I Created ‘The X-Files.’ Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of the New UFO Report | Hacker News Reader

I Created ‘The X-Files.’ Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of the New UFO Report

nytimes.com

31 pointsmiiiiiike19 comments

I believe that’s the weakest appeal to authority I’ve heard in a while: “Thirty years ago I wrote a mildly entertaining television show with subject matter around U. F. O.’s and conspiracies…”

I hesitate to be so dismissive, but the whole article came across to me as just a rambling collection of anecdotes, convincing me of nothing.

To be fair to Chris Carter, he does illustrate that his position as creator of the X-Files made him a magnate for tales of extraterrestrial encounters during the 90s. I do agree, though, that he fails to convey how purported UFO sightings in the 90s are relevant to the current navy reports.

I propose that intelligent life is improbable generally speaking. The other issue is distance. Assuming there is an energy breakthrough and relativistic speeds are possible, the craft will be destroyed long before arriving at a destination. Think collisions and blueshifting of radiation. At non-relativistic speeds, you are looking at extremely long transit times. Think 40,000 years to 200,000 years. No energy source can last that long. You ship would have lost it's energy long before arriving at a destination. Biological entities would have died in the first 100 years. Robotic entities cannot function without an energy source.

Therein lies the insatiable desire for ETs to be real: we wish any or all of those things could be not true. We hope against observation that our own scientists will arrive at mind-boggling energy sources, knowing that cannot be done with all that we know. We imagine another life form that was superior understanding of physics that could prove its possible, and hopefully show us how. These limits, like mortality itself, don’t sit well with our boundless egos. There’s something majestic about that folly… for what it’s worth.

I didn't see any reason to be skeptical of the UFO report in this article. The UFO report doesn't have strong conclusions and it's much shorter than I'd like - but I don't consider that a reason to doubt what it does say.

I think it's obvious the government does know more than they reveal. Trivially, they know the details of the encounters they summarize in the UFO report. I'd love to get a full description of each, any video or recordings, know if there is any similar evidence from the period of time before the report's coverage, and know if there is any physical evidence.

https://youtu.be/0UYDdJN53ak

Spherical drones with lights would be able to produce tons of drama.

If your an alien, your going to be smart enough to disguise your transport as a earth plane, even if your not so smart

Even if I were to be completely skeptical and/or in denial about Aliens existence, on the contrary, no one can say there isn't any evidence. Apart from being mathematically completely unlikely we're alone in the Universe, if you go and read dozens of reports and accounts about alien encounters, most of them match with one another.

> Apart from being mathematically completely unlikely we're alone in the Universe,

I agree that the is probably life in other star systems. The difficult part to believe is that they made an interstellar trip to here. Anyway, pics or it didn't happen. But good pics, not bad pics at the border of the resolution where objects are difficult to identify.

> if you go and read dozens of reports and accounts about alien encounters, most of them match with one another.

Wikipedia has a list of like 9 classes of aliens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alleged_extraterrestri... and subclases that cover all the range of the human imagination. The reports are not consistent at all.

That may be the case with them. But there's thousands of reports and accounts. If you read enough of them you'll see the consistency. Of course there's discrepancies, but the base elements are consistent.

There’s consistency in reports of vampires and dragons too, and for the same reasons.

I agree, but reports of vampires and dragons are very old and too unrealistic to most people today.

I prefer witches, "we" were burning witches like 400 years ago, but the idea is vivid enough today. At that time, many people believed witches were real and the different accusations and account consistent.

> Apart from being mathematically completely unlikely we're alone in the Universe

That's a false assumption, since we don't know the probability of our existence. If the probability is low enough, then it's not "completely unlikely". Particularly if you limit it to our galaxy, since there's little reason to suppose aliens in another galaxy would know of us, let alone make a trip millions of light years.

> if you go and read dozens of reports and accounts about alien encounters, most of them match with one another.

You can say the same thing for similar religious experiences and various other paranormal phenomena. But what's more likely, that human psychology combined with Earth-based phenomena is the answer, or that aliens travelled light years to mess with us?

Most people fail to realize their purpose. They want to give, not to take away. They want to be of service to us. Most of them anyway. Some of them only want to learn of our ways since we're so different. And a minority of them want to study our physiology for their own gains.

Quidquid cognoscitur cogniscitur per modem cognoscenti. But mass witness events with physical traces are quite another matter, epistemologically

I think it's unlikely that Earth is the only planet supporting life. But for a planet to support intelligent life capable of interstellar travel carrying vehicles capable of flying in our atmosphere, and have those aliens spend the huge amount of time and money to travel over here... They'd have to after something far more valuable that what they seem to be interested in.

This is the key point. Most people fail to understand the truly impossible scale of the challenge to travel between the stars. Why would the visitors then make themselves impossible to see or find? The usual response to this is they’ll have some sort of magical way of interstellar travel we don’t understand that makes it not so hard. Meh. Doesn’t ring true.

I’ll believe aliens are here when a starship hauls in and parks.

And I’ll be very, very concerned at that point about exactly what it is they want.

The thing is, we're carbon based lifeforms. They're not. Our bodies are on our visible spectrum. Theirs may not be. They don't hide themselves. We just mostly can't see them with our physical eyes, and with our tools.

From what I understand of their motives after reading so much about it from hypnosis sessions and encounter accounts: They're not here to harvest resources, or to take anything from us. At least most of them aren't. They're here to be of Service. They're not like humanity in general, always taking and taking. They only want to Give. Must people don't understand the state of mind in which you want to give more than take. To be of Service to those in need, is their purpose.

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