5 ms·

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fic

by mrob 8y ago

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.

beyotf45dluyt 8y ago
>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, it doesn't require extraordinary evidence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  I appreciate you providing a link, but am hoping for a tl;dr after realizing just how long that article is.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    You may acquaint yourself with the concept of an abstract: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary). The one in question has 1326 characters, which is, I dare say, quite manageable.
    - Judgmentality 8y ago
      Thanks for the snark. I read the abstract and found it uninformative, but I guess I should've mentioned that.
  - mimixco 8y ago
    I like TL;DRs, too and sometimes post them myself, but not every subject can be reduced to that. Sometimes you just have to read or write long form documents. What's the TL;DR for WWII? What's the TL;DR for the taxonomy of animal species, or how to run a nuke plant?
- c0brac0bra 8y ago
  The mere mention of the word "extraordinary" is presumptive and asserts a line of reasoning that must be defended if one requires claims to be interpreted through it.
- mrob 8y ago
  The appears to be an argument about semantics, enabled by Sagan's failure to precisely define "extraordinary". For the sake of argument, I'll define it here as "breaking the laws of thermodynamics". A reactionless thruster, which is one of the "scifi" technologies alluded to by the article, breaks the first law of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is so fundamental to physics that it is "extraordinary" that anything violating it is correct, i.e. the prior probability of the supposed violation being correct is extremely low, and low enough that we have to consider unlikely alternative explanations, e.g. failures of the research process itself. For non-extraordinary claims, we can assume that the scientists are not lying or insane, but when the prior probability is low enough, these possibilities are no longer ignorable.
georgespencer 8y ago
See also Hitchens' razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
- synctext 8y ago
  Check the original source. Note that these videos are pushed by "To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences". On other parts of The Internet it's known as a UFO organisations and other “mysteries of the universe", plus there is the $37.4 million of debt; https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/all-the-dumb-things-blink-182-front-mans-ufo-project-37-million/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/all-the-dumb-things-...
  - Zancarius 8y ago
    Interesting. So there's both ability and motive. It doesn't surprise me to be truthful. I believe the plurality of so-called "UFO researchers" are selling something. Be it books or speaking engagements. I confess my opinion may be colored by the fact that I live not far from the Roswell UFO museum.
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
  Have you considered Kitchen's sink? "I wash my hands of this matter."
criddell 8y ago
Since the author didn't give many details of the Tic Tac Incident, I googled it and came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident
- m4x 8y ago
  Also see here for a less breathless article on the event: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a...
Zancarius 8y ago
With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation. I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelligence effort or the military is doing something and wants to involve others in "sightings," probably to gauge the success of certain programs. If it's not some sort of clever projection, those UFOs probably have US markings on them. Otherwise, the belief it has something to do with aliens is probably wishful thinking. I'd recommend listening to John Michael Godier's top 10 lists regarding alien messages, first contact, or SETI [1] if you want a healthy dose of realism. In particular, his "10 SETI messages that we may not want to receive" [2] is especially good, even if the first part is rather depressing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEszlI8-W79IsU8LSAiRbDg/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEszlI8-W79IsU8LSAiRbDg/vid... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVpHTMj3XM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVpHTMj3XM
- api 8y ago
  Try photographing a bird with a phone camera. Then try it with no advance notice, whipping it out and shooting as fast as you can. You'll get a blur, just like the crappy phone camera photos of "UFOs" all over the Internet. It's an extraordinary claim, sure, but it isn't impossible that some fraction of UFOs are someone else. "They are here but are not making overt contact" is one potential Fermi paradox answer. The apparent abundance of possibly habitable planets demands some answer here I think. There are many rational reasons an alien intelligence would avoid overt contact with some being altruistic (prime directive type thinking), some neutral (same reason we decontaminate space probes), and some selfish (we are aggressive and capable of rapid technological progress).
  - Zancarius 8y ago
