically because the risks aren't nearly as extreme and the rewards are still very good.
You really don’t get materially more of your yield taken from you in France than you do in California where top marginal tax rate is over 50%. And that rate clearly doesn’t stop anyone in California. Imagine Steve Jobs going hmmm, I would start Apple but the top tax rate is like 5% higher than it could be, I’m just going back to bed then.
Comparing top marginal tax rates is kinda silly - makes much more sense to pick some "normal" ish salary or salary range (or just your current salary or expected future salary) and compare total percentage taken at that level.
The top federal and (California) state tax brackets both start at over 500k, and you'd have to be earning significantly more than that even for it to start affecting your overall tax percentage very much.
Why would anyone take the extreme risk of starting any business at all in the United States unless they were already financially independent?
Also this idea that taxes are lower in the US is mostly bullshit - once you add together state income + sales + federal + healthcare insurance costs it's not meaningfully different from many European/Australasian nations.
> Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies?
It's a good question, my guess is network effects. The people who would want to do this want to be near other people who would want to do this - and the biggest extant pool is in California.
> For now, I'll honestly take 2.5x salary in US over pretty much any other place.
Yeah, that's basically my situation too. Honestly probably closer to 4-5X annually what I'd make back home. Nominally, not adjusted for PPP of course.
> And I love guns (own several).
Haha, we don't have to agree on this one - although I will say they are super fun to shoot.
> Haha, we don't have to agree on this one - although I will say they are super fun to shoot.
I am the opposite. I own them for the philosophy of autonomy, freedom and individualism that guns imbibe. Target shooting isn't that much fun in cities (indoor ranges), only if you go out to the country.
This tweet describes it all:
---
The Bill of Rights feels intense today, but try reading it in the mindset of someone in 1791.
A few years removed from Louis XVI selling Divine Right of Kings.
Then suddenly “Hell no, also we’re gonna say and print whatever we want, you can’t search us, and everyone gets guns.”
lol, 1791 was a long-ass time ago, and the flintlock era is long past. Also they all had slaves and didn't believe women had the right to vote, and that black people were people. Franklin likely lost his mind to syphilis. There's no sense putting on a hat that doesn't fit. I prefer to evaluate the role of guns from first principles in the current world not the age of dysentery and cholera. Times change and laws evolve. It's a good thing.
I've never understood the elevation of the founding fathers to infallible deities. They had some good ideas, and some terrible ideas, and that doesn't detract from what they accomplished.
The 1st amendment was written in the era of printing presses - should we scrap that too? After all, there's no way they could have predicted the internet.
Not at all, we should evaluate each one on its own merits and be open to changing them if they're not longer relevant or interesting. Especially if it's actively harmful. In what way do you think the 1st amendment is no longer relevant, interesting and is harmful?
I can very much explain my opinions in re the 2nd.
Each amendment is independent and invalidating one does nothing to any other.
But looks if you can convince me the 1st amendment needs a revisit, I'd be open to it. I don't think so, but a compelling case would change my mind.
I 100% agree. I hate guns and love freedom of speech. As a centrist i got to say that liberals are just as cunning as extreme right.
For example, liberals support gay rights but don't dare to condemn muslims who hold/preach hatred towards gays and defend wearing burq as a good thing that ever happened to muslim women.
Like I said we can agree to disagree. My question would be why stop with this analytical framework on the 2nd amendment? How would the founding fathers feel about the 14th? Not great, I wager, given, you know. How does that mesh with the modern world? It feels disingenuous to only harken back to them on things we think they'd like and ignore their opinion on things we're pretty sure they'd take issue with.
I guess my point is, in your hypothetical question about imagining life in 1791... you mean as a straight, white, male right? Because if I'm anything other than that particular combo, dude, I can't tell you I'd arrive at the conclusion you want me to. 14th wasn’t until 1866. Women couldn’t vote until the 19th in 1920. That's not an argument for guns so much as it's an argument for 'being top dog is pretty good.'
Do you think Aliens would (if they wanted to) rather make first contact in a place where it's relevant now more than ever to own guns, or in a place where it's less so?
Inequality is a feature, not a bug as long as the standards for everyone improves. The problem is that the lowest has not seen improvement in certain areas.
Inequality is a term so alluring to mid-IQ activists. I'll take today's inequality vs. poverty of 100 years ago. The world has improved, period.
Similarly, I'll take a nation full of extreme inequality if their average standards of living are better than say, Honduras.
Agreed. Another way to also look at this is that if 95% of the people's median (not average) shifts upwards, I'll accept the trade offs. That's improvement for vast majority of the people.
"The notion of invasions by aliens was a projection of the aggressive traits of the predatory, barely civilized ape-man. If he himself willingly did unto others as he would rather not be done by, then he pictured the Advanced Civilization on much the same principle. Flotillas of galactic battleships were supposed to fall upon unsuspecting little planets, to lay hands on the local dollars, diamonds, chocolates, and, of course, beautiful women — for whom aliens had about as
much use as we did for female crocodiles."
It likely would be the biggest threat given the weapons tech though. You generally want to study the things that pose the biggest threat for self preservation.
This is highly speculative on both of our parts. I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat to an entity that traveled >4ly. It sounds a lot like picking which classical civilization to study based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber.
It was an interplanetary endeavour. Unfortunately, some programmers encoded intersystem travel using the Universal Unit, while others used the Multiversal Metric System.
"I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat"
You don't have to be a threat, just appear as the biggest possible one.
"based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber."
One has to know what a bow is and that they only have bows to come to that summary conclusion. If you have no knowledge of the capabilities, caution is warranted - whether we're talking about civilizations or a new species of spider.
If you somehow found a way to get a wooden arrow with a stone arrowhead on it into the engine of a Stealth Bomber at the wrong time and place, you may very well cause a big fireworks show. Less has taken down the engines of commercial airliners when a screw comes loose or something.
Advanced technology != invincibility. Actually, a lot of times the more advanced tech is, the more vulnerable it is to catastrophic failure.
We're talking about beings capable of harnessing enough energy to travel interstellar distances, possibly even harnessing (let's say for the sake of argument) strange new physics like warp drive or wormholes. They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output, and they'll be able to tell from light-years away. No species that hasn't already colonized their solar system or started mining the plasma from their home star is going to be worth worrying about.
I think advanced aliens would laugh at our kardashev scale and say "well it's a lot more nuanced than that" especially considering we don't see a single shred of evidence that anyone out there has a dyson swarm. It's probably the wrong metric to use. If they're up there, whatever they're up to, it's probably really interesting and not just about energy consumption.
> If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research, I’d want to learn about them.
Sounds like they'd care more about China/South Korea/Japan/Taiwan/etc then.
Not really, most great tech originates in the US. China etc are good at copying. I know that’s an unfashionable statement, but let’s do away with this false modesty for once
This isn’t true. TSMC is using EUV tech all funded by Intel. If the US were sufficiently motivated by a Taiwanese fall to China, a fab would be brought up somewhere else quickly with the support of the US (if not in the US).
They've done it several times. Samsung is Korean, Sony japanese and OnePlus Chinese, to name a few. Sorry to burst your bubble but outside north America, most people use Android.
I don't know. I feel like the countries without constant gun violence, where the government is actually capable of passing legislation, where the people actually accept that they live in a society with some acknowledgement of social responsibilities, and can access healthcare and education without incurring a lifetime of crippling debt, are currently winning at civilization a bit harder.
Being the richest and the most capable at propaganda and world-ending violence isn't the same as being the most civilized.
So... Switzerland, which has the Large Hadron Collider? That would probably be the most attractive thing to aliens. Maybe France, which is building ITER? Or the UK with a successful early nuclear fusion test?
I mean it's cool that the US has YouTube and big pieces of metal that shoot smaller pieces of metal and all. Also they launch rockets, but everybody launches rockets. I'm just not sure aliens would be that interested in that, more like "secrets of the universe" type stuff that we're getting closer to.
You both have a point, but I'd like to add that maybe aliens aren't as interested in shiny things like collider's and plasma and all that, and more interested in organizations of living things that control resource flow across the oceans, which the US does for the entire world. If I was an alien that already understood the bosons and all that, it would be cool to watch a monkey planet figure that out, but I wouldn't learn much. But I could learn from an organizational structure with unilateral force projection capabilities across all specimens of this creature. There are things the US does that are mighty interesting.
Sure, you might also be just as interested in a society capable of working towards something like the LHC or ITER, by taking care of its citizens and through diplomacy. I think it's a more interesting goal than controlling the seas so that people can get cheap trinkets from China.
And don't get me wrong, I'm just as addicted to my trinkets from China as anybody else, and I benefit from US hegemony. Just trying to think from a total outsider's perspective.
It's funny how people confuse "most powerful nation" with "best nation". We have the biggest guns, and the most money, and the most prisoners, so we're #1. (Just ignore literally all other rankings)
>If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research
If the ship of such an incredibly advanced civilization came across Earth then the differences between US technology & that of other parts of the world would require an anthropological microscope for them to detect. Like us looking back on Western vs. Eastern roman empire circa 400-500 C.E. and trying to decide which was more advanced. (well, at least < 476 C.E... being conquered is going to take one side down a few pegs)
Why of course. The coolest monkeys are the ones with the biggest bombs and fastest jets, right. Not the ones who have a knowledge of love so intimate they wrote an entire book just about sex positions. Of course, the aliens that can expend Jupiter's worth of energy to travel at lightspeed are impressed by the monkeys with the fastest planes, not the ones who claim they found a peace so profound it encompasses the universe.
I think the super advanced aliens aren't showing themselves because we're letting a bunch of auto-fellating monkeys run the planet
The deltas between the military/technology of the worlds top economies might not even be noteworthy to a species capable of interstellar travel. From there perspective we might just all look the same.
Some folks seem to think it's intentionally absurd. I thought about playing along and chatting up how New York is clearly the capital of the world if you don't realize us savages lack a world government, but all my comedian friends have told me to keep my day job.
Or would if I had any comedian friends. Or, you know, a day job even.
>Each city is assigned a liveability score for more than 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
It is easier for the kind of person who reads HN to efficiently trade their labor for money in the US than in Europe, and this index does not account for that very important aspect of most people's lives -- earning power.
American society is more chaotic and dangerous than Europe, I do concede. Maybe more Americans who have accumulated enough savings to last the rest of their lives should move to the top 100 cities in this index.
you're really leaning into the out of touch engineer stereotypes if you think civilization can be won using criteria from a video game of all things, and that the main criteria of winning is tech & research and not say ability to sustain peace or end homelessness
“they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
The most advanced tech and research, as an overall, would be trivial for an advanced alien to decide. And the US has been leading in those categories for 80 years at least.
The notion that it's impossible to figure out whether an advanced alien would think Afghanistan or the US have more advanced tech/research/science, is absurd. And if you can make that distinction, you can keep going.
For a species advanced enough for trivially navigating the universe, the difference between the US and Afghanistan would be trivial. If they are more in the individuality side of thing (in contrast to hive mind), the dumbest of their lot would probably be smarter than the smartest person we can find here, probably looking at us the way we look at other intelligent species.
To measure us, would they look at the capacity to produce tech or consume tech (they would probably be more interested in East-Asia than North-America)?
If they look at introducing themselves and communicate peacefully, what metrics would they look at to determine what society they want to deal with?
If they look for dominance, once again they would hit where we produce tech, and hit our means of communication, which are worldwide.
> If they are more in the individuality side of thing (in contrast to hive mind), the dumbest of their lot would probably be smarter than the smartest person we can find here, probably looking at us the way we look at other intelligent species.
I feel like people in this thread don't watch enough Science Fiction. There are LOTS of situations where a species could trivially navigate the universe (Someone stole the technology and ran away with it, the people who invented the technology died a million years ago, they were gifted the technology by a superior race, or it was discovered by accident). Lots of possibilities out there.
No need for SF for this line of reasoning. You don't need to know anything about electricity, or physics, to turn on a light switch, or activate autopilot in a car. But a certain amount of understanding and craftsmanship is required to maintain things in working condition. If it's something discovered, you need a reverse-engineer the thing.
This entire comment chain is missing the fact that there are many UAP sightings in China and one of the reasons the US isn't being mum about this anymore is because China is exploring the phenomenon without all of the West's weird religious and secular hangups about the possibility of nonhuman intelligence.
I can say I'm not sure what to think about this; I don't understand possible motivations nor psyop sufficiently to comment on the veracity/lack thereof.
Anecdotally, I'll note that this has sent folks I am acquainted with who believe that the Replicants walk among us (or variations thereof), right off the deep end. This validates what they've been asserting, and which people have pooh-pooh'd, all along.
Man, the fox is loose in the mental health henhouse. And please know that I don't judge or claim to understand that place.
It's the perfect grift. If the DoD denies having evidence then they are hiding something. If they show you the evidence they possess then they are hiding stuff anyway. The grifter gets payback/attention in either case because it is all indisputable and unprovable. Legally you are untouchable because the proof for or against is unobtainable. The X-Files poster says it all "I want to believe."
The paradox about this is that even though our sensor technology keeps getting vastly better we still only have evidence at the extreme edge of it. Never any really conclusive proof -- spaceship lands and aliens get out and get caught on video. And then there's this guy who just knows about a secret government program, but hasn't seen any of it.
It sort of reminds me of the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.
If the US had an alien space ship, why keep it secret? Seems like it would a globally important discovery and diplomatic / technological credit for the US.
Even if the US were inclined to keep their space ship secret, other countries should be encountering UAPs given that the US sees hundreds per year. Some ground control operator should eventually share an in-focus picture at some point.
This guy seems to have done all the right things you're supposed to do if you discover a coverup as a DoD employee. He reported to the Inspector General. He reported to the committees in Congress that oversee intelligence activities.
That's all authorized by law and regulation.
> Grusch said the US government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.
This makes it sound like the US govt is recovering material that has been found lying around, maybe due to a crash, or debris from an accident, or a piece of a UFO that broke off, etc.
Simple question. Why is it that only the US govt is recovering this? Presumably if these are pieces of matter that aliens are leaving behind unintentionally, they would have left them behind distributed across the world. So why aren’t other, less allegedly secretive governments with spy agencies that are less capable or protect data better, not also recovering such material? Why, in hundreds of years of UFOs visiting the earth, and leaving debris behind, are random goat farmers not finding this debris lying around?
How has every govt that has managed to find this debris managed to keep it a secret?
New solution to the Fermi paradox: Highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations deliberately delay their appearances, letting centuries of erroneous UFO sightings desensitize us first. This tactic allows their real spacecraft to go unnoticed, as cynicism has led us to dismiss any new reports.
I'm pretty sure this is related to those balloons they shot down. They we're UAPs officially. They're too embarrassed to admit that they we're just hobbyist balloons, and thus they want to keep it under wraps. Meanwhile, someone extrapolates it into alien spacecraft.
On the other hand, I think that it's in the realm of possibilities that there are some AI-controlled Von Neumann probes on Earth, sleeping in the bottom of the ocean, and checking on us from time to time. It's not unlikely that there's a point in time where they think we're ready to know the truth and they reveal themselves and their knowledge.
I would very much like to believe, but… no doubt we’ve all heard the crackpot theories that we (speaking as a US citizen) faked the moon landings. That’s nonsense for all sorts of reasons, but one of my favorites is this:
It would literally be easier to build giant machines using 1960s technology to land people on the moon and return them safely than it would be to keep a secret like “fake moon landings”.
Now imagine the secret being “alien intelligence/time travelers/angelic beings are visiting earth on the regular”. No matter how good some of us are at keeping secrets, this one would have gotten out long ago.
That said, I’d still love to be demonstrated wrong.
If true, what would be even more remarkable than alien spacecraft is the secret actually being kept. I have zero confidence the US government, let alone in conjunction with other governments, would be able to keep a secret like this.
What I find compelling about this new evidence is that what they see flying is a small sphere doing impossible things. Can a sphere fly and hold its geolocation position perfectly in a hurricane as these reports cite?
How would you explain it as any earthly tech? And if not US, what nation hass more advanced tech than the US?
And isn't as likely that alien civilizations would send a probe, rather than arrive with their organic selves in a big spaceship needing food etc? Like us with our Mars rover, etc, wouldn't they send a small remote controlled probe to check out alien worlds?
Sounds like a social experiment to see how fast rumours spread or something. Next up: hysteria. Give it a week and the papers will say that there are big bad aliens in Moscow or some such.
The world is burning and what gets our attention? Aliens; and from a country infamous for alien ship sightings and that same country is known to lie when it's an advantage to them. Not to mention the testimony is hearsay.
Either we have some grifters who don't have a job and are looking to make something out of their background. Or the US is doing some psyops for who knows why. Or just plain old mistaking one thing for another, perhaps through mental illness or jumping to conclusions.
The whole chit-chat isn't productive actually, because almost everybody gives a fun about the aliens, we just need to know how those things fly without wings, fans, rockets in them. We mostly don't even care about the pilots.
How they can easily zip to the LEO in less than a minute like it wasn't a big thing at all vs. how a human built rocket needs a carefully planned operation just not to blow up even before raising up from the very floor?
step 1: Throw shit against the wall
step 2: See what sticks
step 3: Amplify that messaging
step 4: Exercise power through providing spectacle and influencing attention
step 5: Pacify with spectacle or agitate differences through amplified narratives to create chaos or division
Am I insane for thinking that nation state manipulation of social media narrative is a more likely explanation for the upsurge of UFO/alien related media in the last 2-5 years than "otherworldly" craft?
It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sort of claim is foolishness.
In fact at this point they're really in a Catch-22... if they really do try to come out with "Yes! Aliens! Really!" then we have the question of, why then were you lying the up to this point then? Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence... why should I trust you now, then?
I mean, it isn't that hard to imagine how "alien threat!" will require us to, once again, give them more power. It's absolutely astonishing how no matter what the problem is, the solution is to give them more power.
A credible alien threat would give world leaders a super easy excuse to demand emergency powers, impose martial law, and assume total control of all aspects of life, in the name of the war effort. Said world leaders really really want these things, so you can safely assume there isn’t a credible alien threat. You don’t have to trust them, just trust that they’ll act in their own interests and work backwards from there.
It was a key element of Watchmen. The movie changed the common enemy from aliens, but kept the general concept. It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it.
Interesting problem in orbital mechanics, suitable for the Musks and Bezoses of the world: calculate parameters for satellite launch, insertion, and stationkeeping needed to simulate seemingly-irrefutable signals from an intelligent ET civilization.
Now there are multiple private teams who could actually pull it off. Or maybe not... I have no idea how hard it would be to make a signal source appear from Earth as if it came from a fixed star, but I suspect it would be extremely difficult to accomplish for any length of time. It's not as if you could just park it someplace. Then there's parallax to consider.
In any event, the message wouldn't be "Build a spaceship with technology no one has ever seen before." The message would be "Get your act together or we'll bulldoze your planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass," or "Take the red pill LOL" or "Get Amazon Prime today. The bargains are out of this world!"
What if it's much more boring and sad than that? Like we're a contained invasive species. They're peaceful, and they respect our rights to this planet cause we evolved here but they're scared of us getting off the planet and running roughshod over the rest of the galaxy which is pretty full of intelligent life and there's no final frontier to speak of. Meanwhile our government is busy trying to reverse engineer what scraps we've managed to get a hold of so we can somehow practice galactic imperialism. I call this the "crowded galaxy" resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust.
What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them.
Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "extraordinary" trust for. So your statement, which I quoted, is, from a practical standpoint, completely useless. By your logic all extraordinary claims in existence will all pretty much be mistrusted by you. It's a statement of complete denial of anything that sounds outlandish. It's the definition of being closed minded.
Being extremely closed minded tends to be better than being extremely open minded where you believe every freaking thing you hear. But the best place to be in is at neither extreme. Rather then deny all extraordinary claims you should be skeptical.
You need to search for techniques in which will help you determine whether you CAN or CANNOT trust someone you do not already have "extraordinary" trust for.
To which I throw this statement at you:
If someone makes a statement without any ulterior motive that results in net benefit to them, you can place more merit on the fact that they are telling you what they believe to be the truth.
So take for example a stranger tells you there's a bomb in the building and you have to get out. You get the hell out because that stranger had nothing to gain from telling there's a bomb.
If a person with a camera is recording you and he told you there's a bomb in the building. Well that's different right? The key difference here is that in one situation there's a clear ulterior motive. In the other situation there was no motive.
Follow the motive.
The person making the claim... what is his motive?
> ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them.
That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).
We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust.
When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?
At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.
>That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).
Nope. It is how you gain extraordinary trust. It really depends on what they are famous for. There are many famous people or scholars who you respect and trust due to their fame. You trust them, because others trust them.
Fame can also cause distrust too. But it does cause trust as well.
>When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?
This is too much speculation. There are an infinite number of explanations here. Better to follow the the chain of events from the anomalous claim and start piecing together things forwards rather then just claim it's impossible because you can't think of any valid way for it to happen.
Additionally the claim itself is "extraordinary" so basically there is likely no mundane explanation for it if the claim is true.
>At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.
So that's the first step right? They believe what they are saying. So from their perspective they witnessed extraordinary evidence. So what made them believe it? What did they actually see? Are they correct? Even if following this thread leads to something different then their claim, one can still learn something interesting.
Closed mindedness often involves logic that works backwards. You need to move forwards. If you see a path, moving forwards means following the path. Moving backwards means ignoring the path because you made a guess that there's nothing at the end of the path.
I am not sure why do you think there is only one way to increase trust in a claim made by unknown people?
I don't trust "famous" people. I trust that it's unlikely for a large group of "famous" (eg experts in relevant fields, which is a more specific interpretatiin of "famous"), unrelated people to not trust each other, and only once they reach a common ground, would my trust of their extraordinary claim rise.
Yes, I wouldn't trust Einstein proclaiming speed of light is finite, but when corroborated with independent claims of experiments from Michelson proving likewise, and others from 30 years ago, I would.
Basically, if it's too few people, I'd question how did others, unrelated people not see it: science mostly progresses these days when the body of knowledge is such that simply the next thing is in front of us, and multiple people simultaneously "discover" it. As it's many people making similar claims, I'd start considering it seriously.
This is how science works, and I am happy to follow that with media reports as well. It's not at all backwards IMO.
Sure, if I was working on a hypothesis, I would certainly venture into less trusty sources, but I would need to be ready to accept for my hypothesis to be disproven too.
You ignored the fact these people are not neutral. They're liars. If they're telling the truth now, they're some of the largest liars in human history. Your hypothetical is irrelevant in this case.
I have answers, but discussing them would just be further excuses to try to dilute away this fundamental truth, so I decline. It's their responsibility to figure out how to be more trustworthy if they want it, not mine. (Helpful tip: They can start by not lying about everything, all the time.) It's my responsibility not to trust known, repeated, huge liars.
> why then were you lying the up to this point then?
So it'll take a lot to convince me that this is real. But let's say for an instant that it is.
And you're the government, and you need to handle "announcing" this to the people without freaking them out. I guess you set the scene, monitor for a while what people do (decades of denial), then when it seems like the people are doing alright/don't care about it much, start to say you'll actually look into it (couple years ago with official release of documents). Then monitor the reaction... again people don't really care. Kind of exciting for some people for a day or two but still go work in the morning, life goes on. Then you start to drop the other shoe.
I guess? I'm skeptic but if there was a world in which there are alien UAPs, where the govt knows, where the govt hides it, I can construe this scenario as a good reason why govts would have gone about it in this way.
> Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence
When speaking of the us government and its agencies we must remain ever cognizant that the official story is rarely truthful whether explicitly or by omission. Relatedly, we’ve seen extraordinary measures taken against individuals leaking pretty minor and generally suspected details like wholesale warrant less surveillance via direct taps on arterial comm lines. Thus, it is more likely that this guy has nothing and no power, else he’d be in an Ecuadorian embassy/Russia or an as of yet unknown black site instead of doing interviews.
2018 is the first time any military branch would miss its recruitment goals since 2005. That problem has now spread across all branches of the military, where missing recruitment goals has become the norm. People simply don't want to enlist, for reasons one can only imagine... We're now getting things like congressional hearings on why the military is repeatedly failing to hit its recruitment goals [1]. This is also the setting where the military has been trying a variety of different efforts to get people interested.
And it's in this exact context that the Pentagon started to release UFO videos and the military was publicly patenting sci-fi level technology like a "craft using an inertial mass reduction device." [2] Not only does the patent read like it was written by a sci-fi jargon-generator LLM, but there's absolutely no point to it. Were something like this real, you would keep it beyond classified to not only maximize your national benefit from it, but to try to keep it out of the hands of peer nations for as long as possible. With it published, if e.g. China or Russia was going to make this, what now? Are you going to sue them? Maybe get the WTO to give them a stern talking to. Its one and only purpose is to publicize "secret" research from the military.
So why? Literally the only explanation I can see is it just being another ham-fisted recruitment effort. 'You can go make a living making software pushing ads on people who don't want them, or you can enlist in the military, travel the world, and perhaps even one day get clearance to see and start working where the "real" science is happening.'
Absolutely fascinating that the top two replies to an article about Aliens! are positing basically the same conspiracy: that this is a deliberate psyop run by a "nation state" and not just... people being wrong about stuff?
Why go through the trouble to refute one unlikely and poorly supported hypothesis just to jump right into a new one? Has Occam taught us nothing? There are no successfully hidden "conspiracies" of that scale. Maybe someone can run a successful assassination once in a while and keep it under wraps for a decade or so, but that's as far as it goes. Lips are too loose and threads are too easy to pull, especially in the internet era.
> military brass is not supposed to be wrong by going along with such unlikely scenarios.
True but that was before we started having idiot legislators in congress willing to throw a few tens of millions at "investigations" by the military. Nothing like easy budget and a cushy assignment for several years to encourage some motivated reasoning. "Hey, if you're payin', I'm investigatin.'"
So it's to make money off of suckers? They are swindlers? We're no better than John MacAfee's banana republic low-level bribe seeking government employees.
The U.S. Inspector General called the claims "credible and urgent" and congress has planned a hearing on the documents provided to them under oath on said retrieval programs.
This clearly goes well beyond someone simply being mistaken.
I'll just say that I regard the chances of the IG and congress being wrong about something as rather higher than that of an extraterrestrial civilization leaving artifacts on earth recovered only by the US Government. I mean, come on. I love alien stuff too but you need to put the bar for proof in a reasonable place, and this isn't it.
My point wasn't that there's a reasonable factual argument here (there clearly isn't) it's that the "reasonable" people jumping in to re-interpret it were also engaging in unfounded conspiracy paranoia (albeit one with a much more plausible hypothesis).
Wow, nobody has ever lied to congress before! And what are the chances their testimony pops up right after the introduction of a program incentivizing whistleblowers to come forward?
I wouldn't expect it to be independent of truthfulness. The Cobra Effect [0] suggests that offering a reward for something, in this case public airing of testimony, increases the likelihood of false testimony given the absence of any truthful testimony.
The "omg aliens" media card always seems to get pulled out when there's no $CURRENT_OUTRAGE and people are looking for something. It's like filler content when there's nothing else to rile people up.
When was the last time a UFO/aliens story was competing for air time with a major real world news event (disaster, protest, shooting, terrorist, election, etc)?
Well, the top story right now is a major dam in a war zone having been destroyed. Given that this story is coming out right now... literally right now?
That story is below the fold, as a small subsection on CNN.com. Their current major top story is "New York City’s air pollution among the worst in the world." It's clearly a slow news day.
I always write it off as one of two things. People are simply wrong. Or they're lying for fame/money. The 2nd one is easy to spot once you see them on a variety of conspiracy talk shows.
Just look at the history of alien / UFO sightings. It all began at the beginning of WW2 and the Cold War. It is my humble opinion all just a psychological operation. Some benefits that a government would have doing such a thing would be: Division, misdirection of MSM and population, other news that is very important is intentionally being sandbagged. Fear, Hysteria, & Confusion allows further tightening of control of a society and prompts consent to loss of liberty in exchange for false security. It also increases government support. As well as an intimidation tactic to their enemies that they possibly have much stronger weapons / tech that they let on.
So far, all of the "laws of physics" have turned out to be true, if they were considered an approximation applicable with a certain set of preconditions.
My only hope for human kind travelling interstellar distances is to figure something orthogonal out, as even speed of light is too slow (perhaps we extend our lifetimes to span millenia combined with teleportation? :).
The typical reply to this is that it wasn't until the 20th century that people had enough understanding of the universe to view them as aliens. Previously they would be angels, demons, gods etc.
But the idea that the government is manipulating people to seize power goes back a long way too...
Most of them are religious paintings. It's still surprising to see a UFO in The Baptism of Christ, though I'm sure some people would explain it away as something else somehow.
With everyone handwringing about climate change clearly being our doom, has no one once wondered if it might be partly responsible for an upsurge in sightings of unexplained aerial phenomenon?
I'm beyond skeptical of the 'alien' videos, but Mick West is no better. He comes up with some pet theory that can create a similar visual phenomena, completely ignores any and all other factors, and then declares his pet theory the 'truth.' It's literally the exact same sort of conspiracy theory style behavior he claims to be fighting against, but he feels his theories are special because they're mundane, so they must be true - even if they're also about as sound as a house of cards.
So for instance at 2:00 in the video you linked, he at least acknowledges that he's "not going to address" among other things that there were reported to be a fleet of the observed objects. He fails to acknowledge that he's also not addressing that the object was also observed from multiple sources. And the "SA" was also picking them up, which I can only assume is a sort of scanned array radar type system. In which case you have multiple forms of instrumentation picking the signals up, multiple trained pilots interpreting them as meaningful and distinct, and more. So in other words he's not going to address the countless things that effectively falsify everything else he's about to say.
Finally, this seems to be a newer video. In his past videos he went so far as to suggest that the glare caused by the exhaust of a jet, when one fighter jet was (apparently?) locking onto another jet, all without realizing it. I fully agree with the implied idea there of tossing appeals to authority in the trash, but.... like with all things, sometimes this can be overdone. It seems that part of his theory was removed, and now it seems he's just leaving it as glare from nowhere? Ah yes, that's also one of those things he's "not going to address" now.
How does any of that affect his thesis that the black object in this specific video isn't the aircraft but is rather an artifact of the camera?
He doesn't make any claims about the aircraft because he is saying it isn't visible... and the scope of his analysis is this single piece video evidence.
The "Snowden, 10 years on" banner on this article does stands out
Snowden, 10 years on
A decade ago, we published the Edward Snowden revelations that forever changed our relationship to our privacy and to our governments. Since then, we have defied the powerful by landing scoops on everything from Big Tech to surveillance, offshore banking to cellphone spyware.
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..
What's going on is something like emergent disinformation. A combination of
* intentional withholding of facts (we don't report on how much we know about foreign spying and interfernce with aircraft, etc),
* incompetent reporting within the government (the person denying things is a low level public relations person who isn't told much and knows very little, forced to change stories when scraps of information come down)
* memes (UFOs go through waves of popularity of public interest)
* legitimate hallucinations
* hoaxes
* rare atmospheric phenomena
What is almost certainly happening is we've got foreign spies etc. with ordinary, unusual, and unfamiliar aircraft bothering us along with thrillseekers with drones etc. on an uptick because drones are cheaper and more possible these days. There might be some really interesting secret aircraft both foreign and domestic flying around, and generally the governments aren't showing their cards about what they can do and what they know... they benefit from the confusion and conspiracies keeping their adversaries off balance chasing the unknown.
In the end the people who do know everything know some interesting but still certainly rather mundane information. It's not a case of a grand conspiracy where somebody is trying actively to manipulate public opinion, just vague intentional lack of communication and keeping secrets by just not telling most people anything involved.
Possibly not. But this narrative has been around for a lot longer than social media. Current technology certainly accelerates the spread of it, but people have been discussing this topic since the literal dark ages.
People have been discussing all kinds of things since the dark ages. Should the military consider astrology when making war plans and battle plans too cuz some people did and still make decisions based on astrology?
I understand you're being facetious, but if the military had visual and sensor data of a foreign power entering their airspace due to astrology, then the answer would likely be "probably".
During World War 2 the British consulted astrologers as part of their planning process. Not because they believed the astrology predictions, but because Hitler did and was known to have astrology influence his attack plans.
That's a cool anecdote and makes sense if you're trying to meet him at his level...
So what purpose does pursuing a belief in UFOs have? Are China and Russia gonna be like, what, UFOS?! Let's waste money studying something we have no evidence for!
> Are China and Russia gonna be like, what, UFOS?! Let's waste money studying something we have no evidence for!
Yes. That’s exactly what happens. [1]
“In 1970 United States intelligence sources believed that the Soviet Union was spending 60 million roubles annually on "psychotronic" research. In response to claims that the Soviet program had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") in the same year.”
There's also a reason the government calls them 'phenomenon' and not 'objects' and not 'aliens'.
The reason the government is interested is not because they think there are aliens, it's because their job is to know what is in the sky and understand their sensor readings.
It doesn't really matter if it's China, aliens, a lens flare, or a kid with a drone. The military should be able to know what is in the sky.
That's it. It would be far better to know if it's some feedback in our sensors rather than Chinese hypersonic drones. I find it concerning that so many people want to just dismiss this off-hand when clearly the military considers it something to be worth looking into.
The part that is worth dismissing is the immediate jump to aliens. This topic is really a sensor data analysis discussion, not a conspiracy theory convention.
To preface: I am strongly in the opinion that this 'phenomenon' that's being seen is most probably a US-based contractor that's been testing exotic aircraft, as opposed to any of the other possibilities. There's a documented history of that over the years, and looking at where China and Russia are at currently indicates they might not have these capabilities.
However, I am going to hold off on the 'dismissing is the immediate jump to aliens' part as well, purely due to the position of this guy and the specifics of his claims - he was part of a team investigating the subject and so until he's proven unequivocally of lying I'll just assume there might be documentation he has access to that we don't. His credentials line up and it sounds as if the people who vouch for him are the same.
I'll think it's silly to discredit the fact the government wants to study what's being reported in the sky like some people are doing. Beyond that I'd rather not comment because it's safer to discuss the parts we are actually privy to rather than the parts we aren't, until the dude gets charged for lying to congress or some other official discrediting of his claims.
Unless the assertions made by those interviewed in the article are true. We are all arm chair quarterbacks who only have a view from the goal line to the one yard line. There is no sense in trying to say we know what happened in the game. We don't know what's actually happening and I don't see much sense in eliminating plausible explanations. It could be sensor aberrations, China, or something else. Why not keep an open mind and be scientific about evaluating it? Yes, we should probably focus on eliminating the more mundane explanations, but I don't think we would want to give up if we don't find it at first.
> Why not keep an open mind and be scientific about evaluating it?
I am for keeping an open mind, scientifically speaking. Entertaining theories rooted in fictional fantasy is not that. There is zero scientific evidence of technologically advanced life outside of Earth. It is a hypothesis that is just as unsupported as anything anyone might make up on the spot. Just because it is a hypothesis people want to believe doesn't make it any more supported than a hypothesis that it is the flying spaghetti monster.
Why does the government not just say that? Hey, our instruments are having errors/artifacts and we want to fix it AND also dismiss any suggestion of alien craft --but, no, they go along with the most unlikely scenario. Are they looking to look stupid?
Because it would be dumb to publicly acknowledge any specifics of their weaknesses to their enemies. It's not the military's job to placate conspiracy theorists. It's their job to counter foreign threats.
They don't have to make any of it public. It was never public till they decided that they wanted to inject aliens into their strategy. Now, the Chinese communists and the Russian Oligarchs both still know our instruments suck, except they attributed to aliens.
> Now, the Chinese communists and the Russian Oligarchs both still know our instruments suck
There is no strategic or actionable value in a broad judgement of "sucks" or "doesn't suck". The point of keeping details secret is to prevent someone from building mechanisms to specifically counter it. Information disparity in war is an advantage because it can cause an enemy to misjudge their allocation of resources. (either they underestimate and are out-powered, or they overestimate and waste resources)
It's like poker. You might choose to selectively give off some information with your expressions, but you'd easily lose if you showed your cards.
> they decided that they wanted to inject aliens into their strategy.
The US military has not entertained the idea of aliens.
During the "balloon shootdowns" earlier this year, NORAD referred to them as objects and some people looked a little shook. They wouldn't show us pictures from any camera.. not from the planes, not from the missiles, nada. Yet, when Russia clumsily attacked a US drone near Ukraine, footage of the event was made available almost right away.
The "balloons" absolutely were referred to as objects, and you should question what was so special about them that they won't show anything.
Embarrassment at repeatedly scrambling F-22 Raptors to shoot missiles at a child's party balloon is not a good enough reason.
It was something. It wasn't nothing and it's just been brushed under the carpet as if it never happened.
That's nice, but you know what? If the object was "other", it'll be back.
That was only the 1st one which China owned up to. What about the other 3 objects that had fighters scrambled from both the US and Canada and of which no photos exist and no-one has claimed ownership of?
One object was blamed on a hobby balloon club and I have questions about it because usually winds move west to east and their balloon allegedly travelled east to west. In any case, how about the other 2 that weren't blamed on anyone, especially the one over Alaska?
Nobody can answer the questions because it's all classified "National Security".
Much of the capabilities of the F-22 are classified. This is why the information released is limited, and released slowly and vaguely if it is. It is the US's most advanced fighter, there's no way they're going to release all the data it collects publicly. China is taking notes.
Some of the planes were F-16 and F-18. Use camera footage from the F-18, run it through the low-resolution blurring filter to pretend that's as good as it gets for an airframe that entered service 44 years ago (yes, I know the avionics have been updated since then, but it's still an old jet) and redact out all the HUD numbering and readouts.
They did that with AARO's video of the metallic orb over the middle east. Made it blurry, and redacted out all data readouts. They could do the same thing with the F-18's footage.. show us that it's a balloon.
Nancy had an astrologer and psychic, Jean Dixon, that she routinely consulted. Not aware of any evidence it influenced Bonzo, but everyone's partner has some weird thing, right?
I agree. I mean lets assume it is true: how could the US government have failed a real alien ship? Did the poor aliens fail at filling out some paperwork? I mean this ship had to spend so much energy just to get to us, what else could have failed them?
Seems reasonable that even an intersolar civilization would be subject to bugs, errors, degradation and bad luck. An intersolar trip could’ve damaged a craft far more advanced than what we can make.
Could be (perhaps even likely to be) an unpiloted craft. It could be a craft no more technologically advanced than human tech; maybe it’s an alien Voyager 1.
A good point. Although it could just be a probe. It could have been programmed to crash land on Earth. Much like we send probes to planets in our solar system.
That this is a possibility doesn't make it a likely one, however. But just pointing out that there's possible explanations that counter this thinking.
I’ve read a lot about the US govt. activity during the end of WW2 (op paper clip, moving Japanese scientists that developed bio/Chen weapons here) , the cold war (long list, but basically fighting a war for capital) , up to fighting socialist “land reform” in Latin America. Everything has a direct line to monied interests, it’s almost strikingly obvious if you have an objective view of what the natsec space is doing. This just doesn’t compute for me. How would monied interests be served by this?
We've been warned for a while about this type of thing going on. I guess this is it, it's going on, and we can maybe expect it to be amplified with LLMs.
Lmao. If aliens actually did exist (they may well do, but given the size of the universe, probably far far away from our terrible species) then why do all the paranoid conspiracy loving Americans seem to think that ONLY the U.S. would have found evidence of aliens, or found an alien craft or materials or whatever?
Because it's all bullshit, that's why. Granted, the Brits silenced themselves so that the entire world didn't know that they were the first to build a computer, so I suppose the secrecy required is possible.
But in all of human history, we're expected to believe that an alien craft was discovered by the U.S. gov, at the right time for us to have the tech to discover it and that this was the only craft around?
Surely an alien species' timelines aren't going to magically line up with ours, surely a supposed craft could've landed at any point in our short history on this planet.
Every month or two there some kind of UFO story in US media. Is this some kind of propaganda to convince people that government needs more money to find out what is going on? Or maybe to keep people safe from UFO?
If, at some point in the future, we get small, handy, cheap, good quality cameras that people make a habit of always carrying around, then surely the nature of these phenomena will easily be determined.
This type of disclosure could destroy the society - what if we are just an experiment seeded and pruned by some alien civilization? Most philosophical reasons for a stable society would be thrown out of the window instantly.
Can we rule out UT? Ultraterrestrial, meaning "they" are from this Planet Earth, but maybe left due to an event (the flood?) many millions years ago, or maybe just 12 000 years ago (the younger dryas impact?).
If the US knew there were aliens it would have been exposed during the trump admin. Whether you like him or thought he did well or not you must admit he would've trumpeted this from the mountain tops.
If this is hidden in some black budget somewhere you think they would have told Trump or anyone in his administration? No freaking way. It is well documented that even his closest advisors carefully controlled the information he was given.
A lot of people have remarked that the government couldn't keep a secret this big for so long. This is correct but misses the point that this secret wasn't kept. I've heard this story multiple times in my life, it's been a staple of US lore for decades and numerous whistleblowers have come forward in the past to retell it. All have been discredited and often smeared as nuts and the media has reported as much and moved on. If this really is true and they really do have a massive disinfo campaign to protect it, we have no choice but to admit that they have never kept a lid on this through secrecy, they have done it through character assassination and control of the media narrative, turning anyone who speaks up into a lunatic off his meds, a liar, and so on, and then moving the public's eye onto something else. That this strategy has worked so effectively and for so long is scarier than aliens, IMO.
