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Aliens and UFOs

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rofif

Banned
This came out yesterday, I thought it was fairly interesting. It sort of gets at some of the more emotional motivations behind the subject, both on the believers and skeptics side.


I don't know any of these people.
They kinda argue but they also say the same things lol. That Eric guy is a bit of an asshole... even though he is not saying anything wrong really
 

Razorback

Member
Good answer. If you had answered in the negative I would have either called you a creationist or an empiricist. I certainly can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that intelligent life exists outside of us. However, it seems nigh impossible that it doesn't. We would be special then. We aren't. It is fun to talk about. I've seen a ufo myself. I've seen a ghost too. I stand by both of my sightings that I was in sound mind. I can't prove to you either of them were real though. So round and round we go until a saucer lands in times square. I have a feeling even if it did there would still be doubters lol. I find it odd though that so many of the doubters aren't in the camp you might think. Many famous scientists believe in extraterrestrial life. Hawking for example. In my mind, the only thing to debate is whether or not they've been here or not. I think they have. I can't prove it of course. There's a ton of evidence. A ton. Whether it's good or not would be truly exhausting to research and none of us have that kind of time lol.

People often conflate the idea of intelligent life existing beyond Earth with the idea of us being visited by them. These two things are obviously related but it's misleading to bring it up because the latter is orders of magnitude more unlikely than the former.

This is usually why believers are dumbfounded that there are skeptics of the UFO phenomenon at all. They think the extent to which skeptics disbelieve is related to the other question of whether intelligent aliens even exist.
Either that or they think skeptics are close minded, conformists too afraid to engage with topics that have stigma attached. They must only judge the credibility of a topic by it's surface appearance. If it sounds like science fiction then it can't possibly be taken seriously.


I won't say there aren't any skeptics like that, I know there are. Some of the reasons Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives to dismiss this topic annoy me as well.
But let me try to explain why I personally believe that aliens visiting the Earth is extremely improbable. I'm talking fractions of a percent chance here.

Years ago I fell down the UFO rabbit hole myself, and I came out the other side having first hand experience of how flawed human reasoning is. Since then I got really interested in the topic of epistemology, the study of knowledge and how it's acquired and justified. I'm also a huge sci-fi nerd so I've always been interested in exploring deeply the question of alien life. If you'll indulge me, let's nerd out a little.

The Fermi paradox. An intelligent civilization using Von Neuman probes (Self-replicating colonizing robots) travelling at the speed of light could colonize every single star system in our galaxy in about 100 000 years. At 1% the speed of light it would take 10 million years. This is nothing compared to the age of the universe 14 billion years. This is enough time for a single civilization to colonize many many galaxies. So why hasn't this happened yet?

Why do I assume aliens would want to do this? Let's assume for some reason that most aliens don't want to do this. It would only take one species. The burden is on you to justify why ALL of them would not want to do this. This is called the Non-Exclusivity Principle. Maybe you can come up with reasons why some civilizations might choose not to do this, but to justify why ALL would follow the same path requires much deeper justification. Because expansion and resource acquisition is instrumentally valuable whatever goal you may have. Any non expansionist civilization competing against an expansionist one will always lose. This isn't me anthropormorphisizing how aliens behave. This is game theory, this is survival of the fittest, these are the rules of nature. If you want to get deeper, I can explain why the dark forest and other solutions to the fermi paradox are provably wrong, and it has mostly to do with this non-exclusivity principle.

Now you may ask, what makes me think this hasn't already happened? Maybe the aliens ARE everywhere, maybe we were seeded here by them. I believe this can't be the case because of something else called the Dyson Dillema.
Basically it goes like this. Energy is fundamental to any civilization, the most abundant and most readily available source of energy in the universe are stars. The economic incentive to capture this energy is obvious. We're not that advanced and we already have pretty sound plans on how to achieve this. Yes you've guessed it, Dyson Spheres, or more accurately, Dyson Swarms. These would be very easy to detect. Any expanding civilization would leave behind a dark sphere of expansion. The burden is on you to justify why they wouldn't do this. It would be like arriving at grand central station and noticing tons of 100$ bills on the ground and no one is picking them up. Something is going on, this needs explaining.

I'm trying hard to condense this information to keep the size of the post from exploding. There's A LOT I'm leaving out but these are my basic background assumptions on what I'd expect to see if an alien civilization was out there and advanced enough to travel the stars. Yet we look up at the sky and all those 100$ dollar bills, and no one has picked any of them up yet.

Not let's switch gears and try to come up with an explanation that both fits what we see and also allows for aliens to be visiting us right now. All following points MUST be true.

