6 ms·

This all feels so off to me. Why would the pentagon just openly admit that they have no idea what this is? If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, t

by blhack 6y ago

This all feels so off to me. Why would the pentagon just openly admit that they have no idea what this is? If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, this is them admitting that, yep, your stealth/whatever technology works great, and we are baffled by it. Why would the pentagon do that? It seems much more reasonable to keep it a mystery and imply that we have an even more advanced tech that they don't know about. Okay and then to engage the 14 year old in me who used to watch alien shows on TLC: wouldn't this be a great strategy for disclosure about alien life? 1: No aliens do not exist, and you are crazy for it! 2: Well there are some technologies which are just really advanced 3: Well there are just some technology which is really advanced and we don't know what it is. 4: Well there have been a bunch of encounters our pilots have been having with something. 5: Well maybe that something is very unexplainable. 6: We might have some materials from another world, but the only people saying so are crazy! If I was in charge of disclosing to the world that there were aliens, this is how I'd be doing it. Extremely slow drip, people argue about the details of it (well yeah it's alien tech but they haven't been here for 3000 years, and will probably never come back vs no I think the aliens visit all the time vs no THIS is all the conspiracy there are no aliens etc.) until it's finally just an accepted fact that aliens exist and have visited earth or are actively visiting earth. Very strange.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I've read conjecture that it is likely one of two things. Either the US is wanting to hint to its enemies new advanced technology that we have, or the US military found that pilots weren't announcing mid-flight UFOs so are working to change the culture to allow such announcements without fear of reprisal. Who knows what the truth is though.
malwarebytess 6y ago
These types of stories seem to pop up around major election years. I've begun to see them as requests for more funding or justification for current funding.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  I'm waiting to see if they release a dossier of the Chupacabras when things get direr. Maybe also dossiers on ghosts and paranormal activities for better effect.
  - philistine 6y ago
    Isn’t that crazy if it’s true? Yeah we had to self-confine for super long and it exacerbated all our societal problems, but at least it made the US government admit there were aliens!
krapp 6y ago
>If I was in charge of disclosing to the world that there were aliens, this is how I'd be doing it. The way I would do it is a slow drip of indoctrination through decades of science fiction pop culture, books, movies, television, and spreading rumors about alien abductions and UFO sightings so that the public is already at least subconsciously comfortable with the premise. By the time they start a flash-mob to raid area 51 and rescue the anime girls then humanity might be ready. The transition from that to actual disclosure might still be a bit of an existential shock.
cpeterso 6y ago
> If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, this is them admitting that, yep, your stealth/whatever technology works great, and we are baffled by it. Or you want foreign military leaders to think you are baffled by their stealth tech when you can actually detect it just fine.
- DNied 6y ago
  > Or you want foreign military leaders to think you are baffled by their stealth tech That doesn't seem conducive to that mutual deterrence which is usually desirable.
- philistine 6y ago
  I mean, they are detecting them, we’re talking about pilots detecting them. They just don’t know what they are.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aaroninsf 6y ago
To paraphrase Bostrom, there is a lot of interest here, regardless of the the ground truth of UFO phenomena. This perspective is a good one: what would a slow-drip/evolving story be good for? What might its objectives be? That is a useful question, regardless of whether we ever get ground truth. To wit: our government has a very long (now 70 year) history of exploiting UFO reporting for various ends and for murky reasons. Recommended sober account: https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Government-Historical-Michael-Swords/dp/1933665580 https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Government-Historical-Michael-Sw... De rigeur disclosure: I am related to one of the authors :) -- A different angle: one of the more interesting perspectives on UFO phenomena comes form Jacque Vallée, VC and real-life model for Lacombe, the civilian expert played by François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He has hypothesized that whatever the ultimate nature of UFO phenomena, it is consistent with a very slow period (think Long Now-scale) inoculation/inculcation of–for lack of a better word–contact. Between humanity and what exactly he does not claim to have any answer.
- anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
  I would suppose that longer the period, the weirder / dangerous the alien species are to us. Think about some highly intelligent reptile predator species, with a taste for mamal meat. Yeah, the creeps are there. I think not everyone - not anyone - would be kind of having much of fun discovering we are not alone, in that case.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >Think about some highly intelligent reptile predator species, with a taste for mamal meat. I mean, let's be realistic, we could still do business in that scenario. Maybe trade a few million tasty human popplers for a stargate or zero-point engine or something.
    - anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
      Exactly, why everyone would need two hands all their life?
godelski 6y ago
> If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, this is them admitting that, yep, your stealth/whatever technology works great, and we are baffled by it. I have an alternative explanation that also matches with history. They know what it is but don't want to tell the public. They can also feed bad information to adversaries like China and Russia who may interpret this is over confidence in their technologies. Here's a simple analogy. My cat is really dumb and will step right in front of me in the middle of the night when it is dark because she thinks I can see her (because she can see me). So at night I over exaggerate my inability to see in the dark. Now she thinks she is super sneaky (she's not) but also gets out of my way at night. All wars (especially cold wars, like the one we're in) are about information control. There is lots of propaganda, misdirection, lying, etc. An adversary having over confidence in their technology means that they will use it with that confidence. Think about WW2 and when the Enigma encryption was broken by Turing's team. They didn't reveal that they broke the encryption and let some people be attacked and prevented others (this led to some of the big foundations in game theory as well). Now we know this is a possibility, so do the Russians and Chinese. But the pentagon could also be telling the truth. These videos could also be complete fabrications or lucky shots that are natural phenomena that fool instruments. If Russia has the tech and doesn't tell the Chinese and the Chinese think we don't know what it is then China gets more afraid of Russia (and vise versa). Because sometimes the pentagon says the truth, sometimes they lie, sometimes they misdirect. By doing all of these it makes it very difficult to tell which is happening, and that is exactly the point. So my alternative is just a potential alternative that needs to be added to your list. There's also a bunch more, complicating matters even more. This is an information campaign. The simple and likely answer is that it isn't aliens. There's also strange examples, like how this video[0] is actually a weapon and Dustin became a semi-knowing participant (and you could gather that others are unknowing participants in information campaigns). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE Edit: I wanted to add another alternative. The military knows what it is and aren't trying to trick Russia and China, but garner support for weapons development from the public and politicians. "We don't know what this is but we do know it is spying on us" is a great way to get people to freak out and throw money at the problem. Or they don't know and it still has the same result.
- 6y ago