Really weird how political this is. UFOs are totally real but space lasers are funny, yet the evidence for both is basically the same grainy video. General AI as a strong problem, indeed.
Dont get my hopes high. I have the feeling it will be a disappointment. Also why would aliens only visit the us? Surely other countries would be in possession of alien tech if the us was.
I don't believe that there are any alien vessels, intact or otherwise. But I would imagine that a superpower with global reach and a stealth program could (and would) gather craft before the countries where they were located knew they were there.
> I don't believe that there are any alien vessels, intact or otherwise.
Me neither, but as the saying goes: “i want to believe”. Guaranteed there’s nothing more than a guy that’s either crazy or marketing a book.
> But I would imagine that a superpower with global reach and a stealth program could (and would) gather craft before the countries where they were located knew they were there.
By traveling to china or russia and snatching ufos from right under their nose? I doubt it. I think if anything remotely alien would visit earth everyone would know.
Right, America has trouble retrieving it's own equipment when it is downed near (not in) adversarial territory. That's with the advantage of knowing exactly when and where the equipment went down and with the benefit of advanced planning for a potential recovery.
There's no way they are suddenly so much more competent when the downed equipment is "alien." If this stuff is so easily tracked, then it's not so easily hidden from the public.
And if this stuff went down in a smaller country, you can bet there are plenty of people out there ready and willing to pay for it just because. We have difficulty enough charging wealthy people with real crimes, much less putting them away for buying alien technology.
Because the internet and everything you use every day was invented in america, the waterways are controlled by american aircraft carriers, the moon is american, the silicon you use is made in the american pseudo-colonies of japan, south korea, and taipei. America is the invisible roman empire, and the american corporate oligarchy is Caesar. Weapons systems generations ahead of the competition. All trade done in dollars, all entertainment and science conducted in english. All data flows through american megacorps that answer only to the american oligarch. Pure hegemony so strong most people aren't aware that it exists.
Not that I'm drawing conclusions, but have you considered the possibility that the stuff that crashes is the alien equivalent of the ATV or the hoverboard?
Most likely. It find it funny when aliens in movies almost always land in the us. It may be the world’s most awesome country, but wouldnt at least some of these aliens be curious about german beer or south korean food?
You can clearly see the electric lights of population centers from space. If aliens were doing surveillance, they'd probably stick to the darker spots.
After all, out planet is surrounded by artificial satellites, and we make no attempt to hide them. So clearly some humans are capable of putting things into orbit, and those things could be weapons.
Let’s suppose that aliens where able to travel from distant galaxy to earth.
Let’s suppose that they didn’t travel to dispose of resources abundant on earth (in which case it seems obvious that they would most likely already ostensibly or furtively dominating the world with their advanced technologies). For example, instead they want to make tourism in invisibility-intangibility suits: "look my darling, how quaint this planet is!".
I very strongly doubt any group of human could catch an alien vehicle of such an advanced civilization.
At the scale of the galaxy, alien probes could have launched long before humans were even a thing.
Or if they had expected intelligent life, they wouldn’t know how intelligent the life would be. They could suspect equal intelligence to theirs.
In the chance that this equally intelligent life could capture this probe, self destruct may be the optimal strategy.
People are making the mistake of assuming an all knowing intelligent life-form. There are at least some feasible scenarios where alien craft could crash into earth.
The fact of the matter is the implications if this is real. Which it probably is to a point.
Free energy devices and instant travel would decimate the economy that keeps the elite in power.
“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.” ― Ben Rich CEO Lockheed Skunk Works
Why would it decimate the economy and oust those in power when every other new advancement seems to grow the economy and concentrate wealth on those already able to invest in it?
Exactly. You don’t think the US or whatever nation state would absolutely use these technologies to try and conquer the rest of the world or acquire power/money?
The “elite” who brings the world infinite power will be the most famous and remembered and respected human who ever lived, and will live immortal in the history books.
Call me naive but I don’t think the desire to keep the status quo is greater than the desire to be the literal savior.
Because to phrase it in a certain way - the final 10 yards of power are exerted in meatspace.
You can video chat with dissidents around the world? Cool, the state can still kick in your door or shut off your ISP or shut off your cross-border financing at the ISP or..
You can travel to join those dissidents and come back as you please, wherever whenever? Where can the State able to enforce final power there? It’s much more limited.
> Cool, the state can still kick in your door or shut off your ISP or shut off your cross-border financing at the ISP or..
Or use a drone, hence why that's clearly not sufficient technology to undermine the Illuminati or whoever it is that's supposed to benefit from suppressing space magic rapid transit.
Assuming this is legit, what makes you believe they understand anything about this tech? They might literally have been scratching their heads all this time with this stuff. We might simply not understand the physics by which it operates and have no ability to do anything with it except dust it off periodically and let another team of eggheads strike out. I can't think of any major technology we currently have which doesn't have a totally legit origin story and which the prevailing scientific and engineering ability of the time didn't enable, so I doubt any real advances have ever come out of this.
> "Ben Rich is constantly misquoted as saying “We now have the technology to take E.T home.” That is not what he said.
At the end of his presentation he showed his final slide, a picture of a disk-shaped craft – the classic “flying saucer” – flying into a partly cloudy sky with a burst of sunlight in the background and he gave his standard tagline.
It was a joke he had used in numerous presentations since 1983 when Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extraterrestrial,” a film about a young boy befriending a lost visitor from space and helping the alien get home, had become the highest-grossing film of all-time. Rich apparently decided to capitalize on this popularity. By the summer of 1983, he had added the flying saucer picture to the end of a set of between 12 and 25 slides that he showed with his lecture on the history of Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works division."
My feeling is that they're prepping us for full disclosure. The evidence and witnesses that were seeing more recently are less fringe and more mainstream. They also don't seem to be trying as hard to debunk claims as they used to. The fact that the Guardian has covered this seriously is quite surprising, they usually treat this issue like a joke.
Another episode of 'people who sit in a box and stare at a screen all day tell us that the military pilots, air traffic controllers and government workers are mentally ill or lying because something they say challanges the customery view of what constitutes reality outside the box with the screen'.
I hope someone keeps an archive of these comments.
HN is in for quite the gut punch. All of this is happening because of the 2023 NDAA provisions where congress invalidated all NDAs blocking disclosure (to congress, not the public).
Indeed. The real question is why are the aliens apparently loosening their grip and letting the government release more information now? Is this some alien end game!?!?
This is what happens when misinformation runs rampant. Legitimate news publications are being pressured by know-nothings on the internet listening to a guy who is literally not a primary witness to anything he claims to have "proof" of.
Happens every now and then, but lately, the UFO crazies keep resurfacing every few months.
The dumbest are dragging down credibility, as usual. If there were aliens, they'd have communicated or killed us by now.
The ultimate reason why I don’t believe in this despite the attention this seem to be getting from congress and the more reliable than one can expect witnesses at least if we take them on face values this time around is that Trump hasn’t tweeted a selfie with ET during his presidency…
This is CIA psyop to distract and hid in this noise, actual news, that it is been exactly 10 years since whistleblower former intelligence Edward Snowden told world the truth about CIA and U.S. government.
What is the connection ? Headlines:
> *Whistleblower former intelligence* official says government possesses ‘intact and partially intact’ craft of non-human origin
And here is Snowden interview from 5 hours ago: SNOWDEN REVELATIONS 10-Year Anniversary: Glenn Greenwald Speaks with Snowden & Laura Poitras on the Past, Present, & Future of Their Historic Reporting | SYSTEM UPDATE #93
Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (Nasic), confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” to the Debrief, adding: “We are not alone.”
...
Grusch said it was dangerous for this “eighty-year arms race” to continue in secrecy because it “further inhibits the world populace to be prepared for an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario.”
“I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to re-assess their priorities,” Grusch said.
A conspiracy spanning the better part of century should have more high-level whistleblowers than Grusch and Grey. If their claims are proven out the names Grusch and Grey will be immortalized in history. We still talk about the Gutenberg printing press. Centuries from now people will still talk about Grusch and Grey, and how they kick-started a new era of human knowledge.
Are we to believe that over the course of eighty years, comprising hundreds if not thousands of individuals, many of whom would have access to the same documents and materials, not a single one of these individuals, motivated by either honor or ego, decided to make this world historical disclosure?
The story seems engineered to appeal to the conspiracy theorist. A brave iconoclast bucks the system and exposes a massive coverup - a truth that just happens to confirm all the poorly sourced and speculative claims made by the true believers. Wait, why haven't we seen any miraculous technology derived from alien tech? Ahhh, this tech exists, but it's hoarded by a secretive cabal who may or may not themselves be aliens/reptiles or blood-drinking elites. Etcetera, etcetera.
On the other hand ... it would be apropos if bureaucratic inertia led to a world-shattering disclosure. And the conspiracy theories could be 95% b.s. and 5% truth.
For all those reasons I'm not really convinced. Are Grusch and Grey convinced because the evidence is that overwhelming? Are they seeped in online UFO conspiracy culture, and reading a very slanted interpretation into the intelligence documents they have accessed? Are the analyses the military has run on any recovered materials sufficient to determine an origin in non-human intelligence? Have any experts outside the military examined and tested these materials? Does there exists genuine recovered craft ala Independence Day or are the "craft" large meteors that, if you squint, kind of look like a spacecraft? Have they recovered biological material?
Ultimately we won't be able to make a true determination until we get some actual evidence. First, reviewing any documents that supposedly contain these extraordinary claims. Second, interviews with other intelligence officials who have spoken with Grusch and have had access to the materials. Third, getting these materials into the hands of relevant experts, to determine if non-human intelligence is the most likely source.
If an extraterrestrial intelligence has reached the level of ability needed to transport large masses over vast interstellar distances, they are not lazily buzzing F/A-18s off the coast of California.
They're not coyly darting to and fro in a game with, almost exclusively American, pilots.
They're not hiding themselves from humanity, for whatever reason.
Their immense power would be like the Sun shining next to humanity's candle. They would not care, or even know to care, about how we would react to their presence.
Their interaction with Earth would be like Earth's with Mars. Sure we take steps to sterilize Mars rovers to prevent contamination but only because when we drill the hell out of that rock in broad daylight for all the Martians to see we want to make sure we only get Mars stuff.
I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
We also often prefer not to disturb animals because they are interesting and we think they have value.
Of course there are motives that intefere with that; but you can't make a blanket assumption about an alien racing traveling vast distances through space to visit. Maybe they would just want to observe out of interest.
Is it my impression or looking at all those irrelevant jobs, like people trying their best to... :
* Censoring Internet: claiming that, watching porn has something to do with real world threats.
* Protecting Skies: 90% of the time is waste of money, but well there is new threat the "aliens" yay... our job is not over xD
And honestly it's not that different from business made by climate change, AI threats, pandemic and so on (that I can summarize as "fear"), only that there is need more money... or the job is at risk...
P.S: I'm not thinking some of them are not real threats, just that they are abused.
Why? The most obvious questions will be asked, and those questions will hurt the financial interests of the powers-that-be.
Questions like "how did they get here?" and "what is the energy source that powers these crafts?" Politicians with stock portfolios chock full of Oil&Gas stocks will certainly not want that info seeing the light of day. Same with those who hold defense stocks - all those trillions spent and they can't shoot down a small craft?
That's nothing to say of the major religious organizations that will inevitably whine and cry that their gravy train is also now also permanently derailed. No more tithing or mandatory donations to a god when there are now species from another planet coming and going as they please, and are likely thousands of years ahead of us.
Your understanding of incentives is backwards. Politician's stock portfolios aren't fixed in stone. They can sell their Oil & Gas and then short it, or more importantly invest in whatever single company they would steer the commercialization of a new power source to. Defense stocks go up, not down, when people discover there is a new threat we need to arm ourselves against with newer weapons because the old ones were inadequate. And major religious organizations wouldn't suffer at all if aliens exist - I know of no major religion that denies the existence of alien life. Meanwhile, during turmoil, more people turn to religion.
> No more tithing or mandatory donations to a god when there are now species from another planet coming and going as they please, and are likely thousands of years ahead of us.
While certainly there would be tension caused by the canonical issues, I don't think people will stop making pleas to what they perceive as higher powers. I would expect that such a shocking revelation would cause more people to flock to the church because they suddenly realize how small and powerless they are.
Yes, but the whole thing about "(insert deity of your choice here) made man in his own image" that seems to be quite prevalent throughout most major religions gets debunked almost immediately if there's some bipedal creature that predates our entire civilization showing up in a hyper-advanced spacecraft.
There are no higher powers if someone rolls up being able to do what our current understanding of physics calls magic or has no way to explain it.
Agreed. The various scriptures would simply be reinterpreted to align with our current understanding.
Even if some scripture explicitly stated that aliens do not exist, the existence of aliens would not disprove, or even diminish the possibility of the existence of God. From the perspective of practitioners it would simply mean that whoever wrote that scripture misunderstood what was told to them. In other words, man is fallible, and easily forgiven for misinterpreting the word of God. I honestly believe that the arrival of aliens wouldn't even prove to be a minor speed bump for organized religion.
Successful conspiracies seem hard to keep a cap on when they get too big. If this is the first leak of something true related to actual materials, it could spur the few non-evil congressman to dig further and cause further leaks. If this is a true conspiracy and they had complete control, all of this UAP stuff wouldn't have popped up in the media and in congress in the past few years.
I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents. So, at best his testimony is hearsay.
All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop. My belief is that for some reason, the US government used psychology tests to identify a select few people who naturally "want to believe". These individuals would take vague evidence and through their own nature would exaggerate and fill in the blanks. They then nudged those individuals with carefully curated credible fake evidence. Then they just sat back and waited for a few of those guys to "leak" the information.
Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Some small but significant portion of the population is mentally ill, and it seems likely a few would hear a joke ("we keep the alien space ships through that door, I'd show you but I'd have to kill you"), take it way too literally, and it becomes the focus of their mental illness. That seems not only possible but probable given the size the military industrial complex.
Also people who don't understand what is or is not possible easily get confused about what is impossible / difficult versus possible / easy.
My guess is that a substantial fraction of otherwise competent American adults don't realise VTOL jet aircraft are a thing we can and have built for example, and that if one of them saw a prototype like the Flying Bedstead (Rolls Royce experimental platform, which doesn't look at all like an aeroplane since it doesn't need to) and was told (in jest) that's an alien spacecraft, they absolutely might believe that.
I say this from an angle of religious tolerance but some people actually “believe in angels” etc, people will believe whatever they want
Angels, ghosts, UFOs, miracles all have the same characteristics. A person who seems very reasonable says they are sure that saw the thing, and they provide SOME circumstantial or grainy photographic evidence, but no one actually got a full resolution picture of the angel or ghost or UFO.
I doubt these people are lying. They actually saw something. Miracles are the easiest example to explain. Someone couldn't walk and then a saint said a prayer for them and they could walk again. It is pretty easy guess that it was a placebo effect or coincidence that the medical issue got better at the same time.
We have never seen someone with a X-Ray of a severed spine regain full walking ability after a prayer from a saint.
UFO's may exist, but it seems more likely that a combination of reflections, radar issues, tiredness/stress, "wanting to believe" caused them to see "something"
It seems likely to me that “seeing things” is consistent with the predictive processing model from cognitive neuroscience. To summarize: the retina error-corrects a simulation provided from the cortex.
Let’s say some visual details are fuzzy. With a strong enough Bayesian prior (e.g. belief in UFOs), the human perceptual apparatus could subjectively see things that look like UFOs.
Mind bending, but this seems to me a credible and popular theory of brain functioning. I’m no expert and new to the theory. Please correct me if I’m butchering it.
P.S. Like anyone, I often detect motion in my peripheral vision without much detail. Maybe once a year (or less), I see weird things that seem implausible, but only for brief instant. When I look, there is nothing unusual. Yes, bring on the “what are you smoking?” comments… but I assure you the answer is “nothing”.
> Recent empirical work from independent laboratories shows strong, overly precise priors can engender hallucinations in healthy subjects and that individuals who hallucinate in the real world are more susceptible to these laboratory phenomena.
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S136...
Trends in Cognitive Science
OPINION | VOLUME 23, ISSUE 2, P114-127, FEBRUARY 2019
Hallucinations and Strong Priors
Philip R. Corlett, Guillermo Horga, Paul C. Fletcher, Ben Alderson-Day, Katharina Schmack, Albert R. Powers III
Open Access
Published: December 21, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.12.001
First of, this is completely off-topic, since the whistleblower reports being briefed on non-human technology in possession of the US, which is being intensively studied. Further, their related "sightings" are corroborated by multiple sensor systems simultaneously. And multiple pilots as well.
Now, your idea of hallucinations being an explanation for such sightings, obviously impossible due to said sensors systems in the first place, is utter bogus since not only do you not have "strong priors" in such a situation, you also do not employ people suffering from hallucinations as pilots for mulit-million dollar fighter jets to begin with.
Your article finally describes an entirely different phenomenon than "seeing an object consistently for an extended period of time". Which is what is relevant here.
You are not the final arbiter of what is on topic. Topics are subjective and connected cognitively differently by different people.
Also, in my view, my comment is directly on topic to the message it replies to. [1]
I’m curious about your user experience with Hacker News. Do you use the normal web interface or some other UI? I’m sorry to ask the obvious question, but I do want to rule it out: do you realize that comments are situated relative to the parent comment, right? Now, after factoring this in, do you see how my comment is a response to its parent?
If you’d like to think about it mathematically, try this. The original post could be characterized as having a topic vector in a many dimensional space. Each subsequent reply can be characterized similarly. As you get deeper in the conversation tree, the topic vectors diverge significantly. This does not mean a somewhat distant (in topic vector space) comment is “off-topic”. Quite to the contrary, it means the original post has generated a rich variety of discussion.
This said, I take your point that transitory perceptual errors do not explain all UFO sightings, nor do they directly bear on the whistleblower’s main claims.
One can make such a point without being prickly about it. I’m sorry that you seem upset here and in your comments generally across the threads here. I can relate to some degree; there is is a lot to be concerned about when it comes to the topics of evidence and people’s ability to evaluate truth claims.
I can also relate to prioritizing factual assessments at the expense of tact and empathy towards others. For many years of my life I did this, and it did not serve me well.
It is your responsibility to not take out on your frustrations on me or anyone else. Treat us with respect or your reputation may suffer.
If you manage a civil tone, I will engage with you further. Otherwise, I don’t see it being productive enough to warrant the effort.
To be specific, I suggest reviewing the HN Guideliness. In particular, strive to ask charitable clarification questions and avoid emotionally charged claims; e.g. that what I’m saying is bogus.
Lastly, you are making many assumptions which you then use to knock down straw men arguments.
Notes
[1] I say this based on a larger number of upvotes than I would expect on a comment this deep in the tree. This information is asymmetric; I recognize that you do not have access to it. I wonder what your assessment of this will be.
- If you think I’m lying, this would confirm what you want to believe about my comment being off topic and bogus.
- If you think I’m telling the truth, it would challenge your claims.
Sorry for digressing but having a formal tone comes off as predictable and like you've used AI to help you type. The best manipulation tactic when "responding to someone being dumb" is making the response sound like it came from an actual human and not from a professor or robot. And most UFO sightings are classified because other countries will assume that we are lunatics. America must keep the image of "we are strong and intelligent" to the public. Even hallucinating a weird tiktac in the sky without documentation is a UFO due to the acronym meaning Unidentified Flying Object. It's Unidentified. Doesn't mean it's an angel or alien, one could obviously be sleep deprived yet write about it like crazy, it's a flaw of entitlement. People assume they'll be the first to see it, so they start seeing things.
While this is not a well studied phenomenon, as in to the extent of having well formed theory, we do know that eyes constantly perform micromovements.
One of the prevailing hypotheses states that due to low inherent resolution of the retina these micromovements are used to create sort of sub-pixel resolution. Hence, visual cortex inherently works in predictive/generative mode with constant feedback correction. This hypothesis is sometimes used to explain phenomena like pareidolia and might as well be used to explain perception of UFOs.
> I often detect motion in my peripheral vision without much detail. Maybe once a year (or less), I see weird things that seem implausible, but only for brief instant. When I look, there is nothing unusual.
I want to elaborate on one personal experience I alluded to above. I am curious if others have experienced anything similar.
While driving at about 20 mph across some train tracks, I noticed in my left peripheral vision a parked vehicle with its rear door open. For a tiny instant, I perceived it roughly like dirt was “flowing out” of the car. When I looked more closely — and again, this happened in a fraction of a second — it was clear that a dog, probably a golden retriever, was jumping out.
So my first fleeting perceptual experience got the motion roughly correct (movement out of a back seat onto the ground) and color (light brown) correct. It got the object wrong.
From what I can tell, this is a consistent subjective experience with the predictive processing model. It seems to me if one did not subscribe to the predictive processing model, one would expect the brain to only register a vague blur.
I think it is also worth mentioning that in the days leading up to that experience I had a DIY project where I dug a deep hole, and I put a bucket in the bottom which I filled before lifting it out and dumping it. (This was more efficient than doing one shovel load at a time.) This digging was not an expedient process which could have led my brain to spend energy processing better ways to do it.
Yes, that seems right. Humans fill in the gaps. AI is similar, where it "hallucinates", but are humans that much different?
You are hallucinating complete nonsense here.
Just think for a second, if such a thing was possible, why would it be restricted to "UFOs"?
Obviously, such an illness would be well known.
First, your tone comes across as unnecessarily uncivil. Your comments could be rephrased to better promote curious discussion.
Second, I will respond in terms of the charitable substance of your comment. I think there is some useful back-and-forth to be had.
Please be specific: part is “complete nonsense” to you; which of the following applies?
1. You reject the predictive processing theory? Why?
2. You reject my characterization of the theory?
3. You reject my application of the theory to the example of seeing UFOs? For the reason you gave? Is there more?
4. What research have you done to support your knowledge and claims?
5. Have you read “Hallucinations and Strong Priors” in Trends in Cognitive Science [1]? I referenced it in nearby comment as well.
Penultimate point: correctly or incorrectly, I am using facts and reasoning in my above comment; I don’t see how this qualifies as “hallucination” in terms of an AI or human phenomenon.
Final point: there is considerable nuance and skill required to criticize effectively. In asking questions 1 through 3, I’m offering an example of a better way.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.12.001
Curious discussion is engaging on the topic at hand, not on completely unrelated nonsense, that you are no expert on anyway (as you professed yourself).
As already stated, the whistleblower does not fall at all in the context you are discussing here, as he reports having been briefed on research programs that study non-human technology.
Now, in the case of those sightings by military pilots, you have multiple sensor systems and multiple pilots involved simultaneously. Clearly impossible to be explained by your idea here.
But even in cases of single eye-witnesses, their sightings are often over extended periods of time, entirely incompatible with your paper.
> Curious discussion is engaging on the topic at hand, not on completely unrelated nonsense…
1. No. This interpretation of one HN Guideline is not accurate. Such a view would justify being non-charitable, which is incompatible with the guidelines more broadly.
Curious and charitable conversation should not stop because you think my comment is off-topic.
2. Regarding topicality; as I explained at length in another comment, as conversations evolve in a tree of comments, there may be considerable distance (in terms of a topic vector space) from the root. This is a normal and useful.
I’m certainly open and appreciative of someone adding to the conversation. You made a connection from my points to what you see is the central point. Your connection was ‘negative’ in the sense that you suggested my points about perceptions and priors does not apply to the original post. This sense of negative is not a problem, even though I disagree with some of your logic. But the way you did it — quite harshly — was unnecessary.
3. Each time you say “utter nonsense” or “bogus” (and the like) it comes across as insulting. Are you aware of this?
There are clearer phrases and terms to use that are not insulting. Depending on what you are trying to say, you might try:
- you could say you disagree (in the sense of a value judgment or a subjective matter)
- you could say that I’m making a logical or rational error
- you could say that something is not true, factually
- you could say that particular claim of mine is inconsistent with another claim
- you could say that I am not providing evidence or support for a claim
Onto a different point. You wrote:
> not on completely unrelated nonsense, that you are no expert on anyway (as you professed yourself).
4. Stating that I am not an expert in a particular cognitive science theory does not inherently disqualify the logic of my argument. It merely suggests an openness to learning if there are mistakes. Such an openness is indicative of humility and a tendency to not overreach.
As you can see in my other comments, I have recognized and agreed with some of your points. But these points have not contradicted or disproved what I wrote.
> if such a thing was possible, why would it be restricted to "UFOs"?
Who said it is? Tons of people report seeing all manner of nonsense.
The prevalence of mental illnesses leading to visual hallucination is very low actually.
The idea of whole departments in the US government being staffed with them is absurdist nonsense.
"normally functioning" brains see things that are not actually there ALL the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion
Most UFO reports fall into the Optical Illusion category rather than extreme schizophrenia.
> Most UFO reports fall into the Optical Illusion category
Indeed. Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident you can listen to the audio recording of some soldiers investigating what happened at the site of a proposed UFO landing, where they observe weird lights and scorch marks on trees.
There's another page some guy set up where he posts photos he took himself at the site and even used screenshots from a TV interview of one of the witnesses of the event to clearly show that those lights were easily explain by surrounding structures (light house etc) and the marks on trees were probably left by lumberjacks.
I'm baffled how a bunch of trained soldiers investigating over several days can just "conclude" that it was all very mysterious stuff going on and that, despite it being clearly debunked, this event is still seen as THE UFO event in the UK.
Then again I have no idea how these latest videos of flying objects can be explained. To a lay person like myself it just seems completely crazy. How can a pilot claiming to see things fly at supersonic speeds doing impossible maneuvers be explained by a problem with the lens and / or "it's just a weather balloon". The "explanations" of it being ufos seem completely believable to me.
Optical illusions are not at all the same thing as visual hallucinations.
Your allegation about UFO reports is accordingly simply incorrect.
Right, so your point about people not having hallucinations frequently is valid. But most people do see optical illusions.
So it seems strange that you have jumped to the conclusion that these must be real UFOs since most people do not hallucinate.
I did not jump to that conclusion, you are putting words in my mouth.
The whistleblower reports of the existence of a research program that he was briefed about. He testifies this program was stuying non-human technology, among that functioning craft, aka "flying saucers".
The determination of it being non-human in orgin was due to extensive material analysis, evident morphology and working characteistics of those devices.
"Someone claims that someone else told him material exists that is from aliens."
> "Someone claims that someone else told him material exists that is from aliens."
I think I take your point: he doesn't have firsthand experience seeing the evidence.
That said, the quote "Someone claims that someone else told him material exists that is from aliens." doesn't by itself convey the significance of these other people being high ranking intelligence officials. A trained intelligence professional has much more analytical skill and credibility than a person randomly sampled from the U.S. population.
> The Debrief reported that Grusch’s knowledge of non-human materials and vehicles was based on “extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials”. He said he had reported the existence of a UFO material “recovery program” to Congress.
> “Grusch said that the craft recovery operations are ongoing at various levels of activity and that he knows the specific individuals, current and former, who are involved,” the Debrief reported.
> In the Debrief article, Grusch does not say he has personally seen alien vehicles, nor does he say where they may be being stored. He asked the Debrief to withhold details of retaliation by government officials due to an ongoing investigation.
Maybe so, but presuming such a visual hallucination phenomena exists, who said it's limited to aliens? xpe didn't say it only manifests as UFO sightings. Besides UFOs, you've got tons of people claiming to see big foot, ghosts, monster fish, angels, ball lightning, etc...
Really low chances that the cameras and other 70 sensor arrays located across an entire fleet of the US Navy are hallucinating simultaneously that they seeing, detecting an UAP.
Or 20 UAPs zooming around, in and out from water, up and down from low Earth orbit in seconds.
You have the math backwards. It would be like saying that someone who guesses your 4 letter pin code is a mind reader because the likelihood of that is low.
You are not factoring in how many times he has tried to guess other people's pins. Or if some pins are more common than others.
Similarly here you are not factoring in how often an entire group of sensors has the same big and repots incorrect data at the same time in the same way. You are Cherry picking the one time the data looked like it might be a UFO. This is also a form of confirmation bias.
It's less of a hallucination and more like a mirage - there's some real stimulus but the mind grossly misinterprets it. Most people don't see mirages regularly, but anyone could see a mirage under the right circumstances.
> The idea of whole departments in the US government being staffed with them is absurdist nonsense.
Someone who works in astrophysics for a govt entity in the US told me they have such massive budgets that it's not uncommon to throw some of it to some weird department just as a favor or to keep up the public's interest in "space stuff". Another person (working at ESA) confirmed it, they both rolled their eyes and claimed it was all BS.
NOT saying this is definitive truth.
UFO sightings are much less interesting then abductions. Sightings require almost no effort and ultimately can be explained away. But people who claim to be abducted basically are giving up the assumption they will ever be taken seriously again. So why tell others? Are there some subset of abductees who were actually taken? We certainly do the same to other animals so there's no reason why it wouldn't be done to us.
> So why tell others?
Some people just like having the attention of other people, so it could still be an invented story just to have a great story to tell to the few that believe it.
While being ridculed by all the rest? You have a weird idea of "wanted attention".
Ask George Santos.
Maybe he so desperately wants his $500,000 bail guarantors to remain anonymous because they're aliens!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/nyregion/george-santos-ba...
I mean, there sure are a lot of mentally unstable people who actively choose to detach from reality. To some, living in a fantasy land is as simple as ignoring the truth around you.
There’s also perverse monetary incentives.
“We need to increase tourism on the Town. Cowille business is booming since they had that Virgin Mary apparition. Anne-Marie, could that shape that you saw while tending the sheep be the Spirit of Saint Peter?”
Tangential, but we tend to bring up the placebo effect pretty quickly in medical discussions about what works and doesn't but actually a lot of what people say is the result of placebo is just not even placebo but "natural" resorption, that is your body doing the work. Placebo is measurable, it's whether taking a "fake" cure is better than "natural" resorption. For some affections, the effect is surprisingly important for others quite negligible.
> people will believe whatever they want
Yes. I was discussing something related to this with one of my young-adult children and I said something along the lines of "Some people don't actually like abstract or self-reflective thought. They prefer to just believe what they want to, or what's comforting to them, and not to think about it." I believe it hadn't really occurred to them so starkly before, and I felt kind of bad for that.
I am usually one to treat EVERYTHING with a very healthy dose of skepticism, but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not? I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
The US Military released rather intriguing, yet unexplained videos of objects outmaneuvering our top jets. You should go check those out. I've yet to see an explanation that covers all the data those jets collected.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but instantly writing things off as 'tin foil hat' while the guy has an actual legit legal retaliation case going on seems a bit premature.
>but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not?
This is the tragic sentence which is letting the parade of carnival animals in through the back door. In some sense it's true that intellectual humility is necessary as we allow ourselves to be challenged by ideas we thought not possible. But it's true the way hallmark card quotes are true, as vague generalities.
It does no work as a specific response to a specific set of facts, which should be determined by all kinds of specific contextual examinations. In that setting, it's an open-ended, unrestricted invitation to completely suspend all disbelief without any restraint or distinctions.
If the problem is not outside the bounds of known physics, then it should be considered plausible.
Otherwise, it is certainly not impossible, but pointless to speculate. If you enjoy speculating about such things, fill your boots, but realize that you are only doing it for your own amusement.
I think you mean possible rather than plausible? But otherwise I would say you're right, it's an exercise for personal amusement. But I think as you can see from elsewhere even in this thread, people slip into this mode of half-joking where they might as well be describing their ideas for Deus Ex fan missions, and the dividing line between serious engagement with evidence and make believe is breaking down.
I would argue that play is a highly valuable intellectual activity. Speculating for one’s amusement falls into that category and is therefore not worthless. A lot of great ideas come from playing around with strange ideas that aren’t obviously useful.
A thought experiment. The universe is extremely large and billions of years old. Let's imagine life has developed within a few of those billions of galaxies out there, then imagine this started 1 billion years before us. How advanced to you think we could get in another billion years (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves)? What's really impossible?
We have a pretty good idea about physics and can say with very high confidence that interstellar travel needs a lot of energy. That makes aliens visiting us with small crafts for fun an unlikely theory.
We think we have a pretty good idea about physics - just as cats have a pretty good idea about scratching posts and ants have a pretty good idea about scent trails.
Cats literally can't understand what the Internet is, and ants can't understand what a cat is.
It's astoundingly naive to assume we don't have equivalent cognitive limitations.
That is a classic argument that was already addressed "The Relativity of Wrong" by Asimov much more eloquently that what I could attempt. Google finds this copy: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
I don't think that article is really addressing the same argument. The argument Asimov is addressing seems to be whether human scientists will always disprove the previous century's human scientists.
The argument the poster above is making is that human scientists may be cognitively limited, and our species objectively stupid. You can't really definitively argue against this in an essay, because if you are a stupid person who is a member of a stupid species, your reasoning skills can't be trusted. You might argue it pragmatically makes sense to assume your species is smart enough to understand the universe, but that's a different argument than Asimov is making.
Asimov seems to assume humans are objectively an intelligent species so his reasoning skills can be trusted, which of course may not be wrong, but is pretty hard to prove.
If there were cognitive limitations you'd expect big holes in the theories we come up with unless you believe that for some reason we happen to be limited in a way that we observe a subset of the universe which is strangely internally consistent and shows essentially no signs of interaction with an bigger universe, yet alien species can somehow use the bigger universe to interact with our subset of the universe in a way that appears to be magic. I find that pretty far fetched.
There are big holes in the theories we come up with. The inability to reconcile QM and relativity is the most famous one. M-theory requires 11-dimensional spacetime, but no one has ever observed most of those dimensions. Recent astronomical measurements, if confirmed, may falsify parts of the standard model. The list is pretty long.
Well it pretty much goes without saying that we don't know what we don't know. But we could actually be getting close to learning everything there is to know about the laws of physics. Finishing them up in the next century or two doesn't seem like a big stretch.
I'm not a scientist, just a dumb dude watching Youtube. But there is a problem in physics with tests not being avaialble for stuff they're theorizing about. From my limited understanding, string theory currently has zero path to empirical research to prove or disprove. So it might take a bit longer than a century or two for that reason.
"pretty good idea" does leave some room though...
Maybe all you need to travel from one star to another is just a pair AA batteries, and a 5 min. journey. Hence, very small UFOs would be essentially drones managed from another star.
How could it be possible, well, you have to take a closer look to the probably underlying physics you can infer from the UFOs behavior. Probably the still secret videos from DoD have a lot more to offer than most of the currently available videos.
But for now we have these phenomena reported: - UFOs can go to full stop instantaneously, even if they are travelling at several times the speed of the sound - UFOs can go from fully static to several times the speed of the sound, instantaneously. - UFOs can remain fully stopped, seemingly unamovable, even under a hurricane. - UFOs can submerge almost instantaneously, almost with no "splash", even if they do at extraordinary velocities. - UFOs can travel underwater at the speed of the sound, or even more faster. - UFOs have been reported to go "into mountain bases", decades ago. - and the most important, UFOs have no apparent source of energy nor thrust, nor anything seeming usable as wings to remain in the air, or some rotors to move underwater.
Then, the physics? The UFOs are probably superdimensional entities / vehicles / vessels.
What we are seeing is maybe a fraction of the actual vessels, most of it located out of our three dimensional space, and you can see "here" is a small sphere of "metal". Maybe this spheres are just small arrays of sensors, from a way bigger unobservable vessel.
The evidence is empirical at most yet, maybe the still secret videos from DoD actually show clearly stuff or moves that reveal the superdimensional features, like a UFO "crashing" into solid rock, just to "re-emerge" from solid ground a couple of miles farther. Or maybe some time-related movements, like appearing / disappearing "from nothing".
If the UFOs are superdimensional capable vehicles, and our three dimensional universe actually has upper dimensions, maybe time itself is a physically traversable dimension, from a hypothetical 5th dimension. Hence, you could actually have FTL - Faster Than Light - travel, but without breaking any physics rules from the three dimensional space. You could be just "fastly walking" a couple of kilometers in maybe 15 minutes in the 5th dimensional space, and you could be displacing yourself several light years in the three dimensional space.
Then the energy required to do a multiple light year travel would be trivial, and the time required to displace yourself in the three dimensional space, too.
You could "jump" from star to star in maybe 5 minutes, using the energy from two AA batteries.
The consequences go far beyond that if the time is a physical dimension: you could go back and forward in time, just like you displace yourself in the three dimensional space. Hence the "time travel" thing remains impossible in three dimensions, but it is easily doable in 5 - or more - dimensions. Even closed loops are possible, because time as physical dimension would imply that "everything is happening at the same time", hence you could travel "backwards" in time and change something, and going back "forward" you'd find some things have changed.
What happens if you can also "travel" in time just as fastly, years in minutes, using just a pair of AA batteries? What if you can go back and change history? You could be changing stuff continously, improving at exponential pace. Maybe the aliens have done so, and they don't have "billions" of years of evolution, but have found a way to make the process faster.
Similarly, the implications of the existence of upper dimensions for the humans in its current level of technological evolution would be amazing. If you can displace solid matter like a plane, using an upper dimension, you could make traverse solid matter in the three dimensional space, maybe even not interacting at all with the solid matter: you could make vehicles capable of travelling throug solid rock mountains, or even traverse across the planet.
Some implications are just wow, if you can travel through solid matter in the three dimensional space or you can build vehicles capable of not interacting with mass in the three dimensional space, automagically most of the weapons and defense systems in the world became meaningless overnight. You could go inside any bank, any militar base, not worrying about missiles, bullets. You can't defend yourself by staying in three dimensional space, but in the upper dimensions you'd can't either: the enemy could travel in time and change its strategy to win this time, they'd just need some observer far away from the theather, assessing if the actions have had success or not, if not, go back, advise and repeat.
So, maybe the "first contact" isn't really the problem, but what happens if humanity suddenly realizes about new, radical advances in physics, available not only to super-powers and super-rich entities, but to anyone with a pair of AA batteries?
Almost no upper echelons of power in anywhere in the world would likely want the entire population know about as radically prone to sudden and profound changes in societies, as a discovery of the existence - and cheap accesibility - of upper dimensions, beyond the three dimensional space.
So you - maybe any super-power, nation states and private groups of powerful people - keep aliens out of sight from the general population, UFOs are psychological operations, not a thing like UFOs actually exist, whatever.
For that reason. You want nothing to change from what it is right now.
So it's probably just alien kids tooling around after school.
So Douglas Adams was right all along:
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
haha, could be, after all our kids play with ants,
and the ants most probably think that we are highly advanced entities.
and it doesn't take the kids too much energy nor technological resources - for the human technological level - to play with ants, but ants probably would see the kid's resources as incredible advanced, well beyond its current technological capabilities.
So yeah it could be 5th dimensional kids playing with us (ants from their perspective).
You can always have a louder laughter...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/
As far as we know there is no extradimensional space where you can hide matter/energy. So I find it unlikely that UFOs are "superdimensional entities". How would these dimensions interact with the dimensions we know?
I'm suggesting the UFOs could be the first widely public evidence of upper dimensions beyond our three dimensional space.
I'm thrilled about UFOs happily breaking several laws of physics in front of us, and we should be thinking about what are we missing, what's out of sight, beyond our current understanding of physics that the UFOs obviously manage and exploit.
The upper dimensions is just a - pretty obvious - hypothesis.
"How would these dimensions interact with the dimensions we know?"
I don't know, but whoever has built the UFOs, certainly knows.
Some ideas: because you should not be able to impact the ocean surface at mach 4 without obvious physical consequences, and not submerging almost with minimal to absent "splash", maybe those UFOs are just leaking some photons into our three dimensional space,
hence "submerging" could not be precisely what they are doing, maybe they are just re-locating the "output" of the vessel out of sight of the humans.
Also those "metallic orbes" look amazingly similar to some kind of "black hole" or singularity, maybe those things are not vessels at all, but just a hole opened to our three dimensional space, to watch us, study us. That would make sense about the "orbes" doing nothing but keep running from us, appearing aparently everywhere with some interesting stuff to look at.
Yeah, it's very plausible that if another civilization exists some 10 light years away, the vehicle they use to travel 90,460,730,472,580 Km in order to get to Earth has the size of a compact car and copies the design of a 1950s experimental aircraft.
> I've yet to see an explanation that covers all the data those jets collected.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest. Mick has thoroughly investigated the most cited videos and shows them to be of entirely terrestrial origin - often atmospheric effects combined with optical lens, digital stabilization and thermal imaging artifacts. He even cites the technical documentation for the military camera equipment and often provides convincing demonstrations of the artifacts through recreations.
So you're telling me, some random game developer was more competent than the US military guys who literally are hired for such analysis?
I suppose, having coded some "parallax effect" is sufficient in your book?
Yes he is. Have you ever interacted with the military or other public org in a technical capacity?
The US military made no claims that these videos showed unexplainable phenomena. They just sort of put them out there.
The video they called "Gimbal" shows an artifact caused by a gimbal mechanism, for example
> So you're telling me, some random game developer was more competent than the US military guys who literally are hired for such analysis?
In the case of the most-cited "Gimbal" video, all the military has officially said is they can't determine for sure what the object the glare shown in the video is from. But everyone already agrees on that point. No one can tell from the video whether the glare shown is caused by an airplane many miles distant or some other object. No one representing the U.S. government has ever said the video could NOT be a magnified thermal glare from a distant airplane. Remember, the pilot never saw the object with his own eyes, it was far too distant to see visually even as a spec on the horizon. All the pilot ever saw was the same auto-tracking thermal video we've all seen.
> I suppose, having coded some "parallax effect" is sufficient in your book?
