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Pentagon UFO study led by researcher who believes in the supernatural
- h2odragon 4y agoLinked in article: https://badufos.blogspot.com/2022/06/meet-face-of-pentagons-uap-task-force.html https://badufos.blogspot.com/2022/06/meet-face-of-pentagons-... Bias on both sides. Doesn't mean that either side is wrong; but "they're biased!" isn't much of an accusation. Heretics can also seek the truth.
- nabla9 4y ago>have "seen more UFOs than I can count," and that he’s been tracked by supernatural entities that caused his car and appliances to malfunction. " Stuff like this casts doubt to his honesty or his sanity.
- zarmin 4y agoExplain why
- EUROCARE 4y agoIt's the other way around, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. At the very least - name a plausible physical phenomenon that allows FTL?
- dleslie 4y agoAlcubierre drive or an Einstein-Rosen bridge immediately come to mind.
- EUROCARE 4y agoYeah but no. Both require impossible things to happen and thus both are mathematical exercise only. These two are why I said "physical phenomenon".
- dleslie 4y agoThey require things far outside or current technological ability; both are grounded in our understanding of physics. Yes, it's possible they are forever outside our ability, but that makes them improbable but not impossible.
- EUROCARE 4y agoNo, I mean they require things that are absolutely imaginary and exist only in the realm of numbers. There's zero proof of anything like "negative energy", for example. And E-R bridges are impassable - anything that would try would get stuck and/or crushed. This is not about engineering ability - both theories are artifacts of the imperfection of our understanding of physics and math, nothing more.
- dleslie 4y agoTwo centuries ago we argued whether heavier than air objects could fly, or if machines could reach the moon. I think it's hubris to think our current models of the universe are the rules of the universe; and that our technological ability could not be eclipsed by further millennia of study.
- themitigating 4y agoHe asserts things to be true without evidence
- Dan_Sylveste 4y agoSo did John Snow. Then he stopped cholera.
- krapp 4y agoJohn Snow had evidence, and a hypothesis that could be tested, but no one took it seriously. That's a lot more than UFO believers have.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago>That's a lot more than UFO believers have. UFO 'believers' have - since very recently - videos released by the US military in which they say 'detections of this object were confirmed by multiple sensor platforms' and 'we cannot identify this object and have no speculation as to its origin' or whatever the exact wording is. You know what I mean, the 'tic-tac' video. The narrative provided with that video confirms that the object/objects were detected by multiple types of sensor (visual, infrared, radar) and by multiple sensor platforms (aerial radar, aerial infrared, ship-based radar) and that the detections correlated. With those releases the the UFO landscape changed, to wit, the US military is now a 'UFO believer.'
- krapp 4y agoThe thing is, none of that is evidence of alien spacecraft. The tic-tac videos are interesting, but i've seen plenty of rational explanations offered for them[0], and as far as I can tell the whole alien narrative around them was fabricated by sites like thedrive.com, who then later reported that the government (far from being 'ufo believers') found these craft to be purely terrestrial drones, likely from China[1,2]. You're free to ignore all of that and assume it's aliens but doing so is just superstition, not reason. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Potential_explanations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Potential_... [1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/drone-swarms-that-harassed-navy-ships-demystified-in-new-documents https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/drone-swarms-that-hara... [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31701319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31701319
- lisper 4y agoBecause if your Bayesian prior on being "tracked by supernatural entities that caused [your] car and appliances to malfunction" is distinguishable from zero then your mental faculties are open to question unless you can produce evidence for it. And there is no reproducible evidence for any supernatural phenomenon, let alone one as dramatic as this.
- zarmin 4y ago> then your mental faculties are open to question unless you can produce evidence for it Why?
- lisper 4y agoBecause if you believe extraordinary things without evidence then your thinking is not constrained by objective reality. That is the definition of being delusional.
- stevenhuang 4y agoThere is countless experiential evidence. https://www.narcap.de/dokumente/COMETA-Report-englisch.pdf https://www.narcap.de/dokumente/COMETA-Report-englisch.pdf https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20 https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20
- lisper 4y agoUFOs are not supernatural. Of course there are UFOs. The only question is whether any of them are extraterrestrial (which would be extraordinary, but still not supernatural). (And BTW, the readiness with which UFO advocates conflate "UFO", "extraterrestrial" and "supernatural", all of which are completely distinct from one another, is indicative of the generally sloppy thinking that goes on in that community.)
- danbruc 4y agoEven more, supernatural stuff does not exist. Period. There might be natural stuff which we did not yet discover or which we do not understand properly, but there is no supernatural stuff.
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- thrill 4y agoOne side is indeed wrong.
- gurumeditations 4y agoIf belief in the supernatural rules you out then you’d have to rule out billions of Christians and etc.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoRight, belief in god or supernatural is still compatible with a belief in science and the scientific method. the laws of nature and physics, and even evolution, do not preclude a god; god can be seen as the author of, or even the embodiment of, these laws.
