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Comment by roywiggins | Hacker News Reader

The point is that if the only alien spacecraft candidates are in the "too far away and fuzzy to positively identify" zone, and then you improve your detection abilities and all your new candidates are again in that fuzzy zone (which is just further out), one might conclude that there aren't any alien spacecraft.

That is, there are always going to be objects that are too fuzzy to positively identify, no matter how good your sensors are. So you can always find some weird readings at the edge of intelligibility that could be anything. That's why Bigfoot videos are always blurry: clear videos are always not Bigfoot.

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If I was an alien spaceship I'd try to stay just outside the current identification range on purpose.

Also a reasonable take. If you're sufficiently advanced to cover interstellar distances, avoiding detection (for the most part) is probably trivial in comparison.

Why don't they just stay totally outside detection range, instead?

The same reason why petting zoos exist. The thrill and experience of getting so close to something exotic.

For some earthly evidence, the smarter the animal, the more it will exhibit “play” behavior. I suspect it’s an unavoidable quirk of evolved intelligence.

To see as much detail as possible without confirming they are here. Sensors aren't unlimited, aliens would be constrained by the same physics as we are.

You don't need to be much more advanced than we are. You only need time - perhaps the alien civilization is millions of years older than ours. That would allow them to use peer-level technology to travel here.

That would mean they use rockets and jet engines. Which, if we're accepting (for the sake of argument) UFO sightings as evidence, they obviously do not. Naively, and as described, they demonstrate traits which strongly suggest technology far in advance of our own, to the point of harnessing physics we don't even understand.

It would also be very easy to see them coming, because there is no stealth in space and they would need to be burning fuel and giving off heat, and doing so for tens of thousands of years or more.

Why? Teaser theory from H2G2? Just tease people with your presence without giving them any firm proof of what they saw?

To be able to observe their reaction to unknown without confirming I am there.

And maybe I don't have unlimited sensors - so I want to see as much detail as possible.

In other words, uncertainty exists at the edge of certainty.

I get the point, but it just doesn't solve anything as much as it just dismisses it. "It's a UFO because its hard to see, if we could see it, we'd know it was a helicopter that moves in 4 dimensions."

I don’t think you get the point.

That UFOs always are outside the identifiable camera range even as that range expands suggests that they are nothing special. It’s actual good (indirect) evidence for UFOs being nothing special.

It seems telling that as camera and detection equipment has gotten better, presumed "alien" UFO elusiveness has advanced precisely in lockstep: not too much to stop being detected altogether, but not so little as to be definitively identifiable.

We've actually gotten more UAPs than ever as our detection capabilities have increased. We are picking up more things than ever that we can't explain. You'd think that would be the opposite, implying that previously unknown objects became known with better optics, radar and detection systems, but that's not the case.

Well, they're different objects. The lost weather balloon that would have been unidentified before is now identified. You don't hear about those though, since they're boring.

The weather balloon that would not be detected at all before can now be detected as a UFO. As the range of sensors expands the LIV probably gets bigger too just because the radius is larger. The more sensitive and numerous the sensors, the more false positives you get.

As our sensors got better, objects which would previously be UFOs turned into "oh, it's a balloon" and forgotten. Objects that previously wouldn't be visible at all, but are now marginally visible, turn into UFOs.

I don't think you get the point of applying the entirety of the evidence together outside of just saying "well its still blurry, case dismissed." There is hard, credible evidence from reputable eye witnesses. There is hard, credible evidence of these objects moving in a manner that's inconsistent with any known technology we have.

That evidence is utterly unconvincing.

Please pull yourself out of this mirage and away from falling prey to disinformation.

Disinformation? That would imply we're being intentionally misled about what the objects are. In which case, nothing I've said contradicts that, regardless if it's terrestrial based or otherwise.

I’ve never seen this framed as a disinformation campaign. It seems like the opposite, with all of the agencies now taking it seriously: a “get information” campaign.

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