11 ms·

IMHO, the strong argument against this being real is how it is "perpetually liminal", i.e. just on the threshold of verification, but staying there. It never qu

IMHO, the strong argument against this being real is how it is "perpetually liminal", i.e. just on the threshold of verification, but staying there. It never quite crosses over into solid evidence. The signal never improves. Even over decades, it never proceeds from a sighting to an artefact in a museum. The results never change from "promising" to "promise fulfilled".

JulianMorrison 5y ago
At least some of that is humans. Those videos got leaked, and then tentatively confirmed, but is the military releasing all the other gubbins they have, like radar tracks and voice transcripts? Are they heck.
tgflynn 5y ago
What if that's exactly the effect that the source of the phenomenon is trying to achieve ?
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  Why would they? What if you're overthinking it?
  - tgflynn 5y ago
    Why do human scientists force mice to find their way through strange mazes ?
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      You've basically re-invented capricious elves and pixies. It's an exercise in medievalist superstition dressed up in a cheap sci-fi veneer. Waste of time.
      - JulianMorrison 5y ago
        Wait until you dig into the lore on capricious elves and pixies and realise that it overlaps UFO lore in the kinds of weirdness it contains, despite being recorded by people separated by centuries, continents, and cultures.
        gadf 5y ago
        Exactly. "The Phenomena" is sort of all encompassing. I think that's an interesting thread that's come out recently. Jeremy Corbell advances the idea (not the first to, tho) that things like ghosts, consciousness, the multiverse and ETs are all connected. In some sense it's easily dismissed as "trivially lumping together all things we don't understand" and calling it "quantum". But on another level there does seem to be overlap: in types of experiences, places they happen, and other things I don't know about.
    - arcanon 5y ago
      When I built mazes for gene knockout mice, we did it for addiction/pain research. The mazes themselves are really cool. You get to program all these little doors and sequences. Come for the research, stay for the fun.
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  When you tease a kitten with a laser pointer, the beam dot is moving in ways kitten-brain-physics can't comprehend and has to read as a lifeform. Why would you you so confuse a poor critter? The answer "it's very funny" should not be ruled out.
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    > the beam dot is moving in ways kitten-brain-physics can't comprehend and has to read as a lifeform It is a lifeform—a lifeform with a laser pointer teasing a cat.
  - c22 5y ago
    I'm not convinced the cat is confused into thinking it's a life form, though there is perhaps some confusion due to the non-material nature of the dot. My cat knows that I control the laser and complains to me if I turn it off too soon.
- wpietri 5y ago
  My dad would joke about making a Q&A book called "The Fundamentalist's Guide to Science". On each left page would be a good question, like, "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why are there stars at night?" On each right page you'd see, "Because God wants it that way." Ultimately, an "explanation" that can explain any set of data is useless. I will grant, given the state of the world, "Because God is fucking with us," is an emotionally satisfying one. But ultimately it's just as unhelpful as "Because God wants it that way" from a scientific perspective.
  - tgflynn 5y ago
    The truth doesn't care whether you like it or not or whether you find it "helpful". We can't really ever exclude the possibility that we're merely playthings for beings far more advanced than ourselves. Usually we don't need to assume that such things exist to explain our observations but if we do encounter observations that don't fit our models of reality we do need to consider other possibilities.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      What "truth" means is exactly the question here, so you can't use it as an answer like that. There's a world full of natural phenomena which we perceive dimly. We try to create linguistic structures that explain it. A proposed change to that linguistic structure, like "Fairies are real," can only be more or less helpful in explaining the world we observe. As George Box said, "All models are wrong; some models are useful." We should always be open to possibility. I am equally open to Bigfoot, UFOs, ESP, vampires, fairies, Santa, and Thor as explanations for phenomena. Which is to say that they are historically bad explanations that can never be disproven, but which have been demonstrably unhelpful in explaining the world.
      - gadf 5y ago
