They're here

[tede02]

20 hours ago, Castanza said:

 

 

Who knew it was as simple as asking for a Pentagon report and then coverage by NPR 

 

LMAO. These guys can't get their story straight. In the 2021 UAPTF report, they reported that 144 out of 145 cases reviewed could not be identified even though 80 of them were picked up by multiple sensors. The new report says virtually everything they look at can be identified. It's a total joke.

 

One of the Florida congressman (Moskowitz) said something that keeps me interested. Every time they (members of congress) ask the pentagon for answers or try to set-up hearings, they get HUGE push-back. The obvious question is why? If there's nothing there, why is there a vicious resistance at every turn? It doesn't make any sense. 

 

There's so much dis-info out there, it's difficult to sort through but I remain very curious about what lies behind all the obfuscation. 

Edited March 14 by tede02

[ValueArb]

23 hours ago, Castanza said:

 

 

Who knew it was as simple as asking for a Pentagon report and then coverage by NPR 

 

There is no path to truth if we only accept claims that support what we believe and always disbelieve claims that don't support what we believe.

Edited March 14 by ValueArb

[Castanza]

58 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

There is no path to truth if we only accept claims that support what we believe and always disbelieve claims that don't support what we believe.

 

I'm on the fence as to whether they exist or not. I spend next to no time thinking about it. Statistically it makes sense...after all we are here. 

 

_________________

 

Incentives matter... If you want to hang your hat on the government as your personal standard of truth, by all means...go for it. History past and present would vehemently disagree with your assessment. 

 

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." 

[ValueArb]

On 3/14/2024 at 12:27 PM, Castanza said:

 

I'm on the fence as to whether they exist or not. I spend next to no time thinking about it. Statistically it makes sense...after all we are here. 

 

I fully believe alien life exists in the universe and most likely in our galaxy. But all available physics and evidence strongly infers that UAPs and UFOs have nothing to do with aliens. 

 

First, traveling any faster than a small fraction of the speed of light is incredibly difficult and requires massive amounts of energy. Traveling anywhere near the speed of light is basically impossible, it would require so much energy you'd need an entire star to power a tiny space-craft. And even if you could do that, travel still takes thousands of years to reach earth from 90% of our own galaxy, let alone from even farther away in the rest of the universe. Lastly, if you are patient enough to do all of that, the enormous energy output required to slow your alien craft would be easily detectable from earth. 

 

Lastly, going faster than the speed of light would break casuality in the universe and we've never ever seen anything that indicates that can happen.

 

And if somehow aliens can beat all of that and get here undetected, they went to all this effort to play hide and seek with a species that is no more powerful than an ant to them?

 

Whenever I talk about actual physics with a UFO nut, they always pivot to "well the aliens have advanced technologies based on advanced physics that allows them to do things we haven't yet discovered". Well if we are making up magic technologies and physics then in that case UFOs are just as likely to be angels sent by a god. Why assume aliens when your assumption is supernatural magic exists?

 

There are thousands of legitimate scientists scanning the skies every day for light and radio transmissions that would indicate whether alien civilizations exist anywhere. We have so far come up empty, doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere (unless the Great Filter is real) but it makes it even harder to believe they are flying around on Earth.

[rkbabang]

I have no idea if they are here or not, or if they've ever been here or not, or if they have been here that they are from outer space or from somewhere else (interdimensional, time travel, etc.), but one thing I do know is that I don't trust the Pentagon to tell me the truth about what they know or don't know any more than I trust that the CIA didn't kill JFK. 

A Pentagon report is no information at all.

 

[Castanza]

52 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

I fully believe alien life exists in the universe and most likely in our galaxy. But all available physics and evidence strongly infers that UAPs and UFOs have nothing to do with aliens. 

 

First, traveling any faster than a small fraction of the speed of light is incredibly difficult and requires massive amounts of energy. Traveling anywhere near the speed of light is basically impossible, it would require so much energy you'd need an entire star to power a tiny space-craft. And even if you could do that, travel still takes thousands of years to reach earth from 90% of our own galaxy, let alone from even farther away in the rest of the universe. Lastly, if you are patient enough to do all of that, the enormous energy output required to slow your alien craft would be easily detectable from earth. 

 

Lastly, going faster than the speed of light would break casuality in the universe and we've never ever seen anything that indicates that can happen.

 

And if somehow aliens can beat all of that and get here undetected, they went to all this effort to play hide and seek with a species that is no more powerful than an ant to them?

