Hacker News Reader

Comment by evilturnip | Hacker News Reader

I'll also put my tinfoil hat on, since I've had a long fascination with anamolous phenomenon. I still think the jury's out on what exactly is going on, but one thing that's consistent worldwide is that balls of light are associated with UFOs, bigfoot, poltergeists, etc.

My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously. Jacques Vallee is an astronomer and computer scientist (involved in early ARPANET) who's studied the phenomenon since at least the 70s. Here's a fun paper:

https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/4/jse_04_1_vallee...

He essentially argues that the UFO phenomenon is neither extra terrestrials nor merely misidentified aerial craft. It's something even stranger!

Also, if you find that paper interesting, here's one of this books (one of the most well-known in the anomalous phenomenon field):

https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Flying-Sauc...

View on HN

I like the Zoo hypothesis. We do that to North Sentinel Island[1]. It is populated by 50-400 stone age tribes people. India does not prosecute them for murdering anyone who happens to land on their island. Previous contacts with these people led to them rapidly dying of diseases they didn't have immunity to, so staying uncontacted is literally a life or death issue for them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island

I think it's bizarre that the fact that we have absolutely zero evidence for aliens actually gives a little weight to things like the zoo hypothesis.

Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight, plus our best available models of the universe show there should be billions of planets as habitable as ours.

That is evidence in the abstract sense and we currently lack the technology to observe these candidate planets in enough detail to test the models further.

We're like a person sitting in the desert at night with nothing but a candle concluding that the planet is completely deserted because they can't see anyone else.

> Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight

This sounds superficially right, but unfortunately there are too infinitely many possibilities to assign more than 0 weight to them just because they're compatible with the data. It's the same fallacy as "the sun either will rise tomorrow, or it won't. Two possibilities mean a 50-50 chance."

A more practical approach will only assign weight to possibilities that might influence your decisions about what to do.

The problem is that we have basically no data, in general people (including pilots) are horrible bad at observing and recounting a situation like these and we have no other types of evidence either...

Honestly if you were put on a random desert on a random world you'd be more often right than not about how many people were on the rest of the world.

I don't think I've ever been in a desert where just by waiting a short time, visual evidence of an advanced civilization wasn't available (or in most cases, immediately).

If there's type II civilizations in our galaxy, we don't need to observe things in any more detail than we are now. If type III civilizations exist in other galaxies, we should be able to detect them as well.

What about the Dyson dilemma? We've indeed detected "voids", but we're unable to confirm their origin.

If you have a dyson sphere, it glows very brightly in lower wavelengths, such as IR. We don't see that in voids. Additionally, looking back into cosmic history, we can see the formation of voids in the very early universe and their expected expansion.

I find the assumption that any advanced civilization is going to emit external electromagnetic radiation and/or be warm quite curious. Most quantum computing work is at low temperatures, and work on photonics (for example : http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6397/57 )is coming along nicely. If we assume an extropian approach of uploading into a more advanced substrate, I find it more likely that they would be quite cold in nature.

Pretty difficult to beat the laws of thermodynamics.

QC is a meme.

ok, fine, then they are blazing in the microwave region. The Dyson sphere will always output the same amount of energy as the original star, just at a lower frequency. Otherwise the temperature would increase continuously.

There's also the Dark Forest Theory. Any civ advanced enough knows better than to broadcast information that could potentially help other advanced civs spot their location.

Yup, a number of possible solutions. Dark Forest doesn't lead to the likelyhood of us seeing UFOs in Ireland tho.

One gloriously eldritch way to look at that issue is: can an ant see us? Are they aware of our existence?

Not really the same unless ants have mapped out their universe with little left out. Unless it's just that we can't see far enough or into dark matter.

Looking at the wiki page, it seems the population on the island is decreasing. Hopefully they will either all die, thus relieving us of the ethical dilemma, or India will come to its senses and stop the abuse of these poor people and actually help them. Its criminal that they are allowed to carry on without access to any of the modern world's technology or services. And of course the islanders that killed those fishermen should also be forcibly removed and punished - murder is murder, and the fact that someone is pretending they are still in the stone age has never been a recognised defense...

On the punishment for murder end of things, they neither know or accept Indian sovereignty, so applying Indian law on them doesn't make sense. As far as the Sentinelese are concerned they're being invaded. This is more similar to a case where a soldier that doesn't know the war is over kills someone. It doesn't make sense and isn't fair to prosecute them because they're working on old information that would make the murder they committed okay legally.

I completely disagree that it's wrong to not introduce them to modern technology. To do that it would require one of us to go visit them which would probably kill them because of our diseases. I would argue it's more wrong to kill them than to not give them access to modern technology.

As far as the Sentinelese are concerned, war is not over. Every time someone visits them, the invasion begins anew.