I don't know what you're referring to but it doesn't sound like Mick West's analysis video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs. Also, Mick only assembled the video. He acknowledges the evidence shown in the video is the work of many independent researchers working collaboratively over many months while iteratively sharing their data for peer review. There are links to all the source data shown as well as the entire open analysis discussion and review. The summary video is concise and only 20 minutes long. I challenge you to watch all of it and respond specifically. Which of the four points evidenced from the on-screen camera do you think is incorrect and why?
IMHO, it's inarguable the detailed analysis provides conclusive and verifiable evidence the object is precisely consistent with a glare from an extremely distant object with a thermal imaging 'halo' artifact around it. The apparent rotation and erratic movement of the thermal glare observed in the highly-magnified video is a combined artifact of a) the Raytheon multi-axis camera tracking gimbal system used on that jet, b) the optical stabilization system, and c) the digital de-rotation system.
If you respond, please at least give a clear "yes" or "no" as to whether you agree the apparent rotation is created by the rotating camera gimbal (which was then automatically digitally de-rotated) vs actual rotation of the distant object. If not, how do you explain all the obvious signs of gimbal rotation in the on-screen numeric data and the rest of the video frame around the center glare (eg the background clouds and sky)?
"but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not"
It's usually not a 50/50 percent probability on whether something is possible or exists.
ECREE is a good rule to follow when trying to come up with probabilities lacking direct evidence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard
For example imagine I told you I own a pencil. Would you ask me to prove it or doubt me? Even you don't know or trust me, probably not. Why? Because pencils exist, it's easy to get one, and I have no reason to lie (in this scenario).
Now what if I told you I have an invisibility cloak. You'd call me a liar and want proof, hell probably an in person demonstration. Think about why.
-------------- "I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach."
Whether or not aliens exist is not the same as not reaching space. Say it's the year 1876- 1. Aliens may or may not exist, it's unknown 2. it's a true fact that humans haven't gone to space.
I get that you mean the amount of technological advancment in the last 300 years has been crazy.
The reason the burden of proof is on whether something occurred or exists is because the number of events that haven't occured and what doesn't exist is infinite.
Finally you also ask about who is to say and I assume you also mean "why not". There's always a downside to believing false things, maybe it's small for some people or maybe a crazy person adds aliens to the pile of "government lies" then decides to shoot up some government agency.
> I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
Tsiolkovsky developed his rocket equation in 1903 and in 1928 he published The Will of Universe dedicated to space colonisation. He clearly new it’s within reach of human mind.
Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon and given that his works are some early examples of science fiction and not a pure fantasy, one could say even Verne envisioned space travels as possible.
> The US Military released rather intriguing, yet unexplained videos of objects outmaneuvering our top jets.
Those videos show no such thing. All the stuff about outmanoeuvring is a fantastic narration.
Videos show only dots which can be (and were) explained as a bird from above, plane from behind and glitchy camera mount with a bit of optical artifacts on top. Which is infinitely more plausible than aliens from another star or another dimension.
> but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not?
I feel like learning physics increased my ability to tell possible from impossible things tremendously. Second factor is learning as much as you can about scams and liers.
With those two foundations you should have a solid capacity to appreciate reality
To me, if you watch videos of what amateurs can do with the maneuverability of a $300 racing FPV drone it is most likely those are military drones of some sort.
Even a $300 racing drone looks pretty alien if you have never seen one. A $3 million dollar one would absolutely look like it is from another planet.
The USAF and the Pentagon themselves released those videos, labeling those recording as "unexplainable".
Let me point them, and the fighter jet pilots, to "Scotty79-from-the-internet", so that they can all understand that what they all saw or recorded were in fact birds. :p
> "unexplainable"
Just unexplained, which means noone there bothered to explain them seriously enough to create an official document. Which was correct (lack of) action to take because those observations were irrelevant for anyone except the most keen ufologists.
> Let me point them, and the fighter jet pilots
Jet pilots are good at flying jets. It's kinda hard so they don't have much capacity left to be good at anything else. Like explaining visual glitches and unusual outputs of highly complicated machinery.
> to "Scotty79-from-the-internet"
That weren't my explanations. I was merely citing the ones given by a guy with doctorate in physics and expeirience with IR cameras. There are others. All infinitely more plausible than "it's aliens".
Of course, it's possible. Almost anything is possible on some abstract level if we allow our imagination to roam freely. I'm all for asking the US government: "Do you hide alien UFOs?"
The question is how you react when the answer is "No." If you keep insisting the government is lying, then you're more and more getting into 'tin foil hat' territory, especially if you're a government employee and have no evidence other than alleged hearsay. It depends on your strength of belief in the contrarian opinion. Saying that it's possible is one thing, saying "they're doing it but I don't have proof" is another.
For almost hundreds of reasons, if any government, but specially super-power government would have UFO's tech hidden, and everybody else is almost certain UFOs are a myth, some wacko-level talk for internet forums
They would be strategically obligued to deny everything, so the answer would "No, no such a thing like UFOs here".
i.e. what happened with the NSA programs, most were almost fully known for the "conspiracy wackos" except by the name of the program, even decades before Snowden. But just were confirmed to be real maybe 30 years after the first mentions in the 70s,80s,90s.
Alternatively, if you had access to an immense and unassailable technological advantage over everyone, wouldn't you want to leverage that? Wouldn't it be nice to tell our enemies "we don't care how many nukes you have, we can do whatever we want with impunity or else we'll use our alien tech to protect ourselves and destroy our enemies" or to tell our allies "stick with us we're gonna be rolling out a stream of inventions that will each dramatically increase our prosperity for decades to come"? You only keep your strength hidden if it could potentially be negated - i.e. that they could develop the same technology or an effective counter without having access to alien spacecraft.
You're right mostly, there are also some special cases where it makes sense to hide the UFOs (or any radically new, advanced tech), some examples:
- the alien tech isn't really and/or fully available, they are half way in the reverse engineering efforts, and maybe other powers are in the race too
- the alien tech intrinsically reveals some currently hidden aspect of the universe/reality, if you present the technology publicly, it will be obvious that there's something new, and everybody will pursuit advances related to these new physics.
i.e. imagine discovering the eletricity in the XV century, it would have changed everything.
Given the article, the more interesting question is how we react if the answer is "Yes".
You're sure that in 1923, space was "something we would never reach"? That's about ten years before a German guy starts his work on liquid rocket fuel technology, work that will (via a Nazi terror weapon) go on to result in the US manned space programme.
If you said 1823 maybe I could sympathise, in 1823 they don't have everything together, they don't know about the Noble gases or dozens of other elements, they thought atoms were indivisible (hence the name), they don't have the First Network (the Universal Postal Union, yes, in 1823 you could not write a letter in say, Edinburgh, write an address in Berlin, and just post it, that idea hadn't been invented yet).
But by 1923 they're in a much better place. Their atomic model is still wrong but it's like the model you're probably picturing in your head, the one where electrons are little whizzy balls orbiting a nucleus. Wrong, but not wrong enough to cause big problems for everyday purposes. Kurt Gödel hasn't come up with his clever trick yet, but the problem is right there and people are thinking about it.
You say the videos are objects but I don't see evidence of objects. Just because you see a shape doesn't mean you saw an object. Did you know shadows can move faster than the speed of light? Because you see a shadow isn't a thing, it's just our mental model of events, and there are no limits on that model. We have plenty of ways to make a shape seem to move much faster than we can make an object move.
In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers flew through the skies for the first time ever in a hot air balloon. It wasn't even sure if humans could survive being in the air so the King wouldn't let them send humans aloft until test animals survived first.
Later that same year, the hydrogen balloon was invented and that one was flown to an altitude of 3 km high.
And yes, the idea that you could write in Edinburgh and have it delivered to Berlin had already been invented much further back than after 1823. The Roman Empire had the Cursus Publicus which handled mail delivery between the Provinces and Italy.
Do you mean someone of a high enough rank could have official communications and military dispatches delivered, or do you mean any person could have any letter delivered to any home? I think tialaramex was writing more about universal civilian letter delivery, and particularly about universal (well, global or near-global) addressing, rather than letter delivery between officials within an empire.
There would only be a need for that with ubiquitous literacy. The Roman system may well have been close enough to universally accessible and offer delivery throughout their territory for Roman citizens who were literate.
I don't think it realistically did - it included a system of authorisation that implied a demand that was intentionally denied, however there are multiple other old postal systems which definitely did (e.g. the Imperial Mail of the Holy Roman Empire [1] being one of the significant ones, but that itself built on older systems). A more defensible claim would be the strictly limited claim that the idea of attempting to create a global postal system with global addressability is a new idea. But even long before the UPU, a lot of countries had treaties to allow for forwarding of post, so I think it's unlikely that this idea was new as well, just previously impractical.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserliche_Reichspost
If something has been invented, the idea "the exact same thing but cheaper" has definitely already entered peoples' minds. They may not know a good method to do it, but they can imagine a world in which it exists.
There are unexplained bugs in my software, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t the work of aliens.
For sure. Even if we can't explain how or why some phenomenon occurred, the conclusion "we don't know of anything on Earth that does this, so it must be aliens" is so much less likely than "it is something on Earth we haven't figured out yet".
I'm pretty convinced space aliens send the cosmic rays down that cause the bizarre runtime bugs in my software. I have never found a more amenable or rational explanation.
“but who are any of us to say what is possible or what is not?”
Those people are called experts.
>I'm sure that a century ago, space was just something we would never reach.
Far from it! From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne was written in 1865, and was a reasonable attempt at hard sci-fi. More scientifically, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published "Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" in 1903, some 6 years after deriving his famous rocket equation; it advanced the basic concept of the space rocket, that we all take for granted today. In 1923, exactly a century ago, Hermann Julius Oberth published his book "The Rocket in Interplanetary Space", a thoroughly practical treatment in which he argues that human-rated rocket-powered space flight was not just theoretically possible but feasible and maybe even profitable.[0]
So century ago, not only was space firmly established as a place we could go, but also enough groundwork had been done that it was known how we would get there.
[0] https://ia800304.us.archive.org/24/items/nasa_techdoc_197200...
I don't know what you've seen, but the 3 video released a few years are mostly parallax, optical phenomenon (the "tic tac") and sensors trying and failing to track tiny objects (birds, balloons and similar) at distances of a few kilometres.
It’s incredibly hard for people to say “we dont have an explanation.” Either it’s unexplained therefore aliens or an equally speculative yet mundane dismissal.
What about Occam's razor? Think about the reports as well. It's not like some alien was seen walking around by hundreds then disappeared we are talking about unexplained visuals and mass moving in an unexplained way. Why even go right to aliens? Because people already believe it's true and are looking for anything that can be attributed to it.
I think you’re noticing the big five trait called “openness.”
Some people are very open, some not at all.
I’m happy I’m open to things. God, Love, Art. Some people tell you it’s all make believe, there’s no free will, just machines acting out biological imperatives in a world that’s so well understood by science that we’ve reached the end of history. No way!
The vast majority of Americans have seen TV news videos of VTOL jet aircraft (AV-8 Harrier or F-35B Lightning II). A large fraction have even seen them in person at air shows where they have been top attractions for decades.
https://airshows.aero/Page/AboutAS-Facts
If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence, wouldn't you want to find out before it's too late?
> If people in the DoD at that level exhibited such a degree of incompetence
It is not incompetence - it is orthogonal. I worked with an excellent software engineer who was rather smart - way above average. However, he believed in "Overunity energy" and paid actual money to attend conferences and buy the books. Some folks are predeposed to believing conspiracies and seeing order where there's chaos.
Not to mention:
(1) the Google engineer who "knows" what sentience looks like when chatting with a low-grade AI chatbot (2) the articles by Kevin Roose and other professional reporters about AI chatbots, believing they witnessed authentic confessions from ChatGPT that it wanted to become skynet, evincing a stunning lack of understanding of the function of large language models. (3) NASA Astronaut Edgar Mitchell who came to believe in UFOs and became cited by conspiracy theorists for decades.
People at the centers of professional, institutional respectability who didn't have the wherewithal to step back and put thier impulses under the light of rational examination.
It's not without precedent, and we don't have anything other than second order interpertation of information that hasn't been revealed, but we do have a blizzard of breathless reporting enteratining presumptions that are way ahead of any actual established facts.
You can’t say that Bard isn’t sentient until you define sentience. UK just declared that lobsters are sentient. Why not Bard. I think Lemoine did the world a favor by giving it a good few months head start.
From his podcast, it is obvious that Roose knows exactly what he dealt with in the Sydney affair. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t unnerving.
Conspiracy theorists (important: multiple) often have one or more of the following attributes which is why you see a wide range of intelligence in the group.
1. People with mental illness.
2. People with low intelligence who are unable/don't understand logic, the scientific method, and concepts like ecree, They are easily fooled by others. They may also have a bias like hating or mistrusting the government.
3. People who are insecure. Being a conspiracy theorist makes you feel smarter than other people as you are part of a select group of who know the truth. The masses are stupid or as they say now "asleep" but you've figured it all out via Google.
This is why much of their talk is less about how they can prove their claims and more about the people who don't believe. They refer to them as "sheep" or "not awake. The focus for them is that they are right which may help with their insecurities.
4. People who don't feel they have a purpose in life and are looking for a meaning. Want to be a part of a group that is bound by something important and there's almost no effort to join? Bam, now your job is to get that information out there and covert the masses, a goal that will never be finished and thankfully take up your entire life.
5. People who were originally lured in because of the other reasons and no longer believe. Because they made it their life, maybe spent excess money, wrote books or made absolute claims they don't want to look stupid so they never admit their change. This is especially an issue on the internet where the whole world can fest on your failure.
Interesting that you could s/conspiracy theorists/religious group and your argument sounds as convincing. "People who are insecure" might expand differently. "One or more" of your list items are probably truisms for any group you can think of. Train enthusiasts?
Actually it's s//cult leaders, the established religions are quite open about the ideas and texts underlying their beliefs (then some of them insist you need a cleric for interpretation). In cults that information is hidden and only accessible once someone has risen to the inner circle of the cult.
Besides (4) people looking for a meaning what other attributes would be common with enthusiasts of a hobby. I also don't see an issue with people finding meaning in hobbies because the effect is often isolated to themselves
One of the brightest guys I ever worked with believed the earth had enough food and resources to support ONE TRILLION people. Just because you're one of 1000 people in the world that understand how to make a qubit doesn't mean that domain knowledge transfers. Feynman knew this (Degrasse Tyson kinda doesn't).
What makes you believe that Earth cannot support one billion people, given another 1000 years or so of technological development at our current pace?
Assuming of course: - We've "solved" fusion, and can produce near-unlimited amounts of electricity - Per person energy/resource consumption is cut to an absolute minimum. Most tools, machines etc are designed to last virtually forever, instead of having planned obsolescence - We build farming buildings that are 100 stories tall, and produce light from electricity instead of relying on sunlight to grow plants. - Recycling processes and other activities that are labor intensive today can be made 1-3 orders of magnitude more efficient by AI and better access to cheap energy. - We are able to handle the sociological aspects of such population density
Earth's population density is currently at 16/km^2, or 62500m^2/person. If we multiply the population by 100, that's still 625m^2/person.
We clearly have enough space, and probably enough atoms (of each type) to support one billion. So I think if we have enough energy, technology and organize it perfectly, it should be technically possible.
In fact, given the fact that each American already spends almost 100x more energy than most people did 500 years ago, it may be even easier than is assumed above, if we assume that resource consumption is cut to near subsistence levels.
Obviously, such a world would be quite dystopian, making the USSR seem positively cheerful. But impossible?
I guess the real question is, when do we stop, when everyone has 2 cubic meters of space to live in? Is that where we draw the line? Because then we could build a borg cube the size of the solar system and fit a 1 nonillion people.
I mean anything is possible (for additional nightmares: look at factory farming of chickens).
Just not livable.
He was making the argument as a response to being triggered by "liberal" policies about climate change and human footprint.
For certain values of "food and resources". Incoming solar energy is 7000x humanity's energy consumption, while one trillion is merely 125x the current population, so it's physically possible. Probably the biosphere would have to be converted into a food-producing chemical factory, along with substitutes for oxygen generation, waste recycling, etc.
Add that people today on average consume 10x-100x more energy than strictly needed for survival, and energy consumption may only need to go up about 10x.
Now, if on top of the solar energy, we assuem that we will have fusion energy available within a few 100 years, energy available may easily grow way more than 100x of today's production.
Also, if efficiency continues to increase, for instance due to AI development, nanotech, biotech, etc, we may be able to build almost any amount of infrastructure given the atoms we have available in the Earth's crust. Including multi-story farms, feeding electric lighting to power photosynthesis.
In fact, I'm not aware of any hard limits anywhere near this side of 1 billion people. As far as I know, there are billions of billions of kg of most critical elements available on earth, or in the order of 1+ billion kg per person, even if we're 1 billion people. Our ability to organize these atoms into whatever combination we want (including human bodies) is primarily limited by energy.
And even with 1 billion people, it will take a while before we run out of hydrogen for fusion power.
You keep saying 1 billion, but the world population is already around 8 billion.
Yeah, my bad. I used it in the British/European sense, but the American word is trillion.
Pretty sure we'll stop wanting to reproduce at the required rate long before food/resources becomes the real issue (which isn't to say starvation etc. isn't likely to be a major problem for much of the world's population in coming decades, but it'll make less of an impact on population growth than the rate we choose to reproduce at).
Beyond the clouds, the sky is always blue. But look further, and space is black as night.
Humans are a species of animals. Recent environmental changes has caused a sharp decline in evolutionary fitness (=reproduction rate) for this population. This has happened to millions of species in the past, and in many (if not most) cases, the population adapted to the new environment, and the fitness grew back to or beyond replacement rate.
Also, this can happen quite a lot faster than some seem to imagine. While it takes a long time for completely new mutations to make it into the gene pool, the gene pool already contains a huge diversity of genes coding for different types of traits, including mental traits. Often, all that is needed to adapt to a new environment, is for the relative frequency of these genes to change.
For instance, many people seem to have a built-in oxytocin response when around young children. A boost in frequency to all genes promoting/strenghtening this mechanism may eventually make the need-to-have-baby emotion in most women stronger than the need-to-have-orgasm drive in the horniest of 18-year-olds.
And if these genes are already in the gene pool, just with a low frequency, they could easily become dominant over 10-40 generations.
In other words, if at some point the kinds of environmental change that cause population decline slows down, I don't think it's likely that the birth rate stays below replacement forever. (If it does, we'll go extinct, of course).
Forever is far too long a time to make useful predictions about. But in the meantime... https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/abso...
Sperm count has to fall quite a bit further before it becomes a bigger limiting factor than women actively chosing to not make babies.
Also, I'm not making predictions about "forever". Rather, my prediction is that the reproduction rate is likely to come back above the replacement rate very quickly, compared to evolutionary time.
My guess is somewhere between 100 to 1000 years, if human societies go on approximately like today, and we don't have some kind of apocalypse, AI takeover or totalitarian world government.
> Why does it have to be a conspiracy?
Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities.
For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence agent independently confided in him the same details as well as the same project name. He claims that ultimately he was furnished documentation evidence of this project which he refuses to provide to media (due to national security issues) but which he has provided to congress.
I'm relating what he said in the interview. He could be making that all up. However, if he is relating actual events then there is a coordinated group of intelligence agents working towards the same goal.
I don't understand why someone would have the docs and choose to hold them back while still going public. It ultimately weakens the story and his credibility, and if it is true, there's not much stopping the powers that he crossed in the process from coming after him anyway. The government isn't gonna go light on this guy simply because he didn't go to the press. They send a message to anyone who might be thinking about doing the same thing.
Maybe he avoids getting charged under the Espionage Act this way, but history shows very clearly that the pre-Snowden whistleblowers all had their careers ruined and still faced criminal charges. Love him or hate him, but Snowden went for the jugular and brought receipts while preventing the most damaging intel to human life from being leaked.
I mean, I agree that he should have leaked it publicly because I'm "publicly" and I want to see it. But I think it's pretty unarguably true that if you feel it is incumbent on you to leak classified materials and are unwilling to go Snowden and flee the US, then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation, then not go to the media so the Pentagon doesn't hate your guts.
> then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation
Congress wouldn't protect him from retaliation anyway. Thomas Drake was raided by the FBI and indicted even though he didn't leak any intelligence. You're making yourself an enemy of the government the moment you open your mouth, regardless of whether or not you bring documentation.
A1: Man, that Jekins is so gullible, he'll believe anything. Wanna help wind him up some for the lols?
A2: Lol yeah, you're right. I'm in, that sounds like fun.
A1: Okay so I told him that we've got some alien spacecraft in the broom closet under a project named meatball. I'm pretty sure he believes me, but if you tell him the same thing, I bet he'll really go nuts!
A2: Ahahaha awesome. Okay I'll take him aside next Tuesday. This is gonna be great! I haven't had this much fun at work since the time Brett got his had stuck in the vending machine.
Well, A1 and A2 are clearly conspiring, co-ordinating their activities. So some of his claims, even if you _don't_ believe them, point towards coordinated activities.
That's still a conspiracy to wind up Jenkins.
It's the "rogue psy-op" form of conspiracy.
Or his colleagues are messing with him.
But believing the US has a classified alien spaceship that was recovered in-tact is way more fun so let's go with that.
It being so fun is reason enough not to believe it. When is the last time something this exciting ended up being true?
Well we all suspected the government spied on us and then Snowden brought it to light. That was pretty fun.
Remember that time Saddam was gonna terrorise everyone with weapons of mass destruction, but he didn’t actually have any. Man, what a fun twist!
> Or his colleagues are messing with him
As a co-ordinated activity, sure.
We need to stop using the term “conspiracy” alone. Instead a conspiracy probability should be associated with every such theory.
As a strawman, a conspiracy which requires 10K people or more to pull it off gets assigned 0.0, while a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0.
So anytime someone tells you about a conspiracy theory, ask them to estimate the conspiracy factor.
Examples of high conspiracy factor theory’s would be sports with a single, extremely important player (a goalie) for example since only one person needs to be corrupted.
An example of a low conspiracy factor theory would be the Moon landing as 1000s of people would need to be corrupted.
> a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0
By definition a conspiracy involves more than one person.
I'd argue that a 'conspiracy factor' of 1 is not a conspiracy, just like a road with an occupancy factor of 0 doesn't have any cars on it, and I presume this was exactly the point of the GP.
Fair, a conspiracy requiring just two people to pull it off is assigned a conspiracy factor of 1. 10K or more is assigned 0.0. Use it in conjunction with other factors to determine overall probability.
In other words a wacko got trolled or pranked.
Then the troller was embarrassed about how well it worked and told him to never talk about it.
> he claims that an intelligence official
One guy claims, might as well stop there.
I'm on the side of wanting to believe, it's just important to stay skeptical because if it were all true it would probably be one of the most important things to happen to humanity. We're not alone after all.
Why would two people sworn to protect national secrets disclose them to an unbriefed individual? It isn't a believable scenario.
That Intel official is in trouble then. I can't imagine this guy's IPsec was that good. They'll dump his whole digital life and find 'the leaker' in minutes. More likely the UFO is just a 6 or 7 the generation stealth aircraft 'they' are keeping secret because otherwise you would be asking why they government is spending money on this and not health care
From what the commenter you're replying to said, it sounds like the guy was shown deeper evidence than just a joke. The tendency to assume that conspiracies don't ever happen is just as fallacious as the tendency to assume that they always do.
In the particular case, the coverup would not be challenging (only a handful of people would be aware that it's "fake"), there would be motive (convincing China, Russia, etc. that new aircraft we experiment with might actually be extraterrestrial + convincing them to chase ghosts + generally messing with them), and there would be means (the theory that previous-commenter just expressed, where agents selected from psych test results and shown fake classified information). Not to mention US Intelligence's recorded history of doing some very outlandish and "conspiratorial" things.
Of course, no theory in particular (conspiracy or "grounded") is going to be anything more than speculation given limited the level of evidence that's actually on the table.
Also, he was in a position such that people would have confided such evidence to him.
We're not talking about an Apache mechanic overhearing random conversations. He was on the team investigating UAPs for the gov, and people came to him with evidence regarding UAPs.
I also read he was a GS-15 (civilian equivalent to a colonel). Not just anyone ends up at that level. Colonels in the military command large units, think "senior director" level in industry.
I believe this guy is probably acting out of a duty to root out what he believes is unlawful behavior (hiding activities from Congress). I don't believe the ET claims personally.
The idea that this Grusch guy just doesn't get jokes and brought some offhand comment all the way to whistleblower status is pretty funny. Honestly this guy seems pretty competent and I'd sooner believe a psyop or Meta paying someone off to throw off press coverage during the Apple event than that. A couple of offhand remarks wouldn't drive someone this far.
Yeah, the number of people that seem ignorant of the circumstances here is astounding. He's given classified briefings to Congress on a subject matter he was tasked with investigating (UAPs). The fact that people seem so quick to dismiss that as "some people joked and he didn't get it" is kind of wild. That would require a "Weekend at Bernie's" level of ignorance at more official levels than I'd be willing to entertain of the bat.
Don't neglect the people who are not mentally ill, but still can't tell the difference between "Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (stuff we couldn't accurately ID for a variety of reasons) that's classified (because some of it legitimately need to be secret, and we over-classify a lot)" with ""Yeah, we've got a lot of data on UFOs (little green men in flying saucers) that's classified (because we're part of a conspiracy hiding the existence of intelligent alien life)".
And the people who are not mentally ill who think that being an authority on the US's UFO programmes is a nice retirement gig that comes with none of the downsides of actual whistleblowing...
> likely few would hear a joke… take it way too literally…
This is the premise of about half of I Think You Should Leave skits
Have you seen the new season? Honestly they're hit or miss.
55 BURGERS 55 FRIES 55 TACOS
This has quickly become legend in my house
All sketch comedy in a nutshell.
Believing BS turns out to be an evolutionary adaptation. The truth is generally too overwhelming to process.
The “truth”
Why does it need to be a mental illness? Could just be gullible.
Or confused. Or mistaken.
Just to stay grounded in reality, yes there is intelligent non-human life in space. No, based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them. Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception - either that or the guy with the big shirt who says we have alien spacecraft in warehouses is a nut.
> based on what we know about physics, we will never interact with them
It's probably too an obvious question to ask but seeing how knowledge is continually expanded can that claim really be made with known unknowns and unknown unknows and all that? Or are we really at the edge of all knowledge of astro/physics?
> Occam's Razor says the GP is correct and this is intentional deception
That's not how I read it. It seems to me that there are rather a lot of sane, intelligent people in the USG and especially the US military who believe in aliens with flying saucers, and alien abductions. From my perspective, it looks more like a "mass psychosis" than a conspiracy.
I suspect the abduction stories are related to evangelical beliefs in The Rapture.
QAnon tales of satanic pizza-parlour basements in a building with no basement seem to have many believers who are bright, and have no history of mental illness.
This. It's annoying that people forget or ignore that. Within any population large enough, it's a matter of basic probability that you're going to see a number of inexplicable deaths, suicides, rare diseases, mental illness, bullshitters and notorious liars, disgruntled employees out for a revenge, conspiracy theorists, Qanon followers, and so on and so forth.
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> Read the article.
This (issuing a command to read the article) is even worse than the behavior discussed in guidelines from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Perhaps people simply aren't prepared to accept the implications of the government lying about this - as well as successfully covering it up - for so long. It's a big impact to a persons world view.
Perhaps people are tired of the same story playing out every few years. Someone got told by somebody else there’s a massive coverup and they definitely have the documents but they’re withholding them for reasons and no we can’t see them but we should absolutely take this story at face value because they have or had a career in the military so are a Very Reliable Person we should take very seriously.
We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around.
The most boring thing about the alien versions of the story for non Americans is its always the US military the aliens are buzzing.
Perhaps the aliens are really diligent about avoiding leaving any artefacts behind in the sort of state where some mid ranking official would happily sell the evidence for the price of a new Mercedes or the military would turn up three weeks after international journalists, or the sort of state whose closely-guarded treasure chest full of alien artefacts would have been burst wide open when the government was overthrown.
UFOs are not a US only phenomenon, certainly not a US military only phenomenon. Major events have happened (or been claimed to have happened) in many other countries, including several of the most famous events (Redlesham, Westall, Ariel). There are plenty of reasons to doubt UFOs are real/interesting, but that's just not a valid criticism.
We're not talking about sightings though[1]. We're talking about secret programmes to amass collections of hugely valuable alien detritus wherever they happen to land. One of the key protagonists of this story even insists that 'retrievals of this nature are not limited to the United States'
But for some reason not only have shadowy government agencies been successful at preventing alien artefacts from circulating in India, France, Zimbabwe, the former USSR and multiple regimes whose demise was much more violent than the breakup of the USSR, those states and their descendant states have actually kept a better lid on their programmes!
[1]though I'm not sure your other cited sightings also involving English speakers immersed in Western culture exactly undermines the implication that its a cultural phenomenon driven by US media. But perhaps aliens can't communicate telepathically in Shona or Ndbele...
Is your argument that governments have kept the secret well? That's just not true. There have been claimants from the USSR and France (you can find documents about either on theblackvault). Materials have been claimed to have been recovered by South American people, even recently. China shut down an airport due to a UFO just recently.
The veracity of the above are all suspect, but the fundamental claim that this is something only Americans think about or only happens here, just doesn't reflect reality.
> The veracity of the above are all suspect
That’s GP’s entire point. If this sort of thing were happening to the scale being claimed—worldwide, instead of magically being confined to the US—we’d be swimming in verifiable evidence of alien artifacts being found across the world.
Instead it’s the same grainy, out-of-focus footage, data from sensors out at past their maximum useful range, and substance-free “leaks” with nothing hard to back them up.
> We’re on like season eight or nine of this show and it’s the same plot every time around.
Until it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
People keep saying "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something".
And then someone says something, and they respond with: "If there was such a conspiracy, the government couldn't keep it under wraps, someone would say something"
You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence besides one guy saying someone else overheard a conversation where another person described our secret ET program.
One crank making headlines every few years with nothing that actually backs up their claims doesn’t cut it. By that metric you might as well believe the hundreds of “leakers” claiming the government is made of lizard people.
> You are entirely neglecting the requirement that at the end of the days, these leaks need substance: documents, photo, or other actual evidence
There is evidence however, things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bt6_Potk5Q which are becoming more and more common as time goes on. There does seem to be an increasing willingness to disregard evidence all the while demanding more evidence. Recently the pentagon stated they had hundreds of documents/photographs/videos and what has been released publicly does make this appear legitimate.
Is it an alien spaceship? Probably not. Is it an object flying across a warzone that could potentially be a threat of some kind? Quite possibly.
> One crank making headlines every few years
The interesting part of this news is that this person is not "one crank", he's an actual expert in the field employed by organisations to research this exact phenomena. Recently we have had several such experts come along and make these claims. To dismiss that off-hand doesn't seem particularly reasonable these days.
Nobody denies that military sensors have picked up unexplained phenomena. Does that make it evidence of little green men visiting in spacecraft? Not even close.
> The interesting part of this news is that this person is not "one crank", he's an actual expert in the field employed by organisations to research this exact phenomena.
And yet here we are again with this one person’s word and nothing in the way of actual evidence.
At this point the earth is blanketed in radar and high definition cameras. Wake me up when there is evidence past a 240p out of focus video or something odd on an infrared sensor 100km away.
I want to believe. I read every book I could find about UFOs when I was a kid. But here we are 30 years later playing out the same tired storylines over and over again.
I don't see where he is claiming little green men. Is he claiming that?
He claims we have retrieved dead bodies. Nonhuman bodies.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12165669/Military-w...
There are better sources of this than Daily Mail but I am short on time. Just google his name.
So no little green men then?
That can have many reads. For example from the article:
"The report followed a leak of military footage that showed apparently inexplicable happenings in the sky, while navy pilots testified that they had frequently had encounters with strange craft off the US coast."
I read it as, "We detected several times a military aircraft, that a country expected to be undetectable, flying over our territory, we send you the proof that such plane could have been knocked down; stop doing it" at same time they don't admit such other country violated the territory having to rise up a conflict.
I think the concerning thing is that could well be the case - and there is still a very large number of people in here just saying "nope this guy is crazy".
The group of people who just off-hand deny this is happening is kind of staggering.
Most probably just don't want to accept the US military doesn't have control over their own skies. It's more reassuring to believe this is nonsense.
I'm perfectly prepared to accept that - they're already lying about tons of other stuff. I'm just gonna need something a little more solid than, this guy claimed a few other guys told him some stuff and showed him some papers about how there are totally aliens. Let's see the papers, let's see some close-up high-quality videos of this stuff. Everybody has a HD video camera with 24x7 net connection in their pocket at all times now, how come we haven't seen anything like this yet?
It's trivially easy to keep covering something up, even with information leaks, if the vast majority of the public disbelieves the entire premise from the get-go.
If there are alien craft flying in a manner even remotely alleged by most UFO people, then we as a civilization are dead. D-E-A-D. Our best hope is compliant slaves or an interesting zoo.
Because it implies essentially effortless arbitrary military and economic exploitation access to our planet. Craft that defy gravity, instantly accelerate in arbitrary directions? Presumably cross light years of distance? They could drop an asteroid on us at will. They could bring our civilization to its knees with simple smart rocks.
Sufficiently advanced technology is magic, and this would indicate that level of advanced technology that we find magical.
Either the civilization is rapacious, or, if they aren't, they will take one look at our history books and realize that we are rapacious.
> If there are alien craft flying in a manner even remotely alleged by most UFO people, then we as a civilization are dead. D-E-A-D. Our best hope is compliant slaves or an interesting zoo.
No, we're not. You clearly haven't read The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Robert-... . One of the startling broad-reaching conclusions you will reach after reading this book is that cooperation even between entities or groups of disparate power is always better in the long run assuming future contact will occur. That last part is the tricky bit, and is why (for example) divorce proceedings are so acrimonious. So sure, if you enslave someone, or a bunch of people, you will get a quick fix. But in the long run you will both gain far more cooperating, because cooperation enables people to contribute more to each other.
IF these beings expect to deal with us for the foreseeable future, THE ONLY wise choice is cooperation. Period. And if that was NOT their goal, then I would submit that we'd already be 1) exploited for all we were worth already and then 2) killed or imprisoned by now.
UFO reports (of the disc-shaped, wingless, noiseless, impossibly-performing standard kind) have been occurring since WW2( "foo fighters"). We're clearly VERY interesting; possibly the newest kids on the block, as it were...
No it's not. Interesting evidence would be seen by tens of millions of people within a day.
Why would I care if the government was lying about little green men? Who cares? They’ve been lying since the beginning.
If there was evidence, there’d be evidence.
The interesting thing about this is that there is now evidence (see: Navy videos), and we have also seen what the US government does to people who try to show classified documents as evidence (see: Snowden, Manning, Assange, etc)
Snowden et al looks like counter evidence to me. People who release evidence of secret programs involving UFOs end up doing book tours. People who release evidence of secret spying programs end up in exile.
What is interesting to me is that I don’t see any angle where the government isn’t lying or not fully divulging what it knows about this topic in some fashion.
Whether aliens, not aliens, our own tech, whatever…there is value to the government creating deception, misinformation, and disinformation.
There's a simple, rational explanation: The man needs to make a living. Lectures, documentaries, a book.
> He left the government in April after a 14-year career in US intelligence.
A government pension requires 20 years IIRC. Grusch is only 36.
The formula: Tell the truth where possible, be vague but suggestive about the rest.
And of course there were secret UFO programs -- if something from Baikonur shows up here, wouldn't it be better if the Kremlin thought it might still remain secret? So sensing, reporting, collecting efforts would be classified.
My mom would 100% buy anything this guys says. It's a clever business idea.
Especially with all of those recent flaky gov videos people are eating up wholesale, without any concept of what it actually means to do interstellar travel while simultaneously having invisible motherships. And the only 'evidence' comes from US pilots in a particular height in the sky, never on the ground or visible in space via telescopes... Curious how that works. Just spacecraft zipping around at 30k feet all day in random directions and never going visibly above or below that.
Some guy misinterpreting documents about foreign or unknown materials or objects is probably par for the course here. It's also funny/predictable aliens would be discovered exclusively in the US and withheld from Congress by black suits.
The New York Times is said to have an article in the works for sunday, providing more background presumably.
Funny, how HN is/isn't reacting to "US in possession of non-human technology".
From the comments, you desperately want to believe in this non-human thing for whatever reasons. No one else believes that is actually true. So far, your arguments are that Grusch is telling the truth and no one is listening to him. You have ignored all the contrary evidence including the fact there is nothing documented, he has repeated what someone has said to him and that our sensors and our senses are not infallible.
Why do you think non-human tech exists?
The better question is why do they still believe yet another indirect claim by an alleged single “reputable” human source when every single time it turns out to be a big nothing. History is littered with examples.
If they can’t grasp the obvious pattern here and determine that it requires far, far more than some random guy claiming some agency is lying to the rest of the entire US gov then there’s probably not much to dig into with OP. The rationale is always paper thin deep borderline conspiracy stuff aka “I’m just asking questions” and any further you find a poor (or unwilling) grasp of science and a naive perspective on how the world/governments work.
Surely this time is different. All the movie stereotypes about hidden black alien programs always-US run were really true!
It's hilarious watching how HN upvotes insane theory instead of crazy theory. Wild times!
There is a very very simple explanation, which is that everything he says is true. There is a secret program, they did reverse engineer, they did withhold it from congress, and people did tell him that there is alien stuff.
Why make up silly make believe?
The guy isn't claiming 'oh i saw aliens'. He could simply be telling the absolute truth.
Why so many people told him there were aliens, I dunno, but who cares. Those people aren't the ones whistleblowing and so it doesn't really matter, does it?
I for one believe the guy, 100%
My only complaint is that perhaps he should probably be a bit more circumspect about what actually exists.
> There is a very very simple explanation
I’m not sure an explanation that presupposes FTL travel is very very simple
Why would faster than light travel be presupposed in any way?
Where do we think the aliens came from, specifically, without it?
They could be von Neumann probes having travelled for a long time. Even without FTL travel, von Neumann probes could colonize an entire galaxy in reasonable time (a few million years). Even just a single successful civilization somewhere in the milky way or even a neighboring galaxy could've accomplished that
Especially since at the point any civilization starts to develop technology, it happens really exponentially. Even just 1 million years, which is nothing compared to geological time scales, is an absolutely insanely long amount of time to develop technology after the initial spark.
Our 300,000 year old species didn't even settle down until a mere 12,000 years ago, we didn't really develop proper government systems until 2-3,000 years ago and learnt flight only ~120 years ago.
Within the last 120 years we went to the Moon (!), developed the integrated microchip, the Internet, AR/VR and built deep space solar communications infrastructure, got smartphones, MRTs... you name it.
Even among all of these marvels, we still poop though.
> Especially since at the point any civilization starts to develop technology, it happens really exponentially.
Most likely, even overall technological development forms some kind of sigmoid function. It's likely to hit an absolute wall at some point.
Obviously, though, we have no idea if we're 0.0001% of the way or 10% of the way to that wall.
we don’t actually think about aliens.
but if you want a list of hypothetical alternate origins, and don’t have access to the wealth of programming generated by Prometheus and made available on Discovery Networks, thanks to some of the minds of our time, this light summary might help…
* center of the earth is actually hollow, “aliens” are just inner earthlings * one of the other planets or otherwise within the solar system isn’t so dead after all * it’s just us - from the future * it’s just us - from the past * no space travel, no time travel, but parallel earths or dimensions or something * they have always been here, we just are too dumb to see them
It doesn't presuppose anything other than that some people told him aliens.
I mean.. just accept it at face value. Stop reading into it.
Stop thinking and believe? Err... No?
Everything we know about the biology, chemistry, physics and astrophysics makes alien contact with the earth an extreme improbablity. Everything we know about government and intelligence agencies makes a global, mutli-national, multi-government, mass conspiracy to hide aliens an extreme improbability.
Against these mountainous-weights of incredibility one needs more than a retired 36 with a shiny badge who has "heard but not seen" some things.
The improbability of his claims is so vast that even "CIA psyop" becomes plausible against them -- not, least, since it's extremely likely the USA exploited the UFO mass hysteria to disguise its air force development programmes.
Nevertheless, the most probable explanation is that government employees in these agencies are often paranoid believers in the folk mythologies of these agencies --- and are able to maintain these superstitons because they never get senior enough to see they are false.
There is a far simpler and more plausible explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36221917
> I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents
Wasn't he in charge of or in the higher end of the government led agency to investigate these things? He doesn't seem to be a nobody just saying he saw things, it was his job to investigate it for the government?
And if the Inspector General is involved, along with the dudes lengthy time in front of congress, surely it's likely that evidence was presented to higher levels of government that the public still can't see legally. I get that this may be a psyop kind of thing, but writing it off as 'he didn't see anything' seems like an incorrect position to hold.
Grusch also brought these people in front of Congressional oversight committees to testify. There should be more info from Grusch dropping soon on NewsNation or the Need to Know podcast. They did a 7 hour interview with him, as they talk about in this behind-the-scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjbFZT9_EM
However, one thing that every government employee knows is that they can't arrest you for fictional stories. In contrast, if you're saying the truth, then you're facing decades in prison. So what are you going to do if you need to make some money with books and talks, etc. Tell the truth or lie?
>However, one thing that every government employee knows is that they can't arrest you for fictional stories.
They certainly can arrest you for fictional stories told under oath and in sworn statements (which is what this whistleblower gave).
