So unless you have an answer to this alleged isolated hallucinatory mental illness that lacks any scientific rigor, can you really refute thousands of witnesses or the validity of their other forms of evidence, such as photos and videos?
Whenever an actual event occurs (meteor, explosion, and so on) we have video footage from multiple angles uploaded almost immediately. If UFO activity was a frequent occurrence happening to thousands of people, it would be truly remarkable if it was never captured by multiple cameras somehow.
As for dismissing reports: There are hundreds of millions of people in the US alone. If you go searching for claims, you can find thousands of people who will make similar mistaken or untrue claims about anything. At scale, the amount of misperception and misremembering is massive.
There are a few problematic assumptions in this line of thinking: you assume the event is as dramatic as a meteor or explosion, occurs in a highly populated area, and involves no discretion on the part of the object. This is typically not the case, although you could argue that people recalling the same specific details in smaller witness groups, but across many different incidents, could constitute the same idea. Even with this in mind, I can think of a few truly mass sightings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrozavodsk_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407
And you should read these if you are interested in an account where either the Navy fabricated this weird hoax, fake data and got a squadron of pilots to lie about it very convincingly, or the whole event is real. Multiple radar, multiple pilot visuals, multiple angles.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33371/here-are-the-det...
All of which occured before the advent of ubiquitous hand-held cameras, security camera footage, and dash-cams. Can't help but feel had these been captured we'd have found simple explanations for each, and people's memories of them would be less malleable.
Re the naval sightings, the article you've linked to says "experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents".
Most interestingly, the captioned video:
"That footage, published previously but with little context, shows an object tilting like a spinning top moving against the wind. A pilot refers to a fleet of objects, but no imagery of a fleet was released."
A kernel of truth + some imagination.
(I don't think I actually believe aliens are here and walking amongst us, but I'm not sure I can see a lack of evidence as being evidence of them not being here either).
As to the Navy stuff Occam's razor would say that these are edge cases where the instruments fail. Having viewed these videos this seems like a reasonable explanation. Sure, it could be aliens, but sensors being wrong is an extremely common occurrence so it is a much simpler answer. Edge cases where sensors fail are also cases where human sensors are likely to fail too (this should be unsurprising if you've studied a bit of computer vision). So
> either the Navy fabricated this weird hoax, fake data and got a squadron of pilots to lie about it very convincingly, or the whole event is real
Is a false dichotomy. Sure, those are two options, but a third option is that people simply don't know what they saw but it was a natural phenomena. Ignoring that case isn't helpful to the discussion and more likely to convince people that you're a crackpot (I don't mean this in an offensive way, just trying to help you set up your argument better. I want you to have the strongest argument you can make because that's how we find answers).
And if, hypothetically, there was an intelligence, and it was intentionally being discreet, it doesn't take a lot of creativity to imagine they might be smart enough to go about their business while doing a decent job of avoiding the situation that would provide incontrovertible proof. While that seems like a cop out, so is claiming the Nimitz incident could be explained by some mysterious natural phenomena, without actually offering an explanation. If you actually put in the effort to consume all the information available on just that specific incident, it leaves little room for alternatives between the two options.
But if a person doesn't want to see or believe, it's almost like a magical shield goes over their eyes - they simply won't see it, or won't be able to acknowledge it.
As was posted in another comment I'm going to post this video. And don't dare claim someone hasn't looked up the links and articles just because they don't agree with you. Do it if they demonstrate that they didn't (there's a big difference and the former is going to piss someone off and is against HN's good faith rules).
I'm referring to the Nimitz incident. I don't mean to offend you, but I can say confidently there is information you have yet to consume on that incident. Taken alone and with no context, the IR video isn't convincing proof of anything, and West points that out, while ignoring that there is other information. But there is more verified info from the original NYT piece that makes this case special [0]. How do you explain the fact that passive radar from the ship was tracking this object on and off for two weeks before they finally deployed a squadron to investigate it? How do you explain the fascinating pilot testimony (they had multiple angles, by the way) of the white round object flying around erratically, then mirroring their descent, then shooting off into the sky [1]? Or the fact that their primary radars were being jammed (technically an act of war)?
Any of these pieces of information taken alone could be inconclusively explained away, but as you compound them, forcing a "normal" explanation looks more and more like the Catholic church telling Galileo that the cosmos orbit around the Earth.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ
My point about "something was there" still stands though. I've heard other debunking comments that simply dismiss it as a video issue, and that is what grinds my gears.
Forgive me if I was a bit defensive in the before comment, but I did not make the claim that nothing was there. I made the claim that there were better explanations. It is important that we try to characterize arguments individually and not group as "them". All that leads to is frustration and fighting. I'll say it takes two to tango but we should all work on not stoking the flames. I think this is a big lesson we as a society need to learn from recent events.
This one is a great example: The video linked here has been thoroughly explained to be very dull, boring things that were misinterpreted by the people filming them.
For instance, the second video, with the supposed fast-moving object over water, is very clearly just a regular bird, plus parallax effects from filming from a moving plane.
See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-de... for more.
