7 ms·

It would make sense that secretive military aviation projects would purposefully fly near unsecretive unsuspecting military aircraft to determine how detectable

by baddox 8y ago

It would make sense that secretive military aviation projects would purposefully fly near unsecretive unsuspecting military aircraft to determine how detectable they are. It also makes sense that the military would publicly embrace the UFO narrative as a way to continue concealing their secretive projects.

fit2rule 8y ago
Its also reasonable to understand the desire for people to describe these events in human terms, and ignore the possibility that we are not alone in the universe - especially since their technology appears to be far, far superior to anything we have at our disposal. However, no such conclusions can be made - either pro- or anti- the "But its Aliens" argument - since the entire subject is couched in dire secrecy, with a lot of people whose lives would change, drastically, if it were the case that these UFO's turn out to be non-human in origin.
- bdamm 8y ago
  The assumption that people's lives would change requires scrutiny. For most I think it would be a promotion of Enquirer headlines to premiere news, but little else. SpaceX would soon become a public company. But what else? Life goes on, unaffected. People still would need to pay their taxes.
  - mattlondon 8y ago
    I think it would change a lot of people's belief systems in a major way. E.g. how would the major organised religions cope with the revelation (pun intended) that there was life that originated off of Earth/outside of the garden of eden? For a lot of people who take religion seriously, I feel like this could be a major upset. It might not affect "day to day life" in terms of the lights staying on and there being food on the shelves, but there could be a significant personal impact on a lot of people which may lead to a lot of things like depression/substance-abuse/suicides/general-"fuck it, its the end end of world, I am going to <x>"-sentiment/etc that will have knock-on effects (e.g. not turning up for work, abandoning family/responsibilities, running away to live as a hermit in the woods, gun hoarding etc)
    - fifnir 8y ago
      > how would the major organised religions cope with the revelation (pun intended) that there was life that originated off of Earth/outside of the garden of eden? Like they've dealt with every other scientific advancement that killed their beliefs. They will deny it as much and as long as they can until they will be forced to admit it, at which point "god" will shrink to an even meaningful pocket of scientific ignorance. Some of them will keep denying it forever
    - JulianMorrison 8y ago
      The Catholics address the question every so often. https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/may/14/pope-francis-baptise-martian-would-they-want-our-religions https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/may/14/po...
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        Not just us Catholics; I think the real big takeaway from that article is this: “Three years ago, a paper for the Royal Society found that roughly 90% of believers did not think they would suffer a crisis of faith should intelligent extraterrestrial life be discovered, though two-thirds of them believed other religions would have a crisis.” Nearly everyone is fine with this idea, but most everyone also thinks people with religious views different than their own will have trouble with it.
    - hardlianotion 8y ago
      Easy. No need to claim the Garden of Eden is on Earth.
      - krapp 8y ago
        Except the Genesis account pretty clearly establishes that it is.
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        The garden of Eden story isn't even consistent with the other creation story in Genesis, though; if a literalist can accept it as true on faith despite that, they can do so despite any inconsistency with mere sense data, which unlike the conflicting text in the Bible they don't hold to be infallibly accurate as a matter of religious doctrine.