> but writing it off as 'he didn't see anything' seems like an incorrect position to hold.
Why incorrect? He specifically says he didn't see anything.
>All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop.
Ugh, I was 100% with you until this point. This is speculative, fantastical, and I think serves to discredit the sober and calm pushback of the type exhibited in the first half of your comment. And that is desperately needed in a moment like this.
No it's really not fantastical. We have no physical evidence of extraterrestrials but we do have physical evidence that the CIA engages in sometimes ridiculous operations to psychologically manipulate people. I mean if you told someone the CIA did mind control experiments in the 60s they'd think your nuts. But we know today with certainty they did, often with tragic consequence.
So, the bayesian priors, given that in the course of humanity or even prehistorically there is no certain evidence of aliens, and plenty of evidence of weirdo government manipulation and innumerable examples of propaganda, should be skewed in the favor of any new fantastical governmental claim to be yet another silly operation by some three letter agency.
Until someone procures a body or craft of certain non human origin, this is the only reasonable course of action.
> We have no physical evidence of extraterrestrials but we do have physical evidence that the CIA engages in sometimes ridiculous operations to psychologically manipulate people
That’s true. And I would even say a CIA psyop is more likely than aliens. But its still purely speculative.
Right, and evidence free indulgences into fan fiction speculation about the CIA etc etc are unnecessary detours.
Yes, it really is fantastical. Six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style associations to unrelated historical events, just to motivate fan fiction writing about psyops is not healthy engagement with the state of reported evidence, much less the only reasonable course of action. I can think of another, refraining from entertaining in elaborate explanations born of speculation unsupported by evidence. Boom, done.
The fanfiction writing serves to validate the manner of thinking that would motivate people to believe the most extreme possible interpretation of this reporting, effectively extending a vote of approval toward people inclined to look at this and put themselves in a headspace of entertaining speculative beliefs without evidence.
I don't think it's charitable or polite to refer to GP's argument as fan fiction. They're making a genuine argument about what they think could have happened, not writing a made-up story, regardless of how unlikely you think their psy-op hypothesis is.
If you define aliens as a long separated branch on the tree of life with significantly more advanced technology, then alien encounters are more common in history (hawai’i in 1790’s being most recent i can think of).
So mathematically its rare, but perhaps an experience of 1% of societies . And perhaps strongly correlated with one branch undergoing a rapid technological advance.
i think it’s perfectly rationale and not fantastical, as long as its kept in mind that its a low probability event.
A psyop doesn’t have to be a super advanced operation. It could be some low effort opportunistic thing that helps objectives.
The “declassified” UAP videos so far are rote footage containing easily debunked garbage. Why would the military release lens flare videos and claim they’re UAP? They could be blithering idiots not knowing they’re looking at lens flare, which is probably less likely than knowing it’s BS and claiming it’s UAP with some ulterior motive. So, psyop.
> The “declassified” UAP videos so far are rote footage containing easily debunked garbage. Why would the military release lens flare videos and claim they’re UAP? They could be blithering idiots not knowing they’re looking at lens flare, which is probably less likely than knowing it’s BS and claiming it’s UAP with some ulterior motive. So, psyop.
A more mundane possibility: Someone thought, "Hey, you know, if there are aliens doing thing secretly, we'd want to know about it, right? And also, there are always going to be these stories, and if our answer is always, 'No that's probably lens flare', people are going to think we're trying to cover something up. So how about we just make a policy, that any time someone has unexplained phenomena, we log it properly? Either we'll get a long track record of nothing-burgers, or we'll actually find something. Or, maybe we'll have 50 years of nothing-burgers, followed by something actually different, and we'll have a solid 'baseline' from which to look into the new phenomenon."
That makes sense, but it’s pretty insidious to release lens flare videos as UAP knowing they’re lens flare. Either they’re not actually analyzing these videos or they’re going pretty far into psyop land with this mundane operation.
Do you really put aliens and psyops in the same league of fantastical speculation? One is advanced beings from light years away or other dimensions, and the other is military information campaigns for which there is plenty of precedent.
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I share the opinion that it is psyop and it is a very long running project. At one level it is a nice psyop platform - like Star Trek for the psychological warfare professionals. Over the years they have influenced American thought about the government to a great degree. X-Files. For example, most Americans, and this “whistleblower” here, now accept that elements in the US government are operating entirely outside of the overview and control of the government, where the executive and legislature do not have “the clearance” to be informed about it.
Emotionally it is also slowly preparing humanity for the possibility of a confrontation with a power that we possibly can not resist and must obey. Aliens may turn out to have strong theological and sociological views that they want to share with us. This is more than just slowly boiling the constitutional frog in the cauldron of “national security”. Somewhat /g more far fetched but definitely one reason to have ex intelligence grandees from Mosad and CIA (and now this man) come and tell us all about aliens in our midst.
Unless there exists some really simple way to do FTL travel that we're soon to discover, any civilization advanced enough to visit Earth should be able to wipe us out as quickly as humanity can burn an anthill.
So, assuming members of such a civilization is actually here, they're likely to be friendly, and any psyop similar to what you describe would be staged for our benefit.
Using X-files or Star Trek as representations of what the future is likely to be like, is just as obviously improbable as using The Lord of The Rings to understand Medieval Europe.
Sorry, how long is this supposed to take? You're saying we're going to be dominated by aliens and must be prepared for that? That's not how conquests normally work is it? There's no consent involved. And you're also saying this 'preparation' has been happening for 70 years? How long have we got before they actually arrive and how much prep do we need?
This is all complete bollocks
There is no invasion as there are no aliens. It is psyop. A genre (“platform”) of psyop has been tried out over the years, and a developing thread (based on other propaganda channels, such as fiction, and film) is the coming ‘encounter’. Here “US is urged to reveal UFO evidence” is published by a major Western establishment press, The Guardian, based on 2nd hand information and not on actual personally witnessed evidence.
The issue of having “major world religions” that are not in accord (per orthodox understanding of respective faithful) remains an issue for establishment of a uniform social order on the planet. It’s going to be difficult to have a world government without a unified world religion. “Aliens” can help with that.
As a thought exercise, imagine aliens have landed. Aliens could inform us that for example ‘angels’ were really the aliens and that we sadly misunderstood their messages. Various syncretic efforts have also been ongoing since at least 19th century (“new age”) so the ground has been well prepared. To conclude the exercise, ask yourself what impact this will have on your belief system.
"Conspiracy theories are ok when it's us discarding UFOs" :o)
This is my thinking as well. Though the entire Admiral Byrd, Antarctica, supposed Nazi tech and Operation Paperclip, Werner von Braun founding NASA lends some credibility to the idea that there might be a weirder angle the tech aspect at least. Combine "alien tech" with a tumbling empire and this would get ugly.
Not a believer myself, but it was an interesting deep dive.
> I saw an interview with this guy just yesterday. He didn't see anything himself. His claim is that some people, and he believes them to be trustworthy, confided in him and showed him some documents. So, at best his testimony is hearsay.
This is the same MO as Stephen Greer's grift about the same thing. Greer claims that he was given access to classified documents and information that say the government is hiding their knowledge of, and interactions with, aliens and UFOs.
I have a family member who won't stop consuming everything about Steven Greer on youtube, and I don't know what to do about it. It is driving me crazy and I just have to tell someone, sorry.
I have a good friend who went down that rabbithole instead of seeking help and it's consumed him. The obsession is so bad that he lost multiple jobs and became homeless so he can focus on literally talking to aliens using the methods Greer sells. He gives what little money he has to grifers like Greer and the cottage industry that popped up to take money from those with the beliefs he promotes.
I'm familiar with the hopelessness, there's really not much you can do but try to help nudge them into healthier directions without being overt enough for them to shut you out for denying their beliefs.
I've had some success with things like Mirage Men and Mick West's work in helping them understand that there's a lot of manipulation in that space and that not everything can be assumed to be aliens, and it's helped a little, but I've found that they just integrate that information into their belief system. Those people are lying about aliens/UFOs, and that UAP was just a weather balloon, but everything else is real. They've been more discerning about who they give their money to, though, which is a good thing.
My sense is that you could remove Steven Greer and it would be something else? Sorry I have a rather pessimistic take.
JFK conspiracy theory content is second to the "antigravity technology stolen from aliens" on her list, so you're not wrong, but Steven Greer has the same reach as those fricken JFK conventions. He'll never go away...
Replace it with Game of Thrones?
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Didn't he start seeing ghosts or some such and started a spiritual ritual camp thing in the desert?
Yeah, he has a retreat or something I think, billed as more expansive (and expensive) than a tour through the desert.
Edit: found his expeditions
Procedure: If you have not been to an expedition before the tuition fee is $2500 – $3500 depending on facility costs. Each expedition is different.
https://siriusdisclosure.com/expeditions/expeditions-w-dr-gr...
What to do about it? Nothing. You should probably stop thinking about it.
In the beginning he seemed to get a significant number of credible witnesses to essentially say what the USG admitted last fall- UFO's are real, and no, we do not know what they are.
I'm sure that at some point he became unhireable and needed to make money any way he could... and that's when the grifts began.
I think he's a mixed bag who unfortunately had to taint himself in order to actually make some money.
> All of this stuff reeks of some kind pf psyop.
In this case, I agree. I usually try to avoid conspiratorial thinking and conspiracy theories, but the DoD and related agencies have been putting out all kinds of information about UFOs in the past few years. My question is: why? The DoD isn’t known for their public relations.
My best speculative guess is that they’re claiming they’ve found alien craft and exotic alien materials because the US is testing aircraft that appear alien with exotic materials and don’t want other nation states to assume it is even terrestrial so they don’t attempt to replicate the technology.
There must be a reason behind the UFO media blitz that has happened lately, it’s not like they’re releasing the info to keep the public informed. Anyone have other ideas? It could be grifters looking to sell a story, mentally ill people misunderstanding jokes or inventing things out of whole cloth, etc.
P.S. I believe intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but that we’ve never been visited and will never be visited due to the distances involved.
"The DoD isn’t known for their public relations"
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43168/top-gun-2s-exten...
The DoD got Tom Cruise to pay them to make a 2hr 10m ad, and then audiences paid $1.5bn at the box office to watch it.
The DoD is amazing at PR.
Stargate was a commercial for the Air Force in episodic form.
They literally had the Air Force chief of staff play himself in an episode:
https://rdanderson.com/stargate/lexicon/entries/jumper.htm
Operating an aircraft carrier is extremely expensive. Wikipedia says 6.5m PER DAY
> In 2013, the life-cycle cost per operating day of a carrier strike group (including aircraft) was estimated at $6.5 million by the Center for New American Security.
Well normally if someone wants to make money off you they need to give you a cut. Thats not savyness from the DoD. Thats par for the course. They would be wildly incompetent if they let the film makers use the Navy for free.
Seems like they are amazing at getting a good deal, which is not the same as being amazing at PR.
Considering there is not another US Navy to lend them some jets for filming, I'd suggest the DoD had a pretty strong hand.
A much more reality based explaination:
https://twitter.com/JackMurphyRGR/status/1665884263865110529Both things could be true though. There are tons of SAPs out there that cover a multitude of very specific things. Most aren't aware of the others either, by nature of the SAP.
Sure, but there is ample evidence of human made flying aircraft, and those being shot down, and really none of the other.
But who is the messaging intended for? Foreign military intelligence agencies can draw the same conclusions, that this is some kind of misdirection, and that it's more likely a cover for US or Chinese weapons tech, they're not dumb.
You make a very good point, I’m going to stick with the grifter/liar/mentally ill thesis instead.
His actions would have seriously bad consequences for him if he was lying.
Several reputable people have gone on record testifying for his (mental) integrity. Even some scientists actually.
The whole premise of that guy being easily discredited is absurd. Its lazy thinking plain and simple. Go read the actual article and corroborating information on 'The Debrief'.
Given the choice between ‘a guy is lying/mistaken and so are a few others’ and ‘a worldwide conspiracy has existed for 80 years to cover up the existence of alien visits to Earth’, I’m going to apply Occam’s Razor and go with lying.
His actions would have far worse consequence if he was telling the truth.
If he is lying there is no conspirators to give a shit.
Neither of these point to whether or not hes lying though. Just saying.
It's unclear what the distances involved are. It might just be a few years or months of travel time, say for a loitering Von Neumann probe from the Kuiper belt.
> I believe intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but that we’ve never been visited and will never be visited due to the distances involved.
I suspect that at least one and perhaps many alien intelligences have been here on Earth for a very long time and are observing us, but they're very good at staying hidden so probably we have never observed them and never will.
In the unlikely event that they ever did accidentally reveal themselves, probably they would cover it up to the extent possible while continuing to remain hidden.
Since these aliens will never interact with us in any significant manner, for practical purposes it doesn't matter whether they exist or not, and therefore I don't care very much whether they exist or not. Nevertheless, if, hypothetically, I had to make a bet with equal odds, I'd bet they do exist.
> There must be a reason behind the UFO media blitz
They already told us exactly why. Because there are unexplained phenomena which may pose a risk to national security, and they want to know more. Their intent is to reduce the stigma so that pilots and others are less afraid to report unusual sightings for proper investigation.
You don't have to believe in aliens to see the sense in this.
You are missing the complaint he filed because he was a victim of retaliation. This is first hand evidence that the inspector general of the intelligence community found credible and urgent, and the main point of the story.
Wait, that David Grusch guy never saw those stuffa despite that he led the analysis? This is weird. How can you do analysis without seeing the real thing?
> All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop
Is it me or is the internet really quick to reach this conclusion? It's definitely not the simplest one you can make.
"The US government" can hardly pass a budget but is somehow presumed to be super competent at psyops and/or concealing evidence of aliens.
You're confusing the legislative branch with the intelligence community and other participants in the military industrial complex. Yes, Congress is full of incompetent elected officials who "can hardly pass a budget." But the MIC is comprised of highly specialized professionals with careers spanning multiple presidential administrations and dozens of congressional sessions. It is a mistake to assume these people are incompetent.
If the military industrial complex is so competent, how come it failed so hard in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Even the "true" conspiracies, like mkultra ... What did all that abuse accomplish? Not much. Unethical? Yes. Murderous? At times. Competent? No. Bumbling fools.
The term "military industrial complex" was meant as a warning about corruption, not that they'd manage to be good at it.
I think from the MIC POV the war in iraq and afghanistan was a incredible success. Why end a war in a year when you can milk the DOD for 20 years?
Ok, so if they're good at the goal of extracting money, it would appear they're not good at much else.
Psyop doesn’t imply competence or a complex operation. Although I believe the US military is competent, unlike congress.
Why do you believe that? Having been in and worked around it, its success is a function of money and will. I would not call it competent, but that is a personal opinion having worked in competent effective organizations in the commercial sector.
I guess I believe they’re competent enough to have figured out a video of lens flare is of lens flare and not of alien craft. Though I was on the fence. They could be incompetent or too lost in bureaucratic clusterfuck to even look at these videos. But there are other factors indicating they are probably engaging in psyop.
Absolutely not just you. It's everywhere.
To what end?
I have no idea on the specifics for this particular operation, but in the general case [1]
In the context of UFOs, UAPs or whatever ... some possibilities are to hide advanced defense programs or to confuse potential enemy intelligence efforts. In fact, for an operation like this I would guess there are probably a dozen strategic objectives and not just one.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
Some speculations:
To spook enemies of the US and create a mystical aura of superiority around the US military and its capabilities. They're literally creating the impression that the US military has technology beyond the "Clarke threshold." (The Clarke threshold refers to Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")
To shake out moles, spies, and unreliable people / leakers.
As a cover for very terrestrial extremely advanced technology such as hypersonic weapons, drones, laser and directed energy weapons, etc.
To repeatedly float the idea of "alien disclosure" and then dash everyone's hopes in order to discredit the idea of extraterrestrial life and visitation. Why? Maybe they're concerned that we will eventually detect aliens and they want to blunt the cultural impact by making the public skeptical. Maybe they actually do have evidence of aliens (but maybe less sexy than crashed UFO parts) and want to keep it quiet, so they want the topic to be discredited and marginalized. Maybe there's some ideology at play like religious fundamentalism. Why knows.
All I can say is that IF there ever is an irrefutable visitation from an alien civilization in the future, it will be shit-show that will never end.
I have zero confidence that any government or their populace will be able to handle that realization without going completely bonkers. We simply can't handle it as a civilization. For every sane person who is curious and wants to interact positively with the artifact/being there will be a dozen different types of maniacs out to destroy whatever it is.
And if you believe that governments reflect the neurosis of their people, it fundamentally impossible for any government to deal with something like this rationally.
Realistically no one would care. I honestly think some of the 'if we meet aliens there will be moral panic' sentiment is the biggest psyop of all. Most humans realistically would not care unless there was a threat posed.
If the aliens are far away and it's a SETI detection I think we'd manage, but if they are here I think things might get pretty wild.
How do you know how people would react? It's never happened before. This is just paternalistic manipulation which by extension means the government should have much more power over people's lives 'for their own good'
the US military have been caught off guard several times with newer tech, showing that they’re actually well behind the curve. I don’t think there’s much evidence that they have any advanced tech.
They probably both have advanced technology and are caught off guard by other peoples' advanced technology. With China we are already back in a multipolar world.
I’m just saying that I have personally seen high level DoD officials jaws drop after showing them commercial capabilities. (I live in NoVA)
A lot of them are still fighting the Soviets
Can you relate a specific example of commercial tech the "jaw dropped" some DoD officials? Like what was the tech and what was the venue?
Think of what you may want to do in an asymmetric war.
It's a conspiracy theory that exalts the government/military and a narrative that they control. Why wouldn't you want skeptical populations thinking that they can trust you, that you're skilled and competent, and for whom you can use slight of hand to easily influence and distract?
US adversaries can easily turn their drones into a panic when they fly in US airspace, and I believe that the instances where actual drones are involved, those are attempts at adversaries to surveil our military and government and to scare the populace. That's to say adversarial drones have an additional use as psyops weapons against civilians and military members. Being able to send whatever you want into US airspace and the US being unable to do anything about it can be perceived as being threatening and scary.
A counter narrative to that involving some UFO/alien mystery can quell panic and instead foster wonder and distraction.
You're the fnord sensei so you ought to know best. ;)
When I hear about this alien stuff or other "big government" conspiracies I'm always reminded of this saying, not sure where it's from.
"Behind every vast conspiracy theory is a sincere hope that somewhere out there, someone knows what they're doing."
(i.e., conspiracy nuts in a sense really want to believe in an all-powerful government because it would give them an assurance that someone really does know what's going on).
The military industrial complex is pretty powerful (arguably it's the most powerful organization on the planet), and is plenty capable of engaging in ongoing conspiracies and psyops. It's naive to believe that the same government who created nuclear bombs with the secret Manhattan Project, and that inserted intelligence agents into media companies in Project Mockingbird, is not continuing to conspire at levels of grand strategy equal to or exceeding those of its past projects.
I can't imaging trying to hide a Manhattan project today. They hid an entire city containing tens of thousands of people and consuming a serious whole segments of the total US electrical grid and federal budget.
Modern civilian OSINT would have been adequate to deduce fission work was being performed, assuming no one posted centrifuge schematics on their gaming Discord.
And it still didn't succeed, the first world leader to learn that fission weapons work was Stalin.
You're referring to Operation Mockingbird which afaik was completely unrelated to Project Mockingbird (an illegal wiretap by the CIA on a US journalist)
Is it conspiracy theory time?
"... the conspiracy theory Project Blue Beam, which concerns an alleged plot to facilitate a totalitarian world government by destroying traditional religions and replacing them with a new-age belief system using NASA technology."
Take my money
I thought this was obvious...distract from the lizard people.
Why would the organization that would be expected to protect our skies want to make people believe there is something to protect our skies?
Why would they want to make people believe there are things they can’t protect us from?
Distraction from lobbying, e.g. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/our-right-challenge-ju...
Demonstration of psyops capabilities; entertainment.
More funding from Congress.
If there is an actual threat from these possible visitors then they get all the funding.
Schizophrenia and pranksters both exist. Also people who want to get notoriety by saying anything they can to get attention.
Certainly much of the whole present "flat earth" popularity was driven by a bunch of people who thought it'd be funny.
I take just as seriously people who insist UFOs are aliens as those who insist the world is flat. I'm sure you can find somebody on youtube who has been "shown some documents" about how the world isn't round.
I am calling it as 90% probability non true based one of the two techniques you can use to validate these type of claims. My claim uses Method B
Method A: Extensive analysis if this is a first account of facts or hearsay (here is the latest anyway). Extensive analysis of evidence, specially with metadata correlation between evidence arriving from different sources and timelines.
Method B: Analysis of instinctive and immediate body language reactions to focused questions.
"How many?" -> . https://twitter.com/i/status/1665832644230402048 The instinctive eye reaction to this question gives it away...
"How to Tell If Someone Is Lying to You, According to Body Language Experts" - https://time.com/5443204/signs-lying-body-language-experts/
Body language showing lying is debunked and bullshit
Body language cannot be used as evidence in a court of law, but you bet your ass detectives use it effectively as cues all the time during investigations.
It’s not debunked, it’s just has to be used as a piece of the puzzle not the whole thing.
References?
"Nonverbal communication and deception" - https://www.paulekman.com/blog/nonverbal-communication-and-d...
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/02610159...
Body language across a lot of samples and people can show patterns between this body language and lying. A single instance of someone displaying body language in a given context says virtually nothing. "Tells" vary wildly between people for a million different reasons as this study shows, and unless you study a specific individual very carefully in a scientific way, there is nothing you can gather from their body language.
You need to tell that to my wife...
See my reply, my theory that this is psyop to bury in noise and distract from 10 years anniversary since Edward Snowden revelations.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222610
It's not the most robust theory given these stories appear each year.
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Other than working for the US Government, this guy doesn't seem to have brought anything, so I'm amazed this story has gotten the traction it has. It's not like it's been a slow news week or anything.
If this is a psyop that’s still huge news.
These are fantastic claims from a highly ranked and decorated member of the IC, released with official backing/DoD preAuth
Someone has some explaining to do
What official backing?
He applied for permission to disclose this to journalists and that application was approved by the Pentagon.
I'll agree that this smells of psyop, but for what purpose? What is attention being pulled away from?
Speculate away, I'm interested in what this community has to say.
Even if he said that he saw it with his own eyes it's infinitely more probable that's a lie/delusion/a dream he misremembered as reality.
My experience with military people is that they all put in an impressive veneer of seriousness and respectability -- but some of them are just as nutty as anyone.
Or, they know that you're exactly the person who might have a psychological fracture when actual evidence actually emerges from the cloistered tower.
It's funny to see how far into the absurd people are ready to go in order to discard UFO recordings. Sure, live space travel across light-years sounds crazy. But what you are ready to come up with in order to tell us that army radars, USAF pilots, etc, are all delirious, like giant "psyops".... is even crazier.
One of the firsts things you learn in the "I want to believe" side is to never trust the government.
Don't you see? The government is trying to suppress this information. That's why it has to be true! /s
Oh the government(s) know a lot about how to handle information. And people through it.
I'll remember this next time someone shares a Guardian article as evidence of anything.
That literally did happen so it's not out of the question to believe such a thing :D
Just look at his eyes during the interview. The guy is CLEARLY lying and spelling out learned phrases. It's all a big show. There are no UFOs and there never will be.
I'd also assume this is just a psyop, though more in the more general propaganda sense. You want other countries to both overestimate and underestimate you.
If other countries think there's a serious possibility that the US has alien technology then they'll be extra cautious. I doubt anyone buys it, personally.
But propaganda operations definitely have unintended consequences, I'd personally guess that experiments on the population's willingness to believe the government is at most a side effect. After all, there's wacky stuff like flat earth or refusing to believe in irrational numbers that has no meaningful international relations impact.
What is it about the US that makes aliens always crash land there?
It’s not even the biggest country by land area. And it’s only a small percentage of the total land area of earth.
And while we’re at it, why do aliens always crash land where the number of witnesses is close to one?
It almost makes you think that all these phenomena are observer dependent.
Tunguska is not in the US?
Roswell was just a badly kept secret. Perhaps other countries are better at keeping secrets.
That is discussed in TFA. It has a quote that multiple countries probably have evidence.
> All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop. My belief is that for some reason, the US government used psychology tests to identify a select few people who naturally "want to believe". These individuals would take vague evidence and through their own nature would exaggerate and fill in the blanks. They then nudged those individuals with carefully curated credible fake evidence. Then they just sat back and waited for a few of those guys to "leak" the information.
It's ironic to use a baseless conspiracy theory to accuse someone else of a disinformation conspiracy.
I feel sad to see that in the top post of an HN discussion.
The Trump indictments probably have teeth, and getting the I Want To Believe / Dale Gribble / Q-Anon crowd sidetracked is probably the main idea.
They've been doing it since the 90s and the Oklahoma City Bombings.
Nice point. But why is it even considered probably fake immediately when people speak about probable extraterrestrial intelligence encounters? Isn't this a cognitive bias? I would have little doubt in possiblity of advanced extraterrestrial life if not the hype - the universe is so vast and ancient, the idea Earth and humans are so unique seems much more incredible.
The argument isnt that we are unique but that we are far, far away.
It is considered fake because the perceived difficulty of space travel combined with the complete lack of direct evidence despite the ongoing search for it.
Why are we so confident in our understanding of reality being so perfect nobody in the whole universe could have found a way to transcend the limitations it imposes? I would totally expect an advanced alien race to consider our physical science ridiculous.
Because of the complete lack of evidence.
It is illogical to build confidence on top of lack of evidence of your wrongness. In a virtually-infinite (relatively to your size and age and the limits of your senses and cognition) universe there always is some evidence you just don't know about. Our science is quite decent from our perspective, doing a great job describing the reality we perceive, but it seems absurdly naïve to consider it the ultimate knowledge. As history shows it changes regularly and will change a lot more someday in future.
Not an argument to be applied to a specific claim - it justifies literally every perspective and becomes useless. Immediately.
Exactly my thoughts also.
Your comment reads like psyops... trying to discredit the leakers.
I agree with you both!
Why would anyone want to do this psyop? Who benefits from this?
> All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop.
Feels like someone started up the same government UFO psyop program that we had running during the cold war.
Maybe they're just trying to redirect all the Qanon crazies onto getting them chasing their tales looking for UFOs instead.
The New York Times is said to have an article in the works for sunday, providing more background presumably.
If this was some psyop, they certainly go all out.
Funny, how HN is/isn't reacting to "US in possession of non-human technology".
Sounds like the plot of the x-files.
Haha
Am I missing something or is the only thing that makes this different than so many other "insider" claims is that this guy has a career history that implies he isn't just another crackpot spewing theories?
It reads just like so many claims like we have heard in the past, but this time people think the guy is more reliable.
It is pretty funny that the one of the people often quoted who backs up Grusch's claims is Jonathan Grey. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2241801/)
I'd love to think that alien contact is possible, but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly.
> this guy has a career history that implies he isn't just another crackpot spewing theories
I love the optimism in assuming that being a crackpot and having a career in intelligence are incompatible!
He could have been driven to crackpottery also.
Consider this hypothetical: A person in intelligence knows something you would rather didn't get out, but you suspect there's a chance they will leak it. Maybe they have a personality that leads you to believe they can't in good conscience keep that secret, or maybe you're just callous and paranoid, doesn't really make a difference.
One thing you could do is convince them of something completely ridiculous that no one will take seriously. Even easier if there is a large existing community of nutters that already believe that (possibly you manufactured that too, just for such an occasion). Put on some little shows, make sure they see some documents they "weren't supposed to", and when they've bought into it enough have someone all but confirm it to them in person.
Then, if they're in a leaking mood, they'll discredit themselves for you.
> He could have been driven to crackpottery also.
What if it was against his will? What I mean is what if he has served his purpose and the government did something to make him slip into borderline insanity?
Not saying that I even remotely believe this, then again. . . It's not like the US government hasn't carried out horrible, immoral, and unethical experiments before.
Seriously though, it' one of those fun Black Mirror-like plots that pop in my head occasionally. Since everyone is throwing out all kinds of what-ifs I thought I'd try to have some fun too.
I'm pretty sure there are documented, widely-recognized case of this happening. Can't remember the details, but I think it was an amateur radio operator that found a secret broadcasting station, and was thrown off the trail when said station decided to broadcast fake stuff about aliens. And another case where the government needed to test animals for radiation following a nuclear test, so secretly stole them from farms in a way that suggested UFO abduction?
I can't remember where I read/heard this, but sure it is on the internet somewhere.
I always thought this was the point of alex jones...
Some real conspiracies are revealed, but they're mixed in with so much super psycho that everything gets discredited...
It’s called a limited hangout
The part that you quoted was me summarizing what I thought they were saying and kind of asking if that was what they were saying. I've never met the guy. And by the way, yes, I do think crackpottery is an equal opportunity condition.
I cackled.
> but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly
As if humanity's knowledge circa 2023 is the end-all of things!
I'm extremely skeptical, but open minded too. until I see actual evidence, I won't believe it, but ftl isn't needed per se, warp drives supposedly could create worm holes or little folds in space they could jump through to essentially go as far as ftl with fractional speeds. if a worm hole opens between two distant spaces, does time dilation still work the same way? Maybe there's some shortcut through a parallel universe that takes people through space faster, ... I'm obviously not a physicist, but there's plenty of exotic science we don't yet know about, so this is definitely suspect and Occam's razer and all, but that's still like 1 percent or so that it is possible. I would've said 0.0001 percent 4 years ago.
This arrogance underpins so many comments on here. We don't know whether some breakthrough is possible that makes interstellar travel viable using hitherto unknown physics.
Did you know that Dark Energy is >50% of the whole Big Bang energy? And we have no idea what it is.
If dark matter and dark energy are real. While it is generally accepted that they are, dark matter's existence isn't a a closed case yet. Look into the MOND theory.
I personally don't have the education to state a theory with confidence, but I like the idea the physicists saw galaxies rotating in a way which seemed to break the rules of physics they knew and so they said, "our rules can't be wrong, there must be something there we can't see or measure or prove what it is." When it is possible (emphasis on possible) that maybe the laws of physics as related to motion and acceleration are different at scales that include multiple galaxies. Maybe they are rotating at the precise rate they are supposed to and there are undiscovered laws of physics at great scale. They are different rules at the quantum level and we haven't found quantum gravity yet. Is it possible the rules of gravity could be not as concrete at the largest levels of existence? Einstein said large masses bend space and time and we see that as gravity. Could the unexpected rotation of galaxies that is now explained as proving dark matter exists actually be caused by galaxy sized massed bending space and time at a different proportion. I dunno, but wouldn't it be fun if the explanation was so revolutionary and simple?
Disclaimer because this is the internet: I have no clue is this theory could be real, and it is mostly based on other theories by actual, real physicists--which I am not.
For real there should be a name for this sort of categorical error in thinking.
Yeah like open minded or something.
Sure they aren't open minded, but I mean thinking that our current state of knowledge defines the limits of what is possible, which is more specific than just closed-minded. It's crazy how often people make this mistake.
It isn't close minded at all. I would LOVE to have my thinking changed.
After listing to people who research this area like Martin Rees, Sabine Hossenfelder, Matt O'Dowd of PBS Spacetime, it just seems unlikely to me that the logistics of such travel--especially in a small craft that would just carry several beings--seems like it is just too hard to do and will remain so difficult for many, many generations to come.
Can you explain what seems arrogant?
Which is more likely?
a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is visiting us right now.
or
b) The people making these claims are wrong.
While a) isn't impossible, b) seems so much more likely.
Also if they have the technology to cross interstellar space, surely they have the technology not to be detected by us?
Extend that too: a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky
Seriously people underestimate the ludicrous energies involved in near-c travel. Even with engines off at those speeds the interstellar dust undergoing nuclear fusion off your hull will give you away
Extend that too: a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is able to visit in a manner that doesn't create a second sun in the sky b) then crash
with coldsleep technology, or a species evolved or self-engineered for ultralongterm hibernation, speed might not matter.
Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case. Not implying this is what we have here, just a general observation. It's weird people believe space travel requires pilots.
> Machines would be more likely than anything biological in any case.
Counterpoint: biology is a machine in itself.
Our machines of metal and microchips are incredibly primitive compared to where they'll be in 100, 500, 1000, 10K+ years from now - and when a machine has the ability to to self-replicate, have autonomy, and to protect itself from microscopic threats, then it sure looks a lot like life-as-we-know it.
Having just finished Iain Banks excellent The Algebraist, this is immediately what came to mind: we have no idea what timescales aliens would operate on.
But what if it's 0.5c travel?
That's a massive difference from 0.99c travel
Agree, visitors may have traveled for millions of years to get here. We should not project human timescales on aliens.
Humans as we know them today will never visit other galaxies, but our AI descendants almost certainly will.
If you have 20 million years and don't mind waiting, you can send probes to every system in the galaxy at sub-light speeds.
Why near c travel is assumed?
Idk what’s so special about the speed of light/causality, in an alien universe it may not even be relevant. When talking about alien intelligence and technology literally everything is on the table.
> literally everything is on the table
Right, they could have ridden dragon-unicorn hybrids through a magic portal made from the dust of black hole centers.
That's what you mean when you say "literally everything is on the table."
Or, start drawing lines for me if you disagree.
There is only one universe
I'm not sure we will ever know if this is the only universe. However it seems highly unlikely that aliens could travel from another universe and, even if they could, bring their own laws on physics with them.
Occam's razor.
Even at non-relativistic speeds self replicating robots could have visited every star system in the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years. We haven't seen any evidence.
Everyone has the most advanced cameras in history in their phones and there's exactly zero indisputable pictures of UFOs, ghosts, fairies, chupacabras, Nessie, Bigfoots, Yetis, and so on.
If aliens can travel even a light year, they almost certainly also have the technology to not crash.
Agree with everything you’re saying except the cameras in phones. Cameras in phones are advanced but most do not have kind of optical zoom. Try to take a picture of a plane flying overhead with your iPhone or a bird. It’s hard to get a clear photo of something so far away.
But surely you can get a clear shot over your shoulder as you are being probed? ;0)
>Everyone has the most advanced cameras in history in their phones and there's exactly zero indisputable pictures of UFOs, ghosts, fairies, chupacabras, Nessie, Bigfoots, Yetis, and so on.
This is key in why I was much more optimistic of finding any of those paranormal items than I was 10 years ago. I hope I'm wrong.
There are zero indisputable photos of 99.9999999% of things that happen on earth. I mean, even if you have 10 separate people seeing the same thing and someone videoing, that's still disputable. You'd need a stadium of observers and several camera rigs before photo/video evidence would be the necessary level of "sure" to be considered indisputable when it comes to UFOs.
Can't there be a c) of "Who the hell knows, but there's a lot of evidence piling up." I'm with you in that I don't believe that an alien civilization that has overcome challenges of FTL, etc. would come to Earth to apparently joy-ride. There's something else that's causing trustworthy individuals to make these claims. At this point I just call it "magic" until a better word comes along.
One theory is that these bogeys have been here as long as we have and are basically automated tests, sort-of like the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It's ridiculous, but less ridiculous than a). The more I think about it, flying octopuses from Europa is less ridiculous than a).
The spacefaring octopuses from Europa aren't going to be impressed with this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64814781
Who said anything about a joyride?
The whistleblower clearly is implying that we are being spied on.
Oooh I didn't catch that. I think that's funny. Given the limitations of FTL, etc., that'd be the equivalent of me canoeing across the Atlantic to spy on a nest of rather dull shrews. I should clearly read what he's saying.
Or c) we live in a simulation, and simulation admins break the 4th wall sometimes to leave us gifts... from Jeanne D'Arc to UFOs
and Shazaam!
there could be life in our solar system or at the bottom of our own oceans
To be fair, COVID escaping from the one and only lab capable of doing that kind of research in the area seems the most likely too. However, the best evidence so far points elsewhere. Sometimes the unlikely circumstance turns out to be the real one.
c) An alien civilization can trivial visit Earth and has been for thousands of years.
You make a lot of assumptions how difficult it wouldv be to visit and even why they would be here.
I assume that interstellar travel is really difficult for any civilization. That assumption is based on my knowledge of physics (relativity in particular).
Why is it difficult? You just point and shoot. Will take a long time but you will get there in the end.
First you need an incredible amount of energy to get even a modest mass out of the earth's gravity well. Then you you need a truly fantastic amount of energy to get it up to a fraction of the speed of light. Then you need an equally fantastic amount of energy to slow it down again at it's destination. Then you run into time dilation effects, which diminish the usefulness to the sender of any information they are going to get back (due to the delay).
My point was that you don't need to go fast if you have plenty of time. You just need to get out of gravity which we can do.
Going slowly has it's own issues. If it takes you 100,000 years to cross the space between 2 stars, you are going to need a lot of energy/food to keep your crew/robots/computers going - because there isn't going to be much solar energy available. Also is any civilization going to invest the effort to create a probe/mission that they are not going to hear back from over that sort of time-scale?
I thought that way 3 or 4 years ago. PBS Spacetime has quite a few great videos about that. (Videos by actual physicists and astrologers.)
> That assumption is based on my knowledge of physics
based on your knowledge of known physics. We're still adding to the periodic table...
We're not still adding to the periodic table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oganesson , 118, was synthesized in 2002, and confirmed in 2015 and I don't think anybody is actively working on making https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununennium or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbinilium for lack of resources right now.
If somebody is aware of groups actively working to synthesize above 119 please let me know.
>We're still adding to the periodic table...
That doesn't violate known physics in any way.
Very true, but the point is it just shows there's a lot we don't know still that an advanced civilization might and likely have already discovered and learned to harness/control.
>based on your knowledge of known physics.
Right, and for exactly that reason, it enjoys the advantage over competing theories.
It's so hilarious: "This can't be true, people would have exposed it, there's no way they could cover this up!"
...
"It reads just like so many claims like we have heard in the past"
I mean.... come on people, try harder.
One simple explanation is that Grusch's story is mostly true.
eg: There is a secret project, they have been doing reverse engineering, and they did keep it from congress for a very long time.
This is all the stuff that Grusch can probably prove himself without second hand reporting.
If he COULD prove it, he would have. He did not.
> I'd love to think that alien contact is possible, but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly.
With all the absurdly crazy complexity that has arisen in our universe, and the tiny primate brain you were born with, and the mere 10k years of civilization in our multi-billion year old universe which may be one of a near infinitude stretching back for eternity, you've figured out with high likelihood what is and is not possible. Right.
Damn, that was deep!
I’ve not taken a side yet, but to answer your first question, the original journalism outlet that published his story is The Debrief (who are pretty widely respected in the defense world), and they documented the source checking they did on Grusch:
https://thedebrief.org/fact-check-q-a-with-debrief-co-founde...
even if he and the sources all know a friend a work on these teams, it's still not enough evidence. im very skeptical at the same time, I'm not completely shut off to the idea, I mean I'd say 98 to 2 percent are the odds differential but that's up from like 0.00000001 percent previously, before all the ufo releases.
I'm warming up, and I'm not naive enough to claim what a civilization a million years now advanced than us with bigger and more efficient brains(or ai) could accomplish in large enough time scales.
This is definitely the just trustworthy source to date, perhaps, but still the evidence isn't enough to blindly just say, yes it's definitely aliens.
"the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness"
If those mechanics are known I'd love to hear them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution ?
ctrl-f that page for 'consciousness' and report back.
Not a wiki article, but From Bacteria to Bach and Back is more or less about this very subject.
A philosopher's perspective but still interesting nonetheless.
That's me you quoted and I'd love to hear them, too. That is part of the point.
There is the fact that Grusch gave sworn testimony to congress on it, he's going to prison for perjury if he's lying. Doesn't prove it, but it's more than just saying it in an interview.
People lie to Congress all the time without any consequences. That depends more on the political necessity of having a scapegoat/figure to tar and feather than the actual law.
> People lie to Congress all the time without any consequences.
Examples?
Citations:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/02/198118060...
https://youtu.be/QwiUVUJmGjs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/ve...
Does anybody ever go to jail for lying to congress?
https://www.propublica.org/article/five-trump-cabinet-member...
There's many, many more.
Brett Kavanaugh when he said "boofing" meant farting.
Mark McGwire
He also could just be mentally ill and doesn't believe he's lying. It doesn't mean what he's saying is true.
Man I don't think he's mentally ill now, but before this is done I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes so. Can't imagine that guy's life right now.
I personally believe FTL is likely impossible so I think the only realistic hypothesis is if we encounter aliens, that they're von Neumann drones on the vanguard edge of a colonization wave from an alien race that's been doing it for millions of years.
If we survive for long enough as a species, either we'll meet races in this manner or we'll be the ones doing it.
For the record I still only assign a fairly low probability that this is what is happening, it's more likely that UAPs are craft from terrestrial origin.
If their ship that came here and crashed ... I guess I'm not too worried about them.
Could have been intentional and likely unmanned
Sure, they sent a spaceship that had to travel many lightyears to reach us, then intentionally let it crash.
Or maybe they sent out billions of self-replicating probes that have no value except in the data they transmit, so they don't care if they crash.
It may have not been sent to reach us, they might not know there is an us. When was the probe launched? Did humans even have fire at that time?
I'm no body language expert, but I did notice him shaking his head when he says something to the (opposite) effect that "we categorically have non human craft".
Games within games. Insiders playing credible dupes.
