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To deny that something unexplainable has been happening in the skies is really disingenuous. We have very expert, specialist organizations whose primary respons

To deny that something unexplainable has been happening in the skies is really disingenuous. We have very expert, specialist organizations whose primary responsibility it is to know what's happening in our skies. You take these two things and remove the context of "UFOs" and suddenly it's not crazy that they're doing something about it, but crazy that they're not doing something about it. The context of "UFOs" is laden with plenty of bad rap, but that doesn't absolve these organizations from their responsibilities.

krapp 9y ago
Robert Bigelow doesn't believe "something unexplainable" has been happening in our skies - he believes the explanation for those things is alien spacecraft. He isn't interested in seaching for truth, he has an agenda. It's also disingenuous to skip over more plausible explanations, including hoaxes, the memetic effect of UFO culture, classified military aircraft and disinformation campaigns, and misidentification of other mundane aerial phenomena, to assume that anything unidentified in the sky is likely an alien spacecraft.
- pfisch 9y ago
  This is not a hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai... I'm not saying it was an alien craft, but there are a limited number of plausible explanations for an event like this and none of what you listed is a plausible explanation.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Too bad no one at an entire airport had a camera or took a picture.
    - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
      To be fair, it was 2006, and "everybody's phone has a great camera" was several years off. The article does mention someone may have snagged it on a plain digital camera. Not taking a side, just pointing that out.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Phones had cameras back then. Disposable Cameras were available at every airport shop. And Someone allegedly photographed it, but no one bothered to examine or release the photos?
        fapjacks 9y ago
        Well, faced with all this suspicion and negativity, what incentive would anybody have to present their photos to the public? And so let's just scrap this whole incident at the airport. No pictures, no video, no UFO. There is still a substantial body of photographic, video, expert reliable witness accounts of unexplained phenomena happening in our skies going back decades. The government's chief skeptic guy that headed up Blue Book eventually changed his mind over the years in the face of this relatively small but very reliable subset of witness accounts [0]. The vast majority of people are looking at Venus or the moon or streetlights or drunken hallucinations. But we don't care about those people. We care about the 0.0003% (or whatever) of people that check all the boxes on a long list of reliability factors. And yet, that still isn't good enough for some people, because of the hugely negative pseudoscience context that this carries with it. "It's folklore!" In fact, I'll assert that a strange enough advanced aircraft could fly nuclear weapons over this country, and until our pilots shot it out of the sky and spread the wreckage across three states, it would hardly get any attention because of the context this subject carries. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opini...
        valuearb 9y ago
        What incentive? Huge incentives, obviously. This entire thread is a promotion to help a former government official kickstart a business to "research" this phenomenon, where his partner is contractually obligated to get paid $100,000 a year.
        chrisco255 9y ago
        Some did. Most were cheap and even the most expensive ones took 2MP pixel shots. Good luck capturing a fast moving object from a long distance with a Motorola Razr.
    - pharke 9y ago
      Also, it wasn't seen by 'everyone at the airport' >"The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it." It also apparently was not visible on radar or visually from the control tower. Who cares if it was 'aliens' or not, it's a damned interesting phenomena that should be studied for it's own sake.
  - inks 9y ago
    And yet no surveillance cameras captured it? No cameras at the gate? No cameras near or around? This was 2006, well after the days when the idea of 24/7 eyes everywhere was considered a conspiracy, it was the days of bush and the Patriot Act and consistent airport watch. And we get... no actual real evidence?
    - nolanhanz 9y ago
      Pretty sure they don’t have security cameras pointed at the sky
      - krapp 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure that if there were really a giant unidentifiable craft hovering over an American airport terminal less than a decade after 9/11 someone would have found a way to point something at it.
        agarden 9y ago
        I am inclined to agree with you, but on the other hand, according to that WikiPedia article the FAA concluded it was an unexplained weather phenomenon. That is easier to believe, but it makes it no easier to understand how no hard evidence was recorded.
