can we talk about the aliens

[dead0man]

My favorite part is that Reid though that giving a $22M handout to a friend was the best part of his career.



actually, it's kind of sad.  We, rightly, make fun of the people that take Roswell seriously, yet, at the same time, we let our corrupt politicians give millions of tax dollars to billionaire friends for the exact same sh**t.

[dead0man]

I don't doubt that Reid and his super rich buddy are enthusiasts.  I just don't like to pay for it.

And I have no idea what it is in the video.  The way it's just "stuck" in the middle seems fishy, but I don't know how the optics work.  Could be some skunk works we don't know about.  Like Aurora or some other super advanced drone.  Might be aliens, or it could be a dragon or Jesus.

[dead0man]

Holy hell, how many "true believers" do we have here?

[dead0man]

Holy hell, how many "true believers" do we have here?

I try to go wherever the evidence goes.  As far as I'm concerned, the "true believers" are those who automatically believe the UFO debunkers even when the claim from the debunkers is 'weather balloons.'

sometimes it is just a weather balloon, as in Roswell.  I strongly suggest reading Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

[dead0man]

I'm actually not sure why you are so quick to dismiss the possibility of UFOs and space aliens.

well let me tell ya, it's because every freaking one of them so far has been BS.  It's like the "world is going to end soon" people (no matter if they are climate doomsayers, Jesus doomsayers, tech doomsayers, or whatever), every one of them has been wrong before, it makes sense to question the next guy making the same always wrong claims.  Or bigfoot/yeti believers, ghosties, telekawhatever, horoscopes, tarot, mind reading, copper bracelets and low fat diets...all woo all new claims about them should be heavily examined.  Like somebody said upthread, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we never EVER get it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I have no idea what this has to do with anything.  FTL travel being possible might make aliens visiting us slightly more likely, but the odds are still ridiculously small and more importantly, it's not evidence that we've been visited.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't know if the DoD has encouraged UFO kooks or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.  Makes it slightly easier to hide things during testing if all UFO enthusiasts are kooks.  They really don't need much help looking like kooks though.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

but again, a thing being possible doesn't mean it's happened.  This is not evidence.


But please, don't stop looking.  It would be pretty cool (assuming they didn't instantly kill us or put us in zoos) if there were aliens out there.  Just like it would be super cool if big foot existed or mind reading was possible.  But there is no good evidence for any of it.

[dead0man]

So, what would count as evidence to you?

certainly more than what was shown in the OP.  If the majority of scientists said aliens were real and here, I'd except that it was likely that aliens were real and here.  I'd be more apt to believe it that way than if I saw a "ufo" land and "aliens" got out of it and did some "magic".  If I saw that I'd KNOW somebody was playing a trick on me (or I was seeing someone else have a trick played on them and I was a lucky witness).  There needs to be a lot of evidence, in the hands of REAL scientists that don't have a history of being ufo enthusiasts that can do repeatable science on the evidence that proves the case you're trying to make.  Anything less than that just isn't enough.


I'd like to add that I'd be shocked if we were the only life in the universe.  It's just too big.  But that's the problem with "visits", it's just too big.  Why, other than to visit us for the sake of visiting us, would any alien come here?  There is nothing (other than our life forms and the stuff our life forms create) in our solar system that doesn't exist everywhere else in the universe/galaxy and they're not going to know we exist because why would they?  Because of our "radio signals" flying away from us in every direction?  IF (and that's a big "if") they make it more than a few light years away from Earth, they've still only gone at max, a hundred light years.  That's just a tiny speck of the Milky Way.  (granted there are more than a few stars in that sphere.....as many as 512 it seems)  The chances that there is a space traveling life form in that 512 is slim, the odds they've noticed us are slimmer and the chances they've already traveled here slimmer still.

[dead0man]

Clear and detailed images of a craft demonstrably not of human origin.

And this is not that?

no, not even close.  Do you know what clear and detailed means?

There are a number of problems with this
1.How do you know the aliens are from all that far away relatively speaking?

I don't

You must be logged in to read this quote.

k

You must be logged in to read this quote.

k

You must be logged in to read this quote.

imagination has nothing to do with science

You must be logged in to read this quote.

no there isn't

You must be logged in to read this quote.

ok, show me this credible evidence, 'cause I've never seen it.  And if your evidence is a video or involves ufo enthusiasts making claims about a video, don't bother wasting your time.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

perhaps, but it doesn't help the pro-UFO's side that every claim so far has been total BS

You must be logged in to read this quote.

yep, they do.  At least the first time.



Again, all I want is evidence, mountains of it.  And grainy video isn't evidence.  Reasons aliens might exist isn't evidence.  Appeals to authority isn't evidence.

