There have been over 100K UFO sightings reported worldwide since 1940. Roughly 5% or so are “strong” events, which seem rather hard to explain due to either many witnesses, especially reliable witnesses, physical evidence, or other factors. Many of these events are also “dramatic”, wherein the UFOs seem to display amazing abilities, ones well beyond those held by any known Earth orgs. I’d guess there are at least a thousand such strong dramatic reported events.
I think you're greatly underestimating how much of everything people believe to be true about what they have seen, heard or experienced is just a hallucination.
5. A genuine (but possibly amplified by misremembering) observation of a natural or man-made phenomenon which has nothing to do with any secret groups?
This is textbook False Dilemma. The possible scope of reasonable explanations is far larger than four, but by claiming that it can only be these four you create a scenario where the logically valid choice will be whatever you want it to be.
You should have a separate category for an unidentified human aircraft that's not part of a conspiracy. That probably is the majority of impressive UFOs, such as those recently declassified by the US military. Unidentified drones, balloons, commercial or military aircraft, with apparently strange behavior due to camera artifacts or misjudging distance.
What I want to know is how come all the UFO videos are so blurry? Usually they are seen as only a few blurry dots. It's like, why is Bigfoot always blurry? The obvious explanation is that if the object were imaged in more detail, it would be clear how to identify it.
UFO sightings drastically falling in the age of smartphones and constant recording should put much more weight on #1 and #2. When SpaceX launches a rocket, we have 5,000 angles from hundreds of miles out.
You should follow the work of Mick West. A huge proportion of all the "highly credible" cases he has examined have plausible boring explanations. Something like well over 90%.
What I struggle with the whole UFO thing is the impact of a definitive answer. So if we confirm yes extraterrestrial UFOs are “real”, so what?
1. There isn’t any technological value to it - if proven, we can’t suddenly increase our tech.
2. It won’t change our approach - since “they” haven’t contacted us in any serious fashion - a simple radio broadcast hitting the world would easily announce their presence.
3. It seems counter intuitive that a civilisation can be so advanced that they can build technology which can avoid all civilian official detection and government detection (some governments may agree to keep quiet but not all governments all the time) yet travel to other worlds only to randomly buzz/flyby and scare up the locals.
And then taking the theories themselves through a basic set of what-if assumptions, it seems even more unlikely.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds with much more advanced technology yet space travel is still difficult - then we should see any visit from another planet as a big/complex and obvious event (why incur such expense to be ultra secret about it?) Or conversely if travel is so expensive why invest in “stealth” technology.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds and travel is easy - then we should have seen many space tourists “buzzing” us.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds which can produce technology or live outside our perception of reality / the world, then the argument itself is mute. Since such an argument can be used to “prove” anything.
It feels like a logical fallacy by restricting the logical framing and choices to one’s which support your reasoning. There are many other potential options beyond the 4 described (including 5. mentioned by Oleg Eterevsky). We know mass imagination events are possible and the “credibility” of a given whiteness is subjective as we know humanity has a biological design to create memories.
Given the size of our universe, I think it is likely there are other living worlds. Yet I don’t think we have any definitive proof or likely evidence that any of those civilisations have bothered to send a spy space craft to freak out a few pilots on a late night flight. The logic just doesn’t add up once we consider associated complexities.
> But in order to explain most strong dramatic events this way, I just don’t think it works to postulate scattered amateur liars and hoaxers. Instead I think one needs a big conspiracy, wherein a coalition of orgs has secretly and professionally coordinated to spend big budgets over many decades to have many lie, and to fool others via what are essentially magic tricks.
What do you think about the idea that people like to half-believe things that are exciting and dramatic, and that sometimes this happens in self-reinforcing groups?
You see plenty of examples of this with other miraculous or improbable events, and UFOs are an established idea out there for people to latch on to.
We can see weaker versions of this right now with things like QAnon or [redacted] that I think people only half-believe (some more, some less) but enjoy participating in.