        You can disprove all those things. You just have to find "the real thing" that gives rise to the evidence people talk about, and say, "see it's not X, it's Y". X disproved. But it's a bit dishonest to lump all together. UFOs we have thousands of witnesses, and radar data. Santa we don't have as many witnesses or data. If we find some Bigfoot like civilization living underground, but that's different to how we think of Bigfoot, we've "explained" Bigfoot and disproven "the wrong version" of Bigfoot. If Thor lands on Earth and say, "I'm back," but says, "btw my name is "Bor". We've disproved "Thor". If we discover people with some disease which makes them live indoors, drink lymph fluid and live for hundreds of years, we've disproved "vampires" but explained the stories around that. At the level of speculation we're operating at, these things can be argued both ways. It's not truth that brings you down on one side or another, it's your preference. You're blind to that.
- jwally 5y ago
  I forget the math behind it; and could be totally wrong but I think for every additional caveat you add to a hypothesis to make it fit the data post hoc, it cuts the odds of your new hypothesis in half.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    No, not quite. It depends on your prior assumptions. Basically imagine that you have these preconceptions Possibility Prior probability No aliens 0.55 Aliens at the perceptual limit 0.1 Completely invisible aliens 0.2 Obviously visible aliens 0.15 Now the math is simple. You cross out the impossible: obviously visible aliens. Then you need to get the remaining options to sum to 1 again. This is done by dividing by the total. Possibility Posterior probability No aliens 0.55 / 0.85 Aliens at the perceptual limit 0.1 / 0.85 Completely invisible aliens 0.2 / 0.85 Obviously visible aliens 0 Now you may wonder where the prior probabilities come from. Well they are simply your best guesses based on reasoning and thinking, before having looked at the data. For instance they may be informed by your knowledge of physics and how easy it is to make things invisible. And they may be informed by extrapolating human psychology onto aliens (see the other response about a human playing with a cat using a laser pointer). You may consider the precedent of bacteria existing all around us for a very long time without detection.
    - jwally 5y ago
      To be honest, I'm stealing from here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 (The cost of making excuses) Which if I understand; would go like this on explaining UFOs: Naive Approach: P(ALIENS) = 50% p(~ALIENS) = 50% Time elapses and I find some new evidence that looks like this: P(Evidence | ALIENS) = 30% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% Which gives my hypothesis (Its Aliens) a posterior probability of 25% => (50% X 30%)/(50% X 30% + 50% X 90%). I want it to be aliens so I say that they're conducting studies on us which juices P(Evidence | ALIENS && Studying Us) = 100%. But because I have no evidence to back that up, the odds are no better than 50/50; and I have to drop the prior of my new hypothesis (UFOs are Aliens who Study us) to 25% (50% X 50%). This nets out a new posterior probability of around 27%. P(ALIENS AND They Study Us) = 25% p(~ALIENS) = 75% P(Evidence | ALIENS & They Study Us) = 100% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% I'm new to Bayesian logic and am still shaky with it, so there could totally be glaring errors I'm overlooking, but as I understand it that's what I was trying to get across - Every new caveat you add to explain away a poor data fit shouldn't juice your odds.
onion2k 5y ago
the strong argument against this being real is how it is "perpetually liminal", i.e. just on the threshold of verification, but staying there. It never quite crosses over into solid evidence Aliens could be actively trying not to be detected. It would be quite reasonable if they're monitoring us for them to disturb us as little as possible and not to leave any evidence behind. That's how humans study nature after all.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > Aliens could be actively trying not to be detected. You're not the first to suggest that, but it just doesn't pass a smell test. I mean, why and how? And with such consistently liminal results? Always on that edge. It's an exceedingly "extraordinary claim". They _could_ but it's pretty ridiculous.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    I mean, why and how? Why is simple. If they're monitoring us they probably wouldn't want to affect the result of their observations. That's exactly why people studying nature on Earth try not to have an impact on what they're observing. It affects the outcome and it results in bad science. Or maybe they're shy. As for how ... we're talking about hypothetical aliens who have crossed galaxies to watch us. Speculating about how they might hide from us when they get here in an HN post is beyond futile. How the heck would anyone know?
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      Yes, I get the drift. It's certainly a self-contained consistent belief you have there. Utterly absurd, though.
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  If you're trying not to be detected at all, you don't do about nine tenths of the stuff UFOs do, like flying around with lights on, stopping right over the head of some ordinary person on the road and dropping a searchlight on them, or buzzing military jets and ships. If you're trying to fuck with the humans though...
wpietri 5y ago