- harmon 4y agoThe existence of an "active" God as portrayed in most religions would complicate things tremendously though. If an entity can inject energy into the system or can alter system properties at will then the fundamental assumptions about the way the universe works go out the window.
- wizofaus 4y agoAnd if no entity can, we don't have free will...
- Bouncingsoul1 4y agoonly in deterministic physics...
- wizofaus 4y agoIn my head 100 times out of 100 my "decision" to raise my hand or open my mouth results in said action. Are you suggesting the fact each decision is made at all is due to non-deterministic quantum effects? I thought neural activity had already been demonstrated to operate at a classical level though.
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- robswc 4y agoI'm constantly in a state of flipping between "this is a psyop" to "stupider things have come to light." I guess my best example is how people claim 9/11 was an inside job. All the evidence is made up of "mistakes" or inconsistencies that someone found by playing back the videos over and over in their basement. I would think anyone with the means to fake an attack like that would be able to do so without making such trivial mistakes... but then lets say that it was totally an inside job. All those mistakes don't matter because everyone believes it anyways. This is similar to the Holocaust in the sense that a lot of people simply didn't believe it was happening because it was too crazy, too big of a thing to happen. * want to say, I don't believe in that conspiracy at all, was more thinking out loud. In regards to the UFOs... what benefit is there for the pentagon to put on this whole show? (Yes, I know ppl more or less asked for it but it doesn't mean they had to)
- tshaddox 4y ago> I would think anyone with the means to fake an attack like that would be able to do so without making such trivial mistakes But once you’re agreeing to go along with conspiracy theory epistemology, you can keep looping forever. Anything that you provide as reasons that you believe it’s not a conspiracy could have been placed there by the conspirators to convince you there’s no conspiracy! If you see no evidence of conspiracy, well then clearly that’s what the conspirators wanted! If you see some small mistakes or inconsistencies, and you take that as evidence that it wasn’t a conspiracy (because of course competent conspirators would never allow small mistakes or inconsistencies), well then clearly the conspirators were so competent that they allowed a few small mistakes and inconsistencies to throw you off the scent!
- robswc 4y agoahah, true. That's why I generally don't give much weight to those types of "evidence." What you're describing is usually what happens when you talk to them.
- 13113 4y ago
- hunglee2 4y agowhat impact on the credibility of a study does a discredited 'expert' have? I guess we have to work out how much that expert contributed to the study?
- ergonaught 4y agoStop using "science" and anything else produced by people who "believed in the supernatural", and see precisely how far that gets you. This species, man.
- nabla9 4y agoRead article before responding to see the level of insanity in this guy.
- fithisux 4y agoPentagon + UFO = misinformation campaign
- 1970-01-01 4y agoTry adding an M.D. to the research team. Scully always kept Mulder grounded to reality, even when reality was fluid and contradictory to facts. When will this become a movie?
- rhn_mk1 4y agoIsn't reality made out of facts?
- krapp 4y agoNot fictional reality, no.
- ALittleLight 4y agoWasn't Scully insanely wrong about everything? (In the fictional universe)
- illegalmemory 4y ago"Belief" can be anything that doesn't mean that results will be wrong. Ramanujam believed if he can figure out Infinity he can "meet / understand / reach" Goddess Mahalakshmi.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoWell now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect
- dleslie 4y agoThis sounds like a nothing-burger. > Taylor was “informally referred to... as the chief scientist as efforts to assemble a larger team were underway," and it was not a full-time position. It's a meaningless title he received while only having a part-time participatory role, during the process of gathering together a team. Taylor is obviously a stakeholder on the issue; any investigation into the alleged phenomenon is going to need to involve those who claim to have experienced it, lest their absence be taken for evidence of a lack of credibility on the part of believers.
- Mo3 4y agoI have watched clips from shows with Taylor and I am continuously amazed, not by the over-dramatic fake acting, but by the fact that he apparently has several different PhDs and serious academic background. Ignoring the fact that he produces the most brain-dead reality TV shows you could imagine, what really confuses me is simply his person. He talks like a Redneck who has never seen a classroom from the inside, makes incredibly stupid associations and statements that could be mistaken for the effects of a concussion, and if you watch his show you are absolutely convinced he's just a farmer living on this ranch. Then, sometimes, he'll slip, and suddenly he makes a rational statement that shows a great depth of understanding of physics or engineering, with almost no detectable Redneck accent, and your brain literally feels like it tripped and fell. This is then followed without fail by regression back into some sort of naive association and explanation and several restatements of his original statement in extremely simple dumbed-down terms. I am not from the US, I do not watch US television, even our reality shows are not this stupid, so this is quite honestly utterly confusing to me. It seems as if these shows are produced for viewers with major brain damage, yet I cannot possibly believe that the viewers inherently lack any sign of intelligence and looking at some of the comments always confirms that this style of acting is almost universally perceived as extremely annoying and devoid of value, with people constantly complaining about it and reiterating that this added reality TV show bullshit dilutes the value of the show 10x. Even more confusing is that Taylor, who - even though he doesn't seem like it in the shows - appears to be a very intelligent and educated man, would purposefully allow and engage in this kind of production. I truly believe that there is extraterrestrial life, the probability is too high to ignore, and that places like Skinwalker Ranch might contain traces or artifacts, but I'm not sure if History Channel should be the organisation researching them.
