Pentagon UFO study led by researcher who believes in the supernatural | Hacker News Reader

Pentagon UFO study led by researcher who believes in the supernatural

science.org

32 pointsnabla986 comments

This sounds like a nothing-burger.

> Taylor was “informally referred to... as the chief scientist as efforts to assemble a larger team were underway," and it was not a full-time position.

It's a meaningless title he received while only having a part-time participatory role, during the process of gathering together a team.

Taylor is obviously a stakeholder on the issue; any investigation into the alleged phenomenon is going to need to involve those who claim to have experienced it, lest their absence be taken for evidence of a lack of credibility on the part of believers.

I have watched clips from shows with Taylor and I am continuously amazed, not by the over-dramatic fake acting, but by the fact that he apparently has several different PhDs and serious academic background.

Ignoring the fact that he produces the most brain-dead reality TV shows you could imagine, what really confuses me is simply his person. He talks like a Redneck who has never seen a classroom from the inside, makes incredibly stupid associations and statements that could be mistaken for the effects of a concussion, and if you watch his show you are absolutely convinced he's just a farmer living on this ranch.

Then, sometimes, he'll slip, and suddenly he makes a rational statement that shows a great depth of understanding of physics or engineering, with almost no detectable Redneck accent, and your brain literally feels like it tripped and fell. This is then followed without fail by regression back into some sort of naive association and explanation and several restatements of his original statement in extremely simple dumbed-down terms.

I am not from the US, I do not watch US television, even our reality shows are not this stupid, so this is quite honestly utterly confusing to me. It seems as if these shows are produced for viewers with major brain damage, yet I cannot possibly believe that the viewers inherently lack any sign of intelligence and looking at some of the comments always confirms that this style of acting is almost universally perceived as extremely annoying and devoid of value, with people constantly complaining about it and reiterating that this added reality TV show bullshit dilutes the value of the show 10x.

Even more confusing is that Taylor, who - even though he doesn't seem like it in the shows - appears to be a very intelligent and educated man, would purposefully allow and engage in this kind of production.

I truly believe that there is extraterrestrial life, the probability is too high to ignore, and that places like Skinwalker Ranch might contain traces or artifacts, but I'm not sure if History Channel should be the organisation researching them.

It sounds like you are struggling with your understanding of what the cadence, character and interests of an educated person should be as it contradicts what you've experienced when watching Taylor on television.

Truth be told, this thread is the first I've heard of this person. I don't really watch recent American supernatural daytime television.

That said, it takes all kinds, and every State has one or more post-secondary institutions. Pocketing a number of PhDs is increasingly common as a result of the sheer quantity of schools and graduates.

That sums it up pretty nicely. I can't remember seeing a lot of scientists producing reality TV.

> I don't really watch recent American supernatural daytime television.

Granted, neither do I. Maybe Taylor is just a particularly bad example, but I'd rather not watch more American supernatural daytime television to extend the dataset.

Linked in article: https://badufos.blogspot.com/2022/06/meet-face-of-pentagons-...

Bias on both sides. Doesn't mean that either side is wrong; but "they're biased!" isn't much of an accusation. Heretics can also seek the truth.

>have "seen more UFOs than I can count," and that he’s been tracked by supernatural entities that caused his car and appliances to malfunction. "

Stuff like this casts doubt to his honesty or his sanity.

Explain why

It's the other way around, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. At the very least - name a plausible physical phenomenon that allows FTL?

Alcubierre drive or an Einstein-Rosen bridge immediately come to mind.

Yeah but no. Both require impossible things to happen and thus both are mathematical exercise only. These two are why I said "physical phenomenon".

They require things far outside or current technological ability; both are grounded in our understanding of physics. Yes, it's possible they are forever outside our ability, but that makes them improbable but not impossible.

No, I mean they require things that are absolutely imaginary and exist only in the realm of numbers. There's zero proof of anything like "negative energy", for example. And E-R bridges are impassable - anything that would try would get stuck and/or crushed. This is not about engineering ability - both theories are artifacts of the imperfection of our understanding of physics and math, nothing more.