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    Certainly, the rationale for spending $21Trillion on military superiority instead of investing it in a healthy society, would be minimised. If it turns out that aliens are on the planet and have advanced technology that could ruin us all, maybe the Pentagon and the Kremlin would find a reason to stop starving their own people for the sake of assumed dominance over the planet, and instead unite to either befriend, or defeat, the common alien friend/foe. One can imagine the reason all of these events are couched in such secrecy might be, indeed, militaristic hubris. Or, in other words, FOMO at a grand scale ..
    - krageon 8y ago
      You can just as easily argue the opposite. If the aliens are so much more advanced, maybe we need to spend even more in order to catch up. I'm not saying I think these things, I'm just trying to point out that your conclusion is not a given.
      - close04 8y ago
        If intelligent aliens get to our planet and have any kind of aggressive intentions no amount of spending would save us. It means they already have capabilities far beyond what we could achieve in a generation and proved them by just getting to us.
        krageon 8y ago
        > It means they already have capabilities far beyond what we could achieve It certainly means that they have those capabilities as pertains to travel, but it is not a given that they would have those capabilities in a military sense. Of course the argument can be made that you can convert that kind of power into a weapon, but I'd hazard to say that a haphazard conversion does not in fact impart upon you a godlike ability to ignore everything we could possibly do. I'm definitely not arguing that this means we should increase military spending. I think that is fundamentally not a great idea for us in the first place. Instead, I am arguing that while the things you are talking about are widely used as sci-fi tropes and held as beliefs by a lot of people, I do not think they stand on their own merits.
- bhouston 8y ago
  Occam's Razor. It is likely not aliens and more likely man made because it isn't that advanced compared to what we can currently do. It is like 5 to 10 years ahead of publiclt disclosed tech. It is either US or Chinese skunkworks and given it was in US airspace I doubt the Chinese would do this. Also it has to be US because otherwise military brass would be freaking out the Chinese are penitrating us airspace with advanced tech. Thus it is a us skunkworks project. It is probably just advanced drone techonology. Probably really cool tech.
  - ConfusedDog 8y ago
    How is that Occam's Razor? This is the same guesswork as aliens or foreign countries. I just see a lot of people using "Occam's Razor" with their subjective theories and the term is giving me a headache.
    - krapp 8y ago
      It being aliens would require completely rewriting physics as we understand it, because physics as we understand it does not allow for gravity manipulation or FTL. Occaam's Razor claims that terrestrial technology is more likely than extraterrestrial because it relies on fewer unproven assumptions, namely the existence of extraterrestrial life, its presence on Earth, and everything we know about physics being wrong, despite the math somehow working out to describe the universe incredibly well.
    - mklingen 8y ago
      Occam's Razor: postulate as few as possible new entities to explain an event. Aliens causing UFOs not only postulates that aliens exist, but that they're intelligent, and have visited Earth. That's a lot of new entities we have to consider. On the other hand we know foreign governments exist. We know foreign governments test new aircraft. So the only entity we have to assume here is that an aircraft with these properties exists. That said I think there are other alternatives that are even more likely: that these sightings are sensor malfunctions or natural phenomena that have been blown out of proportion by popular myth and deliberate disinformation -- (which is certainly the case with all other UFO sightings).
usgroup 8y ago
Yeah but I’d rather it was aliens :)

