Edit: I am specifically talking about aliens, insinuation of aliens, hinting at aliens, waving one's hands vaguely at something that sounds like it might be aliens, and generally treating aliens as equally or nearly as probable as mundane explanations for various reports.
When dealing with complex questions of which we have but datapoints, the probability of scenario A vs B moves in a linear scale, not according to arbitrary requirements of "extraordinary evidence".
That may be true, but I the case of interstellar travel, we have mountains of solid evidence to prove it's not possible (essentially all of physics for the last 100 years or so), and some vague claims with 0 evidence claiming it's actually happening. To convince us that all that physics is wrong you have to bring some extraordinary evidence, not claims that you heard someone knows someone who saw something.
The question is what the probability is for an intelligent species to evolve per solar system, and the more complex questions of how long they would survive etc. We only have a single datapoint (us) which only gives us the knowledge that intelligent life can evolve, but no direction whatsoever as to its probability.
In today's economy of attention, grifters are very common and extraordinary claims like "I know for a fact that Aliens have made it to Earth and they have technologies beyond our current understanding of physics. Also there is a conspiracy to hide this fact." can rationally be ignored in the absence of irrefutable proof. At most it's entertaining to hear.
On our journey through life, most people develop a fairly good sense of prior probabilities and that manifests through excitement. Actual aliens? Exciting. People misinterpreting noisy information? Dull. Telephone game stories getting out of hand? Dull. People lying for clout? Dull. Prestigious people doing all of the above? Dull, dull, dull.
Equal-weighting an arbitrary list of options is a terrible prior distribution that does not tap anyone's knowledge of how the world works. Weighting by excitement, however, does exactly this. To convincingly prove aliens you need to convincingly disprove the dull alternatives. It's easy to imagine extraordinary evidence that could do this -- but I don't see any extraordinary evidence here. I see a bunch of ordinary evidence and people who want to believe.
So either we have a strong prior that the data needs to overcome, or we have a sensible null position (e.g., UAPs are the result of natural phenomena or human technology - probably both) that would need to be overcome by strong evidence.
It's still worth getting more specific and learning more about the bucket of things that get lumped together into "UAP", but that doesn't change the fact that I think people are completely justified in dismissing all the alien BS.
Mistakes can happen without grift or delusion. A fighter pilot who spends an entire career training against fighter-sized opponents might honestly mistake a small nearby slow-moving drone for a fighter-sized distant fast-moving drone. A radar tech might see returns that fly away at unearthly speeds because that's how jamming works (create fake bait return, fly it away).
But repeated, insistent refusal to engage with obvious dull alternative hypotheses? Yeah, that's delusion / grift.
He goes and gives a summary of this stuff to congress, and random normal people say "oh there's no evidence", but he clearly HAD IT, AND gave it to the ISG. Congress asked to see it, and have been denied. Why are they being denied if there's nothing? How can congress properly perform their function of oversight if they keep getting denied requests?
What's frustrating is there's a sector of the government that seems happy to say "we haven't see any evidence, must be nothing" while at the same time the government is refusing to share the supposed evidence.
I think in 2017 I would have been one of the skeptical people, but the more I watch this play out, it's cystal clear there is something and there is a group of people in our government who want it out there, and a group of people in our government who absolutely do not.
In five years, a "conspiracy theorist" will be defined as someone who refuses to believe the propaganda from on high about UFOs/UAPs.
The problem is that there's a whole conspiratorial ecosystem which has been thriving on the news/testimony.
"this" meaning aliens? FFS...
Honestly it was disappointing to me. Someone with his bonafides standing up, raising a hand, and testifying in congress that they have been inside one of these things, was part of the program revere engineering them, or gave an alien a handy would be an interesting development. Until that time, I chalk this up to simply more of the same blurry assumptive evidence that looks a little too much like a pie plate.
There’s simply not enough time to run down every single crank rabbit hole.
If David Grusch had showed up with a bunch of family members who claimed to have seen UAPs being dismantled with their "spiritual eyes", then perhaps I'd put his testimony on par with Joseph Smith (and Oliver Cowdrey and David Whitmer)
Of course, I would expect some internal investigation into if and why he is claiming these things, if it's not already known. But I don't see why anyone should spend any significant resources (let alone the public at large) going by the words of someone who is payed to hide things from the public.
If there is a conspiracy inside the DoD to hide reverse-engineering projects from congressional oversight, as Grusch claims, then there is a good chance that no investigations will actually be performed without significant pressure from the public.
That is why public engagement is important. Public apathy enables corruption.
Really depends on what your priors are. For almost everyone, the existence of aliens has a much, much lower probability than the probability of someone lying about it or being mistaken about it.
As a sanity check, imagine a person with a similar background testified to congress that elves are real and have been kidnapping children and replacing them with changelings. How would you rate the relative probabilities of that being the truth or him being a liar or mistaken?
This isn't really arbitrary -- there are plenty of people in the world who deeply believe in the existence of elves and little people.