Two centuries ago we argued whether heavier than air objects could fly, or if machines could reach the moon.

I think it's hubris to think our current models of the universe are the rules of the universe; and that our technological ability could not be eclipsed by further millennia of study.

Sure, but it's much worse to take a math exercise without any connection to reality and claim that it means aliens might be visiting us.

You asked about plausible FTL technology, and I provided examples.

I asked about a plausible physical phenomenon - something that can be seen and measured in the real world. You will never measure a passable E-R bridge or Alcubierre drive because it's purely mathematical exercise, it has zero possibility/probability of being engineered into existence as it relies on things that straight-up can never exist. I'm not saying FTL is impossible but it's definitely not going to be either of these - our universe would be totally broken and self-destruct if these were possible.

Without technology, you'll never see mechanical engines powered by chemical energy, either.

Neither option I gave requires impossible technology, only improbable and unlikely technology.

I don't think FTL is such a barrier if you accept that general relativity isn't a perfect model, even by current known standards.

He asserts things to be true without evidence

So did John Snow. Then he stopped cholera.

John Snow had evidence, and a hypothesis that could be tested, but no one took it seriously. That's a lot more than UFO believers have.

>That's a lot more than UFO believers have.

UFO 'believers' have - since very recently - videos released by the US military in which they say 'detections of this object were confirmed by multiple sensor platforms' and 'we cannot identify this object and have no speculation as to its origin' or whatever the exact wording is.

You know what I mean, the 'tic-tac' video. The narrative provided with that video confirms that the object/objects were detected by multiple types of sensor (visual, infrared, radar) and by multiple sensor platforms (aerial radar, aerial infrared, ship-based radar) and that the detections correlated.

With those releases the the UFO landscape changed, to wit, the US military is now a 'UFO believer.'

The thing is, none of that is evidence of alien spacecraft. The tic-tac videos are interesting, but i've seen plenty of rational explanations offered for them[0], and as far as I can tell the whole alien narrative around them was fabricated by sites like thedrive.com, who then later reported that the government (far from being 'ufo believers') found these craft to be purely terrestrial drones, likely from China[1,2].

You're free to ignore all of that and assume it's aliens but doing so is just superstition, not reason.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Potential_...

[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/drone-swarms-that-hara...

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31701319

To the US military a UFO is an unidentifid flying object. To UFO conspiracy theorists and the like they are alien ships.

Stating you don't know what an object in the sky is , is a completely reasonable thing to do.

Making the claim they are alien ships without any proof is not

What did he believe without evidence? Cholera?

Because if your Bayesian prior on being "tracked by supernatural entities that caused [your] car and appliances to malfunction" is distinguishable from zero then your mental faculties are open to question unless you can produce evidence for it. And there is no reproducible evidence for any supernatural phenomenon, let alone one as dramatic as this.

> then your mental faculties are open to question unless you can produce evidence for it

Why?

Because if you believe extraordinary things without evidence then your thinking is not constrained by objective reality. That is the definition of being delusional.

There is countless experiential evidence.

https://www.narcap.de/dokumente/COMETA-Report-englisch.pdf

https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20

UFOs are not supernatural. Of course there are UFOs. The only question is whether any of them are extraterrestrial (which would be extraordinary, but still not supernatural).

(And BTW, the readiness with which UFO advocates conflate "UFO", "extraterrestrial" and "supernatural", all of which are completely distinct from one another, is indicative of the generally sloppy thinking that goes on in that community.)

Even more, supernatural stuff does not exist. Period. There might be natural stuff which we did not yet discover or which we do not understand properly, but there is no supernatural stuff.

To be fair, there could be supernatural stuff, i.e. stuff whose behavior is not constrained by any discernible natural law. There just isn't any evidence that such stuff actually exists in our universe. All of the "evidence" for supernatural phenomena can be more readily explained by people making mistakes, sensory illusions, cognitive biases, or just flat-out making shit up.

