My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Some Schmo
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Jersey Girl wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 6:57 pm
Neil deGrasse Tyson Weighs in on Pentagon UFO Report and Alien Life | The View
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siZPaZ9hcEA
Like a lot of YouTube videos, the worst thing about that one is the number of idiots in the comments section. That one was so bad, it felt like I was on Fox News' website.

Christ, there are way too many stupid people in the world.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Here's what gets me about this whole subject: why now? How could they have gotten to us so quickly, putting aside travel time?

If you think about the percentage of Earth's history that is recorded compared to how old the Earth is, mankind is a tiny blip in a vast ocean. Aliens decide to show up within 200,000 years of the arrival of the species, and within about 4000 years of recorded history?

That is some serious progress, given how long it would take to plan and execute a trip for some faraway solar system. And of course, that assumes they knew we were here before leaving and wanted to investigate (I suppose one could entertain the idea of aliens touring/mapping the galaxy, but that presents it's own problems).

When we look at the stars, we aren't looking at what they look like today; we're looking at the very distant past. If an alien found us, how did they acquire that knowledge so quickly after our species' arrival on the planet?

All of this would necessitate vast technological advances, and I just don't see an intelligent species getting there before blowing itself up. Selfishness always comes before wisdom.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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The silliest irony by the alien buffs, an example of arguing from ignorance but in this case it's one that results in contradiction -- and I hate to say it, even Fravor has allowed this to color his commentary -- everyone thought Einstein was crazy in his day and nobody could understand his ideas and now he's being proven right on everything! But if there was any one thing that relativity proves is that the speed of light is the universal speed limit. And that's the most significant argument against aliens, that speeds are just too slow.

Given slow speeds, the most likely scenario (among the admittedly unlikely scenarios) is AI and there is no phoning home.

But even that suggestion slips into the trap of becoming an apologist for aliens. So if there are any disputes to AI, I don't plan to respond.

The meta discussion is important, but there really are only so many angles, and nothing from the meta discussion is nearly as significant as the distance and speed problem, so it's not something I think about at all when weighing the evidence of actual sightings. And for distances, I suspend disbelief.

In this case, the Navy is apparently getting bombarded by sightings. Is it a ruse just to get funding? If it is, it's a long game and it hasn't worked very well. Whatever it is, either the trend continues, interactions increase, or they don't. If they do, then we'll have more information and go from there. If they don't then, well, I guess that's that.

It's important to take this seriously as a country because even if it's a ruse from officials for money, even if it's a collection of psychological flaws of military personnel, and even if it's optical illusions wreaking havoc with equipment, the proliferation of any of these things = a serious security vulnerability.

Now, if the incidents fade away or fail to increase in intensity, then an argument could be made to just assume it's it's one of the reasons suggested above and live with it. It probably wouldn't be worth pouring tens of billions into pursuing an answer.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Dr. Tyson is awesome! He rightly pointed out the absurdity of jumping to a first guess assumption that these sightings must be of extra-terrestrial origin. That is so improbable that it should be the very last guess after everything else possible has been unequivocally excluded. One of his best arguments was the absurdity of anti-science types being in possession of incredible devices like smartphones that are only possible because of the very science they are so eager to dismiss and denigrate. They are incontrovertible proof that science really works!

In the comments to his video, some of the commentators to his video mentioned the instance of radar surveillance indicated an object suddenly dropping 60,000 feet in altitude in only one second, which is obviously an average vertical velocity of 60,000 feet per second. Assuming that its vertical velocity was initially zero before the drop and went back to zero upon completion of the drop, it would have to have accelerated to a peak velocity of 240,000 feet per second during the first half second of the drop, and decelerated back to zero again in the last half second. This would have required an incredible acceleration of 7500g for the 0.5 second, immediately followed by negative 7500g for the last 0.5 second. Any other scenarios would have required even higher acceleration rates, but for shorter fractions of seconds. As far as I can tell from the narrative, this movement was "detected" only on the radar screen, not actually visually observed. Because of this, it seems far more likely that it was some kind electronic glitch or advanced radar jamming than an actual physical movement of some kind of aircraft.
Last edited by Gunnar on Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

Post by Gunnar »

Some Schmo wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:46 pm
Here's what gets me about this whole subject: why now? How could they have gotten to us so quickly, putting aside travel time?

If you think about the percentage of Earth's history that is recorded compared to how old the Earth is, mankind is a tiny blip in a vast ocean. Aliens decide to show up within 200,000 years of the arrival of the species, and within about 4000 years of recorded history?

