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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Occam's Razor. It is likely not aliens and more likely man made because it isn't that advanced compared to what we can currently do. It is like 5 to 10 years ahead of publiclt disclosed tech.

It is either US or Chinese skunkworks and given it was in US airspace I doubt the Chinese would do this. Also it has to be US because otherwise military brass would be freaking out the Chinese are penitrating us airspace with advanced tech.

Thus it is a us skunkworks project.

It is probably just advanced drone techonology. Probably really cool tech.

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How is that Occam's Razor? This is the same guesswork as aliens or foreign countries. I just see a lot of people using "Occam's Razor" with their subjective theories and the term is giving me a headache.

It being aliens would require completely rewriting physics as we understand it, because physics as we understand it does not allow for gravity manipulation or FTL.

Occaam's Razor claims that terrestrial technology is more likely than extraterrestrial because it relies on fewer unproven assumptions, namely the existence of extraterrestrial life, its presence on Earth, and everything we know about physics being wrong, despite the math somehow working out to describe the universe incredibly well.

Occam's Razor: postulate as few as possible new entities to explain an event. Aliens causing UFOs not only postulates that aliens exist, but that they're intelligent, and have visited Earth. That's a lot of new entities we have to consider. On the other hand we know foreign governments exist. We know foreign governments test new aircraft. So the only entity we have to assume here is that an aircraft with these properties exists.

That said I think there are other alternatives that are even more likely: that these sightings are sensor malfunctions or natural phenomena that have been blown out of proportion by popular myth and deliberate disinformation -- (which is certainly the case with all other UFO sightings).

If I didn't read the report, I would have thought malfunctioning is the most likely explanation. But an active duty warship's SPY-1 radar, and 6 super hornet's IR sensor pods all malfunctioning at the same time? Unless it's a very sophisticated cyber or electronic attack or really some physical (not just optical illusion) natural phenomenon, that is very, very unlikely to happen. This sophisticated attack or natural phenomenon that let observation on Unidentified Swimming Object and UFO is also unlikely. So, by Occam's Razor, which I still insist is not appropriate assuming the reports are true, that the reports are false, hoax, or disinformation.

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