What would it even mean to have evidence of something supernatural? Wouldn't having evidence (an observation?) make it no longer supernatural (above the natural)?

I guess that depends on your definition of the word "natural". But one of the notable characteristics of nature as it actually exists in our universe is that its behavior is governed by discernible laws with very low Kolmogorov complexity. This is what makes science possible. But the universe doesn't have to be that way. Harry-Potter-stye magic could exist in principle, and that would be different enough from nature-as-we-know-it to deserve a different label despite the fact that magic would, in such a world, be "natural".

I suggest checking out Dean Radin's Real Magic. I'm in the middle of it now, and it seems persuasive in the affirmative.

It tries to use the scientific method to objectively determine if "real" magic (supernatural, psi, etc) exists.

I'll give long odds against.

One side is indeed wrong.

It's a brilliant PR move by the Pentagon to hire a reality TV star to head a UFO study in this cyber era of (mis)information. Anyone with common sense already knows that the US has not militarised space and created a new arm of the military (US Space Force) to fight any alien invasion. But the Pentagon knows how essential PR is to justify its huge budget. It can be hard to justify to the public why a new, independent arm of the military is needed to protect critical infrastructure, especially when you can't reveal the primarily goals of Space Force without inviting more critical scrutiny and endangering future military goals. So UFOs (which the general public automatically associate with extraterrestrial aliens) provide a good PR distraction for the US Space Force from real political criticism and scrutiny.

(As "conspiracy" theories go, apart from protecting critical infrastructure the primary goals of the US Space Force is to aid in the creation and protection of next-gen satellite internet and a drone military. This will slowly allow the US to completely take over the internet infrastructure globally, using BigTech, to the point of even making local telecommunication infrastructure of a country redundant. And second, it will create a new planet wide network of satellites and a communication platform to create the next-gen drone military that is inevitable when Robotics and AI r&d reach a certain threshold. A drone military is essential and inevitable for countries like the US where losing military personnels in a war has a high political and miliary cost, unlike say in China or India that have a huge population and a voluntary military force with no conscription.)

If belief in the supernatural rules you out then you’d have to rule out billions of Christians and etc.

Right, belief in god or supernatural is still compatible with a belief in science and the scientific method. the laws of nature and physics, and even evolution, do not preclude a god; god can be seen as the author of, or even the embodiment of, these laws.

The existence of an "active" God as portrayed in most religions would complicate things tremendously though. If an entity can inject energy into the system or can alter system properties at will then the fundamental assumptions about the way the universe works go out the window.

And if no entity can, we don't have free will...

only in deterministic physics...

In my head 100 times out of 100 my "decision" to raise my hand or open my mouth results in said action. Are you suggesting the fact each decision is made at all is due to non-deterministic quantum effects? I thought neural activity had already been demonstrated to operate at a classical level though.

If you are open to another viewpoint, that free will is an illusion, listen to Sam Harris’s take on it (he’s a neurologist). Here’s a summary of his book on the topic as well as mentions from a few other cognitive psychologists and neurologists who came to the same conclusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701738/

Yes, familiar with his take. I honestly don't see any alternative hypothesis that makes sense. But the illusion is too good to allow me to believe that it is one.

Is it not true that if this entity is not limited by space-time, then they can easily alter the past to affect the present, and no one in the present would be the wiser, since there is a cascading effect of changes?

Except somebody always remembers the Sinbad movie that apparently never existed (pretty sure I do).

It depends how you cash out "compatible."

Speculative metaphysical theories are compatible with science because they are unprovable and, if true, "override" science as the true cause of the laws of nature and the world. However, this is trivial and uninteresting because we don't have good reasons to take any of these speculative theories seriously in the first place.

Insofar as supernatural/mystical beliefs correspond to testable claims about the world, these beliefs are clearly incompatible with science. First, they are not backed by evidence. Second, the combined efforts of anthropology, history, and neuroscience have built a compelling model of how people come to believe such things.