I had an encounter with a UAP while I was with some friends in a park. We all saw the same thing. It was so black that its darkness was the only reason we noticed it against the night sky. It loomed over us, maybe 100 feet above the ground, and followed us when we walked away from it. It stayed for about 10 minutes and then flew away. It never made a sound, I never saw any lights, never felt any heat, but it was able to hover. It was hard to tell the shape, but roughly a disc, maybe a sphere.
I never reported it or anything, mostly due to not knowing who to call and lack of evidence (cell phone cameras were primitive at the time and it was too dark). We still talk about it occasionally, not really knowing what to make of it.
I created an account just to chime in . Had the same experience happen to me around 30 years ago in a rural area. I think the only reason I was able to distinguish the round shape against the night sky was because there was almost no light pollution. In my case it was a small group of them flying in a v shape Formation just passing by.
Thanks for chiming in. It is oddly comforting to hear that others have had similar experiences. When it was happening, the first words out of my mouth were “You guys see that, right? I’m not hallucinating?” It was so obviously not normal. I rubbed my eyes, questioning whether it was me or not and it was a relief when they saw it too.
The size of the one I saw was large and it was already extraordinary and alarming. A formation would be astounding.
It is very difficult to estimate the sizes of objects in the sky. I once saw an odd machine-like object in the sky of Shanghai, China in broad daylight. I thought, why is nobody concerned, or even looking? After awhile I saw it sway a bit and realized it was an anchored kite. I thought it was huge but it was just close. At night it lit up like this: https://youtu.be/O_UrmvcJ9T0
Thanks for going against the HN grain and submitting a description of this experience. For a site with so many well-educated users I am disturbed by the volume of comments that suggest that things like this only happen in the US, or they have only happened since WWII, they are only reported by military pilots, or that this can't be real because FTL travel is not possible without considering that it isn't even necessary nor has it ever been claimed in any account AFAIK. I first started reading about things like this decades ago (after Pascagoula) and over the years I have read a lot of reports filed with outfits like MUFON. I am open-minded about all this and willing to consider that some of it could be true. Personally I tend to believe older reports filed by people who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by making an extraordinary claim yet still chose to inform their peers about something that they saw or experienced because they needed to understand it themselves and if they told the story maybe someone somewhere could fill in the blanks for them.
Someone that I have known for decades told me a few years ago that they were part of a small group that had an experience with something similar to what you are describing. In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual. These are college educated people enjoying life in a rural area.
While in college, I also taped a story that a fellow student told one day. I always taped the lectures and transcribed them after class to help remember things and on this particular day the subject somehow turned to UFOs. I would have to replay the tape to know how the segue happened but anyway, if I remember right the professor commented about UFOs not being real and this student interrupted and told his personal encounter story. From memory, he was out with friends riding ranch roads across the part of west Texas where he was raised when one of them pointed out a set of lights over a part of the ranch where there were no roads, buildings, etc. They all saw the lights and decided to investigate and so they followed ranch roads towards them and as they got closer it was apparent that the lights were part of something really unusual and large that was not on the ground but was in the sky. As they got closer it zipped straight up and away and was gone in a couple seconds. I still have the tape but no way to play it. I always recorded over the previous day's lecture after transcribing but for that one I decided I would keep it and start another tape. I know this person to be an ordinary person who got a great education in geoscience and took that into a career with a multinational company eventually as a VP. He was always a no bullshit person.
In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual.
Sounds like ... a cloud? Combined with some kind of local changes in temperature/pressure/ionization sufficient to distract the animals for a bit? (I live partially in nature - sometimes the critters are very active; other times, one can hear a pin drop).
I would think that people who spend a large part of their lives outside working a small farm/ranch after their day jobs would recognize a cloud if they saw one no matter the time of day.
I acknowledge that a cloud would block the view of everything behind it but in this case I'm pretty sure it wasn't a cloud.
The thing is clouds sometimes have unusual formations, appear at surprising altitudes and move very quickly (or appear to, if one misjudges the altitude).
As I'm sure they've been told already. I'm not denying their perceptions; and of course I wasn't there. It's just that my threshold of proof for extraterrestrial vehicles is ... quite high.
And sometimes unexplained observations are just that -- unexplained.
I understand the high bar that people set for situations like this. I am a geophysicist by education. It wasn't clouds. They've seen a lot of clouds and stars etc. and grew up around machines and animals.
I left out some of the details on purpose since the whole story is not mine to tell. They told me because they knew that I had done a lot of reading about the subject when other friends had something odd happen to them and they hoped that my physics studies would help them understand some of it better.
Some things are just unexplainable with our conventional knowledge. Over time that should/could change. If we already knew everything there would be no more need for science as curiosity about unfamiliar things could be satisfied by a simple query of existing knowledge. It would be a boring reality with no novelty or mysteries. In the worst case, a small group of people would control access to knowledge, withholding key information that would empower the rest of the people by helping them understand how all the mysteries of the world fit together to form our boring reality where every question has a clear, unique answer. Luckily we are nowhere near that point and there are many things left to be discovered.
You’re welcome. FWIW, this is getting a lot more upvotes than I expected. Maybe it’s just that there is a lot of traffic on this thread. But it could be that a lot other people have had similar experiences and just don’t want to talk about it. I can certainly relate to that - there are some people in my life who I haven’t told simply because of what they might think. It’s easier to talk about with strangers or super close friends.
I think you are close when you propose that other people who have had an experience like this are not willing to share because society stigmatizes them so that in the end, only those who knew them at the time or those who have become trusted friends ever hear the story.
This is certainly true for the people that I know. With the exception of the fellow student who felt compelled to tell his story, almost every one of the others that I know avoids talking about it and will even try to deflect conversation if there is anyone who hasn't already heard about it present.
One old friend still regularly communicates with me as I am one of the only people they trust to be non-judgemental since I knew them a long time before they had their experience. I get photos, short videos, descriptions of events, attempts to tie their experiences in with other reports, etc and so I dutifully check it all out to try to help them come to terms with what has become for them a lifelong process of dealing with an emotional trauma that ended up stigmatizing them back in the small town where we grew up. Long-term friendships are critical for helping people manage some of these experiences.
Events like this are relatively rare and so it is easy for someone who doesn't personally know or who has never personally had an unusual event happen to automatically default to the conclusion that the one reporting the event has some mental issue, is unreliable, etc. Another poster suggested that somehow the subjects of one thing I mentioned must have been confused by clouds. People look for the most likely explanations and tend to ignore the fact that many of these observers have more than enough experience to understand when they are seeing something remarkable. I can say that I know several people who have had strange things happen in their lives and that among that group there is not a single one who actively went out looking for that to happen. All were just ordinary people and some were still in grade school. I am open-minded about what has happened to these people and in some cases I saw the immediate changes in their personality and demeanor. Something different happened to them. I am not qualified to say what it was but I know it was not something that anyone would consider normal. I'm just trying to be a friend to them - a sounding board when they find themselves thinking about it again.
What year? Fits the military drone narrative.
This would’ve been around 2010-ish. I could maybe buy that it was a stealthy military drone, although I kind of doubt any drone is that big or stealthy. But then, why would a military drone be interested in some random young adults hanging out in the park? I considered that it might’ve been testing the limits of its stealthiness. But then why did it hang around after we started talking about it, pointing at it, and trying to record it? No, it felt a lot more like we were being studied. Especially in the way it followed us. Slowly, smoothly, and with a little distance.
Definitely crazy any way you look at it; something was observing you, whether man or otherwise.
I personally could buy the "autonomous alien probe sent 10,000 years ago" narrative, but just seems like we'd have more concrete, widely distributed evidence by now.
wow.
make drone of it
Isn't the whistle blower stuff considerably less interesting than this:
But some insiders are now willing to take the risk of coming forward for the first time with knowledge of these recovery programs.
Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
huh? This is a current NASIC officer saying “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” - isn't that in itself extremely weird/surprising?
Yes, that along with the last sentence. It sounds like what you are ‘supposed’ to say when this type of revelation is made because we’ve heard it many times before in movies and books over the decades.
It's always some unnamed US gov unit hiding the discovery from the wider US gov itself in these ~~movies~~ I mean whistleblowing claims.
The Pentagon is full of self important buffoons.
Could be generic crap from crash sites of test drones, aircrafts, missiles, satellites etc if its secret stuff are ppl going to inform everyone on the planet?
Just never ending mindlessness thanks to the Attention Economy giving morons too much attention.
Why do you imagine yourself more competent than those "buffoons" who work in the Pentagon?
You believe they see some crap, jump to the conclusion it was "alien spaceships" and go on record declaring to have "working craft"?
I wonder who is who here.
Seeing the massive amount of fraud and dishonesty in science, especially when it comes to getting material published, combined with the government’s track record of lying and incompetence, the simplest explanation for all of this is dishonesty or incompetence
The astonishingly solid track record of utter Buffoonery coming out of people who work in that building (leading to millions of people killed, maimed and tortured), spanning multiple decades -- might have something to do with it.
BTW what the heck is a "generational officer"? is that just another way of saying he's from a "military family"?
> Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
A career like this won't protect you from belief or developing an mental illness. Hope he is fine.
How dou you suppose your own competence to be sufficient to judge his claims "must be wrong" and on top of it attest this guy some "mental illness"?
If there was some Vegas sports book I'd bet the odds are in the direction he's a bit loony or lacks analytical skills at a minimum, or had any real data.
Gov jobs in intelligence isn't exactly an exclusive club for intelligent people after all. Which is usually where the bulk of credibility is built on.
> As our chart shows, the federal government grants top secret security clearance to large numbers of government employees and contractors: 1.25 million according to the latest publicly available figures.
https://www.statista.com/chart/29717/top-secret-federal-gove...
Here's an analogy ... one of the core devs of some important language finds a bug that would have wide ranging security implications world wide but doesn't really want to reveal evidence of it and his colleagues certainly don't either.
Imagine some smart pilot or govt official (with no knowledge of our field) saying "it's not like these guys work in some exclusive club for intelligent people" ?
There is zero public evidence across the entirety of science and human knowledge that suggests any of the claims are even possible. Everything we know about the universe and technology on earth says this isn’t possible. Either the government that isn’t even capable of keeping it spy secrets secret manages to keep this evidence secret along with every other nation on the planet, or someone is being dishonest or ill.
Where did i judge him or attest anything? Maybe i expressed myself badly, in a way that was easy to misunderstand.
We now know that exoplanets and the conditions for life abound in the universe. Where the conditions for life abound, the null hypothesis ought to be that life abounds. In discussions of alien life and intelligence, we are often biased by earlier states of knowledge about the universe and our position in it. When we first started digging up dinosaur bones, we came up with fantastical notions of creatures to explain these artifacts that were mysterious to us. Notions that fit into our existing worldview, drawn from folk knowledge and cultural history. Once archeologists started studying the bones carefully, they gave us stories more fantastical than we could have ever imagined in the framework of our folk knowledge. I suspect the same will turn out to be true of UAPs.
For example, UAP stories are often ridiculed on the premise that intelligent alien life would not bother to come all this way just to hide out in the ocean. That's our folk knowledge of aliens: they like to travel, are eager to make contact with other life forms and are capable of doing so. But the elusive behaviour of UAPs is exactly what we would expect from an "unmanned" scientific probe. The home planet would be dozens or hundreds of light years away, so the craft would need to be completely autonomous in the absence of any communication system. Where does an autonomous probe go to look for signs of life? Oceans.
Knowing that life may be common is a lot different than knowing that intelligence is.
Yes, but the universe is so mind mindbogglingly vast. So many galaxies and so many stars!
It just doesn't seem right that what happened here didn't happen somewhere else.
Very very big and very very old. Take the probability of an intelligent being evolving, multiply that by the probability of it being on a planet that had vast amounts of practically free energy stored from the last great extinction and figured out how to use it, multiply that by the probability of them not running out of that energy until they can develop new sources (without destroying each other in the process), then multiply that by the probability of them figuring out space travel, multiply that by the probability that they are within reach of us with that technology, multiply that by the probability that they care enough to come over here, and finally multiply that by the probability that this occurs within the 2000 years or so when we aren't too ignorant to appreciate it.
With vastness comes separation. The more vast it is the more likely there is life elsewhere, and the less likely its in travel rangeor would be able to identify life on earth.
The possible shapes of life are much bigger than the universe.
The chances of intelligent life existing outside Earth are lower than the chance of that same intelligent life speaking flawless Swedish. We might as well send some Europop records to space as signals to aliens.
"Intelligence" is a human invention created by humans to describe humanity. It only applies to humans and human-like beings.
my money is on convergent evolution. trees and crabs and birds on every planet. not sure about primates though
Trees and crabs and birds appeared very recently in the timeline of life on Earth and will probably get extinct eons before shrimp or tardigrades know what happened.
Life is likely plentiful in the Universe. Earth-like life is almost certainly unique.
When I said "what happened here" I didn't mean humans, I was thinking more like "chemical reactions that evolve as energy is applied" kind of thing.
I’m sure you’re aware, but this is known as the Fermi Paradox (for people who want to do more reading).
Intelligent life might happen on every 10,000th planet or it might only happen in every 10,000th universe.
As long as we know of only one occurrence of intelligent life we have no clue of the probability. And human intuition on what's right doesn't help us here.
We’ve addressed this before. It’s the Fermi equation
But claiming it definitely isn't is just as absurd as claiming it definitely is. Maybe even more so.
We still have only one data point for life and one data point for intelligence.
It's absurd to claim intelligent life doesn't exist, as we know it does on Earth. And it's absurd to claim any level of probability for other intelligent life until we have one more data point.
> We still have only one data point for life and one data point for intelligence.
Don't we have many points for both? There are ~8.7 million species on the planet. What we only have one data point for is a planet that contains life and intelligence.
I should have been more clear. We only have one data point for the emergence of intelligent life.
Regarding oceans, I want to add that the overwhelming majority of our land is in the northern hemisphere. Add the speed of light time lag, and anyone starting with a southern perspective will see a water-world with no technosignature whatsoever.
If one were to send a probe, one could wisely plan on purpose to land it in the ocean, deploy submersibles with flight technology and have them just go around and lay low.
They would hide, lay low and their aerodynamic performance might simply be their idea of a modest, basic platform. They would otherwise be wholly unprepared to make contact or perform in air to air combat.
Sounds like Grusch is upstanding, but I suspect he's been trolled by the rest of them.
You can just imagine; "hey Eagle, the UFO guy's coming to ask about that UAP report, you know, the one where the IR tracker locked-on to a speck of dust. Let's mention the (nudge, hehe) black-ops alien testing site we saw when we went to file the report"
You don't troll someone to the point of letting them go testify under oath to the IG.
You do if you work for a different 3-letter organization
While I think I believe this whistleblower, the CIA is _definitely_ willing to troll someone to the point of letting them go testify under oath to the IG. I'm pretty sure they _have_. Not to mention all the LSD they dosed people with.
It also seems like you’d need to troll someone extraordinarily thoroughly for them to have enough material to testify to congress for hours. Even assuming ET is the least likely explanation, it’s at least very curious what else could have resulted in the testimony described in the article.
Epic troll
As the other commenter mentioned - these people troll each other all the time. It's practically the job description for a large portion of them, in fact.
And it doesn't even have to be anybody is trolling him directly. The trolling could be happening several layers deep. And can be entirely unintentional -- just a matter of a few genuinely naive or deluded people somewhere.
We, the general public, simply do not have enough information at this point to judge this man's testimony, or the evidence that he provided.
We do have a long, colourful history of "reputable" people (aka "I worked at the gov" or "I have a Harvard degree") making such claims (and not just about aliens but various hidden US gov tech) and combined with that we can do basic reasoning about how the US gov operates, the extreme difficulties/limitations of interstellar travel, how information can turn into a "telephone game", the other 1.25 million people with the same top secret clearance, the claim basically amounting to hearsay with no direct witnesses or participants in the program, etc.
I'm personally not waiting at the edge of my seat.
We have enough knowledge of physics to say these are extraordinary claims that require some extraordinary evidence.
i like that option ;D
I find this subject fascinating. As the article states, Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff, along with the various radar feeds, etc. I'm curious what HN thinks of the following:
There are 3 comprehensive possibilities (correct me if you think differently):
1. These crafts are ET origin
2. These crafts are human origin (secrete military tech or similar)
3. This is a psyop
Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Any of these 3 possibilities is very interesting. I have my own take for what is most likely. But I'd like to hear thoughts of others.
After taking the pilots' accounts on face value, this analysis gave me new insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
The pilots claim they saw a flying saucer that was rotating in weird ways, and provide a grainy video that's kind of convincing. The analysis proves it was lens flare.
There are additional debunked UAP videos released by the military, including one that is lens bokeh around starlight, which is debunked by showing the configuration of the "triangle UAPs" matches the positions of stars at that time, including additional evidence that the camera used on those ships has triangle aperture.
This tells me there's a chance of a disappointing but realistic option 4: military incompetence. They take these videos, they don't know what they are, so they go into some data pipeline and categorized as UAP. Then people/congress become aware that there are "UAP videos", and we go through this declassification song and dance, only to get these bokeh and lens flare videos, that the military themselves do not know they are bokeh/lens flare, and they have to find out about it on YouTube.
Giving the military more benefit of the doubt, the likely option is 3: psyop. They spread UAP rumors to confuse adversaries, knowing these UAP videos they have are BS. When they release these easily debunked videos, the adversaries could be further confused, still not knowing what they really have.
Thanks for linking this analysis, it makes a lot of sense.
It's very funny how this particular video was released entitled "gimbal", as they mention. It seems to indicate that the same analysis was already done internally, but the full report wasn't shared so as to not reveal too much military tech, so all we got was the single-word video title.
Interesting analysis but doesn’t that not make sense since the radar was tracking a fleet of the same objects? Radar wasn’t picking up a fleet of lens flares.
Whereas we have the gimbal video, we don’t have any radar data to look at.
If we’re going to rely on pilots’ conversation as meaningful data, I started to get the impression from the gimbal video that the pilots are fucking around and know it’s a plane, and when they say a “whole fleet of’em out there” (the guy appears to be containing laughter as he says it) they’re sarcastically referring to all the other passenger planes in the sky.
for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34746738
> Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff
Yeah!
I used to work with someone who was a Marine F/A-18 weapons officer (back seat guy; I may have the aircraft type wrong). He knew everything there was to know about air combat & ground attack, but outside that, he was a complete moron. I mean, he seriously believed that we stole aircraft technology from aliens, because "there is no way that humans are that smart."
Let's just say I have my doubts.
> As the article states, Navy pilots are on record as eye witnesses for this stuff, along with the various radar feeds, etc.
Watch the introduction to the 4 hour UAP panel that NASA hosted a few days ago[1], they address this.
According to NASA, even highly trained and experienced pilots can easily be fooled, and often reported UAPs are artifacts of the technology that detects them, or are indeed things like weather balloons. For example, NASA even used the example of Navy pilots being fooled by a procession of commercial airplanes queueing to land at an airport 40+ miles away from their base.
They also emphasize that radar, detection systems, etc are not scientific instruments that are suitable for the detection or analysis of this phenomenon. They emphasize that the technology that the Navy et al. use are strictly optimized for defensive/offensive interception of conventional weapons. That's to say that they're calibrated for war and not for accurate scientific observation.
Going back to the procession of airplanes waiting to land, according to the instruments available to pilots and their own observations, those airplanes were doing things that were impossible to do without bending the laws of physics. Yet all they were were just a bunch of airplanes doing what all airplanes do.
> Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Pilots and their system are fallible, you'd have to assume some argument from authority to believe otherwise, which is why I think the military loves this conspiracy theory. It shifts criticism or suspicion of government and power to a narrative that they control and that inflates the military's competence and abilities, and assumes that the military is looking out for us and willing to tell us the truth.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQo08JRY0iM
You’re missing 4, which is eye witnesses are reading instruments wrong.
“Yes I saw it move impossible in the camera”
“Yep you’ve got a speck on your camera. “
This stuff happens all the time mixed with “yeah crazy visual stuff happens”
When the alternative is that an unfathomable amount of energy was used to cross a mind boggling amount of space, you need a very bullet proof argument
Perhaps number 5 could be partial hypoxia leading to hallucinations and delusions as it pertains to pilots. I would not be surprised if a pilot swore they saw a Klingon bird of prey.
I'd say a combination of 2 and 3 is most likely, if it's not just a complete fabrication/mirage/misunderstanding (which is maybe even more likely...)
What about
4. A collection of shadows, mistakes, pilot fatigue, and instrument malfunction?
Too coincidental for pilot fatigue/shadows AND instrument malfunction to always happen at the same time in all of these cases. There are hundreds of reported instances in the past few years. This is simply not a serious explanation.
Strongly disagree. The sheer number of flight hours performed by all the world's professional pilots multiplied by the average percentage of a flight that a pilot could be considered to be "fatigued", multiplied by the odds of a cosmetic/minor sensor blip occuring is still an astronomically large number. That confluence of events probably happens quite regularity. This can be acendotealy verified hanging out at any general aviation flight club, and asking pilots about the times they got temporarily confused by some aerial phenomenon that turned out to be a strange reflection off a cloud. Happens literally all the time.
I would encourage you to actually look into the sort of anomalous cases we're talking about here.
https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20
I'd even suggest a good percentage of reports are either deliberate hoaxes themselves or genuine reports of hoaxes carried out by others. If not hoaxes, then deliberate misreporting to cover up worse truths. Ultimately almost any other such explanation is vastly more likely than advanced alien species having crossed the galaxies (undetected) to visit us only to crash land on our little ball of rock.
Not really into UFOs myself, but that's not what the article (the whistleblower) is claiming:
> “We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”
There is a difference between claiming to have seen the modern equivalent of the Loch Ness monster and saying "they have its body in a hangar".
Yeah. For example, in the Loch Ness example, they're at least claiming to have seen it.
4. Misinterpretation and/or equipment malfunction and/or hoaxes.
A few probably are secret military tech (nothing like antigravity, but I think most people - even in the military - probably don't have a good grasp of what true cutting edge technology is capable of,) but I think there are UFO true believers within the government trying to stir up publicity for funding[0]. To me that is the most intriguing, and plausible, explanation for a lot of this.
Because remember we just went through this with the Chinese balloon shit. "Sources" in the government making the same claims. Rumors about craft defying physics. But it all turned out to be balloons and paranoia and hype.
It's never aliens. It's never aliens.
[0]https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-...
Probably a combination of 2 & 3 along with weird natural phenomena + the fact that human brains run on error prone wetware, are full of hacks, and make shit up all the time...
In short, given prevalence of aliens in popular culture + brains being predictive machines + existence of things that are hard to explain = it would be far more surprising if there weren't people claiming aliens.
Note 1: actual aliens would be really exciting, but Occam's Razor...
There are probably 5,000 comprehensive possibilities. You could sit around all day making up "what ifs". What if it's a psyop? What if it's some meteorite that crashed into a pile of pine resin and made a composite? What if it's a fake craft two dudes in a covert research lab made to troll an intelligence service with some experimental materials? What if the dude is actually lying?
Who cares? It's not going to amount to anything. Even if it exists, nobody's gonna let us see it.
Keyhole, AEGIS, and classified hydrophone systems have trans medium craft entering theater at LEO and dropping below sea level.
It’s not the fucking Russians, if they could do that we’d be glass
Wow all that jargon sure makes it sound legit. I'm glad these military operators have produced such infallible data. When can we look at it?
N+1. They're 25 and they've just popped some amphetamine (now modafinil) to get them through the hangover from getting shit faced on shipboard moonshine last night.
Are the Navy pilots actual eye witnesses to seeing these crafts or are they eye witnesses to whatever is electronically displayed to their HUDS/Helmets/lenses?
It seems every video I've come across, it was all electronic so it has me thinking just a software error.
Every video I've seen, too, has been from some sort of electronic sensor. The US Navy was working on Project NEMESIS at least as far back as 2019, which sought to (and likely did) develop the means to spoof electronic signatures.
They’ve had “drones” (more like gliders) since the gulf war that can fake electronic signatures of different planes. They worked well and were targeted by Iraqi defenses.
How about cell phone video?[0]
[0]https://www.dvidshub.net/video/843620/navy-2021-flyby-video
Can you point out what's happening in the video? I don't see anything
The orb is seen whizzing past just after 8s in the video. It doesn't look much bigger than a basketball but the relative distance is hard to judge.
A balloon?
There's something captured flying by the camera as it is pointing sideways.
It could also be some combination of the three, for example a craft that is human origin but derived from ET bits being presented in a pysop manner for some reason. The Navy's claimed operable AGRAV/room temperature superconductor patents and Salvadore Pais[1] add another layer of huh to the whole thing.
[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a...
4. Dust, misidentifications, radar ghosts. David Grunch is a liar.
David Charles Grusch
why is it always the navy pilots that always see the aliens, and not the commercial pilots. is it because navy pilots are more likely to be flying at some combination of high speed, bad weather conditions, or darkness that tends to make ordinary occurrences look more mysterious?
Because commercial pilots are in control of aircraft flying over densely populated areas, and often responsible for the lives of hundreds on board. A navy pilot typically just has the expensive aircraft and is somewhat expected to be crazy.
So, if a commercial pilot does see such things, they'd be far less likely to report them, as it may well ruin their career. Navy pilots, on the other hand may well get some commendation for identifying an unusual, or anomalous thing (enemy tech?).
Commercial pilots don't get scrambled to get eyes on radar anomalies in the middle of nowhere. They get paid to go from point A to point B using a pre-determined amount of fuel.
There have been reports from commercial pilots in the past few years as well.
That aside, it could make logical sense that the military is seeing these more often for a few reasons:
- The nature of their missions, flight speed, equipment, and flexibility to investigate further
- If it’s a terrestrial adversary, it makes sense that they’d fuck with military
- If it’s ET, it makes sense that they’d pay more attention to military jets than passenger jets if it’s some kind of recon
Commercial pilots see them all the time.
https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20
>and not the commercial pilots
Because they don't want to lose their job when their employer thinks they're nuts and shouldn't be flying hundreds of people.
This reminds me of the "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument that religious people use regarding Jesus. Let's not railroad the options, here. There's room for nuance (like combinations or, frankly, just misunderstandings).
That's a convenient argument and a good analogy for the UFO phenomenon, because it omits the fourth option, which is that Jesus never existed outside of a carefully constructed narrative distributed by institutional authorities with the goal of manipulating their taxpaying population.
what kind of nuanced compromise exists that does not paint jesus as a liar, lunatic, or lord exclusively?
That he believed a falsehood? Does that make him a lunatic? Would that not necessarily make billions of people lunatics?
I do think believing that you are a deity is a sufficiently far fetched falsehood to justify calling you a lunatic. For the sake of argument I suppose I'm willing to accept "profoundly confused individual" as a fourth alternative. But I don't think it helps the rhetorical point against painting arguments for "lord lunatic or liar" as an unjustified demand for absolute beliefs.
And no, you're not a lunatic for believing someone else's bullshit.
That he was misrepresented?
>There are 3 comprehensive possibilities
I'd say there is a 4th comprehensive possibility: these are one or more natural phenomenon we've yet to document and may have no intelligence behind them at all.
"Navy pilots are on record"
PSYops. What about being a "navy pilot" validates these claims? That's like saying "Police officers have come out on record to say that bad buys have lazer guns". Of course they would say that, they want everyone to think THEY have big lazer guns too!
like any other piece of the military, Pilots are only allowed to disseminate what the current strategy-focus tells them to disseminate.
> That's like saying "Police officers have come out on record to say that bad buys have lazer guns".
Or, you know, the things police officers actually say about fentanyl and its magic properties.
The eye and your brain are easily fooled. So are instruments.
4. Time-traveling humans from the future. Don't discount that possibility!
I do. If it were possible we'd surely see them everywhere. Even if time travel was a one-way trip there's enough future billions of us that there'd be massive numbers with the sort of incurable fascination seth the past that they'd be motivated to travel back and see what it was like. Doesn't really seem any more or less likely than alien intelligence at any rate.
That reminds me of an amusing story I read in Analog several years ago. I don't remember the name or author.
It was about the first time travel trip. The team that developed the first time machine decided to send the first traveler to visit Shakespeare, figuring that Shakespeare had a flexible enough mind to not be freaked out by the visit.
When the traveler got to Shakespeare they were right that he did not freak out. In fact he took it entirely in stride. The time traveler was a little confused that Shakespeare was taking it so well. Shakespeare even asked what gift the time traveler had brought, saying that "all the early ones brought gifts".
The time traveler had in fact brought a gift--a nicely bound volume of Shakespeare's collected works. Shakespeare looked at it, said something about maybe he could sell the binding, then said probably not, and tossed it on a pile of books, which the traveler realized was a pile of similar books.
Shakespeare noticed that the traveler was now throughly confused and realized that the traveler was in fact one of the very earliest, and explained that most of early travelers brought books.
The traveler was still confused over the idea that Shakespeare had met other time travelers, saying "but I'm the first time traveler!". Shakespeare told him that he may have been the first to leave, but he certainly wasn't the first to arrive, and said at some stages in his life he was being visiting frequently by time travelers, which was actually annoying--although not as annoying as it was for Jesus, who Shakespeare says another time traveler decided to introduce them once.
At that point numerous other time travelers started arriving. They were reporters from throughout the timeline popping in to try to get an interview with the first time traveler. The first time traveller is now close to completely losing it, and Shakespeare says he can handle it and steps in to act as a press agent for the first time traveler.
If backwards time travel turns out to possible my guess is that there will be some limitation that prevents scenarios like the one in that story from happening. My guess is either (1) the time machine will only be able to go back to when it was created (think of it like going back to a save point in a game), or (2) when a time machine goes back to some point in spacetime it creates some sort of exclusion zone in a region around that point that precludes any other time machine from arrive at a point in that exclusion zone.
I suspect time-travelling and Shakespeare is a whole sub-genre, the one I know is one where Shakespeare travelled forward in time and enrolled in a university Shakespeare course - which he then failed... There must be at least one where all his works were actually sent back in time for him to copy from, leading to all sorts of questions as to who originally wrote them.
The story you mention is probably "The Immortal Bard" [1] by Isaac Asimov.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Bard
That's the one, I read it pretty recently actually!
BTW...I actually asked ChatGPT (just 3.5, don't have 4 access) what story it might be based on a description. Couldn't do it, gave lots of nonsense answers along the way, but when I prompted it with the name of the author and the word "immortal" it finally got it. Was kinda surprised actually, I'd think that's the sort of thing an LLM should be able to do quite well.
In fact, on further experimentation, my only conclusion is god help anyone who tries to use ChatGPT to help with studying literature.
If you haven't watched the movie Primer yet, you may enjoy it.
Maybe every instance of time travel the universe splits in two, to prevent all the causal loop paradoxes etc?
Ie, time is always a tree branching, and traveling back in time doesn't change that?
Well, sure, it's possible my consciousness is one that's travelled along every single branch where the backwards-time-travel didn't happen, but that strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely if there have been even only a fifty such attempts in all human (future) history.
What I mean is when a particle travels back in time, the universe branches forward in parallel, from that particle, at the instant it arrives. This resolves all paradoxes as the independently instantiated time streams can't interact.
I believe there are present theories of time/space that rely on this kind of idea.
It also might mean any time traveller could never get back to the exact "when" they came from. Though if there was a way to traverse parallel time streams, there'd be no paradox as the moment they arrived "back" would also branch.
Time traveling humans is more likely for the following reason: It requires only one thing: worm hole or some other yet-to-be-invented mechanism for traveling to the past. For this to be alien intelligence, two things are required: First alien intelligence has to exist, and second, they too need a mechanism for speedy travel, to travel to another galaxy such that they can reach the destination within an individual alien's lifetime.
Aliens could exist with or without speedy travel. We can assume slow-traveling aliens must be from long-lived civilizations, but we can't assume fast-traveling aliens are from short-lived civilizations.
Slow-traveling aliens likely come from a long-lived origin civilization (although it's possible that origin civilization went "extinct" millions of years ago, but its descendants continue to reproduce of spaceships traveling slowly outward in different directions, these descendants would arguably be from the same origin civilization, which must definitionally be long-lived).
Fast-traveling aliens might be from a civilization doomed to be short-lived, but they achieved FTL travel so we just happen to meet them. They could have popped up a million years ago, and be on schedule for extinction in another million years. But since they can travel quickly, they don't need to be a long-lived civilization in order for it to be likely that we might encounter them. They could be one of many short-lived civilizations.
In a universe without FTL travel, the probability that we encounter an alien civilization is dependent on the expected duration of an alien civilization; the more long-lived civilizations that exist, the more likely we'll encounter one, because they've had more time to slow-travel. In such a no-FTL universe, there could be a high probability of civilization, but with a low expected civilizational lifetime. So we'd be unlikely to encounter any civilization, despite the high number of them in the universe.
So what I find ironic is that even with a bunch of aliens crashing (regardless of how slowly) onto our planet, we can't actually infer much new information about the Fermi paradox, or whether we've made it past the Great Filter. Either we're encountering civilizations that must be long-lived because they're slow-traveling, in which case there may not be a filter because the paradox was resolved by the lack of FTL travel; or they can be both long-lived and unknowably short-lived, in which case we don't know where the filter is because any civilization we meet could go extinct next (perhaps achieving FTL travel even achieves some prerequisite for a specific class of extinction event?).
So either there might not be a filter, or we don't know where it is. The most informative scenario would be for us to meet a long-lived, fast-traveling civilization.
I'm probably more positive alien intelligence exists than I am that humanity will last long enough to discover such a mechanism. To be clear, I'd say both are quite likely - I just very much doubt the mechanism actually exists.
describing something as yet-to-be-invented to contextually imply that it exists and will be invented is a strange proposition
And they have to want to
4. A bunch of well-fed military-industrial complex types, some lying, some naive and sincerely deluded -- stovepiping and embellishing each other's BS as usual.
4. It is optical illusions
* From another univers (in multivers)
* From deep in Oceans
* From subterranean
* From millions of years in past
* From millions of years in future
* From hell (the Operation Trojan Horse theory)
Functionally, all of these can be classified under the first option, "ET origin", because they all involve the revelation that some advanced intelligence unknown to the mass of humanity is active on Earth.
But there is a fourth:
* These craft are of natural origin
Some very strange analogue of St Elmo's Fire which results in the formation of metallic spheres of unknown composition in the vicinity of jet fighters.
> "These craft are of natural origin. Some very strange analogue of St Elmo's Fire"
"we humans are property of some more highly evolved beings that live in a realm that we cannot see. Those invisible beings are immaterial: they are made of energy and Russell compares them to ball lightning."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinister_Barrier
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Alright HN, we all know that this is likely untrue, from a rational angle, and this thread is full of reasons why, but play this mental exercise with me for a minute:
What if its true? What repercussions would having alien technology have on civilization? Would this fundamentally change beliefs? Influence religion?
EDIT: someone pointed out to make this more stimulating we need constrains, assuming the following is true:
The UFO is likely "rogue" in that it was off course, pilot dead, and we are not currently engaged in hostilities with this other civilization
If you are curious about how Christianity in particular would need to react you could read CS Lewis’ essay “Religion and Rocketry”.
We Christians would need to answer these questions:
1. Are there animals anywhere else besides earth?
2. If yes, do any of these animals have what we call ‘rational souls’? That is, are they spiritual beings?
3. If there are such spiritual beings, are any or all of them, like us, fallen?
4. If any of them have fallen, have they been denied Redemption by the Incarnation and Passion of Christ? Christ could have come to those worlds also.
5. Finally, if all of the first four questions could be answered yes, is it certain that this is the only possible mode of Redemption?
https://www.cslewis.com/religion-and-rocketry/
I never got why the interpretation of „world“ christians choose is so narrow; why can’t it describe the galaxy, or universe? What if the genesis revolves around beings on other planets as parts of the same world?
This is a pretty wild but fun topic :-)
Saint Augustine discussed a colorful rumour from his time about dog-headed people (cynocephaly). If you look beyond the actual rumour itself, his thinking provides a useful precedent for contemporary Christians to frame discussions about alien intelligence.
(If I remember correctly...) Augustine's thinking went something like this: if dog-headed people exist, then the question becomes whether they are descendants of Adam or not. (See the protoevangelium in Gn 3:15; or the genealogy in Lk 3:38; or the Catechism paragraph 402 and surrounding paragraphs on the Fall.)
If they are, then they are in need of salvation: the Gospel should be proclaimed to them and presumably they should also receive the Sacraments.
If they are not, given that Adam is our actual ancestor, then we might need additional revelation, because no revelation about this was provided to begin with (Jn 10:16 is taken to be a reference to non-Jewish peoples, who are also descendants of Adam and who would also end up worshiping the God of Israel by the sacrifice of the Cross, as predicted in the Old Testament).
I'd say this need for extra revelation would become even more pressing in the case of supposed intelligent life that is extra-terrestrial and, despite its rationality, fundamentally does not share in human nature and the Fall. My intuition (as a Catholic) is therefore that we will never encounter extra-terrestrial intelligence. Or if its existence is proven, then we would only learn about it from distant observations, e.g. through the SETI program, but we would never have meaningful interactions with it/them.
So far, actual evidence lines up with this more skeptical attitude inspired by the Christian faith: consider the Fermi paradox; or the vast size of the universe and our current understanding of challenges related to faster-than-light travel; or the questionable nature of the existing reports, together with very pragmatic but pressing questions like "why on earth would such advanced aliens secretly buzz around on Earth in highly advanced aircraft and still crash"...
The interesting twist (...imho...) is this: "extra terrestrial intelligence", aside from scientific debates about e.g. likelihood and discovery, also serves a cultural purpose. It is one way in which today's non-Christian society tries to think about what "it" might become. This is not unlike how thinking about angels provides Christians with a view of what they may become individually in relation to free will, moral choices and God, things which in angels are completely pure because they are immaterial creatures. The irony is that the reality of extra-terrestrial intelligence is completely unproven and its nature is therefore a matter of pure speculation and fantasy; whereas immaterial spirits actually do exist and we have some knowledge about them, expressed in solid metaphysical concepts.
Geopolitical Implications of a Successful SETI Program
https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.15125
It could be polarizing, where from a religious perspective, other life doesn't break anything and is more evidence of the divine.
From a political perspective, it is risky because all our current rules are based on a now-obsolete ontology, nothing needs preservation, we are just animals again, all is material. It creates a power vacuum that some people will rush into.
The rationale for that would be, if you don't have to fear the aliens, and we're tiny specs in the universe, why should you fear other men? We are now one species and if you can't get on board with that, there are no moral consequences to shortening your time here, since as we are not the top of the pyramid, we can no longer be held morally responsible to each other - there is only this new power. If it doesn't control us, nothing does, etc.
I think the religious view would be that they must also know God, and the only way you can trust another species enough to relate to it is either it accepts your dominion, or recognizes some similar principles of divine authority. Someone who has a personal relationship with God is perfectly equipped to relate to other beings as best a human can, whereas without that, they'd have to worry about you stealing stuff.
I’m curious to speculate on the most boring possible outcome. Let’s say there is wreckage, from an unmanned craft like a sensing probe dispatched at some unknown time in the past by an unknown creator, including potentially millions of years ago by a species that’s long extinct. There would be a clamor for private business and the general public to get research access, but maybe there’s very little we can actually learn yet. It could be possible these craft reached this solar system very slowly, with no sci-fi FTL propulsion. One way or another there would be a finite amount to glean, and other than any technological benefits how much would it really change life? Organized religion has proven resilient - I honestly doubt the revelation that there was at some point intelligent life distantly far away in the universe would upset their apple cart too much.
There’s literally billions of words written about this - they’re called sci-fi novels.
For this to be an interesting question, you need to specify what exactly is true - then we can game implications.
Are we positing that aliens exist? That FTL/time travel is possible? That aliens are attacking, like right now?
Some unsolicited recommendations for sci-fi novels that cover this topic well:
- "The Mote in God's Eye" by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (1974)
- "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge (1992)
It would unify earth in previously impossible ways.
Imo the most likely scenario if it's true, is that these are automated von Neumann probes that traveled here without faster than light propulsion and that they're here merely to explore, observe or possibly self-replicate. I believe this is the most likely option because it takes just one successful civilization in our galaxy, or even a close one, that employs this strategy.
Crafts made deliberately to meet us would have to originate from much closer civilizations unless the civilization has both FTL travel and much more sensitive and high resolution observation technology than we currently believe possible.
Supposing it is a von Neumann probe. There may be a planet or nearby system where these crafts are being built, but we're unlikely to be near the main star/region of the civilization. We might be stuck with just handful of these crafts for probably many (hundreds?) of thousands of years before any real first contact happens.
It'd be weird if it turned out that it is an alien aircraft and... that's it. It's too advanced for us to understand, it's too high tech. And we're left with, "Yup, aliens exist. No, we don't know anything more about them." It's like that old movie where an airline pilot drops a Coca Cola can into the midst of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. "Wow, this thing sure is neat. Damned if I know what it's for though."
This is the situation I’m leaning towards. Military has been trying unsuccessfully for 80 years to figure it out. An adult finally walks into the room, sees how hopeless their attempts are, and whistleblows.
As someone who dug deep into the rabbit hole, yes, this is the "in-lore" explanation of it.
Apparently a secretive clique in the air force take a group of scientists every few decades to see if any headway can be made into reverse engineering the technology.
See "The day before Roswell" from US Colonel Corso Phillip. Epistemic note: the book has been dramatized by the publisher for effect and diverges from Corso's personal notes, and there is some disagreement with the way the story is told from Corso's son.
Still, it paints a certain picture of who the major players are behind this alleged once-cover-up and how it apparently played out.