      - inks 9y ago
        Most do especially at flight control to record incoming planes along with steady snap cams that relay black and white feeds unless O’Hare is somehow less serious than Helsinki airport in 2005
        MadcapJake 9y ago
        This was over a gate (C-17 iirc) and thus may have been out of view for any flight control cams.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  I can see where you might think I was asserting one way or the other whether Robert Bigelow was qualified for this work, and that's my fault. I have no opinion about this man specifically. I am just saying that I think this problem is worth further study by the organizations which exist for the purpose of knowing these kinds of things. That being said, according to the article, "Mr. Bigelow said he was 'absolutely convinced' that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth." And while on the surface that might seem to reveal his having an agenda and disqualify any of his analyses, do we feel the same way about physicists that believe God created the universe? Or do we just feel that way about people with out-group beliefs? I suppose a better analogy here would be the business owner of a company doing physics research, since he's not a scientist. But beyond that, I think we can agree that the conversation elsewhere in this thread demonstrates there is a whole lot of negative context which serves to drive people away from taking it seriously.
  - krapp 9y ago
    > And while on the surface that might seem to reveal his having an agenda and disqualify any of his analyses, do we feel the same way about physicists that believe God created the universe? I don't, but only so long as they don't ascribe magical or supernatural qualities to physical phenomena. It's one thing to believe alien spacecraft as an extremely unlikely possibility, and another to consider it not only likely, but indisputably so. The lack of skepticism combined with unfalsifiable claims are what disqualify him, in my view. There does seem to be a fringe of interesting events in the field worth studying. I'm not convinced that there aren't plausible explanations for them - after all, how many "black triangle" sightings are likely to have been classified stealth aircraft? But I also think the negativity serves a valuable purpose as long as it keeps people from entertaining flights of fancy. I'll believe the Robert Bigelows and Bob Lazars and Whitley Streibers of the world when they can back their claims up with undeniable and irrefutable evidence. Given the nature of their claims, I don't believe that's an unreasonable bar to set. Even Einstein was doubted until someone proved him right.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  Because it totally makes sense that the military would fly highly-classified aircraft in full view of thousands of people, essentially giving away any element of surprise in the event the shit hits the fan (thinking Phoenix Lights here)
  - krapp 9y ago
    I completely agree that the Phoenix lights were weird. I don't know what they were, I don't think they were birds, but I also don't think they were a big black alien triangle. Neverthless, the military does sometimes test classified aircraft in view of civilians. And they have been known to use or even encourage UFO sightings as misinformation to cover up their activity. Fiction has to make sense, but reality doesn't always have to make sense.
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      And yet you're refusing to believe in the "reality" (hypothetical) of an alien ship visit, because it doesn't make sense (to you... and possibly to me). Probably because (among other things), we think FTL travel is impossible (... we think... cue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) which makes any visitation from realistically far away essentially impossible or at least highly impractical ("cryosleep" for centuries, etc.) And so a sensible person seeks (perhaps justifiably) prosaic explanations for everything and automatically excludes any hypothesis without a prosaic explanation (with the incredibly audacious conceit of assuming we already understand enough about the universe to make such assumptions), while the fantastical person, not as bound by the need for evidence, can wildly speculate (which would of course include nonhuman intelligences somehow visiting us over distances that are insurmountable to us currently, but might also include basically, well, anything, since without the hard-evidence requirement, you're free to get creative) I think both of these points exist as extremes on a continuum and that they're both wrong in some capacity. I think pragmatism and reasoning and rationality are a good basis, however... just, limiting, as well. We might advance a bit on the evidence front here if there was a scientific way to evaluate mass eyewitness testimony (individual eyewitness testimony has come under fire recently https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-..., but perhaps, if you multiply the number of witnesses, the errors will tend to cancel each other out and you might end up with something more like Evidence with a capital E. (This would be useful in far more areas than mere UFO observation, of course.)

