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The NY Times Headline is much more informative and interesting: > U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either

The NY Times Headline is much more informative and interesting: > U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either Sub header: > A new report concedes that much about the observed phenomena remains difficult to explain, including their acceleration, as well as ability to change direction and submerge. Those descriptions are a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government I haven't been following this closely. Why?
- octopoc 5y ago
  The US government was always pretty tight-lipped about UFOs until recently. FTA: > In an unprecedented move, the US government is preparing to issue an unclassified report detailing what it knows about a series mysterious encounters with unidentified flying objects.
swader999 5y ago
"Those descriptions are a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government." Feels like we are being primed for something new to be afraid of and give our treasure to in defense of. Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. I hope the script doesn't go that way.
- tzs 5y ago
  My guess as to the reason for the shift. 1. Up until sometime in the last decade or so, the UFO sightings that were not successfully explained as natural phenomenon or optical effects that made something ordinary like an airliner appear as something else were all accidental sightings of government projects. 2. Then sightings started that the government recognized as the same technology, except not from the government. Whatever it is the government was experimenting with that occasionally led to an accidental sighting is now being experimented with by someone else, and the government does not know who that is. When it was just the government projects getting accidentally sighted, they wanted to discourage reports and discussion to try maintain secrecy. Now that someone else is doing similar work, they want to know who and how they got the technology. They need people to report and discuss sightings so they can try to get past the secrecy of whoever is doing these new experiments.
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    Nah, it's much simpler: American's are tired of spending 10x more than all other nations combined on the Pentagon budget, solution: create an even bigger boogey-man than all other nations (what's bigger than aliens bent on world-domination), hell they don't even need to say that last bit, just insinuate aliens and they'll get twice as much $$. That or it really IS aliens, and we're just used to not believing the Pentagon, or U.S. govt... cause they haven't always looked out for our best interests (NSA / Snowden ring's a bell).
- disantlor 5y ago
  was just thinking the same thing as I watched this video easily explaining one of the apparent objects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_bX9Hx1H0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_bX9Hx1H0
- morpheos137 5y ago
  >Aliens being non-peaceful fails logic Um, why?
  - lukebitts 5y ago
    Here's a fun answer: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvadeAnAlienPlanet https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvad... Just the "Motivation and Planning" category will reveal several reasons. My favorite is that there is almost no reason to go through the trouble of colonizing our planet, if you need any of our resources you can mine asteroids and no one will fight back. Unless of course the aliens are Evil.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      That sounds like ants reasoning "there's no reason for humans to mess with our ant hill. There's all that land right over there, and they won't have to fight us for it." If the aliens are millions of years ahead of us, it's pretty optimistic to think they'll take us into account at all, unless maybe as a mildly interesting subject of nature documentaries.
      - lukebitts 5y ago
        I guess beings so strong and powerful that they would destroy us without a second thought, like we do to ants, would fall into the "Evil" category in my comment above.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    I agree with that and this is my thinking behind it. (1) The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. The late-stage species most prone to violence are also the ones most prone to self destruction before they developed the tech to traverse space and get to Earth. We don't have good predictions on the destructive potential of future tech, but suppose that tech advances in 1000 years means that every individual can easily make a weapon as destructive as a nuke. If such advances are possible, only the species predisposed to peace will survive. (2) Resource abundance from technology removes the selective pressure towards tribal conflict, in the same way that it achieved that for the evolution of bonobos. They are genetic bonobos, not chimps, and violence is anathema to their genetic predisposition (assuming they're biological). Aliens may not have been that way in their ancestral past, but they would evolve in that direction post abundance.
- swebs 5y ago
  >Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though How so? Humans are capable of basic space travel already.
  - science4sail 5y ago
    If an interstellar-capable species wanted to wipe out humanity, then they could easily bomb us with relativistic projectiles by throwing their trash at Earth. If they still wanted the biosphere intact afterwards, then they could alternatively deploy a targeted anti-human bioweapon.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Why would they have to be peaceful? Maybe they want a new vacation home and they're doing recon and prepping the battlefield.
- hliyan 5y ago
  On Earth, every time an advanced civilization encountered a primitive one, it didn't go well for the primitive one.
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    Ah, but it's different at the stage of development required to organize interstellar travel: https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/flying-saucers-the-process-of-matter-and-energy-science-the-revolutionary-and-working-class-struggle-and-the-socialist-future-of-mankind/ https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/flying-saucers-th...
  - Magonia 5y ago
    If your premise is that these aircrafts aren't man-made, what makes you think that extrapolating human behavior has any relevance here?
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    This isn’t universally true. Modern civilization has decided to not disturb many of the so-called “Uncontacted peoples”. Not in every case, but many have been left alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
- md_ 5y ago
  > Feels like we are being primed for something new to be afraid of and give our treasure to in defense of. Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. Heh. Are you really suggesting that after decades of disinterest, the US government is releasing this in order to...make people afraid of aliens? In order to increase taxse? Or do I misunderstand what you mean?