Are you asking for known-fictions or claimed-genuine-UFOs?
Because for the former, the average Avengers film.
Go join the MUFON Facebook group and look back the past few weeks at the folks discussing this blue thing off the coast of Hawaii. . I had multiple people get into arguments with me on the MUFON group about it's origins. I believe it was random space junk, immediately a man began insisting it was an "ion propulsion" alien ship crashing after it had been shot, kept insisting that only that bluish glow could be create by an ET exotic technology star drive, I quickly pointed out more than a dozen materials that create a blue flame when they burn at which point he kept arguing with me and got quite hostile insisting it's a downed alien craft. I think one even claimed they communicated with the 'crew of the ship'.
People... believe what they want to.
I disagree, many forms of “simple” evidence would sway most people’s opinions and almost everyone would be persuaded by replicated clear detailed videos of crafts, attempted communication, or some alien artifact. Even a half eaten discarded alien candy bar would change the minds of almost any skeptic. Where is such evidence? After all these years, there are still no good pictures of an alien or its spaceship.
Look into crop circles, if this topic interests you. I think how deeply you look into it will be a reflection of your beliefs - and more than that, of what you want to believe! (Same for each of us, generally speaking!)
Look into Richard Dolan's youtube presentations.
Now I just clued you into two rabbit holes- how deep will you go? See, your beliefs will determine that. Your desires to believe or not believe will determine how much you look.
I was interested, and wanted to believe, so I read 3000+ pages of Dolan's writings and watched 10+ hours of YouTube documentaries. Now I know practically "everything" (as far as I care to) about these topics. But it's because I wanted to know, I wanted to believe.
And how is the written or verbal testimony of hundreds of thousands of witnesses over time not counted as "evidence"?
Changing the minds of skeptics is impossible. People believe what they want to believe, in my opinion.
>Even a half eaten discarded alien candy bar would change the minds of almost any skeptic.
I don't think you've thought this one through fully. So you have this candy bar - what does it look like? Where will you have it analyzed? When you get the analysis back, who are you going to show? People will still be easily able to discount anything short of a direct landing of alien craft or a cyber-weapon that demonstrably altered reality. I'm not even skeptic and I can discount your candy bar in my mind in half a second - it just looks like a normal candy bar. Or just looks like a shiny candy bar. Or maybe its a prank made up by an elaborate joker. etc. etc. etc.
That's true if you ignore the videos that have been recently declassified and released by the US government and the assertions of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who insists that the government has numerous photos and videos and is hiding them from the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ4reojXeU0
Then you have the eyewitness testimony of numerous military officials who were in charge of our nuclear weapons arsenal. Are all of these guys (the ones who our government trusts to maintain and operate out most sensitive and powerful weapons) all lying and/or delusional?
That event was immediately noticeable and happened in an area where the vast majority of vehicles have dash cams due to insurance fraud.
Not a lot of people stare at the sky though looking for flying objects that they cannot identify. Most cameras aren't pointed in a direction to capture much (if any) of the sky either. Also, go outside next time the moon is out, get your phone out and take a photo or video of it... looks like a tiny blob of light doesn't it, far worse than what your naked eye sees.
In December I was curious about MUFON so joined, paid to take the test to become a field investigator as I was curious what people are reporting (largely commercial aircraft I suspect after having worked at an airport for 15 years and seeing aircraft appear to do wonky stuff due to distance/speed/absurdly bright landing lights), and joined the MUFON facebook group.
On the Facebook group, when you sift through the hot chaff of people claiming they've been telepathically communicating with umpteen races of aliens that "their sources" given them "intel" about, you get a lot of photos and videos of what are almost certainly commercial aircraft. In once instance in the past few weeks someone posted a photo of an "alien ship" that was blatantly a Mylar balloon in the shape of a sun with wavy rays of Mylar around the edge of the balloon.
Then factor in things like stars, planets, satellites, toy and commercial drones, Chinese lanterns, balloons, space debris reentering the atmosphere, military aircraft refueling, etc and you quickly realize that probably 99.999999999999999999999999% of Unidentified Flying Objects are man made and natural phenomenon, often extremely boring stuff.
Recently there was some siting off of Hawaii of some blue orb. I had multiple people get into arguments with me on the MUFON group about it's origins. I believe it was random space junk, immediately a man began insisting it was an "ion propulsion" alien ship crashing after it had been shot, kept insisting that only that bluish glow could be create by an ET exotic technology star drive, I quickly pointed out more than a dozen materials that create a blue flame when they burn at which point he kept arguing with me and got quite hostile insisting it's a downed alien craft.
The past 2-3 days that group has had people sharing a recent article about Juno detecting an FM radio signal from one of Jupiter's moons. Almost everyone on those posts is adamant it is an extraterrestrial signal that NASA is trying to cover up. Virtually none of them are willing to even entertain the idea that this is 100% a natural phenomenon that science can fully explain.
Even if all of the cameras we have deployed around the planet were capable of getting high resolution, stable, quality images of the bulk of Unidentified Flying Objects, some people would simply claim a conspiracy when you showed they were very much not little green men in flying saucers.