For sure. One of humanity's greatest changes in recent decades is the rise of cheap video recording. Security cameras are everywhere. 3 billion people have smartphones. I could go to YouTube and spend all day watch rare, improbable events that have been caught on camera. But during that time a number of liminal phenomena have stayed liminal. Bigfoot. Ghosts. UFOs. Angel and demons. Clairvoyance. Haunted houses. Telepathy. Dowsing. Many more, I'm sure. There are two ways to explain that. One is that all of those things have gotten way better at avoiding evidenced encounters. The other is that they are like the scary animals/monsters kids imagine lurk just outside the firelight when you take them camping: things humans imagine to fill the gaps when sensory data is ambiguous.
- suifbwish 5y ago
  There is a BIG difference between Bigfoot which would be limited to the forested areas of the earth and UFOs which would have the entire universe to inhabit and hide in. With our most advanced cutting edge telescopes and other remote sensing tech we have trouble detecting planets and other not glowing large bodies of mass if they aren’t orbiting a star, how on earth does anyone think we can confidently say there are no space craft present that we cannot see? Sounds more like everyone wants to believe that rather than it being based on any type of observation.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Sure. The same logic is true of angels. How can we confidently say that supernatural beings aren't everywhere around us right now? How can you say I'm not a demon here to trick you into denying God's glorious helpers? The answer to this is that there are infinite possible things that could be true. But until there's decent evidence, nobody is obliged to take it seriously. Do I think there is alien life somewhere in the universe? The odds seem very good. Do I think that a bunch of them have crossed the galaxies just to spend decades hanging around and fucking with people? I don't in the slightest. The simpler explanation is that primate brains evolved to survive on the African savannas are maybe not perfectly tuned to dealing with a universe 93 billion light-years across. That all of these ever-liminal phenomena share a pretty mundane set of explanations in the evolutionary history of the human cognitive architecture.
zionic 5y ago
That's actually a rather weak argument, as it ignores the phenomenon's own intelligence. This would work if it was natural/"dumb".
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  The argument only fails if the phenomenon is both motivated to do this, and capable of doing it without fail for decades. i.e. it not only has to not be natural/dumb, it has to choose this pointless course of action, and execute it without failure. It's a very extra-ordinary claim that that point. With only perpetually liminal proof. We can't rule it out, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27354904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27354904
jwally 5y ago
It’s Peppermint-Patty(?) from the Peanuts cartoon pulling the football away from Charlie Brown just before he kicks it. Fool me once, shame on you; ok I know the last 892 times we told you it was different but it turned out not to be different - BUT THIS TIME ITS REAL...
- chaoticmass 5y ago
  You're thinking of Lucy.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> The signal never improves. It does. The xkcd comic below says it best. In recent decades the number of available sensors (cameras) have radically increased. So too has the quality of those cameras. But have we seen more and better pictures? No. The quality of evidence is not tied to the increasing quality of the signal source. If anything, the signal is increasingly pointing towards 'not real'. https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  What I meant by "the signal" was the opposite. But it's also true that something that remains liminal while sensors radically improve, is actually retreating fast. And that is a signal.
risk000 5y ago
The liminal nature of the phenomenon is the calling card of a higher intelligence, seeking to fulfill/manifest it's understanding of metaphysical principles. The primary metaphysical principle which, in my understanding, is seeking to be respected by these intelligences is this: Free will, even on the level of deciding what is allowed to be considered as real. A UFO that "proves its existence" to you has made concrete decisions about how it wants to alter your worldview. I believe that is a no-no. The evidence that you will find in favor of UFOs, matches precisely or semi-precisely what the deeper nature of your belief system and mind want to believe about them. The Twining Memo alone, if meditated on and considered for its implications, proves beyond a doubt the reality of the phenomenon. I could rattle off a list of a half-dozen books that go into the topic in great detail. The amount of deathbed confessions and former insider testimony will astonish anyone, truly. The freedom to disbelieve in these things is protected. But even the Pentagon just came out saying that "UAPs" harass them regularly (with the implication known to those of us who research the matter, that this has happened ongoingly now for 70 years). Basically just choose to open yourself to the possibility and I think you will find the evidence.