  • These aliens are advanced enough to get here.
  • These aliens do not care about free energy (stars) lying around, waiting to be picked up by some other competing civilization.
  • These aliens do not wish to make contact, they take carefull measures to stay hidden.
  • Despite being incredibly advanced (one must assume millions of years at least of technological progress over us), we still manage to get glimpses of them occasionally.
  • They are either letting themselves be noticed on purpose (Why? Do they enjoy trolling us?) Or they are surprisingly incompetent given how advanced they are.
  • Bonus optional point: Sometimes they even crash.
Given what I've established previously an alien civilization should most likely behave like (expansionist, or grabby according to Robin Hanson) these particular aliens seem very peculiar. No clear motive for being here. The only preference we can discern is that they wish to stay hidden, yet they often fail to do so. Can you imagine our civilization with an extra 10 000 years of tech advancement, failing to completely hide from a bunch of apes? If you can imagine that, you are severely underestimating what is possible with technology. The idea that they would even bother with anything other than nano-sized tech is the product of someone who didn't grow up reading good science fiction. Their ships seem to came in all shapes and sizes. Flying saucers, tic tacs, black triangles, green triangles, glowing orbs, meta-pods. Many of their ships even have lights on them which seems extremely counter productive.

I know what you're thinking. How can I possibly understand the motives of aliens? This is the same argument as god moves in mysterious ways. Whatever inconsistency you may find in their logic can be brushed aside by claiming they are unknowable. This is a cope. The laws of physics, natural selection, game theory, all these things confine what reasonable assumptions we can make about agents competing for resources in the world.

So what evidence do we have to justify belief in such weird aliens? Ultimately, we've been studying this phenomenon for more than 80 years. If there was actually something substantial here, wouldn't we expect for someone somewhere to have gotten a decent video at this point? It's just the law of large numbers. People often bring up the argument that everyone has a phone with a camera now. So that alone is sufficient to put the UFO issue to rest. But counter arguments mention that these cameras aren't good enough. "Have you tried taking a picture of a plane, or the moon?" BULLSHIT. This argument is nonsense in the face of the sheer number of people involved here and all security cams all around the world recording 24\7. And I DO have plenty of decent pictures of planes and the moon, I will upload proof on request. "Oh but if you saw one you'd be too shocked to blah blah." No! Stop it! You don't understand large numbers.

It is highly HIGHLY suspicious that every single piece of evidence is of objects in the LIZ (Low Information Zone) Meaning that all footage is of something beyond the range of identifiability. The blurry dot phenomenon. Always far away enough that you can't exactly tell what it is. This becomes a filter, a selection process. If the thing was any closer people would be able to tell what it was, and as such wouldn't share it with anyone. If you buy a better camera with a telephoto lens, now the aliens know to step back a further couple of miles.

What about personal testimony? You claim to have seen a UFO yourself, and that this is evidence enough for you, yet in the same post you seem to not like empiricism? I don't like it either but a good understanding of why should lower your confidence in the merits of personal testimony.

I saw a video recently that kind of blew my mind that more people aren't talking about it. Here's commander David Fravor, admitting to Joe Rogan that he and his pilot buddies often troll people with their F-18's. He would find campers in the middle of the desert at night and he would turn off his lights and go into low power mode to stay silent approaching them near the ground untill the last moment where he slams the afterburners and scares the living shit out these people.




Can you imagine what that experience must have been like for those campers? Good luck telling these people that what they experienced has a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And yes, it was THAT David Fravor that's admitting to pulling off a stunt like this. Not suspicious behavior at all. I don't buy any of the appeal to authority arguments that claim that we should pay special attention to these claims because they come from government officials.

Did you see the video posted here going over the history of AATIP?




I trust these people about as far as I can throw them.

Goddamn this post got long. My apologies OmegaSupreme, this is directed at UFO believers at large, not you in particular. Feel free not to respond.
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
People often conflate the idea of intelligent life existing beyond Earth with the idea of us being visited by them. These two things are obviously related but it's misleading to bring it up because the latter is orders of magnitude more unlikely than the former.

This is usually why believers are dumbfounded that there are skeptics of the UFO phenomenon at all. They think the extent to which skeptics disbelieve is related to the other question of whether intelligent aliens even exist.
Either that or they think skeptics are close minded, conformists too afraid to engage with topics that have stigma attached. They must only judge the credibility of a topic by it's surface appearance. If it sounds like science fiction then it can't possibly be taken seriously.


I won't say there aren't any skeptics like that, I know there are. Some of the reasons Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives to dismiss this topic annoy me as well.
But let me try to explain why I personally believe that aliens visiting the Earth is extremely improbable. I'm talking fractions of a percent chance here.

Years ago I fell down the UFO rabbit hole myself, and I came out the other side having first hand experience of how flawed human reasoning is. Since then I got really interested in the topic of epistemology, the study of knowledge and how it's acquired and justified. I'm also a huge sci-fi nerd so I've always been interested in exploring deeply the question of alien life. If you'll indulge me, let's nerd out a little.

The Fermi paradox. An intelligent civilization using Von Neuman probes (Self-replicating colonizing robots) travelling at the speed of light could colonize every single star system in our galaxy in about 100 000 years. At 1% the speed of light it would take 10 million years. This is nothing compared to the age of the universe 14 billion years. This is enough time for a single civilization to colonize many many galaxies. So why hasn't this happened yet?