Meanwhile, we do have the technology to contact them without giving them lethal diseases. It doesn't have to be like the Americas all over again. We can screen potential visitors for a wide range of pathogens, make them wear protective suits, vaccinate the local population, and treat them if they get ill nonetheless. The problem is that they want none of it, so any attempt to vaccinate or treat them will end up being forceful.

The time travel argument I've always found to be far more compelling than the extra terrestrial argument.

For example, similarity of physical form (with exaggerated evolutionary aspects relating to modern society, such as bigger eyes/brains, and diminished aspects that would be obsolete, such as weakened physical strength).

And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best.

And yet there's zero evidence of even life, let alone advanced life, in our near proximity. Wouldn't it make more sense that the advanced species that's in near physical proximity to ourselves (i.e. humans) would be responsible for flying objects very similar to our own flying objects and supposedly operated by bipeds looking very similar to ourselves?

And the physical rules bring broken to enable time travel are roughly the same rules that would need to be broken for faster than light travel, so the scientific likelihood for time traveling UFOs is roughly the same as for extra-terrestrial UFOs, but the former makes a lot more sense in other regards than the latter.

> And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best.

I think this is something that doesn't get enough attention; in a universe like our's, almost all first contact events will consist of relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life. (Say three billion years before humans evolved versus a generous million years of human 'civilization' gives a three thousand to one ratio.) We should not expect to see anything remotely near our point in the developmental timeline.

(If "relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines" sounds unlikely, let me remind you that every star in the sky is a massive pile of valuable raw materials that has unfortunately caught fire and needs to be extinguished as soon as possible.)

"in a universe like ours, almost all first contact events will consist of relativistically expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life."

You talk as if that's a certain fact. (Even estimating a probability) I'm no expert in the area, but why? Is that justified? What's that based on? (Not to mention the last sentence 'reminding me' of another odd 'fact'.)

I think it's like a big-o type argument about rates of growth of approximately spherical areas in 3d space

That combined with the aforementioned thousands-to-one odds that a life form that hasn't yet developed into a relativistically expanding sphere also hasn't developed sapience. (I'm not using the mathematical definition of "almost all" of course.)

There would (probably) also be a significant number of cases where two spheres run into each other, but it's debatable whether most of those count as first contact events (light speed lag versus "it's all the same civilization"). The main point was the enormous unlikelyhood of a nearby alien civilization being within a thousand years or so (out of multiple billion) of our developmental level.

The Fermi paradox is more a question of "Why hasn't anything eaten every star in the sky yet?".

I feel like I was given many more strange assumptions, without any of the things I was asking about being addressed. Your "of course", which I didn't understand, in a few different ways, makes me think I'm talking to experts. I understood almost nothing you wrote. But well, like I said, I don't buy all these assumptions. Reading this is like reading those unhelpful wikipedia pages that only make sense if you already understand what it's saying. And your way of talking as if it's all obviously true, (e.g. "let me remind you") raises my suspicions that it's not.

Can you time travel without being able to alter your location in space? I mean, the earth is moving pretty fast, if you popped back a few hours, wouldn’t you land in empty space?

Yes, you would need to adjust for that. Might be the explanation for why the guys from the future shows up in spaceships. I guess it would be dangerous calculating slightly wrong and instead end up inside earth or inside a building's wall.

Better to appear some distance out into space and then fly the last few hundred miles to earth.

The galaxy is rotating and moving through space. All estimated speeds are in relation to other objects.

that presumes something like 'time teleportation'. Time travel based on changing / reversing your 'speed of time' doesn't have that.

Kind of like the difference between wormhole based FTL and warp drive based FTL. In one, you just teleport, in the other, you still travel in a continuous line.

This is how I've always imagined a fictional time machine working. You build the thing, it creates a field inside itself, and you can use it to move whoever/whatever is inside that field to other points in the timeline of the machine's existence.

I think relativity makes this impossible; you're essentially saying there's a particular trajectory that has an absolute velocity of zero. Relativity is founded on the idea that there's no such thing; any trajectory has an equal claim to be the zero velocity.

Maybe time travel would stay in the same reference frame, so if you're on the Earth's surface you end up in the same position on the Earth. On the other hand if you're on an object that experiences non-gravitational directional changes in the span of your time travel, you might be in trouble.

Vallee is a serious person worth paying attention to, a rarity in that field. Spielberg used him as the model for that French scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Another good book of his is "Messengers of Deception", expands greatly on the non-extraterrestrial idea.

Interesting. A possible explanation for some strange and poorly understood phenomenon accompanied by bright lights could be "earthquake lights", bright lights that appear in the sky around the time of an earthquake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEwKrvepH8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMTSDzU1Z4

Not to say that it applies to this particular case. Just goes to show that there is much to this natural world we don't understand yet.