    There's also other solutions to the Fermi Paradox that don't require alien contact but likewise don't exclude the possibility for life. For one, it's possible FTL (or FTL-ish) travel isn't something that can be done in our universe. The other is to reflect on what we've done as a species. Consider the last time we sent manned probes to another world--then consider how many unmanned probes. I'm of the mind to believe that if we do encounter anything alien, it'll likely be autonomous or intelligent probes. It'll catalog us and move along. I still stand by my point with cameras. Mobile devices, dash cams, etc., are all vastly prolific. While it's true they don't capture anything far away particularly well, the shear number of these devices ought to suggest that multiple sightings by large groups of people could be corroborated--even if the footage isn't particularly great. But, we're not seeing that. It may not be impossible these UFOs are other intelligences, but it's exceedingly unlikely. More so when you consider that a non-trivial fraction of those same habitable worlds you mention are, at present, speculative at best and around stars that are unfriendly to life at worst. TRAPPIST-1 comes to mind as an example of worlds directly measured via the transit method: A large number of worlds in a habitable zone surrounding a red dwarf known to be a flare star. Then there's another consideration. If life is common in our galaxy (or in the universe), far more intelligent beings may simply be uninterested in us--a relatively pedestrian world around a fairly ordinary star with intelligent primates that haven't yet figured out how to leave their home world with any degree of consistency.
shrimp_emoji 8y ago
The Tic Tac thing is insane. As far as I understand, its evidence was: - At least two radar systems (boat and then plane) registering it - At least two IR/thermal imaging systems (the two planes') registering it - At least four eye-witnesses registering something when looking for it (two people on each plane, seeing something large near the water's surface with the Tic Tac coming out and flying around) - The ship radar registering it again, later, at a location it told the planes to go as procedure (but the planes didn't see it when they got there) That's not bad. But here are the two extremes of interpretation: 1. Alien visitors are real, and it was an alien craft 2. By a probabilistic lottery, all of these systems happened to fail at the same time (the radar was defective; the IR was defective; the humans' brains were defective, sharing a hallucination), and there was absolutely nothing I actually think #2 is likelier than #1, which is pretty hilarious. #1 is such a fantastic assertion, especially with our not seeing aliens in space (leading to the Fermi paradox), firmly outside the bounds of our experience. Extremely unlikely combinations of ordinary things happening (tech failure, hallucinations) is within our experience though. And with there being room inbetween for "maybe there was a whale surfacing at the same time", "maybe it's elite government tech", etc., I have to err on the alien visitor-skeptic side.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  from the article, a description of "Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC)" system: >What most don't realize is that the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group wasn't just equipped with some of the most advanced sensors the world had to offer, but that it also had hands-down the most advanced networking and computer processing capability of any such system. Dubbed Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), this integrated air defense system architecture was just being fielded on a Strike Group level for the first time aboard Nimitz and the rest of its flotilla. >Our readers are familiar with CEC and the follow-on iterations that have come since, as we talk about the concepts behind them often. At its very basic level, it uses the Strike Group's diverse and powerful surveillance sensors, including the SPY-1 radars on Aegis Combat System-equipped cruisers and destroyers, as well as the E-2C Hawkeye's radar picture from on high, and fuses that information into a common 'picture' via data-links and advanced computer processing. This, in turn, provides very high fidelity 'tracks' of targets thanks to telemetry from various sensors operating at different bands and looking at the same target from different aspects and at different ranges. >Whereas a stealthy aircraft or one employing electronic warfare may start to disappear on a cruiser's radar as it is viewing the aircraft from the surface of the Earth and from one angle, it may still be very solid on the E-2 Hawkeye's radar that is orbiting at 25,000 feet and a hundred miles away from the cruiser. With CEC, the target will remain steady on both platform's CEC enabled screens as they are seeing fused data from both sources and likely many others as well. So these 3 paragraphs state: 1. Instead of each platform (plane, boat, ...) relying on only it's own sensors, the platform sensors (radar, IR ...) are automatically sharing their observations across platforms by data links, fusing them into one scene, such that each platform has the eyes and ears of all platforms combined. Obviously only 1 sensor needs to malfunction or misinterpret signals such that they are gossiped across platforms where the operators seemingly "independently" observe the imagination, i.e. data fusion potentially triggers common hallucinations. Regarding the pilots, navigators: I speculate for example this could have been the augmented reality HUD overlay showing the IR feed... 2. the system was "just being fielded", increasing the odds of initial wrinkles in the data fusion system. 3. again the system was "just being fielded", increasing the odds of human operators misinterpreting their display systems as depicting what the sensors of their platform are sensing, since before introduction of sensor fusion this would have always been the case. Human operators would thus more easily fail to realize that their "independent observations" were not in fact independent at all.