Why do I assume aliens would want to do this? Let's assume for some reason that most aliens don't want to do this. It would only take one species. The burden is on you to justify why ALL of them would not want to do this. This is called the Non-Exclusivity Principle. Maybe you can come up with reasons why some civilizations might choose not to do this, but to justify why ALL would follow the same path requires much deeper justification. Because expansion and resource acquisition is instrumentally valuable whatever goal you may have. Any non expansionist civilization competing against an expansionist one will always lose. This isn't me anthropormorphisizing how aliens behave. This is game theory, this is survival of the fittest, these are the rules of nature. If you want to get deeper, I can explain why the dark forest and other solutions to the fermi paradox are provably wrong, and it has mostly to do with this non-exclusivity principle.

Now you may ask, what makes me think this hasn't already happened? Maybe the aliens ARE everywhere, maybe we were seeded here by them. I believe this can't be the case because of something else called the Dyson Dillema.
Basically it goes like this. Energy is fundamental to any civilization, the most abundant and most readily available source of energy in the universe are stars. The economic incentive to capture this energy is obvious. We're not that advanced and we already have pretty sound plans on how to achieve this. Yes you've guessed it, Dyson Spheres, or more accurately, Dyson Swarms. These would be very easy to detect. Any expanding civilization would leave behind a dark sphere of expansion. The burden is on you to justify why they wouldn't do this. It would be like arriving at grand central station and noticing tons of 100$ bills on the ground and no one is picking them up. Something is going on, this needs explaining.

I'm trying hard to condense this information to keep the size of the post from exploding. There's A LOT I'm leaving out but these are my basic background assumptions on what I'd expect to see if an alien civilization was out there and advanced enough to travel the stars. Yet we look up at the sky and all those 100$ dollar bills, and no one has picked any of them up yet.

Not let's switch gears and try to come up with an explanation that both fits what we see and also allows for aliens to be visiting us right now. All following points MUST be true.

  • These aliens are advanced enough to get here.
  • These aliens do not care about free energy (stars) lying around, waiting to be picked up by some other competing civilization.
  • These aliens do not wish to make contact, they take carefull measures to stay hidden.
  • Despite being incredibly advanced (one must assume millions of years at least of technological progress over us), we still manage to get glimpses of them occasionally.
  • They are either letting themselves be noticed on purpose (Why? Do they enjoy trolling us?) Or they are surprisingly incompetent given how advanced they are.
  • Bonus optional point: Sometimes they even crash.
Given what I've established previously an alien civilization should most likely behave like (expansionist, or grabby according to Robin Hanson) these particular aliens seem very peculiar. No clear motive for being here. The only preference we can discern is that they wish to stay hidden, yet they often fail to do so. Can you imagine our civilization with an extra 10 000 years of tech advancement, failing to completely hide from a bunch of apes? If you can imagine that, you are severely underestimating what is possible with technology. The idea that they would even bother with anything other than nano-sized tech is the product of someone who didn't grow up reading good science fiction. Their ships seem to came in all shapes and sizes. Flying saucers, tic tacs, black triangles, green triangles, glowing orbs, meta-pods. Many of their ships even have lights on them which seems extremely counter productive.

I know what you're thinking. How can I possibly understand the motives of aliens? This is the same argument as god moves in mysterious ways. Whatever inconsistency you may find in their logic can be brushed aside by claiming they are unknowable. This is a cope. The laws of physics, natural selection, game theory, all these things confine what reasonable assumptions we can make about agents competing for resources in the world.

So what evidence do we have to justify belief in such weird aliens? Ultimately, we've been studying this phenomenon for more than 80 years. If there was actually something substantial here, wouldn't we expect for someone somewhere to have gotten a decent video at this point? It's just the law of large numbers. People often bring up the argument that everyone has a phone with a camera now. So that alone is sufficient to put the UFO issue to rest. But counter arguments mention that these cameras aren't good enough. "Have you tried taking a picture of a plane, or the moon?" BULLSHIT. This argument is nonsense in the face of the sheer number of people involved here and all security cams all around the world recording 24\7. And I DO have plenty of decent pictures of planes and the moon, I will upload proof on request. "Oh but if you saw one you'd be too shocked to blah blah." No! Stop it! You don't understand large numbers.

It is highly HIGHLY suspicious that every single piece of evidence is of objects in the LIZ (Low Information Zone) Meaning that all footage is of something beyond the range of identifiability. The blurry dot phenomenon. Always far away enough that you can't exactly tell what it is. This becomes a filter, a selection process. If the thing was any closer people would be able to tell what it was, and as such wouldn't share it with anyone. If you buy a better camera with a telephoto lens, now the aliens know to step back a further couple of miles.

What about personal testimony? You claim to have seen a UFO yourself, and that this is evidence enough for you, yet in the same post you seem to not like empiricism? I don't like it either but a good understanding of why should lower your confidence in the merits of personal testimony.

