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Comment by BluSyn | Hacker News Reader

FYI, Mick West is not an "expert". He has no experience with military hardware. Everyone involved in the incident, or has background knowledge of the classified details, says there are multiple sensors confirming the footage, including direct visual by the pilots. This can not possibly be explained by "lens flair".

People say trust the experts. Well, in this case, the experts are the ones who know the military hardware, who flew the plane, who tracked the objects (plural) on radar. That is not Mick West. Mick West is a professional debunker, which means he analyses these videos with a baked-in assumption that it's "fake", not from an unbiased view.

If you fall for Mick West's BS, you aren't any different from UFO nuts who fall for Steven Greeer's. I suggest thinking for yourself instead.

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This comment, which doesn't reference any of the very powerful bits evidence, and merely spouts a lot of ad hominem, probably belongs on YouTube.

I see very compelling evidence for an argument, which makes your comment seem even more 'unhinged'.

"he analyses these videos with a baked-in assumption that it's "fake", not from an unbiased view"

The balance of 'unbiased view' of either it's 'aliens or something mundane' is going to almost always land on 'something mundane'.

"I suggest thinking for yourself instead."

This is the statement of the true conspiracy theorist:

"Don't believe the evidence in front of you! 'Think for yourself' and 'Make up your own reality!'"

I actually agree with you in general.

> "Don't believe the evidence in front of you! 'Think for yourself' and 'Make up your own reality!'"

I never said this. Evidence is very important. Notably Mick West offered no new "evidence", only supposition. Supposition in direct contradiction to known facts of the case (eg, other sensors, pilot reports, visual confirmations, etc).

I never claimed to know the answer. But I do claim that Mick West is generating faulty conclusions derived from bad assumptions. So in this case you could make a compelling argument that Mick West is the conspiracy theorist. So we go around and around debunking the debunker who debunked the debunker.

It's all a waste of oxygen.

West suggests there is an object being tracked, just that it is obfuscated by the glare. From the article:

> West contends that what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it

So, he's not debunking the existence of what the pilot saw. He's just saying that what we see in the video is not what the pilots saw.

That would be a fascinating countermeasure if the craft was able to rotate to reflect the sun at a tracking pod on a potentially hostile aircraft, or perhaps the craft itself emitted the IR "glare" to prevent it from being accurately photographed.

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