I still yet to hear anything close to a plausible explanation of the situation. We have super advanced alien species who can travel across the galaxy, or even the universe, and they have found us. They watch over us and even though their technology is beyond our comprehension, they're lazy enough to get caught a few times here and there. Why would they just watch? Are they really that lazy that they get caught? Surely they know and understand our capabilities. It just doesn't make sense.
People are seeing things that they can't explain. That warrants investigation. Definitive statements about how these are not human seem motivated by ideology instead of evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If that evidence is presented I'm happy to change my mind here, but none of this ever adds up.
If we're ants/microbes to them, why wouldn't they just watch? Maybe UFOs are some interstellar view-master for alien kids. Maybe Earth/humanity is just boring, deepintoyoutube tier civilization without a lot of views, so objects pop in once in a while for a peek. All the cool alien kids are busy creeping on more viral civilizations.
Maybe it's a Sentinel Island sort of situation. The technology gap is vast, we've had ships wreck there or unauthorized visitors approach the island but though they attacked them both we've left them alone and haven't attempted to recover any of the "modern technology" that's abandoned there.
The Sentinelese are super close to us. They're hunter-gatherers, we were living like that practically yesterday (20k~30k years ago). Same genetics, same culture, just a little bit isolated.
By the way, we have no idea what the Sentinelese think of us or our technology. We don't know if they see it as more advanced or not, or how they perceive our presence. The only thing we know is that they're hostile towards visitors.
It has to be aliens, because they're always blurry regardless of caveman drawings or flying through the most highly instrumented Naval _Test_ Range on the planet.
> ever adds up
They're even capable of changing our reasoning and math: 1+1=Aliens!
To be fair, it sounds like you have no knowledge about the history of UAPs. Sightings, crashes and encounters did not start 1947, it goes back hundreds of years and even thousands of years depending on how one interprets the data.
We have extraordinary evidence, this is what is being presented right now, among other things.
> [...] they're lazy enough to get caught a few times here and there. Why would they just watch? Are they really that lazy that they get caught? Surely they know and understand our capabilities. It just doesn't make sense.
Yes, this line of thinking has been presented countless times. I believe everyone's first argument against UAPs or non human intelligence (NHI) is exactly this. There are numerous possible answers to this question, for example:
* The crashed ships are "gifts" for us to examine and learn from
* Sightings and encounters represent the tip of an iceberg, drawing us in to explore to and learn.
* We can create amazing things, sometimes our amazing things break for whatever reason, perhaps that is universal.
* Perhaps what we are witnessing is not NHI specifically visiting us, instead it is a consequence of how the ship moves through space. Perhaps the ships move in and out from what we perceive is our existence, while moving through space.
Point is; the history of UAP is ancient, the documentation and data is statistically significant, the disinformation campaign is insidious and the encounters are world wide.
> "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he writes. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe
That's very specific: not made by any government.
We know it's not aliens. It's never aliens. So, it's some sort of private party, probably a company.
Or maybe Lue Elizondo doesn't actually know the top secret state of the art of technology made by every government in the world, and he's just talking out of his ass because he's a con man and a fraud, and currently trying to sell a book.
The man tried to pass off a picture of a chandelier as a UFO. He claims he fought terrorists using astral projection. He's connected to the bullshit circus that is Skinwalker Ranch. He's not credible.
This is always the game with these people. Everyone's talking about Corbell's "jellyfish UAP" video - which is obviously just bird shit on the lens - and how there's a second video showing it leaping in and out of the water that definitely exists but of course that the public can never see. It's always allegations, claims, speculations, and rare circumstantial evidence that nine times out of ten turns out to be bunk. What has David Grusch actually revealed, other than a rehash of existing UFO folklore, and things he's been told by other people? It's all smoke and mirrors and people keep falling for it because of media hype, their inherent mistrust in government, and because they want to believe.
If there is something at the center of this - I promise you, I guarantee you the people talking about aliens and "NHIs" and interdimensional beings don't know anything about it.
I don’t believe in aliens (fermi paradox) but I doubt it’s a company.
If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could set their price and immediately become world renowned.
Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs….
>Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs….
As you return home, henchman grab you, blindfold you and take you to my secret lair, then bind you to a table with a laser mounted on the ceiling pointed at the table. I walk up to the table and power on the laser and its beam slowly moves toward you between your legs.