I saw a video recently that kind of blew my mind that more people aren't talking about it. Here's commander David Fravor, admitting to Joe Rogan that he and his pilot buddies often troll people with their F-18's. He would find campers in the middle of the desert at night and he would turn off his lights and go into low power mode to stay silent approaching them near the ground untill the last moment where he slams the afterburners and scares the living shit out these people.




Can you imagine what that experience must have been like for those campers? Good luck telling these people that what they experienced has a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And yes, it was THAT David Fravor that's admitting to pulling off a stunt like this. Not suspicious behavior at all. I don't buy any of the appeal to authority arguments that claim that we should pay special attention to these claims because they come from government officials.

Did you see the video posted here going over the history of AATIP?




I trust these people about as far as I can throw them.

Goddamn this post got long. My apologies OmegaSupreme, this is directed at UFO believers at large, not you in particular. Feel free not to respond.

I skimmed it lol. At least you gave an articulate answer instead of the screeching like so many do. I don't understand those types. It's like they find the very topic offensive.
 

Razorback

Member
No. There is no evidence and no one is drowning in it. Not one scientist. Not one reputable network or news agency. No one is drowning in evidence. And 'refuting claims' is hardly 'unproductive'. Lol

There's plenty of evidence. There's also evidence for Zeus and the Chupacabra. Not any good evidence. I think that word just doesn't mean what you think it means.
 

Chronicle

Member
There's plenty of evidence. There's also evidence for Zeus and the Chupacabra. Not any good evidence. I think that word just doesn't mean what you think it means.
Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

I know exactly what it means. There are no facts your dealing with.
 

Crayon

Member
Not let's switch gears and try to come up with an explanation that both fits what we see and also allows for aliens to be visiting us right now. All following points MUST be true.
  • These aliens are advanced enough to get here.
  • These aliens do not care about free energy (stars) lying around, waiting to be picked up by some other competing civilization.
  • These aliens do not wish to make contact, they take carefull measures to stay hidden.
  • Despite being incredibly advanced (one must assume millions of years at least of technological progress over us), we still manage to get glimpses of them occasionally.
  • They are either letting themselves be noticed on purpose (Why? Do they enjoy trolling us?) Or they are surprisingly incompetent given how advanced they are.
  • Bonus optional point: Sometimes they even crash.

I'm highly skeptical of your claims, here. The capabilities and motivations of some way advanced civilization would be completely inscrutable to me. I don't know how you would figure all that must be true about some aliens that may or may not exist.
 

Romulus

Member
I really like the term "UFO believer." There is a scale to it. But generally, it's someone who believes that something is unidentifed lol. How insane! It means the unknown, which is pretty much our entire existence as humans. We can't even nail down Earth science as humans, much less space. The galaxy is mostly made up of shit called dark matter. What is it? You don't know, none of us do. Gravity is a basic foundational pillar of everything, we didn't even know it had waves until a couple of decades ago lol. We're absolutely clueless.

I think the verbiage used is more revealing than intended. As evolved apex predators on this planet, every fiber in our body is telling us that we're superior, and entertaining something better than us is likely insulting subconsciously. If we look at these sightings throughout the years, they have a certain consistency. The Romans, Germans, and Swiss saw metallic spheres(globes) hurling through the sky before and during medieval times. And in some cases, these were mass sightings. Now can we explain all those away? Maybe.

But I think what we're doing now is influential psychology. We're willing to pivot to anything to suppress and downplay every person that says anything about UFOs. There were literally 4 pilots involved in that Favor case and several radar technicians. They're all trolling right? lol, just filing official government documents to troll. I guess all the pilots on the opposite coast reporting similar sightings were also trolling right? All the pilots in WW2 on all sides of the war were also trolling. I think many people are willing to overlook consistency to preserve their superiority complex, and by that, I mean as an apex species. It doesn't mean us as people.

Look at how we're willing to pivot to put ourselves at the center of these anomalies.

Pre-scientific era. Everything anomaly was explainable by religion, which puts humans at the center of everything--the chosen ones. They were reporting cylinders and silver spheres hurling around in the sky and saying they were angles etc. (Lots of consistency in the modern reports and descriptions. )
But as the modern scientific era came about and we started flying, we evolved our excuses too and further ignored consistency. Now we use human technology to explain it away. WW2 pilots see strange shit? Must be the Nazis. Even though they got their asses kicked in the war and were freaked out by the objects too. Now it's Chinese and Russian "drones." These fuckers can't even make a tank that drives more than 200 miles without problems.

Why do the phenomena need to be rooted in humanity's greatness when we can't even figure out basic shit on our own planet?

But let's talk about evidence. What do you want? You can't even prove how the tectonic forces under you right now work. You can't even prove how those giant holes in the ground in Siberia are happening. You can't cure a common cold you got while you were in Siberia to look at it. Lol but you want evidence of space-farring intergalactic beings? lol. They could literally find bodies of aliens and a ship and most everyone would say it's a government's psyop "distraction" for WW3. We'll pivot to any retreating point to maintain our original stance or sanity. And to be fair, I don't believe green men were ever found or crashed.
 