  - generalizations 5y ago
    Pretty sure that's been an explicit motivation for past wars carried on by the US - an external enemy builds cohesion, prevents conflict at home. Not agreeing or disagreeing, just noting that it's not an outlandish theory.
    - md_ 5y ago
      I'm not disputing that intelligence agencies would lie to justify a foreign war. It's happened multiple times before. I'm disputing that lying about aliens would be an effective or preferred strategy for doing so. Like, a war against...whom? Is the voting public going to buy it? Cut me a break!
      - userulluipeste 5y ago
        Not necessarily a war. It may be useful to justify increased research budget(s) and a general shift to something else substantiated by the new fears.
        swader999 5y ago
        It'll keep the MIC funded and justify the further weoponization of space.
  - Magonia 5y ago
    That is not what he is suggesting, as far as my understanding goes. Rather, that this is yet another iteration of "we have always been at war with Eurasia". And, do not conflate your perception of disinterest from the government with whatever classified research took place during this time, especially post WW2.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. I've seen this sentiment expressed before, but it's never seemed persuasive. Seems to me that the only inherently peaceful alien race would be the one that never had the evolutionary pressure to compete for resources - and that seems like an impossible occurrence.
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    What resource could we have they could possibly want? I mean there's a HUGE universe out there and resources are EVERYWHERE, every element. All over the place. Seems our only use is the same as we'd have: Zoo.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    > Seems to me that the only inherently peaceful alien race would be the one that never had the evolutionary pressure to compete for resources - and that seems like an impossible occurrence. Not only that, but the moment that peaceful species encounters a non-peaceful species it would be wiped out, as evidenced by numerous extinct, or in the verge of being extinct, species on planet Earth. So peaceful species are going to be short lived and may not last much, in Universe times, to have too much contact with other species.
    - userulluipeste 5y ago
      The history in this case may not be the best teacher. The previous instances of wiped species happened when self control was not part of the setting. Space travel has a high bar to enter and is forcing any contender to achieve a high degree of self control. Any further action from someone like that will have to have either deliberate or unnoticed consequences.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Some resources are more scarce than others. If you have effectively infinite matter and energy, the scarce resources shift to things like conscious attention, low-entropy regions, and time-co-locality. Almost none of which are attained by invading and destroying another civilization. On the contrary, doing so actually would arguably evaporate resources you care about.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. Actually aliens being peaceful fails the logic test as evidenced by our experience with the only intelligent species we have encountered so far, humans.
- gfodor 5y ago
  My theories for why the clear ramp up for disclosure starting in 2017ish: - The US government has been studying this phenomenon for years and has recently managed to reverse engineer the technology to the degree it has real-world applications. To actually explain how we achieved those feats, it will be necessary for the public to understand where it originated from, since a lie would be obvious. - There's some really (REALLY) bad news to share, and this is part of a rollout plan needed to be able to deliver that news in the way that would minimize it's net effect on our society. (For example, we're in a zoo. And we've hit some tripwires and are now no longer allowed to develop technology X, Y, or Z.)
  - etrautmann 5y ago
    These both strike me as fun but unlikely explanations if applying an occam's razor lens
    - gfodor 5y ago
      I'm specifically referring to the explanation for why, all of a sudden, these disclosures are happening in a way they didn't for decades. Conditional on the fact they are actual disclosures and not a complex conspiratorial psyop/lies/etc.
      - yummypaint 5y ago
        It may be as simple as the old guard retiring. The timing lines up with the most resistant people in authority leaving or dying off. Many recent leaks are also from people who kept their mouths shut most of their career and then decided to spill once they reached enough security in their retirement.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The US government might be responding to weaponization of conspiracy theories in the Internet age by starting to increase transparency. This may be more of a reaction to Qanon and troll farms. (Or I guess conversely they might be trying to distract people)
WalterBright 5y ago
> but Can’t Rule It Out, Either Can't prove a negative.
- tombert 5y ago
  To be clear, I don't think these are alien, BUT... You might not be able to "prove a negative" in the purely scientific sense, but you can rule out most options to effectively "prove a negative". If, for example, Russia came out and took credit for these things, and showed working prototypes of these crafts, would that "prove" (in the truest, mathematical sense of the word) that they aren't aliens? No, I suppose Russia could have intercepted alien technology and pass it off as their own, but for any kind of practical purpose that would "prove" they aren't aliens to most rational people, and thus "prove" a negative.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Can you "rule out" I'm an alien?
    - tombert 5y ago
      Again, not in the truest mathematical sense of the word, no, but I can reasonably rule it out in most practical senses: a) You look like a human b) You write human language c) We have not seen any direct evidence for any kind of humanoid alien life, but we have seen lots of evidence for humans existing. d) If you were an alien spying on human culture, you wouldn't waste your time on Hacker News :). Does this fully "rule out" the possibility of you being an alien? No, I suppose you could be an alien in a human skin suit who learned English, and maybe aliens are really interested in software engineering forums, but I can practically rule it out just playing the odds.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        You can just as safely "rule out" the possibility that these UFOs are aliens.
bob33212 5y ago
You can say the same thing about a strange noise I heard in my house last night. I can't say it was a ghost, but I also can't say it wasn't a ghost. Whoever wrote that report would agree with me.
elondaits 5y ago
Did Trump steal Occam’s Razor when he left the White House?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government I haven't been following this closely. Why?

