Show me a UFO and an alien and I'll believe it. I've had enough of the podcasts, news articles and "court tv" to know the same amount (very little, nothing concrete) as I did before all of this started.
- the smartphone era produced fewer pictures of UFOs despite everyone having a camera
- crop circles kind of died out
- in order for information to be suppressed, there had to be a conspiracy that was simultaneously worldwide and watertight, yet itself did not leak like, say, Cold War spies
- a whole plethora of new unevidenced beliefs would sweep across the world
So: Occam's razor tells us that there almost certainly aren't any UFOs.
What, then do we do with the eyewitness accounts?
It also becomes apparent just how unreliable these are. People can become thoroughly convinced that things happened which did not and could not have happened. People acquire all sorts of strange beliefs, sometimes to their detriment. Cults come and wait for landings that never happen, but also serious men in serious jobs have one report in their lives that directly contradicts reality.
It can be a little difficult to deal with how unsatisfactorily the sausage of consensus reality is made, but it's the only alternative to wandering back into Carl Sagan's "demon-haunted world".
Not only eyewitness accounts, but also recorded military footage (e.g. onboard cameras, FLIR sensors mentioned in the hearing). Are you suggesting that numerous high-ranking former military officials are lying under oath? And that the expensive, high-tech equipment recording the objects also failed in a way that showed something that wasn't actually there? That sounds much more frightening to me than the alternative explanation.
Yes. And those that aren't lying are severely mistaken. Expensive high tech equipment can fail or show weird readings ALL THE TIME. You get small piece of debris on a camera moving at mach 1 and it's going to look like something is moving at mach 1 with you, and somehow magically keeping up in strange ways before "zooming off" when it falls off the camera.
Pilots are NOT techs. Their jobs is to fly the plane and shoot shit down. They need a working understanding of the tools in front of them and do their best with the information presented. If my car says that my engine oil pressure is at 0, but somehow the car is still running, I don't assume magic. I assume ignorance and take it to a mechanic. MANY of these supposed UFO sightings boil down to such situations, and techs have verified that multiple times, but that gets ignored.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but the testimonies provided under oath today do not match your description of a piece of debris on a camera/sensor. If you have not already watched the hearing I would recommend it.
> MANY of these supposed UFO sightings boil down to such situations, and techs have verified that multiple times, but that gets ignored.
Source(s)? I would love to read more about techs who have talked about these events.
Yes? It's not like that hasn't happened before, and there's no real way to contradict them. And if they did they wouldn't be prosecuted. And if they were prosecuted they would be pardoned.
We can't see the footage, so that's not admissible as evidence in the court of public opinion.
What I consider impossible though is for what is alleged staying secret for this long. Especially internationally.
It rose on the horizon over the mountains, way off in the distance.
Then within about 2 seconds it was hovering directly above us about 100 feet up.
It was huge, silent.
I was marching in my Civil Air Patrol group. Our commander was a former SR-71 mechanic when it was still a top secret program.
He was doing the marchine exercise and when we saw the craft we all watched it - then when it basically teleported directly above us - he very quickly ushered us back into our group hangar.
I've seen others - but this was the closest I have been to one.
It has shaped my reality ever since (I was 14 when it happened, and I am 48 now)
The TR3B wasnt a known class of things back then - but the "triangle with lights at each point" was a typical design trope talked about.
This thing was huge, a triangle, was literally hovering above us. and I could see the details on the bottom.
It wasnt until years later that tr3b came out as the name for the thing.
UFO stands for "Unidentified Flying Object" and doesn't necessarily mean anything extraterrestrial.
Statistics makes the claim that aliens are more likely to exist than not.
"There exists alien somewhere in the universe" doesn't imply "there are aliens visiting us right now", though.
Given that, I think a strong measure of skepticism in this regard is fairly well supported. But, a good scientist should always be willing to change their position if the evidence dictates such, and new evidence can always come along. See: The Problem of Induction.