Razorback

Member
I'm highly skeptical of your claims, here. The capabilities and motivations of some way advanced civilization would be completely inscrutable to me. I don't know how you would figure all that must be true about some aliens that may or may not exist.

I didn't want to make my post any longer than it already was but I thought I did a reasonable job of addressing this very point on a couple of occasions. I also left a lot of links to content that further justifies my views but I can't reasonably expect anyone to invest the time necessary to go through all that. In any case, it's there if anyone wants to dig deeper.

For anyone who read my post and thought some of the ideas there were intriguing, I recommend this video in particular about the Dyson Dilemma.

 

Razorback

Member
It's a false equivalence. Point me in the direction of dozens of different government programs studying ghosts for decades on end. It just doesn't work at all. They've studied telepaths, psychosis, etc. But ghosts are just a ridiculous equivalence.

I take it you haven't watched this yet?

 

Crayon

Member
I didn't want to make my post any longer than it already was but I thought I did a reasonable job of addressing this very point on a couple of occasions. I also left a lot of links to content that further justifies my views but I can't reasonably expect anyone to invest the time necessary to go through all that. In any case, it's there if anyone wants to dig deeper.

For anyone who read my post and thought some of the ideas there were intriguing, I recommend this video in particular about the Dyson Dilemma.



I read it. I understand you acknowledged all that, and it's not new to me. It's doesn't amount to much, though. The fermi paradox. dyson dillema, etc are the best assumptions we can make about another civilization with no first-hand experience, since we have a sample size of zero for a highly advanced civ. They are nice conversation starters. The list of qualities that you state must be true are starting from what I assume to be the most reliable and well documented ufo sightings you can get, overlayed with an alien visitor hypothesis (that's others doing that I realize, not you), and then filled in with imagination.

You actually addressed very directly what I said here:

"I know what you're thinking. How can I possibly understand the motives of aliens? This is the same argument as god moves in mysterious ways. Whatever inconsistency you may find in their logic can be brushed aside by claiming they are unknowabe. This is a cope. The laws of physics, natural selection, game theory, all these things confine what reasonable assumptions we can make about agents competing for resources in the world."

First off, citing that something is unknown is not at all related to claiming it is unknowable. Second, this is a declaration of what you consider "reasonable assumptions" You should not be surprised that a one may not find compelling. This goes back to my original comment and I'll rephrase it slightly: I am highly skeptical of these assumptions built on assumptions built on assumptions.
 

Romulus

Member
I take it you haven't watched this yet?




I have, and I get it. But the issue being ignored again is consistency. What "conspiracies" are you willing to believe within other government UAP programs unrelated to the United States? Are you willing to believe the UK, Japan, French, etc are all secret crackpot UFO believers? I guess those counties have comfort videos too for people unwilling to accept anything outside their 9-5 everyday experience.
 

QSD

Member
I don't know any of these people.
They kinda argue but they also say the same things lol. That Eric guy is a bit of an asshole... even though he is not saying anything wrong really
Eric Weinstein is a mathematician and a somewhat famous 'public intellectual'
Mick West is a skeptic/debunker who seems to have a lot of relevant expertise in analyzing video

LOL Eric can be a bit of a prima donna, he's usually a bit of a contrarian/anti establishment type thinker and he's always thought UFO's were just BS, now the government has released some video's he's like "WHAT THE GOVERNMENT LIED TO ME! TO ME!". It's his energy I guess.
Mick to me seems like most skeptics to have an aversion to the thought that there are inexplicable/incomprehensible/magic things in the world. Eric was right when towards the end he asked Mick about his family background and Mick explains he had a religious upbringing. He's also pissed he was lied to (about god/religion) so now he's found his calling in questioning other people's 'faith'

This is the vibe I'm getting about the dynamics in that debate.
 

Razorback

Member
I read it. I understand you acknowledged all that, and it's not new to me. It's doesn't amount to much, though. The fermi paradox. dyson dillema, etc are the best assumptions we can make about another civilization with no first-hand experience, since we have a sample size of zero for a highly advanced civ. They are nice conversation starters. The list of qualities that you state must be true are starting from what I assume to be the most reliable and well documented ufo sightings you can get, overlayed with an alien visitor hypothesis (that's others doing that I realize, not you), and then filled in with imagination.

You actually addressed very directly what I said here:

"I know what you're thinking. How can I possibly understand the motives of aliens? This is the same argument as god moves in mysterious ways. Whatever inconsistency you may find in their logic can be brushed aside by claiming they are unknowabe. This is a cope. The laws of physics, natural selection, game theory, all these things confine what reasonable assumptions we can make about agents competing for resources in the world."