Not too sure what to make it but it's a fun sci-fi story nevertheless :)
The Day After Roswell, Philip Corso, 1998
Backed by documents newly declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army, has come forward to reveal his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the Roswell crash. He tells us how he spearheaded the Army’s reverse-engineering project that led to today’s integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers, and super-tenacity fibers, and “seeded” the Roswell alien technology to giants of American industry. Laying bare the US government’s shocking role in the Roswell incident—what was found, the cover-up, and how they used alien artifacts to change the course of twentieth-century history—The Day After Roswell is an extraordinary memoir that not only forces us to reconsider the past, but also our role in the universe.
https://www.amazon.com/Day-After-Roswell-Philip-Corso/dp/067...
The Day Before Roswell, James Easton, 1997
If we accept the Project Mogul explanation as infinitely more likely and supported by the evidence, there is no reason why anyone who was open-minded to the possibilities should feel contrite.
So the Army Air Force hadn't actually recovered our popular conception of a flying saucer at all...but that's what was suggested by the press release. And when the issue is confused by a dramatic testimony from such an ostensibly credible witness as Glenn Dennis, it seemed there was a solid foundation to place the further evidence in context.
Crash sites galore, wreckage with alien writing, alien bodies recovered and possibly even survivors, autopsies witnessed, a grandiose and cynical cover-up which spanned decades...
But it was clearly a specious foundation. All of it.
This perception of the Roswell story will be doubtless be an anathema to the Roswell fundamentalists.
But it isn't for them, it's for those who are interested in any objective rationalisation of the truth, even, to paraphrase Kent Jeffrey, if it does mean there is no Santa Claus.
http://geocitiessites.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/roswell030...
This 100%. If this turns out to be real, I bet anything that they are clueless how it works, if they can even get it do anything.
Even merely knowing (conclusively) that aliens with advanced technology exist would provide enormous information, cf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter.
This is covered fictionally in Cixin’s The Three Body Problem: When Eart learns the existence of Trisolarians tremendous social and technical changes occur.
That old movie you're talking about... Is that The Gods Must Be Crazy?
Bingo!
Honestly this is the outcome I'd hope for. Got to leave some mysteries intact.
Aliens have never crashed here. Aliens have never even visited our solar system.
The truth is more interesting: the galaxy is emptier than it should be.
I read somewhere that all of our radio signature would fade away to the point that it's indistinguishable from background noise within five lightyears.
Plus, we've been around for ages and only briefly let out a bunch of radio waves. I image we might not even generate that many anymore.
By that logic, you could easily image that the universe is teeming with intelligent life that happens to not have sent a powerful radio signal out here, or whose tech development timeline never included wide public radio signal broadcasting.
Yep radio waves degradation is due to the inverse square law. The strength of the signal is determined by the inverse of the distance squared. So the drop off is pretty extreme.
I used to be greatly tempted by the fermi paradox, but upon learning about limitations we have observing the skies.... I believe the entire fermi paradox talk, is just steeming from the fact that we think too highly of ourselves as a civilisation and the efford we put into observing the skies.
Most people, including myself until recently, don't realise that most of our astrophysics/space science is very limited to our immediate close promixity in the cosmological scale.
Correct me if I am wrong but we are only able to do science around the other stars in the Milky way (e.g. exoplanet observations)
Beyond Milky way, all the light from the stars are collapsed into a single blob along with the rests of the stars in their home galaxy.
> Correct me if I am wrong but we are only able to do science around the other stars in the Milky way (e.g. exoplanet observations)
Oh yeah and on top of that the way we detect planets around stars creates a extreme bias on dwarf stars since a positive detection needs a few transits before confirmation of a planet can be made. And since dwarf planets transit within days/weeks sun like stars take around a year so it would take 3 years of observation to find an Earth around a sun-like star. But I have heard science communicators imply that what we have detected so far is representative of what is out there which is absurd.
If FTL is impossible(which I doubt since it's only "impossible" in some capacity in Special Relativity. But Special Relativity does not describe our universe, General Relativity does and even that has limits),then not seeing Aliens is not a paradox at all considering radio waves only go out a few light years, and the distances are just too great. And if there are any Alien probes in our solar system sitting on IO or some moon we'd have no idea since we have only done flybys and never truly scanned the surfaces.
I thought on this for a few days. The nature of scientific process, forces us to maintain absolute emphasis on our observation, to an extent which we are willfully ignoring the limitations and scope of our observations.
I wonder who is to blame, is this the current state of scientific studies? or they are actually considering these limitations in the papers, but it is ignored by public? then, is it the science communication to the public that's failing?
I feel shy even bringing up such topics among friends, because it is so far out of the common understanding that it will sound like flat-earth conspiracy to most.
People don't like to hear anything that goes like "we don't know some things at all". There is a comfort in knowing somewhere, some scientist are %100 accurate and know it all.
I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that we have hard evidence of aliens crashing here or visiting our solar system, but you’re going completely the other way and making an extraordinary claim without evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Beefman, could you tell us more about how you know this?
The Drake equation? We can see the stars, we can see the planets (and there are lots of them). We can infer the number of earth-like planets. So where's all the intelligent life?
Does the drake equation takes into account the timeline earth-like planet have to be inhabitable to carbon-based lifeforms?
It could all still be at a relatively early stage like us. Grabby aliens hypothesis predicts this and models it quite well actually.
1. https://grabbyaliens.com/
If you look at all the crazy coincidences that were required for life to develop on Earth, it starts to make sense that we're alone. Single star in the system, need a big Jupiter to block space rocks, our target is a rocky planet close to star, but needs to be hit by an abnormally large moon right as the lithosphere is cooling, ripping out 1/3rd of it so that the planet can have giant continents barely covered with water part of the time, then submerged the rest of the time to the cadence of this moon, oh and has to be the right star type, and etc etc etc.
If it takes something like all that for life to spontaneously erupt, we're likely alone.
That's one example of how life is formed. By someone's definition on wiki, life could be defined as
> self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution
Meaning in a different environments with different moons, stars, temperatures, as long as the environment could support abiogenesis (could be different from what we currently know), life would be able to be sustained but it might be a hell of a lot different.
I don't really know what I'm talking about but surely a different life form would've existed at some point somewhere... Right?
Jupiter directs more rocks towards earth than deflects. But life on earth appeared immediately after it cooled suggesting that the process to start life is relatively straight forward. And life by default adapts and evolves based on it's environment, so how crucial the moon is for life says more about how life on earth adapted than how it can possibly form.
We don't know that any of those conditions are necessary. Right now what it looks like is certain chemistry, which happens to be pretty common, an energy gradient of sufficient magnitude, and relative stability.
If we look at it as crazy coincidences, we can say that the earth is in a very unique state due to the crazy coincidences such that theres nowhere else just like it, but then, theres nowhere like anywhere else and everything that exists is the result of crazy coincidences. So, combinations of crazy coincidences that create very unique places are pretty common, ubiquitous even. So there's likely a lot of very unique places out there with very interesting processes going on.
I don't know if we will ever discover life. I don't know if we will ever observe another intelligence that spontaneously developed. But one thing I'm certain of, there are things going on out there that are more interesting than dead rocks circling even bigger dead rocks.
My theory on this is that intelligence, language and culture are surrounded by very high local maxima and we only got over the hump and down into our minima by incredibly slim chance.
So our original evolutionary advantages were persistance hunting & rock throwing (ranged weapons). This gave us such a huge advantage that we had enough excess energy we could start to develop bigger brains, language and culture (tools). For it to be possible we needed:
* Huge evolutionary advantages (rock throwing? fire to cook? walking upright? sweating?)
* Vocal chords that would let us develop language
* Hands that would let us make tools
And once we have that we can start to evolve intelligence and shared culture. But for a very very long time this was evolving a trait that is an actual hinderance. So we also need for that to be our 'peacocks tail'. A costly trait that is selected _for high cost and total uselessness_. And that trait could've been practically anything else!
Imaigne all the worlds where ranged weapons are developed by a species which just can't do language. Or where they can't make tools only throw rocks they find with their evolved longbow like limbs. They'd conquer the world but that would be it. And that world is now too well optimised for another animal to develop intelligence, they can't afford it.
If this is the case life could be wildly abundant but 'intelligence' more or less unheard of. This is infact what we see in the historical record on earth, there were many epocs of dinosaurs, as far as we know none of them shaped rocks for throwing, had language or developed cultures. In the time we've been around no indepdent intelligent species have evolved (we only see evidence of ones with a common ancestor.)
I think the drake equation suffers from the same fallacy that seems to beset everyone talking about AI. Intelligence is over-rated, it is not a linear thing or a super power where more of it is always better and can solve any problem. It's incredibly costly and often quite useless. Our actual problem solving is more down to trial and error at the level of culture than we like to admit to ourselves.
While I don't really have an opinion either way on whether we're likely alone or not, I just want to point out that the blindspot in this argument is that all those things are truly necessary for life.
This is like a form of the anthropic principle [1], where we think that just because those conditions appear to have been necessary for our evolution (and since Earth life is the only example of life we know), that exactly those conditions must be necessary for life elsewhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
We may only think that because we evolved here and thus think you must need all of that as we can't think of it any other way.
On another note, you probably are absolutely right and we do need at least some of that. Not too hot or cold. No massive asteroids to destroy everything...etc. I think some of the rest may be negotiable though. Like do you need water? I think yes, buuut maybe some other liquid could work?
The universe is big.
Maybe it's emptier than it should be because that's how the universe is always made to appear to emergent civilisations at the dangerous and volatile point of evolution we presently find ourselves at?
Ill bite.
> The truth is more interesting: the galaxy is emptier than it should be.
Why should it be less empty and what are the implications that its emptier than it should be?
That would be depressing. Now if it were less empty than average, that would be more interesting.
Praise the lord!
> the galaxy is emptier than it should be.
It really isn't. Do the math, I did (scroll about halfway down): https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/11/30/this-jus...
Being very generous, in my opinion, and assuming 1 in 2 systems has a planet/moon that is inhabitable by life as we know it, and that 1 in 2 of those has tool-building life at some point, in our galaxy you get something like 1 tool-building civilization per 600,000 square light-years spread out over 12 billion years.
Would anybody with even an ounce of critical thinking faculty believe this even if they explicitly came out and said "yep, we've got aliums, folks"?
There's literally no level of evidence I would accept because the premise is contrary to numerous, basic logical inferences.
The paradox of ufology is that we can't trust the government because they've been covering up aliens for 70 years, but now we know aliens are real because the government says so.
The only fact I know for certain is that the federal government and military industrial complex has a history of lying and waging information warfare on American citizens. If they tell me aliens are here, there's no way I will believe them. As much as I want to believe, I simply can't, unless I personally have some experience with an alien.
And remember... no matter what happens, no matter what the government or the "aliens" tell you... do not get on the ships!
I think the best evidence against Aliens is if the government had any, they would have been trotted out for a rally by now by the last guy.
It's exceptionally likely Trump was kept away from as much intel as they could reasonably keep him from. We know that from things that leaked out after the fact, eg by how General Milley behaved (gave orders to disobey nuclear launch commands coming from Trump).
From what I’ve heard, it’s not like he was even interested in the intel he was supposed to be interested in.
Friedman had an ex CIA guy on his podcast and he explained how the daily intelligence report worked. Basically the president told them which things he was most interested in. That was in the front and the rest was more CIA judgement.
The CIA is (supposed to) serve at the pleasure of the president.
If Trump knew there were Aliens there’s no way he could have kept himself from blabbing all over Twitter.
An alien was trotted out for a press conference June 19th, 1997 https://www.deseret.com/2007/3/25/20009206/former-governor-s...
Ever watch Independence Day?
"Plausible deniability"
Ufology is an FBI astroturf which is supposed to be a more exciting alternative to listening to a 90 minute lecture on the Sandinistas by Chomsky.
Now why the hell didn't anyone tell me, when I was say age 11 or 12 or so, that a career path existed whereby one might be able to get a job with the FBI which consists of deliberately trolling people into believing that UFOs exist, with access to effectively limitless resources to make it stick. For actual money, including a government pension.
If that's someone's job specifically, it's probably a small part, and not at all fun, in-context. I think it's also safe to say they wouldn't have unlimited resources.
I would also reject personal experiences with an "alien" as manufactured.
If they brought in some trustworthy skeptical folks with some tools and enough background to know what compelling nothing looks like, and they came out saying, "Oh man. oh wow. I'm trying to come up with another explanation, but it really seems like they have it." I'd start taking it seriously. "Guy who seems trustworthy said it's real and he saw the proof" is so very normal, for aliens, ghosts, various religious phenomena. "Someone was convinced" isn't compelling to me. "The specific trustworthy non-believers who were given access to the evidence were convinced" would shake me. That moves it from "might be a delusion or hoax" to "if it's a hoax/fraud, it's a very good one".
Although, "specific physical / recorded evidence made publicly available for study" would be even better if the evidence is strong. Once you're at "if it's a hoax/fraud, the perpetrator has advanced science we don't" it's a world-changing thing; maybe it's not an alien, but whatever it is it's amazing.
Nothing remotely close to that will ever happen, because the people who care about this don't care. In the same way that you want extraordinary evidence to back up these extraordinary claims, they are prepared to disregard any and all evidence to the contrary in order to continue believing all of those same claims.
If you haven't, I recommend watching the YT minidoc "In Search of a Flat Earth" by Folding Ideas. It's not about the aliens, it's not about the earth being flat, it's about the conspiracy and who is behind it. If you dig deep enough, it's always rooted in some racist or antisemitic world view.
Really great post, really terrible conclusion.
Considering the grift between DoD and Skinwalker Ranch, I am sure we can expect similar fraud throughout. New York Post did a 4 part expose that uncovers this. I highly suggest it. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwfaAz9kxcc
Basically Federal agents became "convinced" that paranormal stuff is happening at Skinwalker ranch, but that is/was because of significant conflict of interest where they earn income from entertainment enterprises (like History Channel) by leaking information to them -- even information which is completely falsified.
> the premise is contrary to numerous, basic logical inferences
How so?
The argument for no aliens is lack of evidence, not evidence of their lack.
Absence of evidence absolutely is evidence of absence. Like the absence of evidence of an invisible dragon in your garage.
The absence of evidence of an invisible dragon in my garage absolutely is not evidence if its absence. It may very well be there. I strongly suspect it isn't, but that's not the same as evidence.
Yes, but when you go and search your garage you don’t find anything.
You walk through your garage with a camera and when you play back the video, there’s a strange orb on the video!
Must be dragons!
It’s stupid. When you look very hard for something and you dont find it, sure, it’s not evidence it doesn’t exist.
…but it does increase the probability that it doesn’t exist. It eliminates a category of possible “it existing” cases.
Everyone on the planet has a high resolution camera in their pocket, and can share photos and videos instantly online.
Yet, miraculously, paranormal phenomena is somehow covered up by the government…
50 years ago, the possibility of an alien crash coverup seems plausible.
Today, it beggars belief it could happen and not be noticed and commented on.
That is not proof nothing “weird” exists; but if you think it doesn’t eliminate a broad category of things from existing, you’re delusional.
Humans are good at believing in things that don’t exist.
What we see isn’t “reality”, its just our interpretation of the input from our senses. We see things that don’t exist.
That doesn’t make them exist.
If there were a large animal in my garage, I would hear it.
Is there were a large animal in my garage, I would see droppings.
If there were aliens, we would......what exactly?
Every day we see new stuff in the universe that we didn't see before.
The difference between my garage and the universe is immense.
Where's the evidence that you are correct though ?
I think GP is referring to the idea that there are a lot of (unlikely) conditions that would all have to turn out to be correct in order for there to be aliens. Not that there is evidence of no aliens, but that you can do thought experiments to guess at the probability that there are, and it doesn't look good.
Things like:
* There have to be enough star systems and planets that could support life. Research here is exploding as we discover more and more exoplanets and are able to gather more detailed information about them. But it's still not clear that it's at all common, and might be breathtakingly uncommon.
* Those star systems and planets that could support life have to actually spawn life. And then they have to spawn intelligent life capable of creating and using tools, and capable of intellectual thought and developing theories and application across physics and engineering. This life needs to be somehow "compatible" with humans, in the sense that it can't be so wildly different that they might not recognize us as intelligent life and vice versa.
* The aliens have to exist "right now". A civilization that existed in the past and fell even a few thousand years ago is not one that we would see. Similarly, a civilization that is, say, 10 thousand years behind us, is not one that we would see.
* These aliens need to actually be interested in the possibility of life outside their own world (or at least interested in generally exploring outside their solar system), and mount a campaign to search the skies and look for us.
* Then the aliens have to have found us. That means that they have been looking in the right spot, at the right time (aliens who live 3000 light years away won't see "us", absent some sci-fi faster-than-light viewing device). Also consider that the amount of effort we've spent to search for alien life could easily be insufficient to find any, even if life turns out to be somewhat common in our galaxy.
* The aliens have to have figured out interstellar travel. Our current understanding of physics suggests that this is Very Hard. Assuming our current understanding of physics is correct, it will be expensive and difficult for these aliens to come visit us. Even assuming we don't have the whole picture when it comes to physics (almost certainly true), that would seem to increase the barrier, not reduce it.
* Even if aliens do manage to find and reach us, they have to either a) want to be seen, or b) screw up and be seen by accident. If they want to be seen, then presumably they'd have done a better job of it (despite various Earth governments trying to hide it) and detailed knowledge of alien life would be common. If they don't want to be seen, then a -- perhaps unlikely -- accident must occur that reveals themselves to at least some of us (whom the rest of humanity don't really believe).
That's just a taste; there's a lot more you can find if you go down the rabbit hole. All of this has to work out for it to be the case that aliens have visited our world. If we assume that each of these events is fairly improbable on their own, than the probability of all of it happening is pretty tiny. Even if we assign decent odds to many of these things, the probability of all of them being true is still fairly low. Doesn't mean it definitively hasn't happened, but probability it usually pretty suggestive.
You know this never occurred to be before, but seams obvious in hindsight. It popped into my head while reading your comments.
If you can flash a light bright enough to be seen by other civilization you can communicate with them at light speed. Then once you convince your communication partners to build machines and run programs you send them, your AI's can "travel" at light speed.
Once the AI has arrived it can start communicating without the light speed lag and things really start moving. The AI could build UFO's locally using the science and tech of its own culture.
If your aliens are just data, light speed travel doesn't sound that far fetched.
I don’t know what estimates exist for the bit rate of SETI signals, this paper seems to imply 0.01 bits per second:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...
If we assume GPT4 is a trillion parameters, each 16 bits, then this would require 5000 years to transmit (quite aside from any error correction or the description of how the parameters should be arranged).
I would hope that our AI would be able to bootstrap to FTL in that time.
Um, that's called 'radio'.
Haha, sure, the revelation to me was that if your life is just data, light speed travel is easy.
I hope you have some very good data correction to go with that data transfer. Beaming light/radio into space is going to get a ton of interference and loss.
Alliums are delicious and their flowers are quite nice as well.
How is it fundamentally illogical? I mean I'm skeptical as hell, but one possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that there is no paradox because there are aliens here.
You are correct. The reactionary and emotional comments in here are extraordinary.
Sit back and enjoy the ride.
What would those logical inferences be ? I’m not sure i got your point right
I'm willing to put aside literally every mechanical interpretation of probability here, ignoring really poignant questions, in favor of one overarching question:
Do you really, really think a species capable of interstellar travel would have vehicles or crafts that we could recognize as such? That feels more like a technology 100-200 years ahead of us, akin to science fiction, than the reality of a species hundreds of thousands or MILLIONS of years ahead of us technologically, whose existences would simply be fucking incomprehensible to the human eye or mind.
The conception that such entities are travelling the galaxy in dinky little craft is completely absurd.
They could probably scan our fucking souls and create replicas of our qualia with technology from the interstellar equivalent of a Walgreens.
Or, more likely, they simply have technologies that we can in no capacity conceive of or understand at all.
> Do you really, really think a species capable of interstellar travel would have vehicles or crafts that we could recognize as such?
Yes. That is, they almost certainly use objects made out of actual atoms to travel it or whatever the hell. There are almost no hints, with the possible exception of dark matter, in even the most speculative of well -grounded physics, of anything else they could be using. So that's the the null hypothesis. And the mere presence of that object in an interaction is enough to recognize it with high confidence as a vehicle.
People get too obsessed with the idea of technology indistinguishable from magic. Physics is still real, still imposes hard constraints on technology, and our tech is already sufficiently shaped by those constraints that other things within those constraints will at least be recognizable with some effort. We may not know how it works right away, but that's a very different question.
Quick question for you.
Have you heard of a really smart guy named "Isaac Newton"?
Well, his ideas are only ~300 solar years established and observations in quantum mechanics have opened a realm of complete impossibility to a Newtonian worldview.
Yes, but Isaac Newton would be able to see an F-35 and iPhone and would be able to understand how these things work once explained.
But, you are giving Newton an affordance that makes this an unfair comparison: "once explained".
How do you think he would do with rare visual glimpses and hearsay only?
You asked, analogously, if he would be able to recognize the F-35 as a vehicle. All it would take is watching one land and seeing the pilot climb out to make it absolutely clear to him.
The fundamental issue is that people really have no intuition as to how unfathomably gigantic space is.
Traveling Mars to Earth would require some decent tech. Traveling from the next star over requires some mind-bending tech. An entity traveling from the next galaxy over would necessarily be in possession of just some truly incomprehensible technology and would probably exist on spatial and temporal scales that just cannot be loaded into our ape brains via our sensory organs.
Now, imagine their dinky little arts and crafts UFOs are "crashing" due to something trivial like gravity.
Just playing devils advocate though: okay, but couldn't they also just have really high-tech ships in a primitive shape (like a sphere, for aesthetic reasons) with really fast engines and really strong hulls, too? Maybe we're simply too limited in our naive essence to understand the technology behind such a simple premise.
I mean, sure, the odds are not zero. But they seem very, very, very, very close to zero (to me).
And then the odds go down further that they have tech that can move them 10,000+ light years in a palatable amount of time/energy for them to visit Earth.
Then the odds go down further by the fact that, if they exist with that broad a view of the universe, Earth is almost certainly not worth visiting.
Then the odds go down further by the fact that we have allegedly detected and recovered them?
Not zero but it really is astronomically low, even if you have high conviction the universe is actually teeming with life.
Its not crazy to me to think that there is something here.
But that it doesn't care if we see it or not. There is not much of it so we just don't see it often.
Who know what we recovered? Perhaps just some discarded waste, perhaps the result of internal conflict. Neither seems crazy.
I like to think the Earth _is_ very special given "life", and that we are just about to start our own exploration of the galaxy (on galactic timescales)
It's really only a few hundred years before we mount an artificial general inelegance in the front of some rocket and shoot it at the nearest sun.
Can you imagine recovering alien technology, and the best we have to show for it is an iphone, with East Asia starting to lap us in things like semiconductor manufacturing?
You'd sure thing ALIUM technology would be useful for Intel to leapfrog Asia's foundaries.
Weird, where is that stuff?
Oh I never said anything about them visiting us. Or finding us. Or wanting to.
Just the super fast super durable aesthetic spheres.
"Ships" feels really really anthropomorphic.
I think a modern jet is similar enough to a bird that animals created millions of years ago (prehistoric birds) can have some basic understanding on how it behaves.
What makes you think just because it’s millions of years more evolved we wouldn’t be able to get the general gist of what it does ? (not how it does it, of course)
Apologies: This comment is a terrible analogy.
Try explaining quantum physics to Aristotle.
That's a mere 2-3000 years of technology with large periods of stagnation.
Give Churhill/Stalin/Hitler an iPhone.
They now have access to a device of unparalleled ability compared to anything they could have conceived of, and they will simply be completely incapable of understanding or utilizing it outside of performing basic tasks.
That's 60 years of the accelerated age of technology we live in.
I'd be happy to explain any of this to Aristotle. "It's a picture that draws its itself. Here, touch it." We do this every day with children. Ten thousand years o development and you're caught up in five. It's fine!
My point is that our relative distance in time and technology is basically zero, yet we're already seeing massive gaps in capability.
Yes, Aristotle would likely be able to pick up on the new monke uptake given that he was a unparallelled mind. That was a pretty weak analogy given it didn't impart the information that I intended.
You can give an infant an ipad and they will figure out how to use it pretty quickly. They will have an understanding of its purpose. You merely extrapolate from our advances of 5000 years that there must be technology that is inconceivably advanced.
Though he did not believe in it, Aristotle was aware of the concept of atoms (that he had no hope of observing). I am sure he would have gotten the gist of quantum physics too.
This is why I dont understand why people expect UFOs to have lights on them. Or when they see lights they go to UFO.
Why ? Why would external lights be helpful when travelling interstellar distances. Then if you have the technology to travel these vast distances so quickly, why would you need lights when darting about at "slow" terrestrial speeds, the technology you must have to navigate and avoid things must be so beyond just lights... You almost certainly aren't navigating in anything that remotely resembles looking out your craft ?
It just makes no sense to me. IT's why I assume if anyone mentions a UFO when talking about lights in the sky I'm totally convinced it's terrestrial in nature.
> That feels more like a technology 100-200 years ahead of us, akin to science fiction
So my theory is in about 150 years, DJI will release a drone with a time-travel capability, and the UFOs we see now are people in 2170 trolling us.
While I completely agree with you on interstellar travel, I'd like to add the nuance that you seem to assume that there is no life in the Solar system other than on Earth.
That could very well be true... but we're not even confident ruling out life on Mars completely, and we landed there and took soil samples and explored.
Honestly, if there are extraterrestrials on Earth, I'd wager my hat that they're from somewhere in the Solar system. Just because the alternative is even more unlikely -- as you rightly argue.
No, that can't be it.
No local drones or Dyson spheres, but we're cohabitating with a species capable of intra-solar travel?
Seems highly suspect. They'd need to be at roughly our level of technological development, which, if true, would be more likely to believe in a concept of "God" engineering that outcome than any kind of organic alien life.
Not only that, but when they're here on Earth they get from point A to point B by actually traveling the distance through the air. Slow enough for us to see. You'd think these aliens with FTL technology would just appear to us as popping in and out of existence when they change position.
They seem a little too domestic. It reminds me of how ancient people thought the Sun rode across the sky in a chariot. Because how else would the Sun get around but the same way we do?
And after they fly across the universe for millions of light years, they immediately crash for Uncle Sam to retrieve them. Or no, actually Uncle Sam immediately shoots them down with his pew pew rockets that travel at infinitesimally low speeds.
Given the enormity of the universe and the seeming[0] impossibility of FTL travel, plus the complete absence of astronomical observation of extraterrestrial civilization, and the incredibly tiny (on astronomical scales) window of time in which we have data, any other explanation for pretty much any phenomena we care to observe will be more likely than "aliens did it".
[0] extremely well supported
Even if we pretended aliens wouldn't be able to surpass FTL, Von Neumann probes only take half a million years to spread across an entire galaxy, which is a grain of sand of time in cosmological timescales.
"Let's take a look at one of John von Neumann's most fascinating contributions to science: the Von Neumann probe. Simply put, a Von Neumann probe is a self-replicating device that could, one day, be used to explore every facet of the Milky Way in a relatively small window of time.
The general idea is to build a device out of materials that are readily available and easily accessible out in space, like on rocky planets or small moons. Once it finds a suitable destination, it lands and mines the material it needs to build even more devices, which, in turn, land on other planets and moons and build even more.
The system is very effective, and by some estimates, it would take around half a million years to dispatch millions of probes across our galaxy, assuming each one travels at approximately 1/10th the speed of light, or 18,640 miles (30,000 km) per second (though the real number could be closer to ten million years, which is still no time at all in the grand scheme of things)."
What confidence do we have that we'd actually observe these probes? If one was orbiting, say, Saturn or Jupiter (or one of their moons) right now, would we definitely have seen it? Or if it were something in a wide solar orbit?
And then there's the general time scale. I agree that half a million years (or even 10 million years) isn't much in the grand scheme of things. But it matters to us: what if this alien civilization sent them out 50 thousand years ago? They may not have gotten to us yet. Or what if they were sent out 100 million years ago? It's unclear if they'd still exist today, or if they would have broken down, their repair and replication systems failing after all those years; even if they are still around, maybe the civilization that sent them out doesn't exist anymore.
Also consider that building these probes is pretty much at or beyond the limit of our technological capabilities right now. We might be able to build enough of them as a seed fleet if we devoted tens of trillions of dollars to the project. And accelerating something to 0.1c is nothing to sneeze at either. Remember that they also have to decelerate from that speed in order to find targets for mining in order to fuel themselves and their replication systems, or even just to enter orbit around a planet or star. They'd require some pretty advanced software to run them, too.
I've seen quite a few articles and videos on Von Neumann probes, created by people I respect, but even many of them acknowledge that building these and sending these out would not be a small undertaking. A civilization that did so would have to be at a point where they've solved most of their problems at home (or be in dire need of finding a new home, but at the same time able to wait thousands or millions of years to find one) before they could justify taking this on.
(Remember, the person upthread isn't talking about the mere existence of aliens. They were talking about the improbability of us having some evidence or experience of their existence.)
Here are some things that were, at some point, long considered to be physically impossible:
-Deep sea exploration
-DNA sequencing and cloning
-Flight
-Long-range electric power
-Microbes
-Organ transplants
-Solar panels
I understand the enormity of the proposition of things such as FTL travel. But just saying "it doesn't have a fit within our current framework of understanding, so it's impossible and a moot point" seems a little...conceited, given all the historical precedents of exactly the opposite becoming true, eventually, given enough public interest.
Even without FTL, time dilation makes travel conceivable, no?
You can get halfway across the galaxy in less than 50,000 years.
> There's literally no level of evidence I would accept because the premise is contrary to numerous, basic logical inferences
Sounds like you'd accept something that breaks the basic known science then. If they could demonstrate any tech which does not exist, or is wildly outside of the current limits, would that convince you? For example energy use allowing interplanetary travel in a vehicle of unreasonably small size.
"yep, we've got aliums, folks"?
And now I'm trying to imagine aliens that look like members of the onion family.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion
Can someone explain to me how a species that can do one of the following can also do something as mundane as…crash?
1. Travel faster than light
2. Sustain a peaceful, productive, spacefaring civilization over millions of years to travel here
3. Create AI that can do 1 or 2
Am I missing something here? How can both of these facts be plausibly true? These are genuine questions, not snark.
It’s not a fancy alien who crashed. It’s a drone from a fleet of paperclip producing ai swarms. It crash landed here, but 1000 others didn’t crash, and they’re already at work secretly converting the earth to paperclips
The paperclip ai swarm’s origin story: some tech startup from 100 light years away screwed up their ai system and went extinct / got turned into paperclips
The universe is devoid of life because all of it, everywhere, has been converted to paperclips by various civilizations badly tuned ai systems. They don’t send out radio signals because, obviously, they need to grow as strong as possible before meeting other paperclip systems; so their kind of paperclips will win
..and let's waste 1000s of work-hours as a community: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
Universal paperclips is a great game
Could not agree more, it was fun playing it.
You can always crash, given that mechanic failure happens all the time.
Plus, you might not be able to recover from that failure, e.g. stuck on a planet forever, given that you do not have the material to repair the ship.
You are probably thinking, how come such an advanced species cannot repair its own ship? Well we humans can rarely repair our own ship, we usually rely on professionals to do that. Now that advanced species will have much more advanced systems that no individual can achieve that. Even if they rely on AI, what if AI system broke?
Can someone explain to me why the phone in my pocket is literally 6000 times as fast as my childhood computer and yet still regularly laggy, slow, and broken?
It would seem as though such things would be ridiculous but clearly no matter how far ahead you are in some metric or another, things are still going to be shit now and then.
Are our machines really all that much more reliable than they were 20, 50, 100, 150 years ago? The answer is meh, no, it's a mixed bag. Advancement hasn't made everything have magical quality and reliability. Some things are a lot better, some things are a lot worse.
I guess software ate the alien world too...
> Wirth's Law [0] is an adage on computer performance which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
I think ants could say the same thing about us. How could someone as advanced as a human just drown in the water or fall from a window and die?
If FTL exists there is no reason to believe without knowing specifics that achieving it requires a particular level of improvement over present development. It be technologically behind us along a path not taken or just ahead. There is a fantastic little short story exploring this idea its only a few pages.
https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
If FTL isn't a factor its not necessary for them to have survived millions of years. Maybe we shall be ready to undertake such journeys in a century and perhaps suitable targets exist only decades journey away.
Lastly even capable humans sometimes make simple stupid mistakes. No reason to hold our neighbors to infinitely high standards. Centuries of progress didn't stop us from losing a space probe because of a failure to convert units properly.
If aliens were here they would have something better to do than buzz navy pilots off the west coast and then crash.
Maybe they are teenagers, trying to entertain themselves for summer while school is out.
If there is one other intelligent species out there, it's highly likely there are even more. Why would they care about us in that case?
Humans crash probes into interstellar bodies all the time. “Wreckage” could be fragments of some unmanned craft, like a von neumann probe, creators unknowably many light years away and maybe long dead.
Interesting to consider how that revelation might change life very little overall.
I agree that intuitively it seems to not make sense, but with regard to your specific points, and assuming that there's actually more than a nothingburger behind this whole story:
1. I wouldn't necessarily assume FTL. But even if we assume "arbitrarily technologically advanced," there's no reason to think that any technology will ever have an absolute 0% chance of failure.
2. It only has to be sufficiently peaceful to not wipe itself out.
3. I don't think AI doing things changes either of the previous two points.
What I find harder to believe is that humans would be able to get their hands on a crashed alien craft and keep it.
It's also an assumption that the pilot of the craft is from the same species that manufactured it. Perhaps the technology was gifted to them by a superior civilization, or maybe they stole it, or maybe they're a genetically engineered descendant of an advanced species that died off millions of years ago without recalling its probes with their hibernating pilots.
What evidence do we have that they traveled faster than light rather than, say, leaving a very, very, very long time ago? Or launching something in our direction, in hopes of generations surviving, but they didn't manage to, so there's nobody on board anymore?
Or why couldn't they just have significantly misidentified what it would take to navigate in our atmosphere and have sent a ship that wasn't prepared, and didn't have a way to realize it wasn't prepared?
I can think of a lot of very prosaic reasons.
>What evidence do we have that they traveled faster than light rather than, say, leaving a very, very, very long time ago?
We would see a generation ship coming. It would be big, it would give off waste heat, it would probably have to stay in orbit, if we're assuming it follows physics we're familiar with, it would have to use chemical or nuclear rocket propulsion, dump waste and need constant refueling and maintenance.
So either they have warp drives and magical tech bullshit or they don't exist. Those are the two options.
You're assuming the intelligent species is anywhere close to the size of human beings. And that their generations are anything like our generations. You're assuming that they eat like we do, or weigh as much as we do.
Just because a human generation ship would have to be large, it doesn't mean some other species' generation ship would have needed to be.
To account for the size of the various UFOs that have been seen, if those accounts are to be taken at face value, we don't seem to be dealing with space smurfs.
Now, hear me out... maybe the generation ship is the Moon...
You can attribute those achievements to entire species, but entire species do not drive vehicles--individuals do. Imagine a species with a mean IQ of 150. If such a species had a IQ distribution similar to ours, around ~2% of them would be as dumb as the average human, with almost half of them being dumber than a human 'genius'--and we don't expect human geniuses to be infallible!
Entropy? Surely even hyper intelligent mega aliens can spill coffee on their keyboard at least once. Things just go wrong sometimes.
It could be one of many cheap probes sent by something like the Breakthrough Starshot.
One rare circumstance could be due to an EMP, whether natural or man-made.
They weren't ready for how thiccccccccc Ice Spice is
I definitely did now wake up expecting to see Ice Spice being mentioned on an HN thread about aliens
Open ocean vs. reefs
[dead]
I'm trying to think of any sci-fi stories where the aliens are lost tourists or similar. They are usually presumed to be scientists or government representatives checking out Earth and/or humankind.
Maybe ET? -- I don't think that's explained? It's been a lot of years since I saw it.
The reality is that the government is interested in unexplained phenomenon primarily for security reasons. That statement does not say nor imply "Belief in aliens means you're a nutter!" I just get really tired of people acting like "They study this stuff because they know there really are aliens visiting Earth!"
Roadside Picnic, the inspiration behind Stalker, has aliens using Earth much like a family on a long drive might pull over for a scenic picnic site.
They actually just shoot stuff in the direction of the earth inadvertently if i recall correctly, they dont actually visit
Like Twoflower from the other side of the Discworld, an "in sewer ants" agent on vacation, visiting a medieval society.
Zogg from Betelgeuse?
Invader Zim?
I'm not familiar with those. Thanks.
The novel Waiting for the Galactic Bus is about two immortal energy beings who get stranded on prehistoric Earth while on the immortal-energy-being equivalent of a Spring Break bender, and decide to help these cute li'l apes develop civilization to pass the time.
Predator?
Hunting tourism is a thing.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect is writing for a travel guide
That sounds like Transition, by Ian Banks.
Morons from Outer Space (1985)
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0089622/
If true, I'm curious to know how the government even came into possession of such non-human aircraft.
E.g.
- did they shoot it down? (this seems to contradict the claims that the aircraft can perform unrealistic maneuvers like massive acceleration / extreme changes in vector)
- did some random farmer stumble upon the craft? (then why didn't the farmer post photos of it online and/or speaking out about it)
- where was it found and where is it today?
Note: I'm not saying there isn't ET. But some first principle questions seems like they need to be answered before people jump to conclusions.
Or it crashed of its own accord, but instead of a farmer finding it, they'd been tracking it carefully and got there first.
Like an enemy weather balloon
Aliens are notoriously bad drivers. Have you seen those videos where they just hover in the sky and then zoom off? Homeboy's gonna catch an intergalactic DUI.
My favorite theory is that the government periodically leaks this stuff so that junior military members are less scared to report weird stuff they see (stuff that could be new enemy tech)
“Sergeant, I’m telling you, I saw floating meta orbs - it’s aliens! The pentagon said they exist!”
As I recall this was explicitly spelled out as the reason when the Pentagon first started being more open about their UAP programs. I can't find the source now because "UAP" is ungoogleable now under all the sensationalized sources.
EDIT—found it with "site:*.mil":
> The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pre...
It would be absurd to think that some organization _doesn't_ have a _plan_, or perhaps even an entire team prepared, for handling retrieval of an unidentified craft, right? Even if it's never happened, surely there's a plan for handling something weird falling from the sky. That's definitely someone's job...
Now, if that playbook is seen by someone and then goes through several games of telephone I wouldn't be shocked if it turned into "we have retrieved vehicles of non-human origin."
My epistemic claim after having dived deep into this topic from a rational and analytical perspective, is that it's all true.
And as crazy it sounds there may also be a mystical component to reality that conventional science cannot (currently) explain.
The topic is vast and deep and may have profound implications about humanity and the universe. But like many, we can only speculate until more hard data is released and further research into this "phenomenon" is conducted.
It is my opinion that the decline in US Christianity has not reduced the underlying religiosity, and the population that would previously have been firm believers in angels/demons/gods/etc. have directed their desire to believe to something else. UFOs are one of many such alternatives.
Never in human history have we had so many high quality cameras in the hands of so many people.
And still no pictures of ufos. Or Bigfoot. Or Nessie.
Several times now I've seen birds that I didn't recognize or planes that didn't look like the normal airliners or small private planes that are common here and taken photos, only to find that the photo is a pretty much unrecognizable blob.
there are some pretty convincing videos and photos of UFOs out there, the problem is when they are good enough to look real people call them fakes.
Or when they're good enough to actually try identify objects, they're birthday balloons like the mylar batman one with its very distinctive profile.
Apart from the ones released by the US military
Anything that doesn't have an explanation is labeled a fake unless it's from an official source like the military.
Actually we do have good pictures of Nessie, which is how figured out 'she' was actually just a whale penis
Edit: apparently this is actually bs
Serious question: are there any whale species which inhabit Loch Ness?
Tangential, but there's some great analysis and debunks of the video the headline photo is taken from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
Simulation: https://www.metabunk.org/gimbal/
If the rotation of the craft is simply due to a rotation of the camera, why do the clouds not also rotate? I’ve only skimmed the video but he doesn’t seems to account for this relative rotation between the craft and clouds…
Mick West has consistently put out the best videos examining the UAP phenomenon.
As much as I want to believe that the truth is out there. It seems highly improbable that every craft that has crashed ever has done so in the territory of the small number of countries with the motives, resources and strict governance to recover and hide these artifacts with zero shreds of physical evidence.
I’m certain there are plenty of countries and groups that would proudly parade around a crashed UFO if it came down on their soil. Maybe these craft spend 99% of their time hanging out over highly secure US military sites.
Sounds pretty boring to me to come all this way to observe ancient technology.
I'm waiting for either, a) the rug pull after a credulous alternative media piles in, and then some minister says, "see, this is why we need to regulate social media" or b) the triple-down by politicians saying that the existence of aliens gives them a mandate to redistrubte everything immediately, supported by people who believe normal rules of humanity don't apply anymore because they've been told about aliens, and a bunch of other people who stand by and watch hoping nobody will come for them.
What about the US military pretending to see UFO’s instead of admitting they have their own stealth airplanes and drones?
This suggestion was made at the recent Required podcast about Lockheed Martin.
It’s exactly this. It’s not just aircraft, either, but aircraft designed to disrupt other aircraft’s instrumentation.
There is a white hat team somewhere in the DoD whose only job is to develop technology and software to make other aviation software instrumentation fail or perform incorrectly. It would be absurd if this were NOT the case.