octopoc 5y ago
The US government was always pretty tight-lipped about UFOs until recently. FTA: > In an unprecedented move, the US government is preparing to issue an unclassified report detailing what it knows about a series mysterious encounters with unidentified flying objects.

swader999 5y ago

"Those descriptions are a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government." Feels like we are being primed for something new to be afraid of and give our treasure to in defense of. Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. I hope the script doesn't go that way.

tzs 5y ago
My guess as to the reason for the shift. 1. Up until sometime in the last decade or so, the UFO sightings that were not successfully explained as natural phenomenon or optical effects that made something ordinary like an airliner appear as something else were all accidental sightings of government projects. 2. Then sightings started that the government recognized as the same technology, except not from the government. Whatever it is the government was experimenting with that occasionally led to an accidental sighting is now being experimented with by someone else, and the government does not know who that is. When it was just the government projects getting accidentally sighted, they wanted to discourage reports and discussion to try maintain secrecy. Now that someone else is doing similar work, they want to know who and how they got the technology. They need people to report and discuss sightings so they can try to get past the secrecy of whoever is doing these new experiments.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  Nah, it's much simpler: American's are tired of spending 10x more than all other nations combined on the Pentagon budget, solution: create an even bigger boogey-man than all other nations (what's bigger than aliens bent on world-domination), hell they don't even need to say that last bit, just insinuate aliens and they'll get twice as much $$. That or it really IS aliens, and we're just used to not believing the Pentagon, or U.S. govt... cause they haven't always looked out for our best interests (NSA / Snowden ring's a bell).
disantlor 5y ago
was just thinking the same thing as I watched this video easily explaining one of the apparent objects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_bX9Hx1H0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_bX9Hx1H0
morpheos137 5y ago
>Aliens being non-peaceful fails logic Um, why?
- lukebitts 5y ago
  Here's a fun answer: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvadeAnAlienPlanet https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvad... Just the "Motivation and Planning" category will reveal several reasons. My favorite is that there is almost no reason to go through the trouble of colonizing our planet, if you need any of our resources you can mine asteroids and no one will fight back. Unless of course the aliens are Evil.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    That sounds like ants reasoning "there's no reason for humans to mess with our ant hill. There's all that land right over there, and they won't have to fight us for it." If the aliens are millions of years ahead of us, it's pretty optimistic to think they'll take us into account at all, unless maybe as a mildly interesting subject of nature documentaries.
    - lukebitts 5y ago
      I guess beings so strong and powerful that they would destroy us without a second thought, like we do to ants, would fall into the "Evil" category in my comment above.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  I agree with that and this is my thinking behind it. (1) The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. The late-stage species most prone to violence are also the ones most prone to self destruction before they developed the tech to traverse space and get to Earth. We don't have good predictions on the destructive potential of future tech, but suppose that tech advances in 1000 years means that every individual can easily make a weapon as destructive as a nuke. If such advances are possible, only the species predisposed to peace will survive. (2) Resource abundance from technology removes the selective pressure towards tribal conflict, in the same way that it achieved that for the evolution of bonobos. They are genetic bonobos, not chimps, and violence is anathema to their genetic predisposition (assuming they're biological). Aliens may not have been that way in their ancestral past, but they would evolve in that direction post abundance.
swebs 5y ago
>Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though How so? Humans are capable of basic space travel already.
- science4sail 5y ago
  If an interstellar-capable species wanted to wipe out humanity, then they could easily bomb us with relativistic projectiles by throwing their trash at Earth. If they still wanted the biosphere intact afterwards, then they could alternatively deploy a targeted anti-human bioweapon.
bostonsre 5y ago
Why would they have to be peaceful? Maybe they want a new vacation home and they're doing recon and prepping the battlefield.
hliyan 5y ago
On Earth, every time an advanced civilization encountered a primitive one, it didn't go well for the primitive one.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  Ah, but it's different at the stage of development required to organize interstellar travel: https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/flying-saucers-the-process-of-matter-and-energy-science-the-revolutionary-and-working-class-struggle-and-the-socialist-future-of-mankind/ https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/flying-saucers-th...
- Magonia 5y ago
  If your premise is that these aircrafts aren't man-made, what makes you think that extrapolating human behavior has any relevance here?