by baddox 8y ago

fit2rule 8y ago

Its also reasonable to understand the desire for people to describe these events in human terms, and ignore the possibility that we are not alone in the universe - especially since their technology appears to be far, far superior to anything we have at our disposal. However, no such conclusions can be made - either pro- or anti- the "But its Aliens" argument - since the entire subject is couched in dire secrecy, with a lot of people whose lives would change, drastically, if it were the case that these UFO's turn out to be non-human in origin.

bdamm 8y ago
The assumption that people's lives would change requires scrutiny. For most I think it would be a promotion of Enquirer headlines to premiere news, but little else. SpaceX would soon become a public company. But what else? Life goes on, unaffected. People still would need to pay their taxes.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  I think it would change a lot of people's belief systems in a major way. E.g. how would the major organised religions cope with the revelation (pun intended) that there was life that originated off of Earth/outside of the garden of eden? For a lot of people who take religion seriously, I feel like this could be a major upset. It might not affect "day to day life" in terms of the lights staying on and there being food on the shelves, but there could be a significant personal impact on a lot of people which may lead to a lot of things like depression/substance-abuse/suicides/general-"fuck it, its the end end of world, I am going to <x>"-sentiment/etc that will have knock-on effects (e.g. not turning up for work, abandoning family/responsibilities, running away to live as a hermit in the woods, gun hoarding etc)
  - fifnir 8y ago
    > how would the major organised religions cope with the revelation (pun intended) that there was life that originated off of Earth/outside of the garden of eden? Like they've dealt with every other scientific advancement that killed their beliefs. They will deny it as much and as long as they can until they will be forced to admit it, at which point "god" will shrink to an even meaningful pocket of scientific ignorance. Some of them will keep denying it forever
  - JulianMorrison 8y ago
    The Catholics address the question every so often. https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/may/14/pope-francis-baptise-martian-would-they-want-our-religions https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2014/may/14/po...
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Not just us Catholics; I think the real big takeaway from that article is this: “Three years ago, a paper for the Royal Society found that roughly 90% of believers did not think they would suffer a crisis of faith should intelligent extraterrestrial life be discovered, though two-thirds of them believed other religions would have a crisis.” Nearly everyone is fine with this idea, but most everyone also thinks people with religious views different than their own will have trouble with it.
  - hardlianotion 8y ago
    Easy. No need to claim the Garden of Eden is on Earth.
    - krapp 8y ago
      Except the Genesis account pretty clearly establishes that it is.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        The garden of Eden story isn't even consistent with the other creation story in Genesis, though; if a literalist can accept it as true on faith despite that, they can do so despite any inconsistency with mere sense data, which unlike the conflicting text in the Bible they don't hold to be infallibly accurate as a matter of religious doctrine.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  Certainly, the rationale for spending $21Trillion on military superiority instead of investing it in a healthy society, would be minimised. If it turns out that aliens are on the planet and have advanced technology that could ruin us all, maybe the Pentagon and the Kremlin would find a reason to stop starving their own people for the sake of assumed dominance over the planet, and instead unite to either befriend, or defeat, the common alien friend/foe. One can imagine the reason all of these events are couched in such secrecy might be, indeed, militaristic hubris. Or, in other words, FOMO at a grand scale ..
  - krageon 8y ago
    You can just as easily argue the opposite. If the aliens are so much more advanced, maybe we need to spend even more in order to catch up. I'm not saying I think these things, I'm just trying to point out that your conclusion is not a given.
    - close04 8y ago
      If intelligent aliens get to our planet and have any kind of aggressive intentions no amount of spending would save us. It means they already have capabilities far beyond what we could achieve in a generation and proved them by just getting to us.
      - krageon 8y ago
        > It means they already have capabilities far beyond what we could achieve It certainly means that they have those capabilities as pertains to travel, but it is not a given that they would have those capabilities in a military sense. Of course the argument can be made that you can convert that kind of power into a weapon, but I'd hazard to say that a haphazard conversion does not in fact impart upon you a godlike ability to ignore everything we could possibly do. I'm definitely not arguing that this means we should increase military spending. I think that is fundamentally not a great idea for us in the first place. Instead, I am arguing that while the things you are talking about are widely used as sci-fi tropes and held as beliefs by a lot of people, I do not think they stand on their own merits.
bhouston 8y ago
Occam's Razor. It is likely not aliens and more likely man made because it isn't that advanced compared to what we can currently do. It is like 5 to 10 years ahead of publiclt disclosed tech. It is either US or Chinese skunkworks and given it was in US airspace I doubt the Chinese would do this. Also it has to be US because otherwise military brass would be freaking out the Chinese are penitrating us airspace with advanced tech. Thus it is a us skunkworks project. It is probably just advanced drone techonology. Probably really cool tech.
- ConfusedDog 8y ago
  How is that Occam's Razor? This is the same guesswork as aliens or foreign countries. I just see a lot of people using "Occam's Razor" with their subjective theories and the term is giving me a headache.
  - krapp 8y ago
    It being aliens would require completely rewriting physics as we understand it, because physics as we understand it does not allow for gravity manipulation or FTL. Occaam's Razor claims that terrestrial technology is more likely than extraterrestrial because it relies on fewer unproven assumptions, namely the existence of extraterrestrial life, its presence on Earth, and everything we know about physics being wrong, despite the math somehow working out to describe the universe incredibly well.
  - mklingen 8y ago
    Occam's Razor: postulate as few as possible new entities to explain an event. Aliens causing UFOs not only postulates that aliens exist, but that they're intelligent, and have visited Earth. That's a lot of new entities we have to consider. On the other hand we know foreign governments exist. We know foreign governments test new aircraft. So the only entity we have to assume here is that an aircraft with these properties exists. That said I think there are other alternatives that are even more likely: that these sightings are sensor malfunctions or natural phenomena that have been blown out of proportion by popular myth and deliberate disinformation -- (which is certainly the case with all other UFO sightings).

usgroup 8y ago

Yeah but I’d rather it was aliens :)