 

Whenever I talk about actual physics with a UFO nut, they always pivot to "well the aliens have advanced technologies based on advanced physics that allows them to do things we haven't yet discovered". Well if we are making up magic technologies and physics then in that case UFOs are just as likely to be angels sent by a god. Why assume aliens when your assumption is supernatural magic exists?

 

There are thousands of legitimate scientists scanning the skies every day for light and radio transmissions that would indicate whether alien civilizations exist anywhere. We have so far come up empty, doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere (unless the Great Filter is real) but it makes it even harder to believe they are flying around on Earth.

The problem with your argument is that it’s completely human centric. If the universe is billions of years old who says that timeline of “advanced beings” started with us? Idk about magic or angels or advanced alien space crafts and their source of energy. All I know is that if you took an iPad in a Time Machine and showed it to someone 250 years ago they would probably hang you for witchcraft. It doesn’t take that much to make something seem like “magic.” 
 

I really don’t care nor do I have a dog in the fight. But I think taking a hardline stance based on what we know, have and understand regarding physics as the litmus test/basis for every other potential is a bit biased. 
 

And I agree with @rkbabang which is really my only point. Regardless of what’s “true” or “possible” the pathological lying government isn’t going to be my basis for fact and opinion. 

[ValueArb]

1 hour ago, rkbabang said:

I have no idea if they are here or not, or if they've ever been here or not, or if they have been here that they are from outer space or from somewhere else (interdimensional, time travel, etc.), but one thing I do know is that I don't trust the Pentagon to tell me the truth about what they know or don't know any more than I trust that the CIA didn't kill JFK. 

A Pentagon report is no information at all.

 

 

Sure the government might be lying about UFOs, but we don't have any evidence they are. But we have tons of evidence that leading UFO proponents have lied repeatedly.

[rkbabang]

4 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

Sure the government might be lying about UFOs, but we don't have any evidence they are. But we have tons of evidence that leading UFO proponents have lied repeatedly.

 

 

If you don't think there is just as much evidence of government lying as there are UFO nuts lying, then I don't even know how to respond.   The only thing a government report tells you is that this is what that government agency wishes you to believe at this time.

[ValueArb]

On 3/15/2024 at 2:43 PM, rkbabang said:

 

 

If you don't think there is just as much evidence of government lying as there are UFO nuts lying, then I don't even know how to respond.   The only thing a government report tells you is that this is what that government agency wishes you to believe at this time.

 

Again,

 

1) we have numerous cases of UFO sightings being mis-reported visual effects, planes, balloons, etc and strong evidence of UFO promoters willfully providing false information or even manufacturing outright frauds (Alien Autopsy, Mexican "alien" corpses, Bob Lazar, etc).

 

2) We have only allegations of government UFO coverups, nothing factual, despite such conspiracies requiring the silence of many thousands of current and former government employees. In the example of David Grusch's allegations, everything he's presented is hearsay, someone told him someone else saw something. 

 

The only reason to believe in a government conspiracy is if you want to believe UFOs are actual alien technology or entities visiting earth, because the actual evidence for aliens visiting earth is so undeniably weak. But if you only want to believe in things that are likely to be true,  you would require a far higher evidentiary bar before you could accept such an elaborate conspiracy theory.

[rkbabang]

4 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

Again,

 

1) we have numerous cases of UFO sightings being mis-reported visual effects, planes, balloons, etc and strong evidence of UFO promoters willfully providing false information or even manufacturing outright frauds (Alien Autopsy, Mexican "alien" corpses, Bob Lazar, etc).

 

2) We have only allegations of government UFO coverups, nothing factual, despite such conspiracies requiring the silence of many thousands of current and former government employees. In the example of David Grusch's allegations, everything he's presented is hearsay, someone told him someone else saw something. 

 

The only reason to believe in a government conspiracy is if you want to believe UFOs are actual alien technology or entities visiting earth, because the actual evidence for aliens visiting earth is so undeniably weak. But if you only want to believe in things that are likely to be true,  you would require a far higher evidentiary bar before you could accept such an elaborate conspiracy theory.

 

You misunderstand my point. It isn’t that UFO “enthusiasts” should be believed or are more/less credible compared with the pentagon. My point is that the pentagon weighing in on the topic provides no new information, because they can’t be believed. You don’t know their agenda and why they might want you to believe a certain thing at this time. This would also be true if they suddenly said there were aliens. Unless proof is shown and verified there is absolutely no information in a government pronouncement other than “This is what we want you to think.”