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  This isn’t universally true. Modern civilization has decided to not disturb many of the so-called “Uncontacted peoples”. Not in every case, but many have been left alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
md_ 5y ago
> Feels like we are being primed for something new to be afraid of and give our treasure to in defense of. Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. Heh. Are you really suggesting that after decades of disinterest, the US government is releasing this in order to...make people afraid of aliens? In order to increase taxse? Or do I misunderstand what you mean?
- generalizations 5y ago
  Pretty sure that's been an explicit motivation for past wars carried on by the US - an external enemy builds cohesion, prevents conflict at home. Not agreeing or disagreeing, just noting that it's not an outlandish theory.
  - md_ 5y ago
    I'm not disputing that intelligence agencies would lie to justify a foreign war. It's happened multiple times before. I'm disputing that lying about aliens would be an effective or preferred strategy for doing so. Like, a war against...whom? Is the voting public going to buy it? Cut me a break!
    - userulluipeste 5y ago
      Not necessarily a war. It may be useful to justify increased research budget(s) and a general shift to something else substantiated by the new fears.
      - swader999 5y ago
        It'll keep the MIC funded and justify the further weoponization of space.
- Magonia 5y ago
  That is not what he is suggesting, as far as my understanding goes. Rather, that this is yet another iteration of "we have always been at war with Eurasia". And, do not conflate your perception of disinterest from the government with whatever classified research took place during this time, especially post WW2.
generalizations 5y ago
> Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. I've seen this sentiment expressed before, but it's never seemed persuasive. Seems to me that the only inherently peaceful alien race would be the one that never had the evolutionary pressure to compete for resources - and that seems like an impossible occurrence.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  What resource could we have they could possibly want? I mean there's a HUGE universe out there and resources are EVERYWHERE, every element. All over the place. Seems our only use is the same as we'd have: Zoo.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > Seems to me that the only inherently peaceful alien race would be the one that never had the evolutionary pressure to compete for resources - and that seems like an impossible occurrence. Not only that, but the moment that peaceful species encounters a non-peaceful species it would be wiped out, as evidenced by numerous extinct, or in the verge of being extinct, species on planet Earth. So peaceful species are going to be short lived and may not last much, in Universe times, to have too much contact with other species.
  - userulluipeste 5y ago
    The history in this case may not be the best teacher. The previous instances of wiped species happened when self control was not part of the setting. Space travel has a high bar to enter and is forcing any contender to achieve a high degree of self control. Any further action from someone like that will have to have either deliberate or unnoticed consequences.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Some resources are more scarce than others. If you have effectively infinite matter and energy, the scarce resources shift to things like conscious attention, low-entropy regions, and time-co-locality. Almost none of which are attained by invading and destroying another civilization. On the contrary, doing so actually would arguably evaporate resources you care about.
yumraj 5y ago
> Aliens being non-peaceful fails so many logic tests though. Actually aliens being peaceful fails the logic test as evidenced by our experience with the only intelligent species we have encountered so far, humans.
gfodor 5y ago
My theories for why the clear ramp up for disclosure starting in 2017ish: - The US government has been studying this phenomenon for years and has recently managed to reverse engineer the technology to the degree it has real-world applications. To actually explain how we achieved those feats, it will be necessary for the public to understand where it originated from, since a lie would be obvious. - There's some really (REALLY) bad news to share, and this is part of a rollout plan needed to be able to deliver that news in the way that would minimize it's net effect on our society. (For example, we're in a zoo. And we've hit some tripwires and are now no longer allowed to develop technology X, Y, or Z.)
- etrautmann 5y ago
  These both strike me as fun but unlikely explanations if applying an occam's razor lens
  - gfodor 5y ago
    I'm specifically referring to the explanation for why, all of a sudden, these disclosures are happening in a way they didn't for decades. Conditional on the fact they are actual disclosures and not a complex conspiratorial psyop/lies/etc.
    - yummypaint 5y ago
      It may be as simple as the old guard retiring. The timing lines up with the most resistant people in authority leaving or dying off. Many recent leaks are also from people who kept their mouths shut most of their career and then decided to spill once they reached enough security in their retirement.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lamontcg 5y ago
The US government might be responding to weaponization of conspiracy theories in the Internet age by starting to increase transparency. This may be more of a reaction to Qanon and troll farms. (Or I guess conversely they might be trying to distract people)