JulianMorrison 5y ago

At least some of that is humans. Those videos got leaked, and then tentatively confirmed, but is the military releasing all the other gubbins they have, like radar tracks and voice transcripts? Are they heck.

tgflynn 5y ago

What if that's exactly the effect that the source of the phenomenon is trying to achieve ?

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
Why would they? What if you're overthinking it?
- tgflynn 5y ago
  Why do human scientists force mice to find their way through strange mazes ?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    You've basically re-invented capricious elves and pixies. It's an exercise in medievalist superstition dressed up in a cheap sci-fi veneer. Waste of time.
    - JulianMorrison 5y ago
      Wait until you dig into the lore on capricious elves and pixies and realise that it overlaps UFO lore in the kinds of weirdness it contains, despite being recorded by people separated by centuries, continents, and cultures.
      - gadf 5y ago
        Exactly. "The Phenomena" is sort of all encompassing. I think that's an interesting thread that's come out recently. Jeremy Corbell advances the idea (not the first to, tho) that things like ghosts, consciousness, the multiverse and ETs are all connected. In some sense it's easily dismissed as "trivially lumping together all things we don't understand" and calling it "quantum". But on another level there does seem to be overlap: in types of experiences, places they happen, and other things I don't know about.
  - arcanon 5y ago
    When I built mazes for gene knockout mice, we did it for addiction/pain research. The mazes themselves are really cool. You get to program all these little doors and sequences. Come for the research, stay for the fun.
JulianMorrison 5y ago
When you tease a kitten with a laser pointer, the beam dot is moving in ways kitten-brain-physics can't comprehend and has to read as a lifeform. Why would you you so confuse a poor critter? The answer "it's very funny" should not be ruled out.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  > the beam dot is moving in ways kitten-brain-physics can't comprehend and has to read as a lifeform It is a lifeform—a lifeform with a laser pointer teasing a cat.
- c22 5y ago
  I'm not convinced the cat is confused into thinking it's a life form, though there is perhaps some confusion due to the non-material nature of the dot. My cat knows that I control the laser and complains to me if I turn it off too soon.
wpietri 5y ago
My dad would joke about making a Q&A book called "The Fundamentalist's Guide to Science". On each left page would be a good question, like, "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why are there stars at night?" On each right page you'd see, "Because God wants it that way." Ultimately, an "explanation" that can explain any set of data is useless. I will grant, given the state of the world, "Because God is fucking with us," is an emotionally satisfying one. But ultimately it's just as unhelpful as "Because God wants it that way" from a scientific perspective.
- tgflynn 5y ago
  The truth doesn't care whether you like it or not or whether you find it "helpful". We can't really ever exclude the possibility that we're merely playthings for beings far more advanced than ourselves. Usually we don't need to assume that such things exist to explain our observations but if we do encounter observations that don't fit our models of reality we do need to consider other possibilities.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    What "truth" means is exactly the question here, so you can't use it as an answer like that. There's a world full of natural phenomena which we perceive dimly. We try to create linguistic structures that explain it. A proposed change to that linguistic structure, like "Fairies are real," can only be more or less helpful in explaining the world we observe. As George Box said, "All models are wrong; some models are useful." We should always be open to possibility. I am equally open to Bigfoot, UFOs, ESP, vampires, fairies, Santa, and Thor as explanations for phenomena. Which is to say that they are historically bad explanations that can never be disproven, but which have been demonstrably unhelpful in explaining the world.
    - gadf 5y ago
      You can disprove all those things. You just have to find "the real thing" that gives rise to the evidence people talk about, and say, "see it's not X, it's Y". X disproved. But it's a bit dishonest to lump all together. UFOs we have thousands of witnesses, and radar data. Santa we don't have as many witnesses or data. If we find some Bigfoot like civilization living underground, but that's different to how we think of Bigfoot, we've "explained" Bigfoot and disproven "the wrong version" of Bigfoot. If Thor lands on Earth and say, "I'm back," but says, "btw my name is "Bor". We've disproved "Thor". If we discover people with some disease which makes them live indoors, drink lymph fluid and live for hundreds of years, we've disproved "vampires" but explained the stories around that. At the level of speculation we're operating at, these things can be argued both ways. It's not truth that brings you down on one side or another, it's your preference. You're blind to that.
jwally 5y ago
I forget the math behind it; and could be totally wrong but I think for every additional caveat you add to a hypothesis to make it fit the data post hoc, it cuts the odds of your new hypothesis in half.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  No, not quite. It depends on your prior assumptions. Basically imagine that you have these preconceptions Possibility Prior probability No aliens 0.55 Aliens at the perceptual limit 0.1 Completely invisible aliens 0.2 Obviously visible aliens 0.15 Now the math is simple. You cross out the impossible: obviously visible aliens. Then you need to get the remaining options to sum to 1 again. This is done by dividing by the total. Possibility Posterior probability No aliens 0.55 / 0.85 Aliens at the perceptual limit 0.1 / 0.85 Completely invisible aliens 0.2 / 0.85 Obviously visible aliens 0 Now you may wonder where the prior probabilities come from. Well they are simply your best guesses based on reasoning and thinking, before having looked at the data. For instance they may be informed by your knowledge of physics and how easy it is to make things invisible. And they may be informed by extrapolating human psychology onto aliens (see the other response about a human playing with a cat using a laser pointer). You may consider the precedent of bacteria existing all around us for a very long time without detection.
  - jwally 5y ago
    To be honest, I'm stealing from here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 (The cost of making excuses) Which if I understand; would go like this on explaining UFOs: Naive Approach: P(ALIENS) = 50% p(~ALIENS) = 50% Time elapses and I find some new evidence that looks like this: P(Evidence | ALIENS) = 30% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% Which gives my hypothesis (Its Aliens) a posterior probability of 25% => (50% X 30%)/(50% X 30% + 50% X 90%). I want it to be aliens so I say that they're conducting studies on us which juices P(Evidence | ALIENS && Studying Us) = 100%. But because I have no evidence to back that up, the odds are no better than 50/50; and I have to drop the prior of my new hypothesis (UFOs are Aliens who Study us) to 25% (50% X 50%). This nets out a new posterior probability of around 27%. P(ALIENS AND They Study Us) = 25% p(~ALIENS) = 75% P(Evidence | ALIENS & They Study Us) = 100% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% I'm new to Bayesian logic and am still shaky with it, so there could totally be glaring errors I'm overlooking, but as I understand it that's what I was trying to get across - Every new caveat you add to explain away a poor data fit shouldn't juice your odds.