krapp 9y ago

Robert Bigelow doesn't believe "something unexplainable" has been happening in our skies - he believes the explanation for those things is alien spacecraft. He isn't interested in seaching for truth, he has an agenda. It's also disingenuous to skip over more plausible explanations, including hoaxes, the memetic effect of UFO culture, classified military aircraft and disinformation campaigns, and misidentification of other mundane aerial phenomena, to assume that anything unidentified in the sky is likely an alien spacecraft.

pfisch 9y ago
This is not a hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai... I'm not saying it was an alien craft, but there are a limited number of plausible explanations for an event like this and none of what you listed is a plausible explanation.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Too bad no one at an entire airport had a camera or took a picture.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    To be fair, it was 2006, and "everybody's phone has a great camera" was several years off. The article does mention someone may have snagged it on a plain digital camera. Not taking a side, just pointing that out.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Phones had cameras back then. Disposable Cameras were available at every airport shop. And Someone allegedly photographed it, but no one bothered to examine or release the photos?
      - fapjacks 9y ago
        Well, faced with all this suspicion and negativity, what incentive would anybody have to present their photos to the public? And so let's just scrap this whole incident at the airport. No pictures, no video, no UFO. There is still a substantial body of photographic, video, expert reliable witness accounts of unexplained phenomena happening in our skies going back decades. The government's chief skeptic guy that headed up Blue Book eventually changed his mind over the years in the face of this relatively small but very reliable subset of witness accounts [0]. The vast majority of people are looking at Venus or the moon or streetlights or drunken hallucinations. But we don't care about those people. We care about the 0.0003% (or whatever) of people that check all the boxes on a long list of reliability factors. And yet, that still isn't good enough for some people, because of the hugely negative pseudoscience context that this carries with it. "It's folklore!" In fact, I'll assert that a strange enough advanced aircraft could fly nuclear weapons over this country, and until our pilots shot it out of the sky and spread the wreckage across three states, it would hardly get any attention because of the context this subject carries. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek#Change_of_opini...
        valuearb 9y ago
        What incentive? Huge incentives, obviously. This entire thread is a promotion to help a former government official kickstart a business to "research" this phenomenon, where his partner is contractually obligated to get paid $100,000 a year.
      - chrisco255 9y ago
        Some did. Most were cheap and even the most expensive ones took 2MP pixel shots. Good luck capturing a fast moving object from a long distance with a Motorola Razr.
  - pharke 9y ago
    Also, it wasn't seen by 'everyone at the airport' >"The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it." It also apparently was not visible on radar or visually from the control tower. Who cares if it was 'aliens' or not, it's a damned interesting phenomena that should be studied for it's own sake.
- inks 9y ago
  And yet no surveillance cameras captured it? No cameras at the gate? No cameras near or around? This was 2006, well after the days when the idea of 24/7 eyes everywhere was considered a conspiracy, it was the days of bush and the Patriot Act and consistent airport watch. And we get... no actual real evidence?
  - nolanhanz 9y ago
    Pretty sure they don’t have security cameras pointed at the sky
    - krapp 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure that if there were really a giant unidentifiable craft hovering over an American airport terminal less than a decade after 9/11 someone would have found a way to point something at it.
      - agarden 9y ago
        I am inclined to agree with you, but on the other hand, according to that WikiPedia article the FAA concluded it was an unexplained weather phenomenon. That is easier to believe, but it makes it no easier to understand how no hard evidence was recorded.
    - inks 9y ago
      Most do especially at flight control to record incoming planes along with steady snap cams that relay black and white feeds unless O’Hare is somehow less serious than Helsinki airport in 2005
      - MadcapJake 9y ago
        This was over a gate (C-17 iirc) and thus may have been out of view for any flight control cams.
fapjacks 9y ago
I can see where you might think I was asserting one way or the other whether Robert Bigelow was qualified for this work, and that's my fault. I have no opinion about this man specifically. I am just saying that I think this problem is worth further study by the organizations which exist for the purpose of knowing these kinds of things. That being said, according to the article, "Mr. Bigelow said he was 'absolutely convinced' that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth." And while on the surface that might seem to reveal his having an agenda and disqualify any of his analyses, do we feel the same way about physicists that believe God created the universe? Or do we just feel that way about people with out-group beliefs? I suppose a better analogy here would be the business owner of a company doing physics research, since he's not a scientist. But beyond that, I think we can agree that the conversation elsewhere in this thread demonstrates there is a whole lot of negative context which serves to drive people away from taking it seriously.
- krapp 9y ago
  > And while on the surface that might seem to reveal his having an agenda and disqualify any of his analyses, do we feel the same way about physicists that believe God created the universe? I don't, but only so long as they don't ascribe magical or supernatural qualities to physical phenomena. It's one thing to believe alien spacecraft as an extremely unlikely possibility, and another to consider it not only likely, but indisputably so. The lack of skepticism combined with unfalsifiable claims are what disqualify him, in my view. There does seem to be a fringe of interesting events in the field worth studying. I'm not convinced that there aren't plausible explanations for them - after all, how many "black triangle" sightings are likely to have been classified stealth aircraft? But I also think the negativity serves a valuable purpose as long as it keeps people from entertaining flights of fancy. I'll believe the Robert Bigelows and Bob Lazars and Whitley Streibers of the world when they can back their claims up with undeniable and irrefutable evidence. Given the nature of their claims, I don't believe that's an unreasonable bar to set. Even Einstein was doubted until someone proved him right.
pmarreck 9y ago
Because it totally makes sense that the military would fly highly-classified aircraft in full view of thousands of people, essentially giving away any element of surprise in the event the shit hits the fan (thinking Phoenix Lights here)
- krapp 9y ago
  I completely agree that the Phoenix lights were weird. I don't know what they were, I don't think they were birds, but I also don't think they were a big black alien triangle. Neverthless, the military does sometimes test classified aircraft in view of civilians. And they have been known to use or even encourage UFO sightings as misinformation to cover up their activity. Fiction has to make sense, but reality doesn't always have to make sense.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    And yet you're refusing to believe in the "reality" (hypothetical) of an alien ship visit, because it doesn't make sense (to you... and possibly to me). Probably because (among other things), we think FTL travel is impossible (... we think... cue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) which makes any visitation from realistically far away essentially impossible or at least highly impractical ("cryosleep" for centuries, etc.) And so a sensible person seeks (perhaps justifiably) prosaic explanations for everything and automatically excludes any hypothesis without a prosaic explanation (with the incredibly audacious conceit of assuming we already understand enough about the universe to make such assumptions), while the fantastical person, not as bound by the need for evidence, can wildly speculate (which would of course include nonhuman intelligences somehow visiting us over distances that are insurmountable to us currently, but might also include basically, well, anything, since without the hard-evidence requirement, you're free to get creative) I think both of these points exist as extremes on a continuum and that they're both wrong in some capacity. I think pragmatism and reasoning and rationality are a good basis, however... just, limiting, as well. We might advance a bit on the evidence front here if there was a scientific way to evaluate mass eyewitness testimony (individual eyewitness testimony has come under fire recently https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-..., but perhaps, if you multiply the number of witnesses, the errors will tend to cancel each other out and you might end up with something more like Evidence with a capital E. (This would be useful in far more areas than mere UFO observation, of course.)