WalterBright 5y ago

> but Can’t Rule It Out, Either Can't prove a negative.

tombert 5y ago
To be clear, I don't think these are alien, BUT... You might not be able to "prove a negative" in the purely scientific sense, but you can rule out most options to effectively "prove a negative". If, for example, Russia came out and took credit for these things, and showed working prototypes of these crafts, would that "prove" (in the truest, mathematical sense of the word) that they aren't aliens? No, I suppose Russia could have intercepted alien technology and pass it off as their own, but for any kind of practical purpose that would "prove" they aren't aliens to most rational people, and thus "prove" a negative.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Can you "rule out" I'm an alien?
  - tombert 5y ago
    Again, not in the truest mathematical sense of the word, no, but I can reasonably rule it out in most practical senses: a) You look like a human b) You write human language c) We have not seen any direct evidence for any kind of humanoid alien life, but we have seen lots of evidence for humans existing. d) If you were an alien spying on human culture, you wouldn't waste your time on Hacker News :). Does this fully "rule out" the possibility of you being an alien? No, I suppose you could be an alien in a human skin suit who learned English, and maybe aliens are really interested in software engineering forums, but I can practically rule it out just playing the odds.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      You can just as safely "rule out" the possibility that these UFOs are aliens.

bob33212 5y ago

You can say the same thing about a strange noise I heard in my house last night. I can't say it was a ghost, but I also can't say it wasn't a ghost. Whoever wrote that report would agree with me.

elondaits 5y ago

Did Trump steal Occam’s Razor when he left the White House?