onion2k 5y ago

the strong argument against this being real is how it is "perpetually liminal", i.e. just on the threshold of verification, but staying there. It never quite crosses over into solid evidence Aliens could be actively trying not to be detected. It would be quite reasonable if they're monitoring us for them to disturb us as little as possible and not to leave any evidence behind. That's how humans study nature after all.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> Aliens could be actively trying not to be detected. You're not the first to suggest that, but it just doesn't pass a smell test. I mean, why and how? And with such consistently liminal results? Always on that edge. It's an exceedingly "extraordinary claim". They _could_ but it's pretty ridiculous.
- onion2k 5y ago
  I mean, why and how? Why is simple. If they're monitoring us they probably wouldn't want to affect the result of their observations. That's exactly why people studying nature on Earth try not to have an impact on what they're observing. It affects the outcome and it results in bad science. Or maybe they're shy. As for how ... we're talking about hypothetical aliens who have crossed galaxies to watch us. Speculating about how they might hide from us when they get here in an HN post is beyond futile. How the heck would anyone know?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    Yes, I get the drift. It's certainly a self-contained consistent belief you have there. Utterly absurd, though.
JulianMorrison 5y ago
If you're trying not to be detected at all, you don't do about nine tenths of the stuff UFOs do, like flying around with lights on, stopping right over the head of some ordinary person on the road and dropping a searchlight on them, or buzzing military jets and ships. If you're trying to fuck with the humans though...