Your priors are that it is unlikely to be true, and I respect that. My priors on the existence of dark matter WIMPS is also fairly low yet I don't dismiss people who are trying to find them.
Alien fans say stuff like this all the time, but where is the evidence that rigorous research on this is being blocked? We spent like a billion dollars on SETI. There are volumes and volumes of actual science looking for extraterrestrial life. _It's not out there_. It's not like the skepticism about aliens is based on a refusal to look at the evidence. If aliens were real and they were visiting earth, you'd expect all of the instruments we have scanning outer space constantly would find _some_ evidence of ships or communication or life or _anything_. There is _nothing_.
People don't take the supposed evidence of UFOs seriously because in the context of _everything else we know about outer space_, it's extraordinarily unlikely that our _only_ evidence of extraterrestrial life would be some grainy video of a lozenge shape object taken from an airplane.
(which isn't to say that there's no life anywhere else in the universe, maybe some level of microbial life is common, I don't know, but if there were civilizations capable of interstellar travel, it would be a lot more obvious)
Any scientist would dearly love to find any extraterrestrial life. It would be world fame and an instant nobel prize. It'd be one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind. The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly.
Did I say that it is being blocked? I am saying that it is not being done. The SETI leadership is actively hostile to searching for UAPs in our vicinity like Avi Loeb is trying to do now. And this is no unique to SETI but rather it is a widespread stigma that affects academia in general.
> The idea that scientists aren't looking for alien life is just silly.
How many scientists can you name that are looking for signs of technologically advanced non-human craft in our atmosphere? How many grants are there to research this? Because I only know of one (Avi Loeb) and he was only able to start doing this sometime last year against massive opposition and stigma from his colleagues.
The US government and, indeed, almost every government on earth, scans our atmosphere constantly for alien craft both from earth and using satellites (which is to say, they're looking for missiles and bombers) because it's sort of a core function of national security to control your own airspace. I'm not sure you need anything extra to find "non-human" spacecraft.
And do they systematically release that data for academic researchers to analyze? Or is it automatically classified? If it is classified (hint:it is) then how do we know what they have found?
If you were part of the military brass and your mission was thus the defense of your nation, what would you do if you received radar reports of objects behaving unlike anything else that your known technology could do? And if upon further research your experts determined beyond reasonable doubt that these anomalies are real craft, what would you do? Remember that your mission is to provide every possible military advantage to your country and to prevent other countries from gaining an advantage agsinst you.
Me? I would try to shoot them down to study them and keep the lid on the whole thing to prevent our adversaries from leapfrogging our current technology.
If you have a more detailed criticism I would be happy to address it.
My counterargument is that if the military detected UAPs then they would have both a strong incentive not to inform the public and the means to keep it secret. Thus the (public) absence of (military) evidence is not evidence of absence.
Happy to address any other misunderstandings.
As for the general public, their thinking appears to largely boil down to "if something as big as this was true, we would already know about it", together with the circular "there has never been any solid evidence, therefore everybody knows this is bullshit, therefore anybody who talks about it is a kook or a fraud, therefore it is not worth investigating".
I hope either Avi Loeb's Galileo project or the UAP Disclosure Act included in the NDAA 2024 bill will bring some clarity to the subject over the next couple of years.
There are rumors of witnesses coming out later this year with first-hand knowledge of reverse-engineering programs, but I doubt the general public will be swayed by testimony alone.
Because Congress is neither the investigatory institution for things that may result in prison nor the entity that makes determinations of guilt in such cases, Constitutionally?
Lying to Congress under oath is a felony. Grusch testified under oath to Congress. He could be indicted and sent to prison.
I would appreciate a little bit of charity in the interest of having a friendly conversation.
The response of the public at large seems both muted, and a bit off. US Navy pilots claim to see UFOs? The response largely seems to be "They're just Chinese spy balloons or something, who cares, yawn". But then actual Chinese spy balloons show up and the public/media loses their minds over it.
Sure, it seems unlikely that someone who has hoaxed UFOs in the past would be the one to have an actual encounter, but UFOs are pretty common in conversation and on peoples' minds, especially in the last couple decades. I'm sure many pilots have wondered what it might be like to encounter a UFO.
The context of the discussion in Fravors interview he was more jokingly describing some of the cowboy stunts that military pilots do that might be mistakingly interpreted as UFOs.
By his account he was deliberately creating fake UFO sightings.
> The context of the discussion in Fravors interview he was more jokingly describing some of the cowboy stunts that military pilots do that might be mistakingly interpreted as UFOs.
That may have been his intent in sharing the story, so what? Obviously he intended for the story to increase his credibility, but that doesn't mean it does. His story reveals that he thinks UFO hoaxing is funny. Or... he made up the story for some rhetorical reason or to impress Joe Rogan, which would make him a liar.
Imagine a used car salesman tells you "I know what you probably think about used car salesmen, and it's true that I've ripped some people off before. But in your case I'm going to be straight up and give you a great deal." This is a tactic taught in sales and persuasion books designed to make you trust the salesman; by admitting to some past transgressions they hope to make you feel as though they're being open and honest with you. But what does it actually tell you? Either the story of past transgressions is real, in which case the salesman has an admitted history of scamming people, or the story is made up and the salesman is lying to you to manipulate you. Either way you slice it, it's a huge red flag.
