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I was more open-minded to this type of argument a few decades ago. The quality of our sensors - both smartphones held by everyone, and telescopes, satellites a

I was more open-minded to this type of argument a few decades ago. The quality of our sensors - both smartphones held by everyone, and telescopes, satellites and radar by governments has improved exponentially, without a corresponding increase in detection, so I think it's reasonably likely we are not currently in contact with otherworldly intelligence. Once I made this argument to a friend, and they sent me this xkcd comic. https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Unless the aliens stopped showing up because we've developed smartphones, and they were showing up so often in the 1900s because they knew it was their last shot of dorking around with plausible deniability before camera and telecomm tech became mainstream! The tin foil always finds a way.
postalrat 6y ago
> without a corresponding increase in detection How many detections have we had? The camera argument to me is ignorant of how hard it is to get a good picture of something small in the sky. People are constantly taking videos of dots they say was a UFO but it's impossible to identify what they captured.
carapace 6y ago
> without a corresponding increase in detection With respect, have you gone and looked? To me it feels like the folks who present that objection haven't actually gone and checked, they're making an unfounded assumption. About once or twice a year I lose a day to a youtube hole wherein I go through all the recent videos of {Bigfoot,UFOs,Cryptids,Ghosts} for fun. There's a lot of crap out there, fake videos and hoaxes, but there are more and more very good candidates for "real" videos. The US Navy just released video of UFOs buzzing jets off the coast, eh?
- oli5679 6y ago
  The US navy videos it's hard to tell what these are. The picture is so grainy, a lot of the interest comes from the vivid eyewitness accounts. I have looked at some accounts, for example listened to Lex Fridman interview with one of the Navy pilots. To me, I need a photographic evidence that isn't some blurry smudge. If you start going down the eyewitness testimony route then you get some evidence for saints/miracles and also ghosts that meets similar criteria. The phenomena reported in eyewitness statements in the 60s-80s at least some seems possible to capture with satellite/phone camera. It's possible that UFOs more cautious now or government is surpressing this but I take the lack of clear photograpic evidence as a reason to update beliefs.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

Unless the aliens stopped showing up because we've developed smartphones, and they were showing up so often in the 1900s because they knew it was their last shot of dorking around with plausible deniability before camera and telecomm tech became mainstream! The tin foil always finds a way.

postalrat 6y ago

> without a corresponding increase in detection How many detections have we had? The camera argument to me is ignorant of how hard it is to get a good picture of something small in the sky. People are constantly taking videos of dots they say was a UFO but it's impossible to identify what they captured.

carapace 6y ago

> without a corresponding increase in detection With respect, have you gone and looked? To me it feels like the folks who present that objection haven't actually gone and checked, they're making an unfounded assumption. About once or twice a year I lose a day to a youtube hole wherein I go through all the recent videos of {Bigfoot,UFOs,Cryptids,Ghosts} for fun. There's a lot of crap out there, fake videos and hoaxes, but there are more and more very good candidates for "real" videos. The US Navy just released video of UFOs buzzing jets off the coast, eh?

oli5679 6y ago
The US navy videos it's hard to tell what these are. The picture is so grainy, a lot of the interest comes from the vivid eyewitness accounts. I have looked at some accounts, for example listened to Lex Fridman interview with one of the Navy pilots. To me, I need a photographic evidence that isn't some blurry smudge. If you start going down the eyewitness testimony route then you get some evidence for saints/miracles and also ghosts that meets similar criteria. The phenomena reported in eyewitness statements in the 60s-80s at least some seems possible to capture with satellite/phone camera. It's possible that UFOs more cautious now or government is surpressing this but I take the lack of clear photograpic evidence as a reason to update beliefs.