First off, citing that something is unknown is not at all related to claiming it is unknowable. Second, this is a declaration of what you consider "reasonable assumptions" You should not be surprised that a one may not find compelling. This goes back to my original comment and I'll rephrase it slightly: I am highly skeptical of these assumptions built on assumptions built on assumptions.

Thanks for the goodfaith interpretation of what I wrote. I feel like you got it even if you don't agree.

My view is that If I'm going to make assumptions, they have to be based on the knowledge we are already pretty confident about. Things like general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, quantum mechanics. I know we haven't solved all of physics yet, but people underestimate how incredibly precise these models are. For example you might object to the claim that Aliens would want to consume as many stars as they can, and I grant you that maybe further developments in the field of physics might reveal sources of energy far superior to stars. Maybe there's someway to extract energy directly from dark matter or something. There are many such hypothesis out there but they all run into other problems like black body radiation. Basically it's impossible to hide a heat signature without breaking the laws of thermodynamics. And if you're willing to do that then we have no solid ground to stand on, any hypothesis is as good as any other.

And then there's what we know about biology, natural selection, and beyond that we have things like game theory. We have precise mathematical models that predict the behavior of competing agents. We understand these theories so well that a lot of very smart people are terrified of Artificial General Inteligence. There are technical reasons why we know inteligence will develop instrumental goals like self-preservation and resource acquisition. These are universal qualities of all intelligences, to dismiss it by saying that we have a sample size of zero and therefore shouldn't make assumptions is honestly irrational. And we have a sample size of one. Us. We obviously have a strong preference for expanding and acquiring resources and see no reason why we should stop anytime soon. (And by "us" I mean all life on Earth)

So that's where I stand. I know it might seem like I'm making a lot of unjustified assumptions, but I built my model of reality very carefully based on the best knowledge we have. I see no alternative method way of getting closer to the truth.
 
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StormCell

Member
The creation of life is most likely random but it doesn't make any sense that it would be so random that it only happened here. There are countless worlds out there. To say life only happened here wouldn't be random. It'd be intelligent design.
Do you mean random as in something similar to a random number generator or flipping coins or do you mean random as in "by accident of chance" or coincidence?
 

Romulus

Member
Thanks for the goodfaith interpretation of what I wrote. I feel like you got it even if you don't agree.

My view is that If I'm going to make assumptions, they have to be based on the knowledge we are already pretty confident about. Things like general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, quantum mechanics. I know we haven't solved all of physics yet, but people underestimate how incredibly precise these models are. For example you might object to the claim that Aliens would want to consume as many stars as they can, and I grant you that maybe further developments in the field of physics might reveal sources of energy far superior to stars. Maybe there's someway to extract energy directly from dark matter or something. There are many such hypothesis out there but they all run into other problems like black body radiation. Basically it's impossible to hide a heat signature without breaking the laws of thermodynamics. And if you're willing to do that then we have no solid ground to stand on, any hypothesis is as good as any other.

And then there's what we know about biology, natural selection, and beyond that we have things like game theory. We have precise mathematical models that predict the behavior of competing agents. We understand these theories so well that a lot of very smart people are terrified of Artificial General Inteligence. There are technical reasons why we know inteligence will develop instrumental goals like self-preservation and resource acquisition. These are universal qualities of all intelligences, to dismiss it by saying that we have a sample size of zero and therefore shouldn't make assumptions is honestly irrational. And we have a sample size of one. Us. We obviously have a strong preference for expanding and acquiring resources and see no reason why we should stop anytime soon. (And by "us" I mean all life on Earth)

So that's where I stand. I know it might seem like I'm making a lot of unjustified assumptions, but I built my model of reality very carefully based on the best knowledge we have. I see no alternative method way of getting closer to the truth.

Even in the "full proof" science, you've selected there are still gaping holes in some of them. Quantum mechanics are not fully understood, and even the top physicists agree. And are you talking about elementary particles? Because particle physics is still not without its unknowns.
We've proven some basic things and that's it, but even in our more understood science, we don't know shit. It's just knowing more than nothing that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. It's pure arrogance. Ask people 150 years ago with an interest in science and they would present you with a similar level of confidence, yet science has changed drastically on many fronts. In another 150 years, it will be the same, and they will still know next to nothing.
The idea that "aliens" might want to "consume" stars for energy is a very human hunter/gatherer--oil tycoon way of thinking. It ignores the gaping holes we have in the basic understanding of science and basic common sense. They could be 100 million years beyond the energy consumers we think of. Or nothing at all.
 
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Crayon

Member
Do you mean random as in something similar to a random number generator or flipping coins or do you mean random as in "by accident of chance" or coincidence?

Yeah I threw out "random" before and realized that can be used those both ways.