>have "seen more UFOs than I can count," and that he’s been tracked by supernatural entities that caused his car and appliances to malfunction. "

There are levels to it.

It depends on the degree to which their religion biases their judgement. I wouldn't trust a Christian doctor who believes in faith healing for a medical diagnosis, for example. Likewise, I wouldn't expect someone who already believes in the UFO narrative to be skeptical enough not to begin with the premise that confirms their biases and work backwards.

The headline may oversimplify the article (a little).

The article isn't explicit, but I think this guy is seen (by some) as gullible for supernatural explanations.

I.e., his reports would only be informative if they concluded that there were not UFOs.

Absolutely, if you were running a study to determine the existence of God. A proponent of extraterrestrial visitors is hardly sufficiently unbiased to work on a study attempting to explain UFOs.

Anyone here actually seen a UFO? I did once. Didn’t have the characteristics of a drone since it did acute turns at high speed. Always had me spooked after seeing it.

Drones can make turns at high speed.

Proof? From what I’ve seen they have to slow down considerably before making an acute turn

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvNLuC12R0

Some more context - drone racing requires the pilot to be explicitly smoothing their turns to the optimum to maintain speed during the maneuver.

Check out “freestyle FPV” for better examples of “acute turns”.

I fly a 5” freeestyle quad quite a bit, and it’s extremely common to let it fall in a ballistic arc until a few feet above the ground or an obstacle, then shoot off in a different direction. The thrust to weight ratio of these things is just incredible.

I'm reminded a bit of Michael Flynn - who rose to a high rank despite being a bit of a nut. Hard to know though, since I don't know anything apart from this article - but it's at least possible for unhinged or extremely gullible people to rise to high positions at the Pentagon.

> possible for unhinged or extremely gullible people to rise to high positions at the Pentagon

Or the government

I ask this in every UFO thread.

An alien civilization that has achieved FTL or let's say even a generational ship:

WTF would they give a damn about earth and be "buzzing" it in little ships like we would do with fighter planes? Imagine how advanced sensors would have to be to travel FTL and avoid destruction.

Why would they even be occupied by living creatures when we ourselves already use automated drones and interplanetary probes?

All our projections are from the limitations of our own technology and how we would deal with something. They aren't going to be that backwards/limited. And I think they would be very bored with earth, at best observe us like we observe primates and move on.

Thank you! Arthur C Clarke raised a similar point in Childhood's End. When confronted with some alien silver viewscreen, which everyone thought was some advanced thing, one character asked what if is a simple two way mirror? Point is, a visitor will use the most convenient and convert thing to observe us, not some clunky contraption. Unless they are doing it on purpose.

Rare or medium rare?

You don't have to assume FTL. They could be extremely long lived, or not alive at all (AI). They might be from within our solar system.

It's also not valid to reason "because I can't guess their motive they can't have one.". Using humans as an analog people travel to go to the zoo, for religious reasons, or dispatch probes and rovers. UFOs might be any of these or others for aliens.

And yet, humans keep traveling to remote areas to film wildlife documentaries or go on safaris. Why? Because it’s fun and interesting.

> WTF would they give a damn about earth

Possibly for similar reasons we give a dam about ants and have professions dedicated to their study. It may also be in their best interest to keep tabs on any ant colonies just in case they run a muck.

Well the odds of finding a civilization like ours would be astronomically low. So it probably would be interesting. Everything you find is likely to be either primitive or much more advanced. Ours is a very brief sweet spot of rapid tech acceleration

I always tend to ask “why does everyone assume we are not the first civilization to achieve enough intelligence to even conceptualize that there could be others?”

Someone had to be first…why not us?

I'd think a home planet would have to be devoid of life to not even project the idea there might be life elsewhere. And then that void begs the question where did that lifeform come from?