That is some serious progress, given how long it would take to plan and execute a trip for some faraway solar system. And of course, that assumes they knew we were here before leaving and wanted to investigate (I suppose one could entertain the idea of aliens touring/mapping the galaxy, but that presents it's own problems).

When we look at the stars, we aren't looking at what they look like today; we're looking at the very distant past. If an alien found us, how did they acquire that knowledge so quickly after our species' arrival on the planet?

All of this would necessitate vast technological advances, and I just don't see an intelligent species getting there before blowing itself up. Selfishness always comes before wisdom.
So obviously true to anyone one with at least a high school graduate level understanding of science and history who really bothers to think seriously about it, like you did! These are conclusions that any intelligent, moderately well informed person should be able to arrive at, if they tried, even without Neil deGrasse Tyson's help!
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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A clip of Sam Harris last month on Lex Fridman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Mqvex6tIE
Sam Harris wrote:(about the recent articles on Navy sightings) People are claiming the government has known much more about UFOs than they have let on....it's not going to be a comfortable position to be in as a super-rigorous scientific skeptic who's been saying there is no 'there' there for the last 75 years...it sounds like the office of naval intelligence and the pentagon are very likely to say to congress at some point in the not so distant future that we have evidence that there is technology flying around here that seems like it can't possibly be of human origin.

I don't know what I'm going to do with that kind of disclosure, maybe it's going to be nothing; no follow-on conversation really to be had, but that is such a powerfully strange circumstance to be in. What are we going to do with that, if in fact that's what happens? If the considered opinion, despite the embarrassment it causes them...is that this isn't a hoax, there's too much data to suggest that it's a hoax, there's too much radar imagery, too much satellite data ... that should arrest our attention, collectively, to the degree that nothing in our lifetime has.
At what point do we suspend disbelief on the meta discussions and agree to look at the footage?
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

Post by dantana »

I don't see how it could be aliens. There is no tech. we are aware of that would allow this. Therefor it must be terrestrial in nature, using tech we are yet unaware of.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Gadianton wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:44 am
At what point do we suspend disbelief on the meta discussions and agree to look at the footage?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but I like the way you modalise 'discussions' by sticking 'meta' in front of it ...

No-one is suggesting that (some of) the data relating to unidentified flying objects over past decades, much of which is in the form of images is unworthy of attention.

The point is, however, to decide what physical reality underlies such data. Just staring at the data and saying 'wow ...!' gets us nowhere useful. That is where we have that boring thing called a 'discussion'. Present indications, so far as I can tell, are that when a 'discussion' of the data is conducted by calm and scientifically well-informed people, they tend to come to a provisional conclusion such as the following:

(a) We have as yet no good explanation of the physical reality underlying much of these data, whether in image form or other forms.

(b) Of the possible explanations known to us, activity originating in stellar systems light-years away from our own still appears much less likely than activity or phenomena originating on the earth itself.

Yeah, boring and perhaps even disappointing, I know. But reality seems to function like a TV series that is always renewed for another season, regardless of audience figures and the number of people who actually like the program.
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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Well. It’s definitely been a curiosity for governments for a while. This CIA memo for example:

Image

I don’t think it’s a hoax, but I can’t say for sure.

i’ll come back with a thought that’s been marinating.

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Re: My Take on the UFO Craze Hitting Us Now

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Chap wrote:I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but I like the way you modalise 'discussions' by sticking 'meta' in front of it ...
Yes, I wasn't clear. By "meta" I mean debating logical and physical preconditions for the hypothesis, rather than entertaining any particular data for the hypothesis. I'm not saying it's wrong to dismiss by 'meta' considerations, it's quite necessary to do so more often then not. But, as an example of what I mean: Dismiss clairvoyance because the brain has been studied, and no energy signatures that could carry information have been observed entering or leaving the brain. As opposed to the Amazing Randi setting up a test scenario. Randi's test could in principle demonstrate consistency with the claim, and in turn, some credibility for the claim.
(b) Of the possible explanations known to us, activity originating in stellar systems light-years away from our own still appears much less likely than activity or phenomena originating on the earth itself.
I disagree that this is an example of a provisional conclusion. Rather, it's a precondition. To the extent that it's both precondition and conclusion, it is circular. It's rightly a precondition because there is no conceivable evidence that this observation wouldn't apply to, and we understand it just as clearly prior to entertaining any evidence as we do after entertaining any evidence.
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