by blhack 6y ago

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

I've read conjecture that it is likely one of two things. Either the US is wanting to hint to its enemies new advanced technology that we have, or the US military found that pilots weren't announcing mid-flight UFOs so are working to change the culture to allow such announcements without fear of reprisal. Who knows what the truth is though.

malwarebytess 6y ago

These types of stories seem to pop up around major election years. I've begun to see them as requests for more funding or justification for current funding.

ASalazarMX 6y ago
I'm waiting to see if they release a dossier of the Chupacabras when things get direr. Maybe also dossiers on ghosts and paranormal activities for better effect.
- philistine 6y ago
  Isn’t that crazy if it’s true? Yeah we had to self-confine for super long and it exacerbated all our societal problems, but at least it made the US government admit there were aliens!

krapp 6y ago

>If I was in charge of disclosing to the world that there were aliens, this is how I'd be doing it. The way I would do it is a slow drip of indoctrination through decades of science fiction pop culture, books, movies, television, and spreading rumors about alien abductions and UFO sightings so that the public is already at least subconsciously comfortable with the premise. By the time they start a flash-mob to raid area 51 and rescue the anime girls then humanity might be ready. The transition from that to actual disclosure might still be a bit of an existential shock.

cpeterso 6y ago

> If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, this is them admitting that, yep, your stealth/whatever technology works great, and we are baffled by it. Or you want foreign military leaders to think you are baffled by their stealth tech when you can actually detect it just fine.