Even in the "full proof" science, you've selected there are still gaping holes in some of them. Quantum mechanics are not fully understood, and even the top physicists agree. And are you talking about elementary particles? Because particle physics is still not without its unknowns.
We've proven some basic things and that's it, but even in our more understood science, we don't know shit. It's just knowing more than nothing that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. It's pure arrogance. Ask people 150 years ago with an interest in science and they would present you with a similar level of confidence, yet science has changed drastically on many fronts. In another 150 years, it will be the same, and they will still know next to nothing.
The idea that "aliens" might want to "consume" stars for energy is a very human hunter/gatherer--oil tycoon way of thinking. It ignores the gaping holes we have in the basic understanding of science and basic common sense. They could be 100 million years beyond the energy consumers we think of. Or nothing at all.

It's just going by the best guesses. It's only a matter of how far you are willing to take them. Like I agree that a culture that came from the top of the foodchain would forever expand and consume as far as we know, but at the same time I think as far as we know (about a >1000yr advanced from us culture, at least) is not very far at all. So I choose to not put much stock in it those kind of projections. They are still the best we can do if trying to get specific about what it would be like, I'm just more inclined to accept that anything goes and we should be imagining pretty much every possiblity without trying guess what the right answer actually is.
 

Razorback

Member
Even in the "full proof" science, you've selected there are still gaping holes in some of them. Quantum mechanics are not fully understood, and even the top physicists agree. And are you talking about elementary particles? Because particle physics is still not without its unknowns.
We've proven some basic things and that's it, but even in our more understood science, we don't know shit. It's just knowing more than nothing that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. It's pure arrogance. Ask people 150 years ago with an interest in science and they would present you with a similar level of confidence, yet science has changed drastically on many fronts. In another 150 years, it will be the same, and they will still know next to nothing.
The idea that "aliens" might want to "consume" stars for energy is a very human hunter/gatherer--oil tycoon way of thinking. It ignores the gaping holes we have in the basic understanding of science and basic common sense. They could be 100 million years beyond the energy consumers we think of. Or nothing at all.

For someone who goes on and on about human arrogance you sure seem to know a lot about what we don't know. I guess It's a useful skill to spot where all the gaps in our knowledge are so you can shove those aliens right in there.
 

Romulus

Member
For someone who goes on and on about human arrogance you sure seem to know a lot about what we don't know. I guess It's a useful skill to spot where all the gaps in our knowledge are so you can shove those aliens right in there.

Nonsensical. Diversionary.

Aliens bro. Gaps in science means aliens.
 

StormCell

Member
Yeah I threw out "random" before and realized that can be used those both ways.
I had to catch up to better understand which random you subscribe to.

I feel like anywhere you go from this point in the discussion, it becomes philosophical.

The great question: Does the universe have purpose?
 

Razorback

Member
Nonsensical. Diversionary.

Aliens bro. Gaps in science means aliens.

What is this? The rhetoric equivalent of throwing pocket sand in my eyes?

You think blurting out exactly the things I could accuse you of is going to what, preemptively rob me of ammunition?

That's nonsensical. Diversionary... Uh, aliens bro.... GODDAMNIT I can't believe your bullshit schoolyard tactics actually work.
 

Romulus

Member
What is this? The rhetoric equivalent of throwing pocket sand in my eyes?

You think blurting out exactly the things I could accuse you of is going to what, preemptively rob me of ammunition?

That's nonsensical. Diversionary... Uh, aliens bro.... GODDAMNIT I can't believe your bullshit schoolyard tactics actually work.

lol. I'm just getting an emotional reaction unintentionally at this point.
 
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Crayon

Member
I don't really buy the idea that the public couldn't handle the idea of aliens or whatever. The pope said it's cool lol. So Catholicism is good to go. We have plenty of people who would be like "told you so". A lot of people with better things to worry about like food. I don't think that many people would really lose their shit. The stock market might get yanked around and people would be putting more heat on congress to stop playing grabass all day. I see society for the most part getting used to the idea and going on with their business. I honestly haven't given it a ton of thought considering how long the idea has been around, though.
 

StormCell

Member
I don't really buy the idea that the public couldn't handle the idea of aliens or whatever. The pope said it's cool lol. So Catholicism is good to go. We have plenty of people who would be like "told you so". A lot of people with better things to worry about like food. I don't think that many people would really lose their shit. The stock market might get yanked around and people would be putting more heat on congress to stop playing grabass all day. I see society for the most part getting used to the idea and going on with their business. I honestly haven't given it a ton of thought considering how long the idea has been around, though.
Wait a second. Hold my beer while I suddenly make you, and everyone else, fearful for our continued existence...

-throws on a MAGA hat, tosses some dirty clothes in the air for effect, spins around, and then returns to facing you-

Guess what? We now have a potential adversary in the world who is more than a century ahead of us in technology.

And they're coming to our planet, OUR planet, flying through our skies and traveling through our oceans without permission.

THEY don't even live here, so what are they doing on our planet?? They didn't ask anyone for permission before coming here.

Just what are they surveying? We are no threat to them and yet they are watching us and watching our activities. They've demonstrated a capability to shut off our electronic devices remotely, including our best means of protection: nuclear weapons.