I haven't looked at the evidence myself, so maybe the strong events you're talking about can't be explained by "eyewitnesses" getting caught up in a sort of game. But I don't think you need a long running conspiracy to explain people sometimes getting together and agreeing on a UFO story that is greatly exaggerated or entirely made up.
I still don't get how #4 (alien spaceships) fits the data. You would expect alien spaceships to be either invisible or highly invisible, why have they arranged themselves so that they are just partially visible from time to time and never clearly and incontrovertibly visible? Seems very low propbability. And why aren't the number and quality of sitings increasing as billions of people have become equipped with smartphones with excellent cameras. The data seems to fit much better with hallucinations or optical illusions.
> My awkward inference starts here: it seems clear to me that #1 can only plausibly explain a modest fraction of strong dramatic events. Most errors would have to be much closer to gross incompetence than to “oops”. (If you’ve also looked but can’t see this, I just don’t know what to say. Pay more attention?)
I find this to be a highly dubious claim backed up by an unfortunate level of self-confidence. The fact is that people are grossly incompetent observers as a matter of course. There are too many documented cases of things like highly skilled fighter pilots crashing into the water while trying to avoid being shot down by the planet Venus to ignore.
If it is true that elites have a bias against #3 or #4, which I'm really not sure is true, it clearly seems like this would be an overcorrection or backlash to the fairly obvious fact that dumb and poorly informed people are more likely to prefer #3 and #4 because they are simpler to understand and explain despite being overwhelmingly less plausible explanations in virtually every single case.
Look at it this way. Everybody knows that educated elites are more atheistic than the general populace, and everybody knows that this is at least partially just a cultural bias. But the fact is that in a modern context religion preferentially appeals to people who are less intelligent and more poorly informed. So do UFOs. This doesn't disprove either of the things but it does mean that "educated elites are biased against splashy explanations for the UFO phenomenon" is not a good reason to take the UFO phenomenon more seriously. It's just an elaborate and self-referential way of turning the fact that dumb people are biased towards UFOs, or God, into somehow being a positive argument in favor of them being real.
I think you're greatly underestimating how much of everything people believe to be true about what they have seen, heard or experienced is just a hallucination.
What about
5. A genuine (but possibly amplified by misremembering) observation of a natural or man-made phenomenon which has nothing to do with any secret groups?
This is textbook False Dilemma. The possible scope of reasonable explanations is far larger than four, but by claiming that it can only be these four you create a scenario where the logically valid choice will be whatever you want it to be.
You should have a separate category for an unidentified human aircraft that's not part of a conspiracy. That probably is the majority of impressive UFOs, such as those recently declassified by the US military. Unidentified drones, balloons, commercial or military aircraft, with apparently strange behavior due to camera artifacts or misjudging distance.
What I want to know is how come all the UFO videos are so blurry? Usually they are seen as only a few blurry dots. It's like, why is Bigfoot always blurry? The obvious explanation is that if the object were imaged in more detail, it would be clear how to identify it.
UFO sightings drastically falling in the age of smartphones and constant recording should put much more weight on #1 and #2. When SpaceX launches a rocket, we have 5,000 angles from hundreds of miles out.
This question is part of the set of things it is wise to not be curious about. This set also includes a list of things included in the set.
You should follow the work of Mick West. A huge proportion of all the "highly credible" cases he has examined have plausible boring explanations. Something like well over 90%.
For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus
Do you have a reading list for people who want to learn more about the strong UFO events?
What I struggle with the whole UFO thing is the impact of a definitive answer. So if we confirm yes extraterrestrial UFOs are “real”, so what?
1. There isn’t any technological value to it - if proven, we can’t suddenly increase our tech.
2. It won’t change our approach - since “they” haven’t contacted us in any serious fashion - a simple radio broadcast hitting the world would easily announce their presence.
3. It seems counter intuitive that a civilisation can be so advanced that they can build technology which can avoid all civilian official detection and government detection (some governments may agree to keep quiet but not all governments all the time) yet travel to other worlds only to randomly buzz/flyby and scare up the locals.