[ValueArb]

16 hours ago, rkbabang said:

 

You misunderstand my point. It isn’t that UFO “enthusiasts” should be believed or are more/less credible compared with the pentagon. My point is that the pentagon weighing in on the topic provides no new information, because they can’t be believed.

 

We have no evidence to support this belief. By "no evidence" its short hand for compelling evidence commensurate with the claim, so the more unlikely the claim the stronger the required evidentiary standard. Sure we can find isolated instances where "the pentagon" or at least high ranking US military have lied to the public, but the number of cases of that is dwarfed by the many times members of the pentagon have told the truth. So we clearly can't accept everything they say uncritically, just as we can't dismiss everything they say uncritically, but our balance should be opposite of what you say here, to tentatively accept their claims until we have compelling evidence not to.

 

16 hours ago, rkbabang said:

You don’t know their agenda and why they might want you to believe a certain thing at this time.

 

We have no compelling evidence they have any agenda other than to do their jobs.

 

16 hours ago, rkbabang said:

 

This would also be true if they suddenly said there were aliens. Unless proof is shown and verified there is absolutely no information in a government pronouncement other than “This is what we want you to think.”

 

Again we have no evidence to support this. There are millions of government employees, there are millions of US military members, they all don't think the same and they all don't have the same agenda, they don't all want the public to think the same thing,  but they all have jobs to do. To disbelieve the latest pentagon report on UFOs you have to have specific evidence that the specific people involved have mislead the public, have an agenda to mislead the public, etc. 

 

Try turning it around. Assume a team of respected academic scientists reviewed a bunch of UFO sightings and produced a report finding that a small number that were so well documented they were very unlikely they were faked, false, or mistaken, and had specific attributes that can only point to being evidence of an alien intelligence. 

 

If I said I don't believe it because UFO proponents always lie, would I be responding rationally to it? If you point out that's an irrational statement and I say, yea but "academics lie a lot too because they all have agendas" and produce a few random cases of academics caught laying, wouldn't you say, "what does that have to do with this very respected team of accomplished scientists"? I think we'd agree that I'd be wrong to make blanket assumptions in this manner, that the only way I could find the academics less than trustworthy is if they themselves had specific histories of making misleading or unconfirmed claims.

 

If they genuinely had unblemished records, I would have to tentatively accept their claim may be true until their study can be fully vetted. Only then based on the results of complete vetting either fully accept it as the best explanation or not. And if anyone who has vetted it claims it as untrue, preferably I'd read the study myself and review all the claimed facts, to decide who I agree with rather than using appeal to authority fallacy of choosing the authority I prefer most to match my world view.

 

So in the case of the Pentagon report, instead of dismissing it out of hand why not read it? What work did they actually do? What did they possibly miss or get wrong? Does it make any statements consistent with an agenda to produce a pre-ordained result?

 

Look, I'm an atheist, which just means I haven't seen any compelling evidence any god exists.  But if that evidence exists I'd sure like to know about it, and I would no longer be an atheist. Same with UFOs, I haven't seen any compelling evidence they are aliens, so I don't believe that but if compelling evidence surfaces I'd be excited to accept it. Finding evidence that overturns commonly held scientific models/theories is how we move our intellectual understanding of the universe forward, and is how many of our most advanced technologies have been derived. 

 

A similar example is dark energy and dark matter. We don't have any consensus scientific models to explain the cause of the effects we see in the universe that we labeled with those names. But one day we will likely understand them and it will likely lead to significant scientific and technological advancements (assuming they are all not just measurement errors) and a greater understanding of our place in the universe. So finding things "out of place" that break existing models is the most exciting possible thing for scientists to accomplish, which is why thousands of actual scientists are looking for aliens using scientific methods, with tools like radio and deep space telescopes and actually measurable data.

 

If someone someday does find compelling evidence that we've been visited by aliens, it would be as earth shattering as dark matter and dark energy. Scientists everywhere would be taking next steps to determine how did they get here and where did they go? What evidence of their propulsion technologies do we have? Did they get here at sub-lightspeed velocities and if so how did they survive such a long journey? If they travel at greater than lightspeed how do they accomplish it, and how does it affect causality? Etc, etc.

 

But I just don't let my excitement at the potential of that claim blind me to the weakness of the evidence given for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 18 by ValueArb