We have no capacity to defend ourselves should these new neighbors decide to show up en masse and conquer our entire species.

And they could do it any time without us seeing it in advance.

They could blow us away in a matter of hours. Every modern country knocked off within hours. You could wake up tomorrow morning being hunted by aliens for sport... -dun-dun-dun-

:)
 
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Crayon

Member
Wait a second. Hold my beer while I suddenly make you, and everyone else, fearful for our continued existence...

-throws on a MAGA hat, tosses some dirty clothes in the air for effect, spins around, and then returns to facing you-

Guess what? We now have a potential adversary in the world who is more than a century ahead of us in technology.

And they're coming to our planet, OUR planet, flying through our skies and traveling through our oceans without permission.

THEY don't even live here, so what are they doing on our planet?? They didn't ask anyone for permission before coming here.

Just what are they surveying? We are no threat to them and yet they are watching us and watching our activities. They've demonstrated a capability to shut off our electronic devices remotely, including our best means of protection: nuclear weapons.

We have no capacity to defend ourselves should these new neighbors decide to show up en masse and conquer our entire species.

And they could do it any time without us seeing it in advance.

They could blow us away in a matter of hours. Every modern country knocked off within hours. You could wake up tomorrow morning being hunted by aliens for sport... -dun-dun-dun-

:)

Well they've been here for a long time and they're not taking our jobs!!
 

Crayon

Member
Podcast with science guy:


I'm at work, so I didn't get to listen as carefully as I'd like, but he's saying that maybe rdna can pop up more easily than we thought in nature.
 

Romulus

Member
I always found the consistency in these reports pretty wild. Fighter pilots from all over the world have indicated that when they fire on these objects, their projectiles have no effect, they just disappear inside the anomaly.

 

Romulus

Member
Just wanted to post this. It's eerie.
6npvl3N.jpg


What's the background on this? Looks sort of ridiculous.
 

MilkyJoe

Member
OK, so a few days ago there was a very bright light, huge, in the sky moving slowly over the sea outside my apartment, as I was watching it it went behind a tree, so I left my apartment and went to the front to see what it is and it was gone, I assumed it was a distress flare and went home. About 10 minutes later it was back moving slowly above the water in front of my apartment, I grabbed my phone just in time to capture it.


Did you miss it?

ZOOMED

 
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noonjam

Member


Tucker: “You’re around people who study this stuff for a living, the most knowledgeable people on this topic in the world. What is their general sense of what this might be?”
Dr. Nolan: “That this is not from earth.”


Tucker: "Why do you think DOD and the goverment has lied about this for so long?"
Dr. Nolan: “Afraid of admitting they don't have control over our airspace, they didn't want anyone to know about it because they are scared of what the reaction might be."


On crash retrievals and aerospace companies:


Dr. Nolan: “They wanted to profit off of it, so they won't tell congress about it because they may have to share"
Dr. Nolan: "my point has been whatever this stuff is it's hundreds of technology revolutions ahead of us and understanding of physics we don't appreciate."
 

Romulus

Member
2010

I've never understood this one. Why suspend an object just to dump this shit for minutes straight? More importantly how is this dumping like 20x more material than it looks like it hold? Then it just speeds off? Gets more interesting as the camera man zooms in.

I've seen 2 other vids like this in different countries

 
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Ammogeddon

Member
2010

I've never understood this one. Why suspend an object just to dump this shit for minutes straight? More importantly how is this dumping like 20x more material than it looks like it hold? Then it just speeds off? Gets more interesting as the camera man zooms in.

I've seen 2 other vids like this in different countries


What you’re see is light bloom from infrared so it’s difficult to actually tell the size of anything. It could just as well be a military helicopter dropping flares for all we know.
 

Crayon

Member
2010

I've never understood this one. Why suspend an object just to dump this shit for minutes straight? More importantly how is this dumping like 20x more material than it looks like it hold? Then it just speeds off? Gets more interesting as the camera man zooms in.

I've seen 2 other vids like this in different countries



I checked with mick west and that's just a seagull taking a huge shit.
 

Romulus

Member
What you’re see is light bloom from infrared so it’s difficult to actually tell the size of anything. It could just as well be a military helicopter dropping flares for all we know.

That makes no sense to me whatsoever. What flare just drops straight to the ground like that? And flares have a similar shape, those are all sorts of sizes and have a drip look to them. And why just continue to drop them over and over like that? There's another video in a desert I can look for that shows the exact same behavior and it's not a helicopter, there's like 4 of them in a row doing it.
 

lukilladog

Member
So what do you guys think this is?. Same city where I have seen a dozen since the 90´s, they are sometimes really low height, clearly not conventional planes nor birds, and can stand perfectly still for a couple of minutes:

 
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ultrazilla

Member
So what do you guys think this is?. Same city where I have seen a dozen since the 90´s, they are sometimes really low height, clearly not conventional planes nor birds, and can stand perfectly still for a couple of minutes:



I'd say "drone" but would love to know the dimensions on this...
 
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