DNied 6y ago
> Or you want foreign military leaders to think you are baffled by their stealth tech That doesn't seem conducive to that mutual deterrence which is usually desirable.
philistine 6y ago
I mean, they are detecting them, we’re talking about pilots detecting them. They just don’t know what they are.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

aaroninsf 6y ago

To paraphrase Bostrom, there is a lot of interest here, regardless of the the ground truth of UFO phenomena. This perspective is a good one: what would a slow-drip/evolving story be good for? What might its objectives be? That is a useful question, regardless of whether we ever get ground truth. To wit: our government has a very long (now 70 year) history of exploiting UFO reporting for various ends and for murky reasons. Recommended sober account: https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Government-Historical-Michael-Swords/dp/1933665580 https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Government-Historical-Michael-Sw... De rigeur disclosure: I am related to one of the authors :) -- A different angle: one of the more interesting perspectives on UFO phenomena comes form Jacque Vallée, VC and real-life model for Lacombe, the civilian expert played by François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He has hypothesized that whatever the ultimate nature of UFO phenomena, it is consistent with a very slow period (think Long Now-scale) inoculation/inculcation of–for lack of a better word–contact. Between humanity and what exactly he does not claim to have any answer.

anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
I would suppose that longer the period, the weirder / dangerous the alien species are to us. Think about some highly intelligent reptile predator species, with a taste for mamal meat. Yeah, the creeps are there. I think not everyone - not anyone - would be kind of having much of fun discovering we are not alone, in that case.
- krapp 6y ago
  >Think about some highly intelligent reptile predator species, with a taste for mamal meat. I mean, let's be realistic, we could still do business in that scenario. Maybe trade a few million tasty human popplers for a stargate or zero-point engine or something.
  - anoniuyiu33412 6y ago
    Exactly, why everyone would need two hands all their life?

godelski 6y ago

> If it was a foreign military's advanced aircraft, this is them admitting that, yep, your stealth/whatever technology works great, and we are baffled by it. I have an alternative explanation that also matches with history. They know what it is but don't want to tell the public. They can also feed bad information to adversaries like China and Russia who may interpret this is over confidence in their technologies. Here's a simple analogy. My cat is really dumb and will step right in front of me in the middle of the night when it is dark because she thinks I can see her (because she can see me). So at night I over exaggerate my inability to see in the dark. Now she thinks she is super sneaky (she's not) but also gets out of my way at night. All wars (especially cold wars, like the one we're in) are about information control. There is lots of propaganda, misdirection, lying, etc. An adversary having over confidence in their technology means that they will use it with that confidence. Think about WW2 and when the Enigma encryption was broken by Turing's team. They didn't reveal that they broke the encryption and let some people be attacked and prevented others (this led to some of the big foundations in game theory as well). Now we know this is a possibility, so do the Russians and Chinese. But the pentagon could also be telling the truth. These videos could also be complete fabrications or lucky shots that are natural phenomena that fool instruments. If Russia has the tech and doesn't tell the Chinese and the Chinese think we don't know what it is then China gets more afraid of Russia (and vise versa). Because sometimes the pentagon says the truth, sometimes they lie, sometimes they misdirect. By doing all of these it makes it very difficult to tell which is happening, and that is exactly the point. So my alternative is just a potential alternative that needs to be added to your list. There's also a bunch more, complicating matters even more. This is an information campaign. The simple and likely answer is that it isn't aliens. There's also strange examples, like how this video[0] is actually a weapon and Dustin became a semi-knowing participant (and you could gather that others are unknowing participants in information campaigns). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE Edit: I wanted to add another alternative. The military knows what it is and aren't trying to trick Russia and China, but garner support for weapons development from the public and politicians. "We don't know what this is but we do know it is spying on us" is a great way to get people to freak out and throw money at the problem. Or they don't know and it still has the same result.

6y ago