9 pointsby paulpauper13 hours ago8 comments
  • D-Coder11 hours ago
    Here's my analysis:

    If an alien intelligence has reached Earth, it has technical capabilities at least a century ahead of ours.

    Either (a) they do want to be seen by us, or (b) they don't care if we see them, or (c) they do not want to be seen by us.

    For case (a), we would have unambiguously seen them by now.

    For case (b), we would have unambiguously seen them by now.

    For case (c), with their advanced technology, we'd never see them.

    So... I very much doubt that an alien intelligence is here.

    • kadoban11 hours ago
      This argument isn't _that_ compelling because: send today's tech back a century, use that as your aliens in case 'c'. They would 100% be able to see that tech. They wouldn't know what the hell they're looking at, or be able to do much about it, but they'd see it.
      • ZordonShumway7 hours ago
        If we’re talking about aircraft, the combination of modern radar mitigation and modern sensor packages would allow a time traveling plane or drone to be effectively invisible in 1925.

        Sure they’re not going to bend light around themselves, but they can fly outside of visual range and 1925 radar technology won’t stand a chance of detecting them.

        • kadoban4 hours ago
          Maybe this is a stupid question, but aren't they still going to be loud as fuck, and quite visible? How high do you need to be before you're not audible or visible? I guess go at night, sure, but...isn't all that crap more about being hard to precisely target than it is about being literally undetected?
      • viraptor10 hours ago
        It depends where you send it / why. There's lots of places you can send it where there's just nobody to see it. We still occasionally find an uncontacted tribes out there after all, so if someone didn't want to be seen (or even just seen in a place full of cameras), it would be trivial.
  • MilnerRoute2 hours ago
    The U.S. military actually promoted UFO sightings for years, as a way to cover military testing. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal published an investigative history of it through the decades...

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-fueled-ufo-rumors-decade...

  • 12 hours ago
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  • allears12 hours ago
    I neither "believe" nor "disbelieve" in UFOs. Some of the stories and evidence seem credible, but the "U" stands for Unknown. No reason to jump to "aliens."

    I don't like to form strong opinions about things I don't know much about. And if people are looking for something to worry about, this seems like it should be pretty far down on the list.

    • LocalH10 hours ago
      To be pedantic, the "U" in UFO stands for "unidentified"
    • itsanaccount12 hours ago
      "no reason to jump to aliens"

      I agree with that, which is why its pretty interesting the whistle blowers who went before Congress used the term "non-human intelligence" pretty extensively.

      In any case the point the article makes and the one I'm most interested in, is it looks like we've been lied to.

      • euroderf7 hours ago
        > "non-human intelligence"

        Why couldn't this be an A.I. that runs circles around us ?

        If an alien craft contains zero biomass, it might have taken thousands or even millions(!!) of years to finally arrive at our humble abode.

      • Isamu10 hours ago
        >it looks like we've been lied to.

        I don’t get this conclusion at all, please explain. The article makes estimates without showing their work, then arrives at some probability of a coverup. A coverup where the government releases footage and documents. They just don’t agree that the reports and footage constitute evidence that is compelling.

  • constantcrying11 hours ago
    Putting probabilities to these things just seems so silly. Especially when the claims are not mutually exclusive.

    UFOs being what they "appear to be" can mean a lot of things. UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects. The USSR and the Iran would have had multiple, very real, UFO sightings thought their time, due to the US military.

    There is a coherent explanation where neither the US military is deceiving anyone (to a large extent), nor UFO sighting being universally hoaxes. People see flying things in the sky and interpret them as some sort of object which should not be there. Across all cases these happens for one of these reason:

    - Characteristic behavior of a flying object is mistakenly interpreted as as uncharacteristic. Likely these are most cases

    - The object is genuinely novel and unidentified by the observer, but actually not hostile. E.g. you are seeing this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk

    - The object is unidentified, but actually hostile and coming from another nation. The USSR during the cold war and China now have very significant aerospace capabilities. Hostile spying activities are interpreted as UFOs (which is what they are).