Me: "You figured it out. SPECTRE rules the world with UAPs and space lasers!! And that's unfortunate for you."
I start to walk away...
You struggle with the bonds confining you to the table, to no avail. And with just a hint of panic in your voice:
You're assuming the tech is some kind of ex-machina, something incredible (btw I'm not). In your scenario, I could ask the same: Why does the company need the government for then? Would you sell your time machine to the US or use it?
I think it's something trivial, probably boring, yet locked in some sort of confidential arrangement. I think we're on a scenario that the public should know something, but we can't know what UAPs are, and these two conditions are deadlocked.
> If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government?
Hedge fund stock market bullshit. You know, the kind that has people track movements of various CEOs, or buy aerial/satellite images of parking lots, and stuff.
That would be my main guess. As for "monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe" specifically, I'd look at PMCs and data brokers, but there's probably many more scenarios I'm failing to imagine right now.
EDIT: Also, to channel my inner Matt Levine: securities fraud?
> If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government?
They could play countries off each other to gain soft power over policy that affects other investments, ones easier to leverage that selling weapons. “That’s a nice military you got there, it’d be a shame if China/Taiwan/Israel/Iran/NK/Russia/USA had this one weird trick to obsolete it.”
It’d be even more impactful if it changed the nuclear MAD game, because the company could hide behind the risk of escalation. Don’t sell to any one nuclear power so that the others don’t immediately start nuclear war to preempt the new technology.
This is all ridiculously speculative but if humans managed to make a flying craft as fast and maneuverable as UFO witnesses say they are, missile defense and the end of MAD is my first thought.
There are 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe. We know of one civilization--ours, and it immediately began sending probes once capable. If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible, doesn't that solve both distance/speed of light/time scale objection and imply probes should be here by now? The sending civilization may not even still exist, but their probes would.
The odds definitely tell us that by now, we should be seen a vast swarm of Von Neumann self-replicating little machines all around us. I stand by those odds, that idea makes a lot of sense.
However, "Von-Neumman probes must exist if possible" is a very different statement from "UAPs are alien probes".
We know of only one planet with life. Of which there are estimates of forms of life number in the billions to possibly a trillion since the formation of our planet. One and only one form of life has evolved the intelligence to even as the question or conceptualize existence beyond this world and it took literally over a third of the age of the universe for us to get this far and short of sending machines beyond this planet, we (the living things) haven’t ventured much further than our own moon.
So…yes, until we see some tentacled slug monster land in Central Park…or their probe, I am going to assume that intelligent life is super rare. Lots and lots of time must pass to become intelligent and advanced enough to venture beyond the place where they live out there. Also, distances are so vast between these intelligent civilizations that there just hasn’t been enough time that has passed for them or their probes to reach us since the creation of the universe.
So advanced civilizations routinely: FTL to earth, fly around San Diego buzzing the navy, then head to the southwest where they have engine trouble and crash?
If you make reasonable assumptions about grabby aliens (the kind that wants to do VN probes and get here anyway), and condition on us having not yet noticed, then the current modelling suggests about 40-50% of the universe has already been occupied by them — the only reason we wouldn't have noticed is that light from the expansion just hasn't reached us yet.
> If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible, doesn't that solve both distance/speed of light/time scale objection and imply probes should be here by now?
We should've been seeing progressively more of them then, perhaps already been eaten by them.
Why not? Yes, we did send out probes...and where are we with them?
"If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible" That's a big if. Where is proof of these probes that you speak of?
Assuming they all can travel near light speed and considering time dilation, all interstellar civilizations will meet each other "from our perspective" somewhere a trillion years from now.
The weird phrasing "not made by any government" makes me think exactly the opposite. Whoever said it is probably being vague enough to tell the truth, we just don't know exactly what that truth means.
Fake news: someone built a new thing and was testing it in a Navy training range or was using it to spy on the test range and some Navy aircraft entering or exiting the range managed to take video footage of it.
The truth: an advanced intelligence capable of interstellar flight traveled dozens if not millions of light years to visit Earth and chose to fly perpendicular to a bunch of F/A-18s in a Navy training range and then disappear, never to be seen again by man or machine. They ignored all of the locations of industrial activity, all of the people, the land, the animals, the unique geologic features, the vast expanses of earth covered by multiple overlapping forms of radar and cameras pointed at the sky, and flew over an empty-ass stretch of ocean COINCIDENTALLY when some F/A-18s were there.
bingo ... and distraction from Trump appointing so many wildly unqualified and corrupt folks to government positions of power. Matt Gaetz to DoJ (etc) ... wait, look ... a UFO!