wpietri 5y ago

For sure. One of humanity's greatest changes in recent decades is the rise of cheap video recording. Security cameras are everywhere. 3 billion people have smartphones. I could go to YouTube and spend all day watch rare, improbable events that have been caught on camera. But during that time a number of liminal phenomena have stayed liminal. Bigfoot. Ghosts. UFOs. Angel and demons. Clairvoyance. Haunted houses. Telepathy. Dowsing. Many more, I'm sure. There are two ways to explain that. One is that all of those things have gotten way better at avoiding evidenced encounters. The other is that they are like the scary animals/monsters kids imagine lurk just outside the firelight when you take them camping: things humans imagine to fill the gaps when sensory data is ambiguous.

suifbwish 5y ago
There is a BIG difference between Bigfoot which would be limited to the forested areas of the earth and UFOs which would have the entire universe to inhabit and hide in. With our most advanced cutting edge telescopes and other remote sensing tech we have trouble detecting planets and other not glowing large bodies of mass if they aren’t orbiting a star, how on earth does anyone think we can confidently say there are no space craft present that we cannot see? Sounds more like everyone wants to believe that rather than it being based on any type of observation.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Sure. The same logic is true of angels. How can we confidently say that supernatural beings aren't everywhere around us right now? How can you say I'm not a demon here to trick you into denying God's glorious helpers? The answer to this is that there are infinite possible things that could be true. But until there's decent evidence, nobody is obliged to take it seriously. Do I think there is alien life somewhere in the universe? The odds seem very good. Do I think that a bunch of them have crossed the galaxies just to spend decades hanging around and fucking with people? I don't in the slightest. The simpler explanation is that primate brains evolved to survive on the African savannas are maybe not perfectly tuned to dealing with a universe 93 billion light-years across. That all of these ever-liminal phenomena share a pretty mundane set of explanations in the evolutionary history of the human cognitive architecture.

zionic 5y ago

That's actually a rather weak argument, as it ignores the phenomenon's own intelligence. This would work if it was natural/"dumb".

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
The argument only fails if the phenomenon is both motivated to do this, and capable of doing it without fail for decades. i.e. it not only has to not be natural/dumb, it has to choose this pointless course of action, and execute it without failure. It's a very extra-ordinary claim that that point. With only perpetually liminal proof. We can't rule it out, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27354904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27354904

jwally 5y ago

It’s Peppermint-Patty(?) from the Peanuts cartoon pulling the football away from Charlie Brown just before he kicks it. Fool me once, shame on you; ok I know the last 892 times we told you it was different but it turned out not to be different - BUT THIS TIME ITS REAL...

chaoticmass 5y ago
You're thinking of Lucy.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> The signal never improves. It does. The xkcd comic below says it best. In recent decades the number of available sensors (cameras) have radically increased. So too has the quality of those cameras. But have we seen more and better pictures? No. The quality of evidence is not tied to the increasing quality of the signal source. If anything, the signal is increasingly pointing towards 'not real'. https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
What I meant by "the signal" was the opposite. But it's also true that something that remains liminal while sensors radically improve, is actually retreating fast. And that is a signal.

risk000 5y ago

The liminal nature of the phenomenon is the calling card of a higher intelligence, seeking to fulfill/manifest it's understanding of metaphysical principles. The primary metaphysical principle which, in my understanding, is seeking to be respected by these intelligences is this: Free will, even on the level of deciding what is allowed to be considered as real. A UFO that "proves its existence" to you has made concrete decisions about how it wants to alter your worldview. I believe that is a no-no. The evidence that you will find in favor of UFOs, matches precisely or semi-precisely what the deeper nature of your belief system and mind want to believe about them. The Twining Memo alone, if meditated on and considered for its implications, proves beyond a doubt the reality of the phenomenon. I could rattle off a list of a half-dozen books that go into the topic in great detail. The amount of deathbed confessions and former insider testimony will astonish anyone, truly. The freedom to disbelieve in these things is protected. But even the Pentagon just came out saying that "UAPs" harass them regularly (with the implication known to those of us who research the matter, that this has happened ongoingly now for 70 years). Basically just choose to open yourself to the possibility and I think you will find the evidence.