    The US military is not deceiving anyone, because they themselves can not adequately distinguish these sightings from one another. Likely they could shed some light on some of these but are reluctant to do so.

    Giving all of these a "10^-3 to 10^-4" probability of being actual aliens hatching some intergalactic plot to keep humans down just seems very silly.

    • bdbdbdb10 hours ago
      > The object is genuinely novel and unidentified by the observer, but actually not hostile. E.g. you are seeing this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117

      I remember in the late 80s a lot of the UFO reports were triangular craft, and then the nighthawk was unveiled to the public, that's when I started to think maybe the are no aliens and we're just seeing advanced military tech

    • llbbdd10 hours ago
      I had this thought about every number or stay in the post, they all just seem to grasp at looking serious.
  • dangus12 hours ago
    This reminds me of one of the recent “UFOs” that was debunked as a literal commercial plane, obscured by clouds or something along those lines.

    Racing drones can keep up with F1 cars and UFO people still think that there’s a conspiracy going on.

    Like, yeah, of course the military is trying to hide the capability of classified aircraft. That’s not interesting.

    UFO believers are such losers, just like ghost hunters. It’s mean to say it like that, but that’s the truth.

    • itsanaccount11 hours ago
      I think Age of Disclosure is coming out. Might be interesting to watch if only to scratch your head about how many military and defense people are trying to convince people the opposite, that there are craft with extraordinary capabilities and they ARENT ours.

      I made fun of UFO people the same as I did the religious and bigfoot believers, but after the video in the Times in 2017, and all the military people who have come forward with roughly the same story.. I would very much like to know whats behind it.

      • dangus10 hours ago
        Really isn’t going to be an interesting watch.

        People in the military saying this stuff doesn’t really change anything. People in the military are just a cross-section of the other morons that make up this country.

        Over 40% of Americans believe that some UFOs have been alien spacecraft according to Gallup.

        In other words, 40% of Americans are fucking morons. [1]

        How many people believe that the virgin Mary magically got pregnant without having sex? And that’s something we know is scientifically impossible, even more so than the wildly improbable phenomenon of an alien spacecraft visiting us.

        A whole bunch of people in the military believe the Virgin Mary was a virgin, too.

        https://news.gallup.com/poll/350096/americans-believe-ufos.a...

        [1] This 30-40% number seems to also line up with a host of dumbass political opinions like being pro-authoritarianism. At any given point, around 30% of people in the world seem to be dumb as fuck.

    • hcv7612 hours ago
      You can say the same things about all religions.

      Its more about the architecture of the chimp brain defaulting to, manufacturing story as a hack, when it cant explain/predict or understand what it experiences.

      As philosopher Charles Taylor work has shown, the big shared stories of the chimp troupe (religions/ideologies etc) cant keep up with the rate of change, so chimp brains start searchimg for and latching on to what ever is available around them. And since the buffet table of available stories has exploded there is a splintering or lack of commonality in all stories. Every story looks silly to someone cuz they have already latched on to some other story. There are hard update limits to how frequently the brain can update a misguided story.

      Its just shit hardware architecture everyone has.

      • expedition329 hours ago
        It reminds me of early 20th century Egyptologists who can dispassionately talk about Ra and Osiris but take Jesus seriously.

        Men of science who perfectly understand why religion exists but their mind just has a BOSD that prevents them from attaining atheism.

      • dangus10 hours ago
        Yep, and as I pointed out in my other comment, 40% of Americans think some number of UFOs are alien craft. A huge number of people have really dumb opinions.

        So when you hear that some people in the military are also trying to repeat the same myths, you have to remember that they’re just a cross section of the public at large, and they certainly don’t all have clearance to know what’s going on with foreign adversaries’ espionage and military craft.

  • bigyabai13 hours ago
    (no photographic evidence of aliens enclosed, brace for disappointment)
  • 11 hours ago
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