The sensor apparatus needed to “find” these UFOs is the same as the one needed for missile and drone defense.
https://qz.com/911990/the-cottingley-fairy-hoax-of-1917-is-a...
'nuff said
Been a big fan of your work but I think your take is wrong on this one, Walter.
Saving this for later to say I told you so :).
I've been hearing "this time it's for real" my whole life. They never pan out.
There's a breaking news blast on at the moment with the uap whistleblower. Thoughts on the following? If anything, whatever that's happening this time really does feel different.
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/144a9xz/abcnews_house...
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143tj5x/us_has_12_or_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/143zpak/interview_w...
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143v66e/las_vegas_fam...
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143xcjp/excerpts_from...
There’s orders of magnitude more stars than grains of sand on earth. Mull that over before breezily dismissing evidence of extraterrestrial activity.
Forensic evidence? No.
1080p 30fps video? No.
High resolution photos? No.
Any evidence to back up the extraordinary claims? No.
Sorry, but you are crazy if you believe this.
The truth of the matter is that some dude in the military once told a journalist something like "it's hard to control an LLM: if you tell it to kill people, and then an operator tries to override that, it might kill the operator or go for the comms tower" and the journalist reported it as "Air Force drone kills operator if told to stop; destroys comms tower".
Given that, we know there's a lot of people who will claim extraordinary things. So, chances are that some sucker (of which the military will have a whole bunch on account of being so large) completely misinterpreted something completely inane and decided that aliens are here.
Zero specific claims. Zero evidence examined by the person making the allegations. All hearsay.
To top it off, the focus of the story, David Charles Grusch, is a "a former intelligence official."
Pardom me for disregarding this as the diversion it appears to be. The US military has quite a track record on this kind of thing. It's not hard to think of reasons why such diversions might be deployed right now, either.
Maybe some kind of physical evidence - any physical evidence - will be presented. If so, I'm happy to change my mind. Until then, there's zero compelling reason to believe any of it and every reason to think Grusch either a liar or a stooge.
> To top it off, the focus of the story, David Charles Grusch, is a "a former intelligence official."
"From 2019-2021, he was the representative of the reconnaissance office to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the co-lead for UAP analysis at the NGA and its representative to the task force."
> Zero specific claims.
The specific claim is that he has provided to congress documentation on successful non-human craft retrieval programs hidden from congress, under oath. He makes no claims about the projects other than that he was not a part of them and that he was provided said documentation on them.
The U.S. Inspector General called the claims "credible and urgent" and congress is planning a session on them.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
UFOlogy would be interesting if it ever made any effort to make engineering, science or biological sense. But these guys always have stories that dovetail with current fashions.
Back in the day I believed in some of this stuff because there were stories from the 60's about alien remains that looked like insects. Because of course they'd have to sustain high g's crossing light years. They'd also be very lightweight, to keep the mass down. Completely sensical.
Then somebody made up warp drives and every account switched to gray humanoids. Every conspiracy is so low effort and lazy now. But millions will believe it.
Aliens just seem to love the USA, don't they? Just like giant prehistoric sea monsters seem to love Japan. It's totally not a cover-up for another black project.
The only thing aliens love more than the USA is to troll fighter pilots and military bases. Somehow despite all of the cameras and tracking technology these vehicles and locations have, the aliens still manage to avoid being caught on camera and only make their appearance obvious to a few first-hand observers.
There have been some ufos caught on camera by us military aircraft[0].
No evidence of them being alien in nature.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/pentagon-ufo-videos.ht...
You might appreciate Superman Red Son which explores what could have happened if Kal-El landed on a Ukrainian farm instead of Kansas. It's obviously got bias but it's fun to think about what happens if all the hero "stuff" didn't happen in the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son
I could totally imagine a Ukrainian farmer pulling a UFO with his tractor on TicToc.
Culturally, Godzilla in Japan very much came out of the fear of nuclear weapons and radiation post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- a monster awakened and empowered by nuclear weapons [1].
I've never been super clear on what the cultural reason for aliens <-> USA is though. Although I suppose it's different in that Godzilla was an intentional fictional creation, while the fascination with aliens hopes they're actually real.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla
There have been reports of aliens, alien crashes and recovery, etc. all over the world[0]. The reason it's primarily seen as an American phenomenon is that the whole culture and mythos originated in the US, first in the late 1940s with the Kenneth Arnold sighting[1] (where the term "flying saucer" originated) and later Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Whitley Streiber's Communion codified the "grey alien/abduction" motif (although there were prior stories like the Pascagoula abduction[2], notable for the aliens described as looking nothing like greys) and of course the X-Files. The rest of the world likely absorbed the UFO archetype through cultural osmosis. Also Americans simply aren't going to be aware of UFO reports from other countries unless they go out of their way to look for them.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanfretta_UFO_Incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B4nio_Vilas-Boas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Lake_Incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight_1...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascagoula_Abduction
And what is considered by some the best UFO photo ever was taken in Costa Rica in 1971:
https://news.co.cr/best-ufo-photo-in-the-world-taken-at-aren...
UFO researcher Leslie Kean obtained a copy directly from the Costa Rican government:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentag...
It looks great but the provenance seems sketchy.
We only have word of mouth from UFO researchers citing unnamed "organizations" to verify this. I'd want to see an independent, accredited and non UFO related team actually study the negatives and such. Otherwise it's just another picture on the internet. It is a really good picture, though. Classic shiny flying saucer.Although I am concerned about the shape of the reflections in this "high res" version[0], they don't look right to me.
[0]https://www.uapmedia.uk/articles/costarica-ufo
There are very prosaic reasons for the popularity of UFO sightings in the USA.
1. The gdp per capita per cloudless land area is far higher than anywhere else. Africa and Australia have lots of empty sky but relatively no-one is out and about during night time. Plus USA does some have some interesting weather. So the opportunities to see anomalous (yet very terrestrial) phenomena is high.
2. The concern that comes from being the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, that others are trying to infiltrate. (I was almost going to use fear or paranoia instead of concern, but some of the concern is warranted)
3. USA is the center of world culture. Everything American is amplified via Hollywood and music.
Fear of an unknown civilization invading their land, killing them, making them sick, and taking over their resources?
So basically what they did to all their neighboring countries for decades before Hiroshima
Supposing (for sake of argument) they're real, Americans' broad deployment of advanced avionics could mean we're simply more likely to detect them. Secondly, cultural factors could increase risk of leaks, compared to Russian and Chinese detections. Third, tight control of Russian and Chinese media can suppress any serious discourse. That's enough to give an impression that UFO encounters are an American thing.
Off topic but somewhat related... As of late, I've really enjoyed watching FPV racing drone footage on YouTube. And it's made wonder - if commercial drones currently on the market are capable of this:
https://youtube.com/shorts/mMmBC2nwcjY?feature=share3
What do you get when you have a multi-billion dollar defense budget and some of the best engineers on the planet?
Also check out Dutch drone shows. Amazing co-ordination among hundreds of drones.
> What do you get when you have a multi-billion dollar defense budget and some of the best engineers on the planet?
A huge waste.
I don't think 80 years of global peace and safe international trade have been a huge waste.
> 80 years of global peace and safe international trade
Sorry but that's a rather myopic take. A significant portion of the world would claim they've experienced nothing of the sort.
Nothing on the scale of WWII.
Hey, we can have both huge waste and 80 years of global(ish) peace with safe(ish) international trade.
Did you get that history lesson from a Raytheon marketing brochure?
An UFO?
FTA:
> “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
> a global solution continues to elude us
You gotta love the implied premise that there's a problem to be solved, because of course that's all our government is good for: solving problems it creates.
I think the problem here is the government's tendency to lie to its citizens. The solution is unrelated to aliens.
I think one of the most effective strategies of conspiracy theory content relates to exactly this point. You bypass the examination of evidence, and entertain theories that would take evidence as given. I remember a video my stepdad saw about Aliens On The Moon, supposedly there to harvest H3, that, instead of asking whether it was true, asked "what do they want?", and "what are they intending to do?" And there was a part about a grainy picture of the moon, with a narrator suggesting looked like there was a cannon-style weapon, asserting that "experts believe" it is aimed at Earth, implying that it's to keep Earth from challenging them for the precious H3.
Just like that, you are pulled into a story, with all kinds of psychological threads. You run before you're able to walk, essentially, and you get people caught up running, and you can backdoor the presumption that the underlying premise was indeed established.
So, I completely agree at there's such a peculiar note being struck by this implied premise.
The USA loves aliens. And money. And my money is on this guy being a grifter.
Maybe they're just friends of Gordon Shumway, Mork, Paul, and Uncle Martin.
https://i.imgur.com/iC1uhpo.png
Could be the case that it was found in the Pacific, or by an allied country and handed over/“liberated”.
What about the Middle East sighting nasa publicly spoke about?
If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research, I’d want to learn about them.
Everyone’s already encountered the starting conditions in most other countries. US is the only one winning Civilization Earth. I’m a naturalized US citizen, for example. Could have ended up anywhere but it’s best here in terms of opportunity and making new stuff.
> US is the only one winning Civilization Earth.
Depends what you mean by winning. Other countries have different priorities, for instance the health and welfare of the population over individual wealth. That doesn't make one right or wrong, but it really this reflects on your priorities more than anything else. And that's ok! I'm just saying it's subjective, not objective, and there's no reason to believe that some aliens would share your personal beliefs in re: superiority and therefore prioritize observations there.
The US is winning (or has won and keeps on winning) the Conquer Victory, the Diplomacy Victory, and the Culture Victory.
I think that's the main means of winning Civilization? Been years since I played one.
Is it that shocking that a computer game made in the USA has notions of "winning" which align with those which are dominant in American culture?
What other win conditions would you add? The US is not the only country that conquers and exports culture, civilizations have been doing that since the first hunter gatherer planted some cereals on the banks of their closest river.
Some members of the Chinese government take the view that anyone of Chinese ancestry is fundamentally Chinese, regardless of where they live or to whom they pledge allegiance; they would presumably consider "our descendants are X% of the world population" to be as much of a victory condition as "we control X% of the world's surface area".
Some members of the Russian government take the view that anyone who can speak Russian is fundamentally Russian; they would presumably consider "X% of the world population speaks Russian" to be a victory condition.
Many religious groups consider "X% of the world shares our beliefs" to be a victory condition, of course.
I don't share any of these positions, but of course I come from a Western Liberal background.
The first two fit into the Culture Victory, the religion one fits into, well, the Religion Victory.
The 6 types in the Civilization games are Science, Culture, Domination, Religion, Score, and Diplomacy. I don't see what else could be added.
I can never understand the desire to pretend that human nature isn't the same around the world. I think it's the same instinct that causes people to pine for the good old days.
Right. Like everyone has the same instincts as the Japanese to clean up their spaces after their are used. It’s why our stadiums in the US are so clean and well maintained.
That's not an instinct, it's a cultural norm strictly enforced by societal pressure. You also seem to have forgotten that the Japanese made one of the biggest plays for military dominance in the modern era. They followed that up with a really good attempt at economic dominance.
Last time I got nuked by Ghandi so it's hard to say.
Magnasanti scores very well in SimCity. I wouldn't rank it very high in cities to live...
I like how you're using a game that obviously reflects the values of the culture that created it to make the point that that culture is better.
If Civilization were made in Denmark, you'd have Population Happiness Victory and that's about it.
Paradox Games are from Sweden.
Hmm, how is that relevant?
I wasn't the guy to first use the term "Civilization Earth"[1] in this thread, though.
Thread framed the conversation around Civilization, I followed suit. If you have a problem, take it up with that guy.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36219608
Diplomacy Victory? I’m not too sure.. Your friends are just rich, but not numerous. Most of the world hates us in various ways.
Culture victory? You did come up with the book of Mormon, which I guess is some kind of achievement.
Conquer Victory, now this eclipses everything. The size of US army apparatus is astounding. No doubt about that.
Aliens would probably not care that french people have more vacation days.
Well if we’re making silly reductive arguments I’m not sure they’d care how many zeroes are in Warren Buffets brokerage account. But you know EADS/Airbus headquarters is in Toulouse if that’s more your speed. There’s also Alstom and SNCF off hand. TotalEnergies. Hermes. Dior. Sanofi. Schneider Electric. Air Liquide. Essilor. You didn’t think they were agrarians did you? They’re the second biggest economy in Europe!
Definitely. There are some cool badass things in EU. There is also the French military industrial complex, a mini version of US. That said, I was shocked to learn about average software engineering salaries in Europe. Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies? And pay their engineers like kings? That'd be cool and give a strong reality check for California.
For now, I'll honestly take 2.5x salary in US over pretty much any other place. And I love guns (own several).
> Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies?
The regulations are onerous and the taxes are high. Why would anyone take the extreme risks associated with building a high-risk high-reward business when everyone gets in your way and most of the reward upside would just get taken from you anyway?
Because if you fail, you're not destitute and without healthcare - while success still leads to a materially better lifestyle.
Specifically because the risks aren't nearly as extreme and the rewards are still very good.
You really don’t get materially more of your yield taken from you in France than you do in California where top marginal tax rate is over 50%. And that rate clearly doesn’t stop anyone in California. Imagine Steve Jobs going hmmm, I would start Apple but the top tax rate is like 5% higher than it could be, I’m just going back to bed then.
Comparing top marginal tax rates is kinda silly - makes much more sense to pick some "normal" ish salary or salary range (or just your current salary or expected future salary) and compare total percentage taken at that level.
The top federal and (California) state tax brackets both start at over 500k, and you'd have to be earning significantly more than that even for it to start affecting your overall tax percentage very much.
> if you fail, you're not destitute and without healthcare
If an American businessman fails, they just get another job and life goes on. They still make 3-10x as much as they would in europe.
Why would anyone take the extreme risk of starting any business at all in the United States unless they were already financially independent?
Also this idea that taxes are lower in the US is mostly bullshit - once you add together state income + sales + federal + healthcare insurance costs it's not meaningfully different from many European/Australasian nations.
> Why can't Europe build amazing high margin software businesses or any hyper growth companies?
It's a good question, my guess is network effects. The people who would want to do this want to be near other people who would want to do this - and the biggest extant pool is in California.
> For now, I'll honestly take 2.5x salary in US over pretty much any other place.
Yeah, that's basically my situation too. Honestly probably closer to 4-5X annually what I'd make back home. Nominally, not adjusted for PPP of course.
> And I love guns (own several).
Haha, we don't have to agree on this one - although I will say they are super fun to shoot.
> Haha, we don't have to agree on this one - although I will say they are super fun to shoot.
I am the opposite. I own them for the philosophy of autonomy, freedom and individualism that guns imbibe. Target shooting isn't that much fun in cities (indoor ranges), only if you go out to the country.
This tweet describes it all:
---
The Bill of Rights feels intense today, but try reading it in the mindset of someone in 1791.
A few years removed from Louis XVI selling Divine Right of Kings.
Then suddenly “Hell no, also we’re gonna say and print whatever we want, you can’t search us, and everyone gets guns.”
---
Quoting, source: https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1525640468129673216
lol, 1791 was a long-ass time ago, and the flintlock era is long past. Also they all had slaves and didn't believe women had the right to vote, and that black people were people. Franklin likely lost his mind to syphilis. There's no sense putting on a hat that doesn't fit. I prefer to evaluate the role of guns from first principles in the current world not the age of dysentery and cholera. Times change and laws evolve. It's a good thing.
I've never understood the elevation of the founding fathers to infallible deities. They had some good ideas, and some terrible ideas, and that doesn't detract from what they accomplished.
The wedding is over, the priest can go home now.
The 1st amendment was written in the era of printing presses - should we scrap that too? After all, there's no way they could have predicted the internet.
Not at all, we should evaluate each one on its own merits and be open to changing them if they're not longer relevant or interesting. Especially if it's actively harmful. In what way do you think the 1st amendment is no longer relevant, interesting and is harmful?
I can very much explain my opinions in re the 2nd.
Each amendment is independent and invalidating one does nothing to any other.
But looks if you can convince me the 1st amendment needs a revisit, I'd be open to it. I don't think so, but a compelling case would change my mind.
I 100% agree. I hate guns and love freedom of speech. As a centrist i got to say that liberals are just as cunning as extreme right.
For example, liberals support gay rights but don't dare to condemn muslims who hold/preach hatred towards gays and defend wearing burq as a good thing that ever happened to muslim women.
More relavant now than ever I'd argue.
Like I said we can agree to disagree. My question would be why stop with this analytical framework on the 2nd amendment? How would the founding fathers feel about the 14th? Not great, I wager, given, you know. How does that mesh with the modern world? It feels disingenuous to only harken back to them on things we think they'd like and ignore their opinion on things we're pretty sure they'd take issue with.
I guess my point is, in your hypothetical question about imagining life in 1791... you mean as a straight, white, male right? Because if I'm anything other than that particular combo, dude, I can't tell you I'd arrive at the conclusion you want me to. 14th wasn’t until 1866. Women couldn’t vote until the 19th in 1920. That's not an argument for guns so much as it's an argument for 'being top dog is pretty good.'
Do you think Aliens would (if they wanted to) rather make first contact in a place where it's relevant now more than ever to own guns, or in a place where it's less so?
The concept of leisure might be quite enlightening to aliens stuck on a mining expedition their grandparents signed up for.
Show me some evidence for how other countries have produced greater wealth for “the group” than the “selfish US.”
Wealth inequality in the US today is worse than France right before the revolution. The US is a great country to go to if you're already rich.
Three years ago I came to Florida without a nickel in my pocket. Now I've got a nickel in my pocket.
Inequality is a feature, not a bug as long as the standards for everyone improves. The problem is that the lowest has not seen improvement in certain areas.
Inequality is a term so alluring to mid-IQ activists. I'll take today's inequality vs. poverty of 100 years ago. The world has improved, period.
Similarly, I'll take a nation full of extreme inequality if their average standards of living are better than say, Honduras.
I like to say that inequality is only a feature if it's coupled with social mobility and a high and rising standard of living for the lower class.
Agreed. Another way to also look at this is that if 95% of the people's median (not average) shifts upwards, I'll accept the trade offs. That's improvement for vast majority of the people.
Yep, couldn't agree more.
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Mississippi. All of it.
I can elaborate : Alabama. Louisiana. Arkansas.
I live in one of those states. I actually like it down there.
But those 4 states address your points and a few more.
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"The notion of invasions by aliens was a projection of the aggressive traits of the predatory, barely civilized ape-man. If he himself willingly did unto others as he would rather not be done by, then he pictured the Advanced Civilization on much the same principle. Flotillas of galactic battleships were supposed to fall upon unsuspecting little planets, to lay hands on the local dollars, diamonds, chocolates, and, of course, beautiful women — for whom aliens had about as much use as we did for female crocodiles."
To an alien without our particular brand of 21st century capital ethics, I'm not sure that the US is winning Civilization Earth.
It likely would be the biggest threat given the weapons tech though. You generally want to study the things that pose the biggest threat for self preservation.
This is highly speculative on both of our parts. I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat to an entity that traveled >4ly. It sounds a lot like picking which classical civilization to study based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber.
Seems a bit odd that a being that could build a craft that flies further than 4 light years would end up crashing.
It was an interplanetary endeavour. Unfortunately, some programmers encoded intersystem travel using the Universal Unit, while others used the Multiversal Metric System.
Maybe a bee got in the cockpit?
"I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat"
You don't have to be a threat, just appear as the biggest possible one.
"based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber."
One has to know what a bow is and that they only have bows to come to that summary conclusion. If you have no knowledge of the capabilities, caution is warranted - whether we're talking about civilizations or a new species of spider.
If you somehow found a way to get a wooden arrow with a stone arrowhead on it into the engine of a Stealth Bomber at the wrong time and place, you may very well cause a big fireworks show. Less has taken down the engines of commercial airliners when a screw comes loose or something.
Advanced technology != invincibility. Actually, a lot of times the more advanced tech is, the more vulnerable it is to catastrophic failure.
We're talking about beings capable of harnessing enough energy to travel interstellar distances, possibly even harnessing (let's say for the sake of argument) strange new physics like warp drive or wormholes. They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output, and they'll be able to tell from light-years away. No species that hasn't already colonized their solar system or started mining the plasma from their home star is going to be worth worrying about.
"They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output,"
Except we don't use our most powerful energy source (nuclear weapons).
They would still be orders of magnitude past that. Probably Kardashev type 2 at least. A couple of nukes probably aren't going to scare them.
I think advanced aliens would laugh at our kardashev scale and say "well it's a lot more nuanced than that" especially considering we don't see a single shred of evidence that anyone out there has a dyson swarm. It's probably the wrong metric to use. If they're up there, whatever they're up to, it's probably really interesting and not just about energy consumption.
Imagine watching two beetles fight and deciding that you need to pay most attention to the stronger beetle because it's a better fighter.
You’d think that would go to the country or countries with tenuous chains of custody over their nuclear weapons, not the US.
(I’m saying that mostly for the sake of argument, not because I think your reasoning is incorrect.)
Advanced aliens may be even more capitalistic.
Someone should let the Singaporean cranks know, then!
> If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research, I’d want to learn about them.
Sounds like they'd care more about China/South Korea/Japan/Taiwan/etc then.
Not really, most great tech originates in the US. China etc are good at copying. I know that’s an unfashionable statement, but let’s do away with this false modesty for once
Btw I’m not from the US.
The US can't even manufacture an iPhone if they wanted to. The world's tech comes out of East Asia.
And as we all know, the assembly of an iPhone is the hard part, not the design.
This isn’t true. TSMC is using EUV tech all funded by Intel. If the US were sufficiently motivated by a Taiwanese fall to China, a fab would be brought up somewhere else quickly with the support of the US (if not in the US).
Isn’t that what the US is doing? See the CHIPS act [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act
The US voluntarily gave up its industrial manufacturing to countries that were more willing to exploit their workers.
"Designed in Cupertino. Made in China".
But the 'iPhones' of war come from America.
Hey Siri put a missile at these coordinates…
Manufacture != invention
But ROC/East Asia can't design an iphone if they wanted too.
They've done it several times. Samsung is Korean, Sony japanese and OnePlus Chinese, to name a few. Sorry to burst your bubble but outside north America, most people use Android.
Not burst my bubble, iPhone iOS is from Apple and literally impossible to run on other hardware. All the phones you stated run android.
Most =/= brand prestige either.
You are at least 2 decade off.
I live in the US, Going to Shanghai, It seems like more futuristic than New York
> China/South Korea/Japan/Taiwan/etc then.
Well, if they care about software, all of the above have inferior software compared to the US.
Sounds like an internet connection would suffice.
>US is the only one winning Civilization Earth.
I don't know. I feel like the countries without constant gun violence, where the government is actually capable of passing legislation, where the people actually accept that they live in a society with some acknowledgement of social responsibilities, and can access healthcare and education without incurring a lifetime of crippling debt, are currently winning at civilization a bit harder.
Being the richest and the most capable at propaganda and world-ending violence isn't the same as being the most civilized.
I guess it depends on how you define "winning". I like your definition and analysis better, but some people...
> with the most insane tech and research
So... Switzerland, which has the Large Hadron Collider? That would probably be the most attractive thing to aliens. Maybe France, which is building ITER? Or the UK with a successful early nuclear fusion test?
I mean it's cool that the US has YouTube and big pieces of metal that shoot smaller pieces of metal and all. Also they launch rockets, but everybody launches rockets. I'm just not sure aliens would be that interested in that, more like "secrets of the universe" type stuff that we're getting closer to.
You both have a point, but I'd like to add that maybe aliens aren't as interested in shiny things like collider's and plasma and all that, and more interested in organizations of living things that control resource flow across the oceans, which the US does for the entire world. If I was an alien that already understood the bosons and all that, it would be cool to watch a monkey planet figure that out, but I wouldn't learn much. But I could learn from an organizational structure with unilateral force projection capabilities across all specimens of this creature. There are things the US does that are mighty interesting.
Sure, you might also be just as interested in a society capable of working towards something like the LHC or ITER, by taking care of its citizens and through diplomacy. I think it's a more interesting goal than controlling the seas so that people can get cheap trinkets from China.
And don't get me wrong, I'm just as addicted to my trinkets from China as anybody else, and I benefit from US hegemony. Just trying to think from a total outsider's perspective.
Satirical posts on HN have a whole different flavour to them!
The truth is out there. Somewhere in the middle.
Being naturalized one can forgive your bias. But this "the best civ on earth" seems just taken straight out of a 1990-2000s movie.
It's funny how people confuse "most powerful nation" with "best nation". We have the biggest guns, and the most money, and the most prisoners, so we're #1. (Just ignore literally all other rankings)
>If I came across a planet of smart monkeys and one monkey state had the most baddest mfers with the most insane tech and research
If the ship of such an incredibly advanced civilization came across Earth then the differences between US technology & that of other parts of the world would require an anthropological microscope for them to detect. Like us looking back on Western vs. Eastern roman empire circa 400-500 C.E. and trying to decide which was more advanced. (well, at least < 476 C.E... being conquered is going to take one side down a few pegs)
Why of course. The coolest monkeys are the ones with the biggest bombs and fastest jets, right. Not the ones who have a knowledge of love so intimate they wrote an entire book just about sex positions. Of course, the aliens that can expend Jupiter's worth of energy to travel at lightspeed are impressed by the monkeys with the fastest planes, not the ones who claim they found a peace so profound it encompasses the universe.
I think the super advanced aliens aren't showing themselves because we're letting a bunch of auto-fellating monkeys run the planet
The deltas between the military/technology of the worlds top economies might not even be noteworthy to a species capable of interstellar travel. From there perspective we might just all look the same.
This is absurd, and very american. Cute that you'd imagine an alien civilization to look at the Earth the same way you do.
They may just as well look at humans as the white ants of a potential galactic bus stop.
This is absurd
Some folks seem to think it's intentionally absurd. I thought about playing along and chatting up how New York is clearly the capital of the world if you don't realize us savages lack a world government, but all my comedian friends have told me to keep my day job.
Or would if I had any comedian friends. Or, you know, a day job even.
> US is the only one winning Civilization Earth
Not a single city in the top 100 most livable cities on Earth.
That's a very strange kind of winning.
https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/global-liveability-index-202...
>Each city is assigned a liveability score for more than 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
It is easier for the kind of person who reads HN to efficiently trade their labor for money in the US than in Europe, and this index does not account for that very important aspect of most people's lives -- earning power.
American society is more chaotic and dangerous than Europe, I do concede. Maybe more Americans who have accumulated enough savings to last the rest of their lives should move to the top 100 cities in this index.
>only one winning Civilization earth
you're really leaning into the out of touch engineer stereotypes if you think civilization can be won using criteria from a video game of all things, and that the main criteria of winning is tech & research and not say ability to sustain peace or end homelessness
Why would you go to the middle of the American desert? There’s no magic in the ground (or maybe there is??)
HHGTHG. Douglas Adams:
“they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
src: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7320721-teasers-are-usually...
You think extraterrestrial life is impressed with ad tech? If anything, they'd land in Veldhoven.
lol ... you are assuming aliens think like humans. Its almost impossible to tell what aliens consider "baddest mfers" or "insane tech and research".
The most advanced tech and research, as an overall, would be trivial for an advanced alien to decide. And the US has been leading in those categories for 80 years at least.
The notion that it's impossible to figure out whether an advanced alien would think Afghanistan or the US have more advanced tech/research/science, is absurd. And if you can make that distinction, you can keep going.
For a species advanced enough for trivially navigating the universe, the difference between the US and Afghanistan would be trivial. If they are more in the individuality side of thing (in contrast to hive mind), the dumbest of their lot would probably be smarter than the smartest person we can find here, probably looking at us the way we look at other intelligent species.
To measure us, would they look at the capacity to produce tech or consume tech (they would probably be more interested in East-Asia than North-America)?
If they look at introducing themselves and communicate peacefully, what metrics would they look at to determine what society they want to deal with?
If they look for dominance, once again they would hit where we produce tech, and hit our means of communication, which are worldwide.
> If they are more in the individuality side of thing (in contrast to hive mind), the dumbest of their lot would probably be smarter than the smartest person we can find here, probably looking at us the way we look at other intelligent species.
I feel like people in this thread don't watch enough Science Fiction. There are LOTS of situations where a species could trivially navigate the universe (Someone stole the technology and ran away with it, the people who invented the technology died a million years ago, they were gifted the technology by a superior race, or it was discovered by accident). Lots of possibilities out there.
No need for SF for this line of reasoning. You don't need to know anything about electricity, or physics, to turn on a light switch, or activate autopilot in a car. But a certain amount of understanding and craftsmanship is required to maintain things in working condition. If it's something discovered, you need a reverse-engineer the thing.
This entire comment chain is missing the fact that there are many UAP sightings in China and one of the reasons the US isn't being mum about this anymore is because China is exploring the phenomenon without all of the West's weird religious and secular hangups about the possibility of nonhuman intelligence.
What if they include weapons, specifically guns, in their assessment?
"Hey, %$#&&%µµ**&, do we really want to make first contact in a Stand Your Ground state?"
I thought alien is looking for resources. They don’t care with the technology because they know they are more advanced.
Colonists with muskets and cannons didn't care which tribe had the best bows and spears
> And the US has been leading in those categories for 80 years at least.
Imagine being skipped over for first contact because your country invented "software patents", making itself uncompetitive... ;)
You picked the US vs Afghanistan because it’s an absurd comparison. Now do US vs Japan
Perhaps they're less interested in primitive tech and more in those who defeated the guys with all that tech.
Assuming they don't check Florida first.
If I were a visitor to planet Earth, I'd still want to visit the grand canyon, I think
I've never seen a more perfect example of non-ironic American exceptionalism
Or maybe the USA has observed them more.
I can say I'm not sure what to think about this; I don't understand possible motivations nor psyop sufficiently to comment on the veracity/lack thereof.
Anecdotally, I'll note that this has sent folks I am acquainted with who believe that the Replicants walk among us (or variations thereof), right off the deep end. This validates what they've been asserting, and which people have pooh-pooh'd, all along.
Man, the fox is loose in the mental health henhouse. And please know that I don't judge or claim to understand that place.
It just all seems so irresponsible.
It's the perfect grift. If the DoD denies having evidence then they are hiding something. If they show you the evidence they possess then they are hiding stuff anyway. The grifter gets payback/attention in either case because it is all indisputable and unprovable. Legally you are untouchable because the proof for or against is unobtainable. The X-Files poster says it all "I want to believe."
The paradox about this is that even though our sensor technology keeps getting vastly better we still only have evidence at the extreme edge of it. Never any really conclusive proof -- spaceship lands and aliens get out and get caught on video. And then there's this guy who just knows about a secret government program, but hasn't seen any of it.
It sort of reminds me of the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.
Not really a paradox. The public only has minimal evidence. While the US government has mountains of data and recordings.
Ah yes, we’re about to get photographic and evidence of aliens right when widespread generative AI explodes, cannot possibly be a coincidence
If the US had an alien space ship, why keep it secret? Seems like it would a globally important discovery and diplomatic / technological credit for the US.
Even if the US were inclined to keep their space ship secret, other countries should be encountering UAPs given that the US sees hundreds per year. Some ground control operator should eventually share an in-focus picture at some point.
This guy seems to have done all the right things you're supposed to do if you discover a coverup as a DoD employee. He reported to the Inspector General. He reported to the committees in Congress that oversee intelligence activities. That's all authorized by law and regulation.
He may be wrong, but he didn't do anything wrong.
> Grusch said the US government and defense contractors had been recovering fragments of non-human craft, and in some cases entire craft, for decades.
This makes it sound like the US govt is recovering material that has been found lying around, maybe due to a crash, or debris from an accident, or a piece of a UFO that broke off, etc.
Simple question. Why is it that only the US govt is recovering this? Presumably if these are pieces of matter that aliens are leaving behind unintentionally, they would have left them behind distributed across the world. So why aren’t other, less allegedly secretive governments with spy agencies that are less capable or protect data better, not also recovering such material? Why, in hundreds of years of UFOs visiting the earth, and leaving debris behind, are random goat farmers not finding this debris lying around?
How has every govt that has managed to find this debris managed to keep it a secret?
New solution to the Fermi paradox: Highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations deliberately delay their appearances, letting centuries of erroneous UFO sightings desensitize us first. This tactic allows their real spacecraft to go unnoticed, as cynicism has led us to dismiss any new reports.
Why is the US government peddling conspiracy theories after condemning true ones for the past 3 years?
Here's an interesting video clip of Lex interviewing Pilot Ryan Grave [0], ~10 months ago (~27 mins. Note: not full interview).
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT6av8ZFCks&t=184s
I'm pretty sure this is related to those balloons they shot down. They we're UAPs officially. They're too embarrassed to admit that they we're just hobbyist balloons, and thus they want to keep it under wraps. Meanwhile, someone extrapolates it into alien spacecraft.
On the other hand, I think that it's in the realm of possibilities that there are some AI-controlled Von Neumann probes on Earth, sleeping in the bottom of the ocean, and checking on us from time to time. It's not unlikely that there's a point in time where they think we're ready to know the truth and they reveal themselves and their knowledge.
I would very much like to believe, but… no doubt we’ve all heard the crackpot theories that we (speaking as a US citizen) faked the moon landings. That’s nonsense for all sorts of reasons, but one of my favorites is this:
It would literally be easier to build giant machines using 1960s technology to land people on the moon and return them safely than it would be to keep a secret like “fake moon landings”.
Now imagine the secret being “alien intelligence/time travelers/angelic beings are visiting earth on the regular”. No matter how good some of us are at keeping secrets, this one would have gotten out long ago.
That said, I’d still love to be demonstrated wrong.
If these are a recent phenomenon and not the flying saucers of the past, the secret may have not been kept long.
If true, what would be even more remarkable than alien spacecraft is the secret actually being kept. I have zero confidence the US government, let alone in conjunction with other governments, would be able to keep a secret like this.
What I find compelling about this new evidence is that what they see flying is a small sphere doing impossible things. Can a sphere fly and hold its geolocation position perfectly in a hurricane as these reports cite?
How would you explain it as any earthly tech? And if not US, what nation hass more advanced tech than the US?
And isn't as likely that alien civilizations would send a probe, rather than arrive with their organic selves in a big spaceship needing food etc? Like us with our Mars rover, etc, wouldn't they send a small remote controlled probe to check out alien worlds?
Sounds like a social experiment to see how fast rumours spread or something. Next up: hysteria. Give it a week and the papers will say that there are big bad aliens in Moscow or some such.
The world is burning and what gets our attention? Aliens; and from a country infamous for alien ship sightings and that same country is known to lie when it's an advantage to them. Not to mention the testimony is hearsay.
Either we have some grifters who don't have a job and are looking to make something out of their background. Or the US is doing some psyops for who knows why. Or just plain old mistaking one thing for another, perhaps through mental illness or jumping to conclusions.
I'll save my judgement for the inevitable Joe Rogan interview
Ep 1315
The whole chit-chat isn't productive actually, because almost everybody gives a fun about the aliens, we just need to know how those things fly without wings, fans, rockets in them. We mostly don't even care about the pilots.
How they can easily zip to the LEO in less than a minute like it wasn't a big thing at all vs. how a human built rocket needs a carefully planned operation just not to blow up even before raising up from the very floor?
In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) !
This reminds me of the psyop that the British executed in WWII: that carrots improve your vision.
They spread that misinformation to cover the fact that they had new radar tech that let them bomb at night.
I wonder if the US gov has some kind of hovering tech and they're smoke signaling it under UFO?
Some Bene Gesserit schemes right there.
It is commonly said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sort of claim is foolishness.
In fact at this point they're really in a Catch-22... if they really do try to come out with "Yes! Aliens! Really!" then we have the question of, why then were you lying the up to this point then? Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence... why should I trust you now, then?
I mean, it isn't that hard to imagine how "alien threat!" will require us to, once again, give them more power. It's absolutely astonishing how no matter what the problem is, the solution is to give them more power.
A credible alien threat would give world leaders a super easy excuse to demand emergency powers, impose martial law, and assume total control of all aspects of life, in the name of the war effort. Said world leaders really really want these things, so you can safely assume there isn’t a credible alien threat. You don’t have to trust them, just trust that they’ll act in their own interests and work backwards from there.
I believe this was the plot to Watchmen.
Enders game.
But... i would trust them because.... man aliens.
I don't think it was. Could be a great piece of fiction based on COVID lockdowns though.
It was a key element of Watchmen. The movie changed the common enemy from aliens, but kept the general concept. It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it.
Interesting problem in orbital mechanics, suitable for the Musks and Bezoses of the world: calculate parameters for satellite launch, insertion, and stationkeeping needed to simulate seemingly-irrefutable signals from an intelligent ET civilization.
That was the coverup of Contact the movie version.
Potentially, but we never found out for sure.
Now there are multiple private teams who could actually pull it off. Or maybe not... I have no idea how hard it would be to make a signal source appear from Earth as if it came from a fixed star, but I suspect it would be extremely difficult to accomplish for any length of time. It's not as if you could just park it someplace. Then there's parallax to consider.
In any event, the message wouldn't be "Build a spaceship with technology no one has ever seen before." The message would be "Get your act together or we'll bulldoze your planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass," or "Take the red pill LOL" or "Get Amazon Prime today. The bargains are out of this world!"
> It wasn't the governments that created it, but rather the governments were duped into believing it.
The Iraq war?
What if it's much more boring and sad than that? Like we're a contained invasive species. They're peaceful, and they respect our rights to this planet cause we evolved here but they're scared of us getting off the planet and running roughshod over the rest of the galaxy which is pretty full of intelligent life and there's no final frontier to speak of. Meanwhile our government is busy trying to reverse engineer what scraps we've managed to get a hold of so we can somehow practice galactic imperialism. I call this the "crowded galaxy" resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
> Said world leaders really really want these things.
It's a bit much to start an entire deductive reasoning based on such a blatant assumption.
>Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust.
What you say is true. But here's the problem. 99% of people in this world are people you don't know well and don't know personally and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them.
Thus by probability an extraordinary claim that is true is highly, highly likely to come from someone you will never have any form of "extraordinary" trust for. So your statement, which I quoted, is, from a practical standpoint, completely useless. By your logic all extraordinary claims in existence will all pretty much be mistrusted by you. It's a statement of complete denial of anything that sounds outlandish. It's the definition of being closed minded.
Being extremely closed minded tends to be better than being extremely open minded where you believe every freaking thing you hear. But the best place to be in is at neither extreme. Rather then deny all extraordinary claims you should be skeptical.
You need to search for techniques in which will help you determine whether you CAN or CANNOT trust someone you do not already have "extraordinary" trust for.
To which I throw this statement at you:
If someone makes a statement without any ulterior motive that results in net benefit to them, you can place more merit on the fact that they are telling you what they believe to be the truth.
So take for example a stranger tells you there's a bomb in the building and you have to get out. You get the hell out because that stranger had nothing to gain from telling there's a bomb.
If a person with a camera is recording you and he told you there's a bomb in the building. Well that's different right? The key difference here is that in one situation there's a clear ulterior motive. In the other situation there was no motive.
Follow the motive.
The person making the claim... what is his motive?
> ...and they aren't famous enough for you to trust them.
That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).
We expect all statements to be independently verified and attested by a bunch of experts, with eg. journalists verifying they are indeed experts (that's journalists' expertise). The more people who've you learned to trust in that chain of verifiers, the higher your trust.
When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?
At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.
>That's not how we gain extraordinary trust (remember, Kyrie Irving is pretty darn famous).
Nope. It is how you gain extraordinary trust. It really depends on what they are famous for. There are many famous people or scholars who you respect and trust due to their fame. You trust them, because others trust them.
Fame can also cause distrust too. But it does cause trust as well.
>When it comes to extraordinary claims like this, I usually go back to the "implementation": why and how did another civilization solve all of the physics problems of interstellar flight (if it did), how did they go undetected by other countries and amateurs, and why did they not simply reach out in an attempt to communicate?
This is too much speculation. There are an infinite number of explanations here. Better to follow the the chain of events from the anomalous claim and start piecing together things forwards rather then just claim it's impossible because you can't think of any valid way for it to happen.
Additionally the claim itself is "extraordinary" so basically there is likely no mundane explanation for it if the claim is true.
>At that point I can even buy that these "intelligence officers" believe what they are saying, but I still don't buy that their claims are true.
So that's the first step right? They believe what they are saying. So from their perspective they witnessed extraordinary evidence. So what made them believe it? What did they actually see? Are they correct? Even if following this thread leads to something different then their claim, one can still learn something interesting.
Closed mindedness often involves logic that works backwards. You need to move forwards. If you see a path, moving forwards means following the path. Moving backwards means ignoring the path because you made a guess that there's nothing at the end of the path.
I am not sure why do you think there is only one way to increase trust in a claim made by unknown people?
I don't trust "famous" people. I trust that it's unlikely for a large group of "famous" (eg experts in relevant fields, which is a more specific interpretatiin of "famous"), unrelated people to not trust each other, and only once they reach a common ground, would my trust of their extraordinary claim rise.
Yes, I wouldn't trust Einstein proclaiming speed of light is finite, but when corroborated with independent claims of experiments from Michelson proving likewise, and others from 30 years ago, I would.
Basically, if it's too few people, I'd question how did others, unrelated people not see it: science mostly progresses these days when the body of knowledge is such that simply the next thing is in front of us, and multiple people simultaneously "discover" it. As it's many people making similar claims, I'd start considering it seriously.