Even before aliens humans saw "the other" via made up deities living beyond their grasp in every civilization. Then they'd look up to the moon and imagine it was alive or some kind of people there. All projections of "life is everywhere".

Sure we can conceive of it, and have since we have been able to took up and wonder, but the question is really more about the assumption that why do we humans always seem to assume that alien life is more advanced than us? It’s sort of my answer to the Fermi paradox. We haven’t detected alien civilizations because they may not exist…yet.

UFO nuts at least rely on a faith that they exist and they have made it here and are slicing up cow genitals and sticking various probes up our backsides. If they can do that, sure, they are more advanced. However, why are the pragmatic Drake equation applying scientists out there always seems to be this under this assumption that extraterrestrials are more advanced?

If there is no evidence they are here or even exist. There is certainly no evidence that they are more advanced than us. Until we see evidence to the contrary, we rule the roost.

You could argue they're so advanced they no longer have war, death, or drama. So they come to watch us unfold. Maybe they watch closely to get odds on what will happen next on an interstellar Las Vegas board.

I'm constantly in a state of flipping between "this is a psyop" to "stupider things have come to light."

I guess my best example is how people claim 9/11 was an inside job. All the evidence is made up of "mistakes" or inconsistencies that someone found by playing back the videos over and over in their basement.

I would think anyone with the means to fake an attack like that would be able to do so without making such trivial mistakes... but then lets say that it was totally an inside job. All those mistakes don't matter because everyone believes it anyways. This is similar to the Holocaust in the sense that a lot of people simply didn't believe it was happening because it was too crazy, too big of a thing to happen.

* want to say, I don't believe in that conspiracy at all, was more thinking out loud.

In regards to the UFOs... what benefit is there for the pentagon to put on this whole show? (Yes, I know ppl more or less asked for it but it doesn't mean they had to)

> I would think anyone with the means to fake an attack like that would be able to do so without making such trivial mistakes

But once you’re agreeing to go along with conspiracy theory epistemology, you can keep looping forever. Anything that you provide as reasons that you believe it’s not a conspiracy could have been placed there by the conspirators to convince you there’s no conspiracy! If you see no evidence of conspiracy, well then clearly that’s what the conspirators wanted! If you see some small mistakes or inconsistencies, and you take that as evidence that it wasn’t a conspiracy (because of course competent conspirators would never allow small mistakes or inconsistencies), well then clearly the conspirators were so competent that they allowed a few small mistakes and inconsistencies to throw you off the scent!

ahah, true.

That's why I generally don't give much weight to those types of "evidence." What you're describing is usually what happens when you talk to them.

“All the evidence is made up of "mistakes" or inconsistencies that someone found by playing back the videos over and over”

no it’s not. for example how were the passengers able to make phone calls when the planes were at 30,000 feet?

This is what I found for that:

https://www.nps.gov/flni/learn/historyculture/phone-calls-fr...

But that's exactly my point. If someone could inside-job-it why would they make sure a simple error and essentially "provide" evidence?

I'd read whatever you post about the phone stuff though as I do find it interesting.

what impact on the credibility of a study does a discredited 'expert' have? I guess we have to work out how much that expert contributed to the study?

Stop using "science" and anything else produced by people who "believed in the supernatural", and see precisely how far that gets you.

This species, man.

Read article before responding to see the level of insanity in this guy.

Well now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect

This whole thing is just really embarrassing. The result of a dumbed down population viewing reality through the lens of Hollywood stories.

"Belief" can be anything that doesn't mean that results will be wrong.

Ramanujam believed if he can figure out Infinity he can "meet / understand / reach" Goddess Mahalakshmi.

Try adding an M.D. to the research team. Scully always kept Mulder grounded to reality, even when reality was fluid and contradictory to facts. When will this become a movie?

Isn't reality made out of facts?

Not fictional reality, no.

Wasn't Scully insanely wrong about everything? (In the fictional universe)

Pentagon + UFO = misinformation campaign

Reply on news.ycombinator.com