- ck2 4y agoI ask this in every UFO thread. An alien civilization that has achieved FTL or let's say even a generational ship: WTF would they give a damn about earth and be "buzzing" it in little ships like we would do with fighter planes? Imagine how advanced sensors would have to be to travel FTL and avoid destruction. Why would they even be occupied by living creatures when we ourselves already use automated drones and interplanetary probes? All our projections are from the limitations of our own technology and how we would deal with something. They aren't going to be that backwards/limited. And I think they would be very bored with earth, at best observe us like we observe primates and move on.
- russfink 4y agoThank you! Arthur C Clarke raised a similar point in Childhood's End. When confronted with some alien silver viewscreen, which everyone thought was some advanced thing, one character asked what if is a simple two way mirror? Point is, a visitor will use the most convenient and convert thing to observe us, not some clunky contraption. Unless they are doing it on purpose.
- nwatson 4y agoRare or medium rare?
- ALittleLight 4y agoYou don't have to assume FTL. They could be extremely long lived, or not alive at all (AI). They might be from within our solar system. It's also not valid to reason "because I can't guess their motive they can't have one.". Using humans as an analog people travel to go to the zoo, for religious reasons, or dispatch probes and rovers. UFOs might be any of these or others for aliens.
- vimy 4y agoAnd yet, humans keep traveling to remote areas to film wildlife documentaries or go on safaris. Why? Because it’s fun and interesting.
- e2le 4y ago> WTF would they give a damn about earth Possibly for similar reasons we give a dam about ants and have professions dedicated to their study. It may also be in their best interest to keep tabs on any ant colonies just in case they run a muck.
- ALittleLight 4y agoI'm reminded a bit of Michael Flynn - who rose to a high rank despite being a bit of a nut. Hard to know though, since I don't know anything apart from this article - but it's at least possible for unhinged or extremely gullible people to rise to high positions at the Pentagon.
- eheye 4y ago> possible for unhinged or extremely gullible people to rise to high positions at the Pentagon Or the government
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- sacrosanct 4y agoAnyone here actually seen a UFO? I did once. Didn’t have the characteristics of a drone since it did acute turns at high speed. Always had me spooked after seeing it.
- Geee 4y agoDrones can make turns at high speed.
- sacrosanct 4y agoProof? From what I’ve seen they have to slow down considerably before making an acute turn
- 1970-01-01 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvNLuC12R0
- Ancapistani 4y agoSome more context - drone racing requires the pilot to be explicitly smoothing their turns to the optimum to maintain speed during the maneuver. Check out “freestyle FPV” for better examples of “acute turns”. I fly a 5” freeestyle quad quite a bit, and it’s extremely common to let it fall in a ballistic arc until a few feet above the ground or an obstacle, then shoot off in a different direction. The thrust to weight ratio of these things is just incredible.
- ramesh31 4y agoThis whole thing is just really embarrassing. The result of a dumbed down population viewing reality through the lens of Hollywood stories.
- webmobdev 4y agoIt's a brilliant PR move by the Pentagon to hire a reality TV star to head a UFO study in this cyber era of (mis)information. Anyone with common sense already knows that the US has not militarised space and created a new arm of the military (US Space Force) to fight any alien invasion. But the Pentagon knows how essential PR is to justify its huge budget. It can be hard to justify to the public why a new, independent arm of the military is needed to protect critical infrastructure, especially when you can't reveal the primarily goals of Space Force without inviting more critical scrutiny and endangering future military goals. So UFOs (which the general public automatically associate with extraterrestrial aliens) provide a good PR distraction for the US Space Force from real political criticism and scrutiny. (As "conspiracy" theories go, apart from protecting critical infrastructure the primary goals of the US Space Force is to aid in the creation and protection of next-gen satellite internet and a drone military. This will slowly allow the US to completely take over the internet infrastructure globally, using BigTech, to the point of even making local telecommunication infrastructure of a country redundant. And second, it will create a new planet wide network of satellites and a communication platform to create the next-gen drone military that is inevitable when Robotics and AI r&d reach a certain threshold. A drone military is essential and inevitable for countries like the US where losing military personnels in a war has a high political and miliary cost, unlike say in China or India that have a huge population and a voluntary military force with no conscription.)
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