This is how science works, and I am happy to follow that with media reports as well. It's not at all backwards IMO.
Sure, if I was working on a hypothesis, I would certainly venture into less trusty sources, but I would need to be ready to accept for my hypothesis to be disproven too.
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You ignored the fact these people are not neutral. They're liars. If they're telling the truth now, they're some of the largest liars in human history. Your hypothetical is irrelevant in this case.
I have answers, but discussing them would just be further excuses to try to dilute away this fundamental truth, so I decline. It's their responsibility to figure out how to be more trustworthy if they want it, not mine. (Helpful tip: They can start by not lying about everything, all the time.) It's my responsibility not to trust known, repeated, huge liars.
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> why then were you lying the up to this point then?
So it'll take a lot to convince me that this is real. But let's say for an instant that it is.
And you're the government, and you need to handle "announcing" this to the people without freaking them out. I guess you set the scene, monitor for a while what people do (decades of denial), then when it seems like the people are doing alright/don't care about it much, start to say you'll actually look into it (couple years ago with official release of documents). Then monitor the reaction... again people don't really care. Kind of exciting for some people for a day or two but still go work in the morning, life goes on. Then you start to drop the other shoe.
I guess? I'm skeptic but if there was a world in which there are alien UAPs, where the govt knows, where the govt hides it, I can construe this scenario as a good reason why govts would have gone about it in this way.
> Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence
When speaking of the us government and its agencies we must remain ever cognizant that the official story is rarely truthful whether explicitly or by omission. Relatedly, we’ve seen extraordinary measures taken against individuals leaking pretty minor and generally suspected details like wholesale warrant less surveillance via direct taps on arterial comm lines. Thus, it is more likely that this guy has nothing and no power, else he’d be in an Ecuadorian embassy/Russia or an as of yet unknown black site instead of doing interviews.
2018 is the first time any military branch would miss its recruitment goals since 2005. That problem has now spread across all branches of the military, where missing recruitment goals has become the norm. People simply don't want to enlist, for reasons one can only imagine... We're now getting things like congressional hearings on why the military is repeatedly failing to hit its recruitment goals [1]. This is also the setting where the military has been trying a variety of different efforts to get people interested.
And it's in this exact context that the Pentagon started to release UFO videos and the military was publicly patenting sci-fi level technology like a "craft using an inertial mass reduction device." [2] Not only does the patent read like it was written by a sci-fi jargon-generator LLM, but there's absolutely no point to it. Were something like this real, you would keep it beyond classified to not only maximize your national benefit from it, but to try to keep it out of the hands of peer nations for as long as possible. With it published, if e.g. China or Russia was going to make this, what now? Are you going to sue them? Maybe get the WTO to give them a stern talking to. Its one and only purpose is to publicize "secret" research from the military.
So why? Literally the only explanation I can see is it just being another ham-fisted recruitment effort. 'You can go make a living making software pushing ads on people who don't want them, or you can enlist in the military, travel the world, and perhaps even one day get clearance to see and start working where the "real" science is happening.'
---
[1] - https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-te...
[2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en?inventor=S...
Absolutely fascinating that the top two replies to an article about Aliens! are positing basically the same conspiracy: that this is a deliberate psyop run by a "nation state" and not just... people being wrong about stuff?
Why go through the trouble to refute one unlikely and poorly supported hypothesis just to jump right into a new one? Has Occam taught us nothing? There are no successfully hidden "conspiracies" of that scale. Maybe someone can run a successful assassination once in a while and keep it under wraps for a decade or so, but that's as far as it goes. Lips are too loose and threads are too easy to pull, especially in the internet era.
Because military brass is not supposed to be wrong by going along with such unlikely scenarios.
They might as well also believe the fairy god-mother decides the outcome of battles and direct their ire at her.
This is The National Enquirer-level stuff.
> military brass is not supposed to be wrong by going along with such unlikely scenarios.
True but that was before we started having idiot legislators in congress willing to throw a few tens of millions at "investigations" by the military. Nothing like easy budget and a cushy assignment for several years to encourage some motivated reasoning. "Hey, if you're payin', I'm investigatin.'"
You mean like being on the board of Theranos?
So it's to make money off of suckers? They are swindlers? We're no better than John MacAfee's banana republic low-level bribe seeking government employees.
The U.S. Inspector General called the claims "credible and urgent" and congress has planned a hearing on the documents provided to them under oath on said retrieval programs.
This clearly goes well beyond someone simply being mistaken.
I'll just say that I regard the chances of the IG and congress being wrong about something as rather higher than that of an extraterrestrial civilization leaving artifacts on earth recovered only by the US Government. I mean, come on. I love alien stuff too but you need to put the bar for proof in a reasonable place, and this isn't it.
My point wasn't that there's a reasonable factual argument here (there clearly isn't) it's that the "reasonable" people jumping in to re-interpret it were also engaging in unfounded conspiracy paranoia (albeit one with a much more plausible hypothesis).
Wow, nobody has ever lied to congress before! And what are the chances their testimony pops up right after the introduction of a program incentivizing whistleblowers to come forward?
Wouldn't you expect their testimony to pop up after the incentive program independently of it's accuracy or truthfulness?
I wouldn't expect it to be independent of truthfulness. The Cobra Effect [0] suggests that offering a reward for something, in this case public airing of testimony, increases the likelihood of false testimony given the absence of any truthful testimony.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina...
The "omg aliens" media card always seems to get pulled out when there's no $CURRENT_OUTRAGE and people are looking for something. It's like filler content when there's nothing else to rile people up.
Examples?
When was the last time a UFO/aliens story was competing for air time with a major real world news event (disaster, protest, shooting, terrorist, election, etc)?
Well, the top story right now is a major dam in a war zone having been destroyed. Given that this story is coming out right now... literally right now?
That story is below the fold, as a small subsection on CNN.com. Their current major top story is "New York City’s air pollution among the worst in the world." It's clearly a slow news day.
The "balloon shootdowns" during the Ohio toxic chemical train derailment.
"UFO/aliens" as in, extraterrestrial spacecraft, X-Files bs
I always write it off as one of two things. People are simply wrong. Or they're lying for fame/money. The 2nd one is easy to spot once you see them on a variety of conspiracy talk shows.
It’s another razor (heuristic) like Occam’s Razor.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1235/
Just look at the history of alien / UFO sightings. It all began at the beginning of WW2 and the Cold War. It is my humble opinion all just a psychological operation. Some benefits that a government would have doing such a thing would be: Division, misdirection of MSM and population, other news that is very important is intentionally being sandbagged. Fear, Hysteria, & Confusion allows further tightening of control of a society and prompts consent to loss of liberty in exchange for false security. It also increases government support. As well as an intimidation tactic to their enemies that they possibly have much stronger weapons / tech that they let on.
This doesn't pass the occam's razor.
The simplest explanation are mental illness, shameless fame seekers and confused people who saw rocket debris or some supersonic fighter.
Not really getting that the speed of light is a universal speed limit is simpler.
I want to believe. So I'll spend more time than is wise evaluating evidence. But, like, it's gotta be some really good evidence.
So far, all of the "laws of physics" have turned out to be true, if they were considered an approximation applicable with a certain set of preconditions.
My only hope for human kind travelling interstellar distances is to figure something orthogonal out, as even speed of light is too slow (perhaps we extend our lifetimes to span millenia combined with teleportation? :).
Also anonymous pranksters, deliberately tricking people using balloons, kites, drones, etc.
The typical reply to this is that it wasn't until the 20th century that people had enough understanding of the universe to view them as aliens. Previously they would be angels, demons, gods etc.
But the idea that the government is manipulating people to seize power goes back a long way too...
> Just look at the history of alien / UFO sightings. It all began at the beginning of WW2 and the Cold War.
It's been happening for some time before then.
They're in old art:
https://listverse.com/2016/04/24/10-historic-divine-painting...
The very first example is a religious painting that has nothing to do with aliens
Most of them are religious paintings. It's still surprising to see a UFO in The Baptism of Christ, though I'm sure some people would explain it away as something else somehow.
The Flying Dutchman is thought to probably have been a Fata Morgana.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman
With everyone handwringing about climate change clearly being our doom, has no one once wondered if it might be partly responsible for an upsurge in sightings of unexplained aerial phenomenon?
Reminds me of the UFO that ended up being a lens flare on a gimbaled camera of a fighter jet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
I'm beyond skeptical of the 'alien' videos, but Mick West is no better. He comes up with some pet theory that can create a similar visual phenomena, completely ignores any and all other factors, and then declares his pet theory the 'truth.' It's literally the exact same sort of conspiracy theory style behavior he claims to be fighting against, but he feels his theories are special because they're mundane, so they must be true - even if they're also about as sound as a house of cards.
So for instance at 2:00 in the video you linked, he at least acknowledges that he's "not going to address" among other things that there were reported to be a fleet of the observed objects. He fails to acknowledge that he's also not addressing that the object was also observed from multiple sources. And the "SA" was also picking them up, which I can only assume is a sort of scanned array radar type system. In which case you have multiple forms of instrumentation picking the signals up, multiple trained pilots interpreting them as meaningful and distinct, and more. So in other words he's not going to address the countless things that effectively falsify everything else he's about to say.
Finally, this seems to be a newer video. In his past videos he went so far as to suggest that the glare caused by the exhaust of a jet, when one fighter jet was (apparently?) locking onto another jet, all without realizing it. I fully agree with the implied idea there of tossing appeals to authority in the trash, but.... like with all things, sometimes this can be overdone. It seems that part of his theory was removed, and now it seems he's just leaving it as glare from nowhere? Ah yes, that's also one of those things he's "not going to address" now.
How does any of that affect his thesis that the black object in this specific video isn't the aircraft but is rather an artifact of the camera?
He doesn't make any claims about the aircraft because he is saying it isn't visible... and the scope of his analysis is this single piece video evidence.
Since we're speculating, the details of "intact and partially intact" stand out.
Seems like something a nation state might float if another nation state was (or was planning) ramping up some newfangled drone espionage missions.
OMG aliens -> nice advanced tech you got there
Intact -> would be a shame if someone ratcheted up tensions by reverse engineering it
Partial -> stay off my land
illegally withheld from Congress -> if mom and dad find out we're both in trouble
My theory that this is CIA psyop to suppress and distract people from remembering Edward Snowden revelations, it is been exactly 10 years since.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222610
The "Snowden, 10 years on" banner on this article does stands out
Snowden, 10 years on A decade ago, we published the Edward Snowden revelations that forever changed our relationship to our privacy and to our governments. Since then, we have defied the powerful by landing scoops on everything from Big Tech to surveillance, offshore banking to cellphone spyware. .. ..
Eh, you're giving nations too much credit.
What's going on is something like emergent disinformation. A combination of
* intentional withholding of facts (we don't report on how much we know about foreign spying and interfernce with aircraft, etc),
* incompetent reporting within the government (the person denying things is a low level public relations person who isn't told much and knows very little, forced to change stories when scraps of information come down)
* memes (UFOs go through waves of popularity of public interest)
* legitimate hallucinations
* hoaxes
* rare atmospheric phenomena
What is almost certainly happening is we've got foreign spies etc. with ordinary, unusual, and unfamiliar aircraft bothering us along with thrillseekers with drones etc. on an uptick because drones are cheaper and more possible these days. There might be some really interesting secret aircraft both foreign and domestic flying around, and generally the governments aren't showing their cards about what they can do and what they know... they benefit from the confusion and conspiracies keeping their adversaries off balance chasing the unknown.
In the end the people who do know everything know some interesting but still certainly rather mundane information. It's not a case of a grand conspiracy where somebody is trying actively to manipulate public opinion, just vague intentional lack of communication and keeping secrets by just not telling most people anything involved.
Possibly not. But this narrative has been around for a lot longer than social media. Current technology certainly accelerates the spread of it, but people have been discussing this topic since the literal dark ages.
People have been discussing all kinds of things since the dark ages. Should the military consider astrology when making war plans and battle plans too cuz some people did and still make decisions based on astrology?
I understand you're being facetious, but if the military had visual and sensor data of a foreign power entering their airspace due to astrology, then the answer would likely be "probably".
During World War 2 the British consulted astrologers as part of their planning process. Not because they believed the astrology predictions, but because Hitler did and was known to have astrology influence his attack plans.
That's a cool anecdote and makes sense if you're trying to meet him at his level...
So what purpose does pursuing a belief in UFOs have? Are China and Russia gonna be like, what, UFOS?! Let's waste money studying something we have no evidence for!
> Are China and Russia gonna be like, what, UFOS?! Let's waste money studying something we have no evidence for!
Yes. That’s exactly what happens. [1]
“In 1970 United States intelligence sources believed that the Soviet Union was spending 60 million roubles annually on "psychotronic" research. In response to claims that the Soviet program had produced results, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") in the same year.”
That program was funded until 1995.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
Everything for an edge over the other side. Some folks just are good at staring at goats.
There is evidence, however, which is why the government is studying it.
There's also a reason the government calls them 'phenomenon' and not 'objects' and not 'aliens'.
The reason the government is interested is not because they think there are aliens, it's because their job is to know what is in the sky and understand their sensor readings.
It doesn't really matter if it's China, aliens, a lens flare, or a kid with a drone. The military should be able to know what is in the sky.
That's it. It would be far better to know if it's some feedback in our sensors rather than Chinese hypersonic drones. I find it concerning that so many people want to just dismiss this off-hand when clearly the military considers it something to be worth looking into.
The part that is worth dismissing is the immediate jump to aliens. This topic is really a sensor data analysis discussion, not a conspiracy theory convention.
To preface: I am strongly in the opinion that this 'phenomenon' that's being seen is most probably a US-based contractor that's been testing exotic aircraft, as opposed to any of the other possibilities. There's a documented history of that over the years, and looking at where China and Russia are at currently indicates they might not have these capabilities.
However, I am going to hold off on the 'dismissing is the immediate jump to aliens' part as well, purely due to the position of this guy and the specifics of his claims - he was part of a team investigating the subject and so until he's proven unequivocally of lying I'll just assume there might be documentation he has access to that we don't. His credentials line up and it sounds as if the people who vouch for him are the same.
I'll think it's silly to discredit the fact the government wants to study what's being reported in the sky like some people are doing. Beyond that I'd rather not comment because it's safer to discuss the parts we are actually privy to rather than the parts we aren't, until the dude gets charged for lying to congress or some other official discrediting of his claims.
Unless the assertions made by those interviewed in the article are true. We are all arm chair quarterbacks who only have a view from the goal line to the one yard line. There is no sense in trying to say we know what happened in the game. We don't know what's actually happening and I don't see much sense in eliminating plausible explanations. It could be sensor aberrations, China, or something else. Why not keep an open mind and be scientific about evaluating it? Yes, we should probably focus on eliminating the more mundane explanations, but I don't think we would want to give up if we don't find it at first.
> Why not keep an open mind and be scientific about evaluating it?
I am for keeping an open mind, scientifically speaking. Entertaining theories rooted in fictional fantasy is not that. There is zero scientific evidence of technologically advanced life outside of Earth. It is a hypothesis that is just as unsupported as anything anyone might make up on the spot. Just because it is a hypothesis people want to believe doesn't make it any more supported than a hypothesis that it is the flying spaghetti monster.
By entertaining do you mean considering them plausible?
Why does the government not just say that? Hey, our instruments are having errors/artifacts and we want to fix it AND also dismiss any suggestion of alien craft --but, no, they go along with the most unlikely scenario. Are they looking to look stupid?
Because it would be dumb to publicly acknowledge any specifics of their weaknesses to their enemies. It's not the military's job to placate conspiracy theorists. It's their job to counter foreign threats.
They don't have to make any of it public. It was never public till they decided that they wanted to inject aliens into their strategy. Now, the Chinese communists and the Russian Oligarchs both still know our instruments suck, except they attributed to aliens.
> Now, the Chinese communists and the Russian Oligarchs both still know our instruments suck
There is no strategic or actionable value in a broad judgement of "sucks" or "doesn't suck". The point of keeping details secret is to prevent someone from building mechanisms to specifically counter it. Information disparity in war is an advantage because it can cause an enemy to misjudge their allocation of resources. (either they underestimate and are out-powered, or they overestimate and waste resources)
It's like poker. You might choose to selectively give off some information with your expressions, but you'd easily lose if you showed your cards.
> they decided that they wanted to inject aliens into their strategy.
The US military has not entertained the idea of aliens.
During the "balloon shootdowns" earlier this year, NORAD referred to them as objects and some people looked a little shook. They wouldn't show us pictures from any camera.. not from the planes, not from the missiles, nada. Yet, when Russia clumsily attacked a US drone near Ukraine, footage of the event was made available almost right away.
The "balloons" absolutely were referred to as objects, and you should question what was so special about them that they won't show anything.
Embarrassment at repeatedly scrambling F-22 Raptors to shoot missiles at a child's party balloon is not a good enough reason.
It was something. It wasn't nothing and it's just been brushed under the carpet as if it never happened.
That's nice, but you know what? If the object was "other", it'll be back.
What are you talking about? They released multiple pictures of the Chinese spy balloons.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinas-spy-balloon-ove...
That was only the 1st one which China owned up to. What about the other 3 objects that had fighters scrambled from both the US and Canada and of which no photos exist and no-one has claimed ownership of?
One object was blamed on a hobby balloon club and I have questions about it because usually winds move west to east and their balloon allegedly travelled east to west. In any case, how about the other 2 that weren't blamed on anyone, especially the one over Alaska?
Nobody can answer the questions because it's all classified "National Security".
> I have questions about it because usually winds move west to east and their balloon allegedly travelled east to west
On a macro scale, and on average, yes, but on the scale of a balloon, there are many winds that blow west.
Much of the capabilities of the F-22 are classified. This is why the information released is limited, and released slowly and vaguely if it is. It is the US's most advanced fighter, there's no way they're going to release all the data it collects publicly. China is taking notes.
Some of the planes were F-16 and F-18. Use camera footage from the F-18, run it through the low-resolution blurring filter to pretend that's as good as it gets for an airframe that entered service 44 years ago (yes, I know the avionics have been updated since then, but it's still an old jet) and redact out all the HUD numbering and readouts.
They did that with AARO's video of the metallic orb over the middle east. Made it blurry, and redacted out all data readouts. They could do the same thing with the F-18's footage.. show us that it's a balloon.
Ronald Reagan did, right? Commander in chief did, so for at least a time, they did?
Nancy had an astrologer and psychic, Jean Dixon, that she routinely consulted. Not aware of any evidence it influenced Bonzo, but everyone's partner has some weird thing, right?
fair enough
True, but good agit prop leverages existing themes.
Anything is a more likely explanation than crash-landed alien spaceships.
I agree. I mean lets assume it is true: how could the US government have failed a real alien ship? Did the poor aliens fail at filling out some paperwork? I mean this ship had to spend so much energy just to get to us, what else could have failed them?
Seems reasonable that even an intersolar civilization would be subject to bugs, errors, degradation and bad luck. An intersolar trip could’ve damaged a craft far more advanced than what we can make.
Could be (perhaps even likely to be) an unpiloted craft. It could be a craft no more technologically advanced than human tech; maybe it’s an alien Voyager 1.
That is possible, strange things happen at sea.
Now in the case that they crashed due to a bug, then the programming profession is safe from program verification and AI, I like that option!
A good point. Although it could just be a probe. It could have been programmed to crash land on Earth. Much like we send probes to planets in our solar system.
That this is a possibility doesn't make it a likely one, however. But just pointing out that there's possible explanations that counter this thinking.
They didn't fill their ESTA. Dura lex sed lex
you really think a government would do that?
just go on the internet and tell lies?
Please add the /s to your comment so nobody accidentally thinks you are serious.
Even better, here's a link to the meme being referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0
Adding /s for people that can't get sarcasm? /h For humour.
What's interesting is your checklist also seems to work for people trying to oppress minority groups.
So basically it's the steps to building popular consensus despite missing or contrary facts.
Fascinating.
“Who benefits?” is alway, always the most important question.
I’ve read a lot about the US govt. activity during the end of WW2 (op paper clip, moving Japanese scientists that developed bio/Chen weapons here) , the cold war (long list, but basically fighting a war for capital) , up to fighting socialist “land reform” in Latin America. Everything has a direct line to monied interests, it’s almost strikingly obvious if you have an objective view of what the natsec space is doing. This just doesn’t compute for me. How would monied interests be served by this?
No, you're not insane. That's a more rational explanation than ET is.
We've been warned for a while about this type of thing going on. I guess this is it, it's going on, and we can maybe expect it to be amplified with LLMs.
chaos is an opportunity.
whether the original signal was generated by little grey men or at the behest of old white ones, there will be amplification by opportunists.
I wasn't clear but I meant the misinformation, I guess you are too? :)
Nope. Idle hands and all that...
Lmao. If aliens actually did exist (they may well do, but given the size of the universe, probably far far away from our terrible species) then why do all the paranoid conspiracy loving Americans seem to think that ONLY the U.S. would have found evidence of aliens, or found an alien craft or materials or whatever?
Because it's all bullshit, that's why. Granted, the Brits silenced themselves so that the entire world didn't know that they were the first to build a computer, so I suppose the secrecy required is possible.
But in all of human history, we're expected to believe that an alien craft was discovered by the U.S. gov, at the right time for us to have the tech to discover it and that this was the only craft around?
Surely an alien species' timelines aren't going to magically line up with ours, surely a supposed craft could've landed at any point in our short history on this planet.
Every month or two there some kind of UFO story in US media. Is this some kind of propaganda to convince people that government needs more money to find out what is going on? Or maybe to keep people safe from UFO?
Close encounters of the blurred kind.
If, at some point in the future, we get small, handy, cheap, good quality cameras that people make a habit of always carrying around, then surely the nature of these phenomena will easily be determined.
This type of disclosure could destroy the society - what if we are just an experiment seeded and pruned by some alien civilization? Most philosophical reasons for a stable society would be thrown out of the window instantly.
Can we rule out UT? Ultraterrestrial, meaning "they" are from this Planet Earth, but maybe left due to an event (the flood?) many millions years ago, or maybe just 12 000 years ago (the younger dryas impact?).
My thoughts exactly, which is why I asked the question of "how did the government come into possession of this aircraft".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218316
If the US knew there were aliens it would have been exposed during the trump admin. Whether you like him or thought he did well or not you must admit he would've trumpeted this from the mountain tops.
If this is hidden in some black budget somewhere you think they would have told Trump or anyone in his administration? No freaking way. It is well documented that even his closest advisors carefully controlled the information he was given.
A lot of people have remarked that the government couldn't keep a secret this big for so long. This is correct but misses the point that this secret wasn't kept. I've heard this story multiple times in my life, it's been a staple of US lore for decades and numerous whistleblowers have come forward in the past to retell it. All have been discredited and often smeared as nuts and the media has reported as much and moved on. If this really is true and they really do have a massive disinfo campaign to protect it, we have no choice but to admit that they have never kept a lid on this through secrecy, they have done it through character assassination and control of the media narrative, turning anyone who speaks up into a lunatic off his meds, a liar, and so on, and then moving the public's eye onto something else. That this strategy has worked so effectively and for so long is scarier than aliens, IMO.
Really weird how political this is. UFOs are totally real but space lasers are funny, yet the evidence for both is basically the same grainy video. General AI as a strong problem, indeed.
Does anyone remember the story of Bob Lazar:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar
Discussion of this story from a couple of days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36195832
Dont get my hopes high. I have the feeling it will be a disappointment. Also why would aliens only visit the us? Surely other countries would be in possession of alien tech if the us was.
I don't believe that there are any alien vessels, intact or otherwise. But I would imagine that a superpower with global reach and a stealth program could (and would) gather craft before the countries where they were located knew they were there.
> I don't believe that there are any alien vessels, intact or otherwise.
Me neither, but as the saying goes: “i want to believe”. Guaranteed there’s nothing more than a guy that’s either crazy or marketing a book.
> But I would imagine that a superpower with global reach and a stealth program could (and would) gather craft before the countries where they were located knew they were there.
By traveling to china or russia and snatching ufos from right under their nose? I doubt it. I think if anything remotely alien would visit earth everyone would know.
Right, America has trouble retrieving it's own equipment when it is downed near (not in) adversarial territory. That's with the advantage of knowing exactly when and where the equipment went down and with the benefit of advanced planning for a potential recovery.
There's no way they are suddenly so much more competent when the downed equipment is "alien." If this stuff is so easily tracked, then it's not so easily hidden from the public.
And if this stuff went down in a smaller country, you can bet there are plenty of people out there ready and willing to pay for it just because. We have difficulty enough charging wealthy people with real crimes, much less putting them away for buying alien technology.
Maybe Afghanistan? OK this is sci fi materials...
The article states they happen all over the world and the whistleblower suggests other nations do have them. Give it a read!
Because the internet and everything you use every day was invented in america, the waterways are controlled by american aircraft carriers, the moon is american, the silicon you use is made in the american pseudo-colonies of japan, south korea, and taipei. America is the invisible roman empire, and the american corporate oligarchy is Caesar. Weapons systems generations ahead of the competition. All trade done in dollars, all entertainment and science conducted in english. All data flows through american megacorps that answer only to the american oligarch. Pure hegemony so strong most people aren't aware that it exists.
Technology to fly light years. But not the technology to land on earth without crashing.
Not that I'm drawing conclusions, but have you considered the possibility that the stuff that crashes is the alien equivalent of the ATV or the hoverboard?
Miscalculated lithobrake because of different atmosphere and gravity.
Surprise!
Maybe their equipment and pilots are in desperate shape after untold generations crawling across the black.
They don't tend to last more than 20,000 years before some malfunction brings them down.
There's sightings all over, other countries are similarly secretive/in the dark.
It's for the same reason when you find yourself being forced to enter a 'state' on a website address form , yet you're not from the US.
Most likely. It find it funny when aliens in movies almost always land in the us. It may be the world’s most awesome country, but wouldnt at least some of these aliens be curious about german beer or south korean food?
You can clearly see the electric lights of population centers from space. If aliens were doing surveillance, they'd probably stick to the darker spots.
After all, out planet is surrounded by artificial satellites, and we make no attempt to hide them. So clearly some humans are capable of putting things into orbit, and those things could be weapons.
That's weird, when I watch Japanese TV shows a disproportionate amount of the aliens go to Japan
Countries besides the US also have states.
My old country had several smaller countries nested inside it, but no states.
Countries with states:
South Africa?
Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr
sigh .... I don't know why I didn't think of that first ...
The Guardian has been tentatively placed in the "Tabloid" category. In the absence of UFO evidence emerging, there they shall stay.
Let’s suppose that aliens where able to travel from distant galaxy to earth.
Let’s suppose that they didn’t travel to dispose of resources abundant on earth (in which case it seems obvious that they would most likely already ostensibly or furtively dominating the world with their advanced technologies). For example, instead they want to make tourism in invisibility-intangibility suits: "look my darling, how quaint this planet is!".
I very strongly doubt any group of human could catch an alien vehicle of such an advanced civilization.
Humans crash probes into planets and asteroids.
At the scale of the galaxy, alien probes could have launched long before humans were even a thing.
Or if they had expected intelligent life, they wouldn’t know how intelligent the life would be. They could suspect equal intelligence to theirs.
In the chance that this equally intelligent life could capture this probe, self destruct may be the optimal strategy.
People are making the mistake of assuming an all knowing intelligent life-form. There are at least some feasible scenarios where alien craft could crash into earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTHB8iC1C0E
The X planes project was intentionally obscured by the idea of "aliens" to hide the unhideable. It's no different here.
Global IQ getting lower at an alarming pace.
Since IQ is designed to be a normal distribution, isn't the average IQ the same (100) year after year?
We've probably peaked in the western side of the world...
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html
yeah this is the first time some people said that there are aliens visiting the planet
When this is ultimately revealed to be true, I just want this reference here to show you: I told you so.
I hope Bob Lazar is kicking back with a cigar and a cold one in his backyard and having a good day.
The fact of the matter is the implications if this is real. Which it probably is to a point. Free energy devices and instant travel would decimate the economy that keeps the elite in power.
“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.” ― Ben Rich CEO Lockheed Skunk Works
Why would it decimate the economy and oust those in power when every other new advancement seems to grow the economy and concentrate wealth on those already able to invest in it?
Exactly. You don’t think the US or whatever nation state would absolutely use these technologies to try and conquer the rest of the world or acquire power/money?
The “elite” who brings the world infinite power will be the most famous and remembered and respected human who ever lived, and will live immortal in the history books.
Call me naive but I don’t think the desire to keep the status quo is greater than the desire to be the literal savior.
The "elite" in many cases aren't part of the ruling class due to some intrinsic greatness, but because they were usually born into it.
I would think the "wealthy elites" would be dying to get their hands on the tech so they can turn it into a product that generates even more wealth.
Market forces are stronger than government forces.
Just like JP Morgan did with Tesla.
> Free energy devices and instant travel would decimate the economy that keeps the elite in power.
If free energy had that effect, electricity prices wouldn't sometimes go negative.
Also, why would instant travel (at what resource cost?) be any worse than e.g. telepresence robots for humans and just-in-time delivery for goods?
Because to phrase it in a certain way - the final 10 yards of power are exerted in meatspace.
You can video chat with dissidents around the world? Cool, the state can still kick in your door or shut off your ISP or shut off your cross-border financing at the ISP or..
You can travel to join those dissidents and come back as you please, wherever whenever? Where can the State able to enforce final power there? It’s much more limited.
> Cool, the state can still kick in your door or shut off your ISP or shut off your cross-border financing at the ISP or..
Or use a drone, hence why that's clearly not sufficient technology to undermine the Illuminati or whoever it is that's supposed to benefit from suppressing space magic rapid transit.
Well, you could “instant travel” an IED into your political adversary’s bedroom. That would be pretty bad.
Can do that with a tube filled with any of a wide range of fuels and oxidisers, too.
Assuming this is legit, what makes you believe they understand anything about this tech? They might literally have been scratching their heads all this time with this stuff. We might simply not understand the physics by which it operates and have no ability to do anything with it except dust it off periodically and let another team of eggheads strike out. I can't think of any major technology we currently have which doesn't have a totally legit origin story and which the prevailing scientific and engineering ability of the time didn't enable, so I doubt any real advances have ever come out of this.
We been studying biology for many years and can't figure it out. Cells are basically alien technology to us.
The "source" of that Ben Rich quote is a MUFON article by Tom Keller, more amazing quotes: https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/opinion/editorials/201...
That's actually a misquote:
> "Ben Rich is constantly misquoted as saying “We now have the technology to take E.T home.” That is not what he said.
At the end of his presentation he showed his final slide, a picture of a disk-shaped craft – the classic “flying saucer” – flying into a partly cloudy sky with a burst of sunlight in the background and he gave his standard tagline.
It was a joke he had used in numerous presentations since 1983 when Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extraterrestrial,” a film about a young boy befriending a lost visitor from space and helping the alien get home, had become the highest-grossing film of all-time. Rich apparently decided to capitalize on this popularity. By the summer of 1983, he had added the flying saucer picture to the end of a set of between 12 and 25 slides that he showed with his lecture on the history of Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works division."
Free energy is not real, you've been watching too much conspiracy material designed by said elites.
well, gibbs free energy is real
Gibbs free energy is an equation for maximum work, not free energy as in magic that violates thermodynamics.
My feeling is that they're prepping us for full disclosure. The evidence and witnesses that were seeing more recently are less fringe and more mainstream. They also don't seem to be trying as hard to debunk claims as they used to. The fact that the Guardian has covered this seriously is quite surprising, they usually treat this issue like a joke.
Could this be ascribed to a generational change in the general population which includes journalists and editors and whatnot?
ex-airforce claims that the air force is hiding alien craft.
What's more likely?
1. That aliens who can break the speed of light were successfully shot down decades ago by the US using... a phantom f-4?
2. The "whistleblower" is spreading FUD to encourage an increase in the airforce budget
Or is this another instance of "UFOs appear when we are close to a nuclear crysis"?
Is not the only ex air force person with wacky claims.
Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary evidence.
Another episode of 'people who sit in a box and stare at a screen all day tell us that the military pilots, air traffic controllers and government workers are mentally ill or lying because something they say challanges the customery view of what constitutes reality outside the box with the screen'.
More talk of aliens, it’s either that or 10 pixel blurry photos of one. Coincidence?
Funnily all UFO sightings happened in America. Coincidenc i don't think so
Remember those mysterious propulsion patent the us military filed?
Perhaps they had inspiration
what mysterious propulsion patents? I'm out of the loop.
Google Pias patent propulsion
I hope someone keeps an archive of these comments.
HN is in for quite the gut punch. All of this is happening because of the 2023 NDAA provisions where congress invalidated all NDAs blocking disclosure (to congress, not the public).
Not saying this guy is 100% legit, but hang on…
I'm not saying it's not aliens....
....but it's not aliens.
The MIC wants to juice defense spending again.
Where's Art Bell when we need him!?!?!?
Indeed. The real question is why are the aliens apparently loosening their grip and letting the government release more information now? Is this some alien end game!?!?
Art Bell’s show was a hoot to listen too.
This is what happens when misinformation runs rampant. Legitimate news publications are being pressured by know-nothings on the internet listening to a guy who is literally not a primary witness to anything he claims to have "proof" of.
Happens every now and then, but lately, the UFO crazies keep resurfacing every few months.
The dumbest are dragging down credibility, as usual. If there were aliens, they'd have communicated or killed us by now.
Lol
Science fiction, literally.
Wow, another UFO story about how one guy said something but he was reaaaaallly believable right?
Lmao.
The ultimate reason why I don’t believe in this despite the attention this seem to be getting from congress and the more reliable than one can expect witnesses at least if we take them on face values this time around is that Trump hasn’t tweeted a selfie with ET during his presidency…
Pish posh. Psy op.
This is CIA psyop to distract and hid in this noise, actual news, that it is been exactly 10 years since whistleblower former intelligence Edward Snowden told world the truth about CIA and U.S. government.
What is the connection ? Headlines:
> *Whistleblower former intelligence* official says government possesses ‘intact and partially intact’ craft of non-human origin
And here is Snowden interview from 5 hours ago: SNOWDEN REVELATIONS 10-Year Anniversary: Glenn Greenwald Speaks with Snowden & Laura Poitras on the Past, Present, & Future of Their Historic Reporting | SYSTEM UPDATE #93
https://rumble.com/v2sgyx2-snowden-revelations-10-year-anniv...
Try searching the web "Whistleblower former intelligence" it is all about UFOs now.
then add "before:2022" to search query, this is what CIA trying to do.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://www.google.com/search?q=Whistleblower+former+intelli...
Or is it a psyop to make us think it's a psyop to remind us how powerful the CIA is?
Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations (ietf.org)
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-farrell-tenyearsafter-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097082 (10 days ago)
The “news” is an anniversary?
Yes, it is news because subject matter is still relevant as before and CIA want people forget about this and instead think about UFOs.
If I hadn’t seen this post about UFOs and clicked on the comments I wouldn’t have read about this anniversary at all.
That is exactly his point, isn't it?
I don’t think he was encouraging people to read about or discuss UFOs as he called the topic a CIA psyop.
Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (Nasic), confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” to the Debrief, adding: “We are not alone.”
...
Grusch said it was dangerous for this “eighty-year arms race” to continue in secrecy because it “further inhibits the world populace to be prepared for an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario.”
“I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to re-assess their priorities,” Grusch said.
A conspiracy spanning the better part of century should have more high-level whistleblowers than Grusch and Grey. If their claims are proven out the names Grusch and Grey will be immortalized in history. We still talk about the Gutenberg printing press. Centuries from now people will still talk about Grusch and Grey, and how they kick-started a new era of human knowledge.
Are we to believe that over the course of eighty years, comprising hundreds if not thousands of individuals, many of whom would have access to the same documents and materials, not a single one of these individuals, motivated by either honor or ego, decided to make this world historical disclosure?
The story seems engineered to appeal to the conspiracy theorist. A brave iconoclast bucks the system and exposes a massive coverup - a truth that just happens to confirm all the poorly sourced and speculative claims made by the true believers. Wait, why haven't we seen any miraculous technology derived from alien tech? Ahhh, this tech exists, but it's hoarded by a secretive cabal who may or may not themselves be aliens/reptiles or blood-drinking elites. Etcetera, etcetera.
On the other hand ... it would be apropos if bureaucratic inertia led to a world-shattering disclosure. And the conspiracy theories could be 95% b.s. and 5% truth.
For all those reasons I'm not really convinced. Are Grusch and Grey convinced because the evidence is that overwhelming? Are they seeped in online UFO conspiracy culture, and reading a very slanted interpretation into the intelligence documents they have accessed? Are the analyses the military has run on any recovered materials sufficient to determine an origin in non-human intelligence? Have any experts outside the military examined and tested these materials? Does there exists genuine recovered craft ala Independence Day or are the "craft" large meteors that, if you squint, kind of look like a spacecraft? Have they recovered biological material?
Ultimately we won't be able to make a true determination until we get some actual evidence. First, reviewing any documents that supposedly contain these extraordinary claims. Second, interviews with other intelligence officials who have spoken with Grusch and have had access to the materials. Third, getting these materials into the hands of relevant experts, to determine if non-human intelligence is the most likely source.
If an extraterrestrial intelligence has reached the level of ability needed to transport large masses over vast interstellar distances, they are not lazily buzzing F/A-18s off the coast of California.
They're not coyly darting to and fro in a game with, almost exclusively American, pilots.
They're not hiding themselves from humanity, for whatever reason.
Their immense power would be like the Sun shining next to humanity's candle. They would not care, or even know to care, about how we would react to their presence.
Their interaction with Earth would be like Earth's with Mars. Sure we take steps to sterilize Mars rovers to prevent contamination but only because when we drill the hell out of that rock in broad daylight for all the Martians to see we want to make sure we only get Mars stuff.
I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
We also often prefer not to disturb animals because they are interesting and we think they have value.
Of course there are motives that intefere with that; but you can't make a blanket assumption about an alien racing traveling vast distances through space to visit. Maybe they would just want to observe out of interest.
Darn. Guess I need to be distracted from Biden's corruption now. Darn you, diversion tactics!
Sounds like you were already distracted by someone else's diversion.
Is it my impression or looking at all those irrelevant jobs, like people trying their best to... : * Censoring Internet: claiming that, watching porn has something to do with real world threats. * Protecting Skies: 90% of the time is waste of money, but well there is new threat the "aliens" yay... our job is not over xD
And honestly it's not that different from business made by climate change, AI threats, pandemic and so on (that I can summarize as "fear"), only that there is need more money... or the job is at risk...
P.S: I'm not thinking some of them are not real threats, just that they are abused.
Won't happen.
Why? The most obvious questions will be asked, and those questions will hurt the financial interests of the powers-that-be.
Questions like "how did they get here?" and "what is the energy source that powers these crafts?" Politicians with stock portfolios chock full of Oil&Gas stocks will certainly not want that info seeing the light of day. Same with those who hold defense stocks - all those trillions spent and they can't shoot down a small craft?
That's nothing to say of the major religious organizations that will inevitably whine and cry that their gravy train is also now also permanently derailed. No more tithing or mandatory donations to a god when there are now species from another planet coming and going as they please, and are likely thousands of years ahead of us.
Your understanding of incentives is backwards. Politician's stock portfolios aren't fixed in stone. They can sell their Oil & Gas and then short it, or more importantly invest in whatever single company they would steer the commercialization of a new power source to. Defense stocks go up, not down, when people discover there is a new threat we need to arm ourselves against with newer weapons because the old ones were inadequate. And major religious organizations wouldn't suffer at all if aliens exist - I know of no major religion that denies the existence of alien life. Meanwhile, during turmoil, more people turn to religion.
> No more tithing or mandatory donations to a god when there are now species from another planet coming and going as they please, and are likely thousands of years ahead of us.
While certainly there would be tension caused by the canonical issues, I don't think people will stop making pleas to what they perceive as higher powers. I would expect that such a shocking revelation would cause more people to flock to the church because they suddenly realize how small and powerless they are.
Yes, but the whole thing about "(insert deity of your choice here) made man in his own image" that seems to be quite prevalent throughout most major religions gets debunked almost immediately if there's some bipedal creature that predates our entire civilization showing up in a hyper-advanced spacecraft.
There are no higher powers if someone rolls up being able to do what our current understanding of physics calls magic or has no way to explain it.
As someone raised southern baptist but no longer religious, they'll just change the meaning behind the phrase.
"He made us in his own image in the sense of our spirit"
"He is imperceivable and therefore He may take many forms" (I.E. when God was a flaming bush)
Or my fave, "He works in mysterious ways".
The church will adapt as it always has for millennias.
Agreed. The various scriptures would simply be reinterpreted to align with our current understanding.
Even if some scripture explicitly stated that aliens do not exist, the existence of aliens would not disprove, or even diminish the possibility of the existence of God. From the perspective of practitioners it would simply mean that whoever wrote that scripture misunderstood what was told to them. In other words, man is fallible, and easily forgiven for misinterpreting the word of God. I honestly believe that the arrival of aliens wouldn't even prove to be a minor speed bump for organized religion.
"Surely THIS piece of logic will be the one which topples the concept of Religion"
Successful conspiracies seem hard to keep a cap on when they get too big. If this is the first leak of something true related to actual materials, it could spur the few non-evil congressman to dig further and cause further leaks. If this is a true conspiracy and they had complete control, all of this UAP stuff wouldn't have popped up in the media and in congress in the past few years.
Nah it would spur the evil ones more. Knowing what companies got tech access first would be worth billions when insider trading.