Every time I walk into r/UFO subreddit I'm amazed at the number of believers there and the length they are going to justify them. They have their own private slang and a list of obscure figures they constantly discuss. The most epic episode was about a year ago, when they were discussing a short clip from a military gun camera, which had a bird shit splattered on a protective glass. There were like a dozen of topics with thousands of comments, and majority of people were imagining some aliens in that clip. Very entertaining to read sometimes, kinda gives of r/Bitcoin vibes :)
Usurping the powers of Congress is the real issue here. If the military did things and hid them from Congress and the President, then they are in big trouble. Air safety is a secondary issue. National security is a concern, but given how long no one has been able to figure out definitive answers maybe it doesn't matter. On the other hand, drones are real and have also been buzzing military installations; that seems like a real national security threat that has been largely ignored.
It's always been mainly a cover story for experimental aircraft. That's why there are so many "UFO sightings" near the military base where they test the most experimental aircraft. Obviously.
In some cases it's just dirt on a lens or similar. Extremely occasionally there are aircraft they can't identify but in no cases is it ever clear that these are extraterrestrial.
This is the 2nd stupidest shit ever. Only after blasting off to live on Mars 8-/
No wonder the US political situation is such a disaster (and I don't just mean the election of the cheato).
With this much of the population, and this much of the representative legislature so far off the rails of reality, it's almost a miracle that anything gets done at all.
Readit News
People are seeing things that they can't explain. That warrants investigation. Definitive statements about how these are not human seem motivated by ideology instead of evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If that evidence is presented I'm happy to change my mind here, but none of this ever adds up.
By the way, we have no idea what the Sentinelese think of us or our technology. We don't know if they see it as more advanced or not, or how they perceive our presence. The only thing we know is that they're hostile towards visitors.
> ever adds up
They're even capable of changing our reasoning and math: 1+1=Aliens!
We have extraordinary evidence, this is what is being presented right now, among other things.
> [...] they're lazy enough to get caught a few times here and there. Why would they just watch? Are they really that lazy that they get caught? Surely they know and understand our capabilities. It just doesn't make sense.
Yes, this line of thinking has been presented countless times. I believe everyone's first argument against UAPs or non human intelligence (NHI) is exactly this. There are numerous possible answers to this question, for example:
* The crashed ships are "gifts" for us to examine and learn from
* Sightings and encounters represent the tip of an iceberg, drawing us in to explore to and learn.
* We can create amazing things, sometimes our amazing things break for whatever reason, perhaps that is universal.
* Perhaps what we are witnessing is not NHI specifically visiting us, instead it is a consequence of how the ship moves through space. Perhaps the ships move in and out from what we perceive is our existence, while moving through space.
Point is; the history of UAP is ancient, the documentation and data is statistically significant, the disinformation campaign is insidious and the encounters are world wide.
My suggestion is just to keep an open mind.
I don't want to keep an open mind when interpreting data. What I want is the exact opposite.
So, yeah. "I want to believe", but I don't want to have to bend my critical thinking in order to do so.
One word: teenagers.
Dead Comment
That's very specific: not made by any government.
We know it's not aliens. It's never aliens. So, it's some sort of private party, probably a company.
The man tried to pass off a picture of a chandelier as a UFO. He claims he fought terrorists using astral projection. He's connected to the bullshit circus that is Skinwalker Ranch. He's not credible.
This is always the game with these people. Everyone's talking about Corbell's "jellyfish UAP" video - which is obviously just bird shit on the lens - and how there's a second video showing it leaping in and out of the water that definitely exists but of course that the public can never see. It's always allegations, claims, speculations, and rare circumstantial evidence that nine times out of ten turns out to be bunk. What has David Grusch actually revealed, other than a rehash of existing UFO folklore, and things he's been told by other people? It's all smoke and mirrors and people keep falling for it because of media hype, their inherent mistrust in government, and because they want to believe.
If there is something at the center of this - I promise you, I guarantee you the people talking about aliens and "NHIs" and interdimensional beings don't know anything about it.