[dead0man]

1.Imagination and 'strokes of genius' have a great deal to do with scientific discovery and understanding.

indeed, but you'll note that's not what I said.  And more importantly "scientific discovery" and "science" are two different things.  Yes, you need imagination to come up with the idea of the electric light, but you need science to make it.  We can all imagine teleportation or computers we can keep in our pocket, but it takes real scientists doing real science to make it happen.  It's easy to imagine aliens, they've been part of our mythology forever, it's a simple concept for humans to come up with (unlike, say, the hexadecimal number system), just like water gods (look, glowing spirits in the swamp again!), ghosts (I saw some weird light out of the corner of my eye) or dragons (look at these giant bones we found in the desert!), our minds demand explanations for things and sometimes there just isn't enough information there and/or the receiver is ignorant of important facts at hand.  The same (or at least similar) thing is at play when we find patterns in random strings of letters or numbers (or whatever).  Human senses are easily fooled AND we have a desire to have things make sense AND aliens are pretty cool...this is why we have so many stories of aliens.  (well, that and a lot people figure it's an easy way to make a buck/get attention)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

start at what?  I've been reading about UFOs since the early 80s.  It's interesting.  Just like ghost stories, religion and magic.  And just like ghost stories, religion and magic, it's all BS until proven otherwise no matter how much I may want it to be real or not.

[dead0man]

Just going to throw this out there (more background from the fighter pilot incident reportied earlier). Read it all before you make a judgement but understand that all of these were professional pilots, fire control, and other assigned US Navy personnel.

https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

yes, we noticed the appeals to authority earlier.

[dead0man]

and this is why I love these stories.....

because I just learned about MARAUDER.  Someone on another board suggested a test of it (or something like it) may have been the cause of the odd thing in the video (probably not).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[dead0man]

deadoman A railgun projectile doesn't go from angels 80 to 50 feet off the deck and to a CAP like 50 miles away in 3 seconds and it sure didn't in the early 90s with less tech than now. The Navy still hasn't mastered the railgun they are working on now and it may be shelved entirely (see http://taskandpurpose.com/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-budget/)

You'll note I said it probably wasn't this (though it's a million times more likely than aliens), I just thought it was cool.  Why would you think they stopped making it better in the early 90s?  What would the Navy's failed railgun have anything to do with the USAF's working and different kind of railgun?

[dead0man]

I do think it's possible (though I wouldn't bet on it) that we're the only intelligent life in the observable universe (parts old enough that we can see light from them). We just don't know enough about how likely life is to occur, much less intelligent life, in order to know otherwise.

But if the universe is infinite, as it appears to be, then it is a sure thing that there is other intelligent life. In fact, it's a sure thing that there are identical copies of Earth and everything on it, infinitely many in fact. But since they're not observable in principle, it's somewhat of a philosophical question whether they should be considered real to us or not.

I think it was Hawking that said (paraphrasing) "there are two possibilities, we're alone or we're not and both are awesome".  If we're alone, then that makes us super special (and we should probably be better stewards).  If we're not alone, great, more to discover!  Breaking each down further, are we alone because we're the first?..the last? maybe the only, ever?  Each of those is pretty cool too.  If we're not alone, are we one of just a few locations with life? or maybe one planet of billions?  I think the most likely is the most boring, the universe is teeming with life, but 99.8% of planets with life have only microbial creatures.  Only 1 in 800 have anything bigger than a lady bug and only 1 in 5000 have something advanced as a dolphin and life that creates any kind of advanced tech is extraordinarily rare.


...but that just makes us super special.  We've sent sh**t out of our star system, I'd bet that doesn't happen very often in the universe.

[dead0man]

Just going to throw this out there (more background from the fighter pilot incident reportied earlier). Read it all before you make a judgement but understand that all of these were professional pilots, fire control, and other assigned US Navy personnel.

https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

yes, we noticed the appeals to authority earlier.

Edited: There is NOTHING logically wrong with appeals to authority.  The logical fallacy is the misplaced appeal to authority, like using a baseball player to advertise coffee machines.

there is when the authority isn't an expert in the field you are claiming he is.  Navy pilots aren't extraterrestrial experts.  Pilots, like all people, see things wrong all the time.  Them seeing something they can't explain isn't proof of aliens.

[dead0man]

That sounds reasonable...and if we did the math the closest one would still be really really really far away.

If we assume a normal "best case scenario" for the evolution of life is what's happened on Earth, then it takes about 4.5 billion years for a solar system to go from early planets to life that can go into space.  The Milky Way is pretty much as old as the universe itself at ~13billion years, but, if I remember correctly, the heavier elements required for life took two or three cycles of stars forming and blowing up before they existed in quantities enough to form rocky/metalic planets big enough to form life (as we know it).  Lets say that's only been true for the last 6 billion years, that still leaves some plausible life (as we know it) bearing planets that are more than a billion years old.  If FTL travel is possible, they could be all over the galaxy.  Even if it's not, they could be all over a small corner of it.

Of course stars blow up, or otherwise die out.  Unless life is super advanced and can GTFO, it's not going to survive that very well.  Sometimes planets collide or other big thing from space hits it, or really, a million other things could stop early/non-advanced life on a planet.  It's a tough universe and we (probably) live on a rare Eden.

[dead0man]

in the same way it's evidence of dragons and Jesus.