Huh. I've seen this exact blue/purple light in my hometown when I was a small kid (like 15 years ago). It was late night, we were in the patio with my family, eating nuts and talking, just a normal summer evening. We saw this light, and it deeply spooked us children. For years I was wondering what the hell was that. But since an earthquake didn't hit us that night (thanks god) I suppose it likely was something else.

Man, the comments on those videos... just wow. Thanks for the entertainment.

I have been through several earthquakes and have seen power pole transformers spark and explode as the oil inside splashes about and is ignited by the electricty. This could be a possible explanation for "earthquake lights".

This is the most plausible explanation. I’ve seen this effect during ice storms.

Does anyone actually take the 'evidence' in those videos seriously?

At 1:50 in that first video, the 'light' occurs and then amazingly the electricity goes off.

What a coincidence that is.

Also coincidentally the 'light' has similar colour characteristics to the arc flash of a high voltage electrical line/transformer shorting out.

And coincidentally at 4:40 the same scenario repeats!

It would have repeated again in the first minute if they'd been closer to the electrical circuit that faulted out.

The rest of the videos appear as borderline CGI (floodlights washed out in truck area)or some video of clouds.

I've been developing a theory about abduction stories overlapping with MK Ultra-type experimentation. There seem to be a fair number of parallels in the type of activities done to subjects of the MK projects (allegedly) and casting the alien abduction story on the victims makes deniability straight forward.

I haven't thought much about UFO sightings. I always find the ones with video, especially from arial sources interesting.

It wouldn't be a conspiracy talk without someone bringing up MK Ultra...

We can tick off the flowchart as the conversation progresses. - https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUv7tx-DOTQ/UXKqqtaZ7CI/AAAAAAAAE...

For good reason. We know that the CIA dosed people with LSD without their knowledge, which alone would explain most bizarre phenomena, and we know that the CIA claim to have destroyed most of their records of what they did in the program. Pretty easy to link anything to the program, and it's often one of the least strange options.

We also know that MK ULTRA and programs very similar to it, have been continued to present day.

Source?

> We also know that MK ULTRA and programs very similar to it, have been continued to present day.

Do we though?

People assume so, because it fits a paranoid narrative that allows them to "mind control" people, but I'm not aware of any actual proof that MK ULTRA or "programs very similar to it" continue to the present day. As far as I know the program was a failure, like experiments in remote viewing and attempts to surgically implant microphones into stray cats hoping they would wander next to the Soviets.

On the other hand, it would be naive to assume that an agency that once performed such experiments would have compunctions about performing similar experiments today.

Though I won't support the claim you're replying too, we know that as of ten years ago there were still projects with a similar end goal as MK ULTRA, broadly developing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Not as easy to connect to any unexplained phenomena though.

Now that everybody has a cellphone camera there are fewer UFO sitings instead of more, so it seems.

In what way does it seem like that? There are many, many more _sightings_ in the current decade than the last, with a repeating pattern for about 50 to 70 years or so. Cellphone cameras are partially responsible for that, but unfortunately camera quality of most phones kinda sucks. That represents a different set of problems.

> but unfortunately camera quality of most phones kinda sucks.

This excuse died years ago. Cell phone cameras are on par with regular mainline digital cameras these days. Sometimes far superior.

Now everyone has a smartphone maybe they're looking down instead of up.

But people still capture things in the sky if there's something to see. Plenty of footage exists of low flying aircraft and meteors, for instance. People aren't looking down at their smartphones all the time, completely blind to the peripheral universe around them. And there are also dashcams, security cameras, etc, to consider.

Then the dashcams would capture it. Just like they did for that Russian meteorite.

That theory doesn’t seem compatible with the apparent existence of similar UFO reports from before the 20th century, unless there were other similar programs.

Abduction stories fit very well within suggestibility + sleep paralysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis), before aliens it was demons or other things. When I've suffered from it I've had my dog ripping my face off and intruders entering the house, no alien probes yet but apart from that the experience sounds identical.

This is my conclusion as well. I grew up in a very religious household and so all of my sleep paralysis episodes revolved around some sort of demon entering my space and attempting to do something to me. Sleep paralysis is connected with lucid dreaming and so the dreams are incredibly lifelike. I could see someone dreaming about being abducted.

Once I moved out of the house, became a bit more secular, and did some research online about sleep paralysis, any rare episodes I had I knew weren't demons or anything of the sort.

>My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously.

I read through that and it immediately reminded me of Miller's flying saucer theory from Repo-Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE

Thanks, reading the paper now. I liked how, when describing possible alien visitation to earth he wrote: "sophisticated interaction with the human and animal lifeforms present on the planet."

That paper was quite a fascinating read. Thank you for the recommendation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com