(Whenever you tell something is smoke and mirrors, it is very likely people will imagine something even more fantastical).
If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could set their price and immediately become world renowned.
Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs….
As you return home, henchman grab you, blindfold you and take you to my secret lair, then bind you to a table with a laser mounted on the ceiling pointed at the table. I walk up to the table and power on the laser and its beam slowly moves toward you between your legs.
Me: "You figured it out. SPECTRE rules the world with UAPs and space lasers!! And that's unfortunate for you."
I start to walk away...
You struggle with the bonds confining you to the table, to no avail. And with just a hint of panic in your voice:
You: "Do you expect me to talk?"
I laugh and say:
Me: "No Atotalnoob. I expect you to die."
With apologies to Ian Fleming[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film)
Edit: Fixed typo and formatting.
I think it's something trivial, probably boring, yet locked in some sort of confidential arrangement. I think we're on a scenario that the public should know something, but we can't know what UAPs are, and these two conditions are deadlocked.
Would that not be a government by definition?
Hedge fund stock market bullshit. You know, the kind that has people track movements of various CEOs, or buy aerial/satellite images of parking lots, and stuff.
That would be my main guess. As for "monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe" specifically, I'd look at PMCs and data brokers, but there's probably many more scenarios I'm failing to imagine right now.
EDIT: Also, to channel my inner Matt Levine: securities fraud?
They could play countries off each other to gain soft power over policy that affects other investments, ones easier to leverage that selling weapons. “That’s a nice military you got there, it’d be a shame if China/Taiwan/Israel/Iran/NK/Russia/USA had this one weird trick to obsolete it.”
It’d be even more impactful if it changed the nuclear MAD game, because the company could hide behind the risk of escalation. Don’t sell to any one nuclear power so that the others don’t immediately start nuclear war to preempt the new technology.
This is all ridiculously speculative but if humans managed to make a flying craft as fast and maneuverable as UFO witnesses say they are, missile defense and the end of MAD is my first thought.
Dead Comment
Why? Shouldn't probes be here by now?
There are 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe. We know of one civilization--ours, and it immediately began sending probes once capable. If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible, doesn't that solve both distance/speed of light/time scale objection and imply probes should be here by now? The sending civilization may not even still exist, but their probes would.
However, "Von-Neumman probes must exist if possible" is a very different statement from "UAPs are alien probes".
So…yes, until we see some tentacled slug monster land in Central Park…or their probe, I am going to assume that intelligent life is super rare. Lots and lots of time must pass to become intelligent and advanced enough to venture beyond the place where they live out there. Also, distances are so vast between these intelligent civilizations that there just hasn’t been enough time that has passed for them or their probes to reach us since the creation of the universe.
Seems likely.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.01522
The Great Filter is one possible explanation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrGpG0OrNws
We should've been seeing progressively more of them then, perhaps already been eaten by them.
it's going to turn out that absence of evidence is evidence of absence
Strong argument, no notes.
People have lied to congress a good bit in the past. It's safe to do if it's even a little difficult to prove.
That doesn't even count the times people lied to whoever is doing the testifying, such that they aren't knowingly lying to congress.
The truth: an advanced intelligence capable of interstellar flight traveled dozens if not millions of light years to visit Earth and chose to fly perpendicular to a bunch of F/A-18s in a Navy training range and then disappear, never to be seen again by man or machine. They ignored all of the locations of industrial activity, all of the people, the land, the animals, the unique geologic features, the vast expanses of earth covered by multiple overlapping forms of radar and cameras pointed at the sky, and flew over an empty-ass stretch of ocean COINCIDENTALLY when some F/A-18s were there.
What's next, a hearing on whether ghosts are real?
This really is at the root of so many of modern societies problems.
And really the biggest disappointment of the 21st century. How can we possibly still be this primitive 8-/
In some cases it's just dirt on a lens or similar. Extremely occasionally there are aircraft they can't identify but in no cases is it ever clear that these are extraterrestrial.
Deleted Comment
No wonder the US political situation is such a disaster (and I don't just mean the election of the cheato).
With this much of the population, and this much of the representative legislature so far off the rails of reality, it's almost a miracle that anything gets done at all.
Military bases and equipment with presumably the most sophisticated camera systems.
Says it all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phones_with_8K...