Military's UFO-hunting aerial surveillance system detailed in report

In other words, nobody (credible) is claiming that aliens or anything of the sort exist.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is similar. They both approach the subject with a very unscientific, bad faith attitude.

I disagree with them both. I have experienced something that I do not believe has a prosaic explanation. Further, I do not believe that relativity is the end of physics as Tyson or west so strongly imply.

Curiosity in this subject should be encouraged, not ridiculed.

  >His reconstructions make it clear that these phenomena result from properties of the optical system used in the sensors as well as diffusion of infrared light through miles of atmosphere.

From his analysis on the (suggestively named) GIMBAL video, it's clear that the only thing his reconstruction proves is that the rotation ("It's rotating!") and outline is a result of the optics platform. I take no issue with that.

The DoD's claims about extraordinary flight characteristics are not, however, based on the silhouette or the rotation. They have all the flight data from multiple aircraft and ground systems. Their conclusion is based on, at least, additional information from the Situational Awareness display ("There's a whole fleet of them, look on the SA"), the longevity of their flight time (reportedly 12+ hours per Lt. Ryan Graves), and hypersonic flight maneuvers (simultaneously observed both visually and on radar, per Cmdr. David Fravor and SCPO Kevin Day).

Low-information UFO enthusiasts are the ones who got excited about the shape and rotation (which West focuses on), but the DoD never cared about that. Even the name GIMBAL suggests that they were already aware of those confounding effects prior to public release.

Everyone interested in the topic should watch the Mick West videos, but be careful not to make more of his videos than what's actually there (ie the subset of claims he can support with reconstruction data).

For one thing, he makes arguments in bad faith and with poor use of honest analysis. Consequently, many people have done a pretty thorough job of debunking his own debunking efforts (you can easily find some of these through both a YouTube or a Google search).

West takes a very classic debunker approach (not that I don't say skeptic, but debunker specifically) of prima facie deciding that the inexplicable can't possibly be the case and thus guiding all of his arguments, rather dogmatically, to showing how it isn't the case, regardless of the quality or plausibility of what he argues. It's a dishonest and tedious way to view the world, but couched in enough rational sounding discourse to seem solid.

Many people give such arguments more weight than they deserve because, well, nearly any aspect of examining the UFO phenomenon is at least associated (often very unfairly) with the most extreme of quacks and cranks and thus bias tends towards giving more weight to a seemingly skeptical interpretation, regardless of its specific qualities.

I've communicated with West on this subject even and noticed quickly that when questioned on the weaknesses of specific arguments, he simply doubles down on his base statements, but without addressing the precise counter-skepticism being thrown at him. This does not make for honest reasoning and good faith..

Yes, why not? Covers usually convey a lot of information about a book. Of all the books whose covers look like those an action manga, how many do you figure are a good resource for learning Polish? (Yes, in a way I'm acting deliberately obtuse about the proverb you are referring to, but the point is that there is nothing to that rule apart from it being a popular proverb. It is not hard to find proverbs that assert falsehoods.)

I don't know if the hypothetical scenario in which this logo was generated according to formal DoD-wide rules inspires any more confidence, either. It would just cast more suspicion upon other inputs that go into DoD-branded claims - if standard procedure for insignia produces this, what does e.g. standard procedure for documenting the circumstances under which a video was taken do?

I do like your idea that we're in a quarantine though.

It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe.

If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes.

If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence.

> In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.

Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology.

That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies.

Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something.

You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other.

(We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now).

Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value.

In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3.

A few months ago there was a PBS Space Time episode on this so called "Dark Forest" scenario, which you might enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U

Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity.

But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.

Who? This feels like a straw man argument. I am not aware of anyone who takes such a (ridiculous) position, and I follow this subject fairly closely.

> scientific agency like NASA could be suited for.

That agency was created a couple of years ago. It is called AARO. They just released their FY 2024 report:

https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY2...

It's almost as if there's a cadre of actors (not just on HN) who's job it is to quickly jump on any UFO -related topic and ensure they post as much misinformation and nonsensical points to muddle any serious discussion. Hmm...

You would think they would finally give up, given the cat is outta the bag, even the minuscule but legitimate evidence provided by insider govt sources, since at least 2017.

At least the upvoting ratio seems to be good on this thread, let's see how long that last.

I really do need to finish writing that novel inspired by all the things wrong with that film.

Turns out climactic battles are much harder to write than I was expecting.