by mrob 8y ago

beyotf45dluyt 8y ago

>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, it doesn't require extraordinary evidence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-016-9779-7

Judgmentality 8y ago
I appreciate you providing a link, but am hoping for a tl;dr after realizing just how long that article is.
- the_duke 8y ago
  You may acquaint yourself with the concept of an abstract: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary). The one in question has 1326 characters, which is, I dare say, quite manageable.
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    Thanks for the snark. I read the abstract and found it uninformative, but I guess I should've mentioned that.
- mimixco 8y ago
  I like TL;DRs, too and sometimes post them myself, but not every subject can be reduced to that. Sometimes you just have to read or write long form documents. What's the TL;DR for WWII? What's the TL;DR for the taxonomy of animal species, or how to run a nuke plant?
c0brac0bra 8y ago
The mere mention of the word "extraordinary" is presumptive and asserts a line of reasoning that must be defended if one requires claims to be interpreted through it.
mrob 8y ago
The appears to be an argument about semantics, enabled by Sagan's failure to precisely define "extraordinary". For the sake of argument, I'll define it here as "breaking the laws of thermodynamics". A reactionless thruster, which is one of the "scifi" technologies alluded to by the article, breaks the first law of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is so fundamental to physics that it is "extraordinary" that anything violating it is correct, i.e. the prior probability of the supposed violation being correct is extremely low, and low enough that we have to consider unlikely alternative explanations, e.g. failures of the research process itself. For non-extraordinary claims, we can assume that the scientists are not lying or insane, but when the prior probability is low enough, these possibilities are no longer ignorable.

georgespencer 8y ago

See also Hitchens' razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

synctext 8y ago
Check the original source. Note that these videos are pushed by "To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences". On other parts of The Internet it's known as a UFO organisations and other “mysteries of the universe", plus there is the $37.4 million of debt; https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/all-the-dumb-things-blink-182-front-mans-ufo-project-37-million/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/all-the-dumb-things-...
- Zancarius 8y ago
  Interesting. So there's both ability and motive. It doesn't surprise me to be truthful. I believe the plurality of so-called "UFO researchers" are selling something. Be it books or speaking engagements. I confess my opinion may be colored by the fact that I live not far from the Roswell UFO museum.
HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
Have you considered Kitchen's sink? "I wash my hands of this matter."

criddell 8y ago

Since the author didn't give many details of the Tic Tac Incident, I googled it and came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident

m4x 8y ago
Also see here for a less breathless article on the event: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a...

Zancarius 8y ago

With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation. I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelligence effort or the military is doing something and wants to involve others in "sightings," probably to gauge the success of certain programs. If it's not some sort of clever projection, those UFOs probably have US markings on them. Otherwise, the belief it has something to do with aliens is probably wishful thinking. I'd recommend listening to John Michael Godier's top 10 lists regarding alien messages, first contact, or SETI [1] if you want a healthy dose of realism. In particular, his "10 SETI messages that we may not want to receive" [2] is especially good, even if the first part is rather depressing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEszlI8-W79IsU8LSAiRbDg/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEszlI8-W79IsU8LSAiRbDg/vid... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVpHTMj3XM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVpHTMj3XM

api 8y ago
Try photographing a bird with a phone camera. Then try it with no advance notice, whipping it out and shooting as fast as you can. You'll get a blur, just like the crappy phone camera photos of "UFOs" all over the Internet. It's an extraordinary claim, sure, but it isn't impossible that some fraction of UFOs are someone else. "They are here but are not making overt contact" is one potential Fermi paradox answer. The apparent abundance of possibly habitable planets demands some answer here I think. There are many rational reasons an alien intelligence would avoid overt contact with some being altruistic (prime directive type thinking), some neutral (same reason we decontaminate space probes), and some selfish (we are aggressive and capable of rapid technological progress).
- Zancarius 8y ago
  There's also other solutions to the Fermi Paradox that don't require alien contact but likewise don't exclude the possibility for life. For one, it's possible FTL (or FTL-ish) travel isn't something that can be done in our universe. The other is to reflect on what we've done as a species. Consider the last time we sent manned probes to another world--then consider how many unmanned probes. I'm of the mind to believe that if we do encounter anything alien, it'll likely be autonomous or intelligent probes. It'll catalog us and move along. I still stand by my point with cameras. Mobile devices, dash cams, etc., are all vastly prolific. While it's true they don't capture anything far away particularly well, the shear number of these devices ought to suggest that multiple sightings by large groups of people could be corroborated--even if the footage isn't particularly great. But, we're not seeing that. It may not be impossible these UFOs are other intelligences, but it's exceedingly unlikely. More so when you consider that a non-trivial fraction of those same habitable worlds you mention are, at present, speculative at best and around stars that are unfriendly to life at worst. TRAPPIST-1 comes to mind as an example of worlds directly measured via the transit method: A large number of worlds in a habitable zone surrounding a red dwarf known to be a flare star. Then there's another consideration. If life is common in our galaxy (or in the universe), far more intelligent beings may simply be uninterested in us--a relatively pedestrian world around a fairly ordinary star with intelligent primates that haven't yet figured out how to leave their home world with any degree of consistency.