And then taking the theories themselves through a basic set of what-if assumptions, it seems even more unlikely.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds with much more advanced technology yet space travel is still difficult - then we should see any visit from another planet as a big/complex and obvious event (why incur such expense to be ultra secret about it?) Or conversely if travel is so expensive why invest in “stealth” technology.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds and travel is easy - then we should have seen many space tourists “buzzing” us.
If the assumption is there are other living worlds which can produce technology or live outside our perception of reality / the world, then the argument itself is mute. Since such an argument can be used to “prove” anything.
It feels like a logical fallacy by restricting the logical framing and choices to one’s which support your reasoning. There are many other potential options beyond the 4 described (including 5. mentioned by Oleg Eterevsky). We know mass imagination events are possible and the “credibility” of a given whiteness is subjective as we know humanity has a biological design to create memories.
Given the size of our universe, I think it is likely there are other living worlds. Yet I don’t think we have any definitive proof or likely evidence that any of those civilisations have bothered to send a spy space craft to freak out a few pilots on a late night flight. The logic just doesn’t add up once we consider associated complexities.
Were there UFO events before 1940? It seems a bit of a coincidence to me that we only start reporting UFOs once flying becomes common on earth.
> But in order to explain most strong dramatic events this way, I just don’t think it works to postulate scattered amateur liars and hoaxers. Instead I think one needs a big conspiracy, wherein a coalition of orgs has secretly and professionally coordinated to spend big budgets over many decades to have many lie, and to fool others via what are essentially magic tricks.
What do you think about the idea that people like to half-believe things that are exciting and dramatic, and that sometimes this happens in self-reinforcing groups?
You see plenty of examples of this with other miraculous or improbable events, and UFOs are an established idea out there for people to latch on to.
We can see weaker versions of this right now with things like QAnon or [redacted] that I think people only half-believe (some more, some less) but enjoy participating in.
I haven't looked at the evidence myself, so maybe the strong events you're talking about can't be explained by "eyewitnesses" getting caught up in a sort of game. But I don't think you need a long running conspiracy to explain people sometimes getting together and agreeing on a UFO story that is greatly exaggerated or entirely made up.
I still don't get how #4 (alien spaceships) fits the data. You would expect alien spaceships to be either invisible or highly invisible, why have they arranged themselves so that they are just partially visible from time to time and never clearly and incontrovertibly visible? Seems very low propbability. And why aren't the number and quality of sitings increasing as billions of people have become equipped with smartphones with excellent cameras. The data seems to fit much better with hallucinations or optical illusions.
> My awkward inference starts here: it seems clear to me that #1 can only plausibly explain a modest fraction of strong dramatic events. Most errors would have to be much closer to gross incompetence than to “oops”. (If you’ve also looked but can’t see this, I just don’t know what to say. Pay more attention?)
I find this to be a highly dubious claim backed up by an unfortunate level of self-confidence. The fact is that people are grossly incompetent observers as a matter of course. There are too many documented cases of things like highly skilled fighter pilots crashing into the water while trying to avoid being shot down by the planet Venus to ignore.
If it is true that elites have a bias against #3 or #4, which I'm really not sure is true, it clearly seems like this would be an overcorrection or backlash to the fairly obvious fact that dumb and poorly informed people are more likely to prefer #3 and #4 because they are simpler to understand and explain despite being overwhelmingly less plausible explanations in virtually every single case.
Look at it this way. Everybody knows that educated elites are more atheistic than the general populace, and everybody knows that this is at least partially just a cultural bias. But the fact is that in a modern context religion preferentially appeals to people who are less intelligent and more poorly informed. So do UFOs. This doesn't disprove either of the things but it does mean that "educated elites are biased against splashy explanations for the UFO phenomenon" is not a good reason to take the UFO phenomenon more seriously. It's just an elaborate and self-referential way of turning the fact that dumb people are biased towards UFOs, or God, into somehow being a positive argument in favor of them being real.
95% number 1 and maybe 5% number 2. Wishful thinking can account for a huge number of reported sightings.
As a reference point what do you consider to be the largest revealed conspiracy?
Unidentified flying object seems utterly plausible, but it sounds more like 'advanced drone' to me than, ah, spacecraft.