But, if Fravors story isn't credible because of that, to me it doesn't change much:
- The "tic tac" video recorded from that encounter wasn't recorded when Fravor was in the air, he was back at the carrier. It was a follow on flight that had their aircraft equipped with targetting pods.
- Fravor's aircraft had a backseat WSO who witnessed what Fravor saw, to my knowledge that officer hasn't spoken in public or denied Fravor's story
- There was a second aircraft in the air when Fravor had that encounter, also with a pilot and WSO. The pilot of that second aircraft has interviewed confirming Fravor's story.
- Radar operators from the Princeton operating the AEGIS radar have interviewed saying that they also saw the objects.
- To my knowledge no one, either in the air, on the carrier, or in the air wing has stepped forward and claimed that Fravor, or anyone else was lying, or making up stories.
It's always this same excuse. Fravor shared his UFO hoaxing story ostensibly to tell Joe Rogan that he knows how military jets might be misunderstood as UFOs, but that doesn't mean we're not allowed to draw any other conclusions from his story. His story, assuming it's real (assuming otherwise is even worse for Fravor's credibility), tells us that Fravor thinks that it's funny to deceive people about UFOs. I've seen the full video, I know the context. The context doesn't change anything.
> Distrust the car salesman? But the CONTEXT of him telling a story about scamming people was to tell me that he understands why people distrust car salesmen. The fact that he's being open about this tells me that he's being honest with me!
The ostensible context counts for shit, he admitted to being a UFO hoaxer in the past and he's either lying about that or telling the truth, but either way his word w.r.t. UFOs is now dogshit.
And the fact that his old colleagues haven't spoken out against him doesn't give me any confidence. There are a myriad of personal reasons that might be the case, including genuine affinity for the man who by all the accounts I've heard is very likeable in most if not all other respects. Mick West interviewed F-18 Pilot Brian Burke and Burke was gushing with praise of Farvor. Burke also said that he thinks Farvor would never perpetrate a UFO hoax himself, evidently unaware that Farvor already publicly admitted to doing so. So the professionals who worked with or adjacent to Farvor liked him, thinks he's trustworthy, and are apparently unaware or in denial of Farvor's prankster side. https://youtu.be/r3keF8rf7Ig?t=6300
Fighter pilot culture wouldn't see such pranks as that big of a deal. That's why when people like Burke talk about Fravor they only see the decades of service to his country, about his conduct while commanding a fighter squadron, of leading other pilots into combat, or being a naval aviator. A simple prank at the end of a training mission that fighter pilots anywhere would chuckle over at the O'club doesn't rise to the level of needing to be mentioned, and wouldn't even stand out as being remarkable enough to even be remembered.
I also think when Burke is talking about a 'UFO Hoax', I think he is trying to say that he doesn't see Fravor perpetrating a false sighting, and then doing interview after interview about the Nimitz encounter and basically straight up lying with the intention of decieving the public. As I said above, the simple prank of lighting after burners over campfires over people likely trespassing on a restricted bombing range and along frequently used military training routes wouldn't rise to the level of being remarkable enough to be considered a 'hoax' in the eyes of a fellow fighter pilot. That is why Fravor doesn't bat an eye about telling the story, and that is why Burke doesn't mention it when discussing Fravors character or credibility. Also note that in Fravors campfire story, there is no lie, there is no deceit, there is no conspiracy and ongoing narrative to convince the public otherwise. To fighter pilots it's just a prank. Go to an airshow and you'll see the Blue Angles do basically the same thing. One fighter sneaks off low, and while the rest are doing acrobatics above, that one fighter comes in low over the crowd from out of sight and scares the daylights out of everyone. Fighter pilots love that stuff.
But, I take your point. I agree it doesn't help his credibility.
So, the sinister, diabolical, and self-admitted hoaxer Fravor, whos character has been compared to a sleezy used-car salesman online, somehow manages to get 60 nautical miles off the aircraft carrier during a training deployment without being spotted, deploy a drone/balloon, somehow gets back to the carrier in time to go on his training mission, spots his decoy, manages to convince another pilot that it's something strange, strange enough that they convince another pair of aircraft to go out and identify Fravors drone, and they manages to get it on their targetting pod... and then, in his vile deceitfulness, Fravor then does.... nothing, and basically tells no one.
That is until 13 years later, when the singer of Blink-182 goes on a fishing expedition with freedom of information requests, and somehow a short video segment of Fravors heinous hoax come to light.
The whole episode is bizare.
But, what I noticed about that whole exchange with congress, was how willing folks were to detail information in a SCIF and how that's where it ended.
Similarly with the NASA stuff, I'm hearing they were only willing to discuss public info and nothing that's classified. I'm not sure of the usefulness there.
Yes because intelligence officers would never lie to congress or to the public. They are established paragons of integrity and should trusted unquestionably.