shrimp_emoji 8y ago

The Tic Tac thing is insane. As far as I understand, its evidence was: - At least two radar systems (boat and then plane) registering it - At least two IR/thermal imaging systems (the two planes') registering it - At least four eye-witnesses registering something when looking for it (two people on each plane, seeing something large near the water's surface with the Tic Tac coming out and flying around) - The ship radar registering it again, later, at a location it told the planes to go as procedure (but the planes didn't see it when they got there) That's not bad. But here are the two extremes of interpretation: 1. Alien visitors are real, and it was an alien craft 2. By a probabilistic lottery, all of these systems happened to fail at the same time (the radar was defective; the IR was defective; the humans' brains were defective, sharing a hallucination), and there was absolutely nothing I actually think #2 is likelier than #1, which is pretty hilarious. #1 is such a fantastic assertion, especially with our not seeing aliens in space (leading to the Fermi paradox), firmly outside the bounds of our experience. Extremely unlikely combinations of ordinary things happening (tech failure, hallucinations) is within our experience though. And with there being room inbetween for "maybe there was a whale surfacing at the same time", "maybe it's elite government tech", etc., I have to err on the alien visitor-skeptic side.

DoctorOetker 8y ago
from the article, a description of "Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC)" system: >What most don't realize is that the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group wasn't just equipped with some of the most advanced sensors the world had to offer, but that it also had hands-down the most advanced networking and computer processing capability of any such system. Dubbed Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), this integrated air defense system architecture was just being fielded on a Strike Group level for the first time aboard Nimitz and the rest of its flotilla. >Our readers are familiar with CEC and the follow-on iterations that have come since, as we talk about the concepts behind them often. At its very basic level, it uses the Strike Group's diverse and powerful surveillance sensors, including the SPY-1 radars on Aegis Combat System-equipped cruisers and destroyers, as well as the E-2C Hawkeye's radar picture from on high, and fuses that information into a common 'picture' via data-links and advanced computer processing. This, in turn, provides very high fidelity 'tracks' of targets thanks to telemetry from various sensors operating at different bands and looking at the same target from different aspects and at different ranges. >Whereas a stealthy aircraft or one employing electronic warfare may start to disappear on a cruiser's radar as it is viewing the aircraft from the surface of the Earth and from one angle, it may still be very solid on the E-2 Hawkeye's radar that is orbiting at 25,000 feet and a hundred miles away from the cruiser. With CEC, the target will remain steady on both platform's CEC enabled screens as they are seeing fused data from both sources and likely many others as well. So these 3 paragraphs state: 1. Instead of each platform (plane, boat, ...) relying on only it's own sensors, the platform sensors (radar, IR ...) are automatically sharing their observations across platforms by data links, fusing them into one scene, such that each platform has the eyes and ears of all platforms combined. Obviously only 1 sensor needs to malfunction or misinterpret signals such that they are gossiped across platforms where the operators seemingly "independently" observe the imagination, i.e. data fusion potentially triggers common hallucinations. Regarding the pilots, navigators: I speculate for example this could have been the augmented reality HUD overlay showing the IR feed... 2. the system was "just being fielded", increasing the odds of initial wrinkles in the data fusion system. 3. again the system was "just being fielded", increasing the odds of human operators misinterpreting their display systems as depicting what the sensors of their platform are sensing, since before introduction of sensor fusion this would have always been the case. Human operators would thus more easily fail to realize that their "independent observations" were not in fact independent at all.