4 ms·

We should worry. Not about alien spacecraft, but about the inability of the public to deal with blurry photos. There will always be some blurry / ambiguous pho

We should worry. Not about alien spacecraft, but about the inability of the public to deal with blurry photos. There will always be some blurry / ambiguous photos. The fact that no sharp pictures show alien spacecraft means that blurriness is the phenomenon. As long as there are slow news days, media outlets make a big deal out of blotches and blobs, and we as a public continue to fall for that.

colordrops 4y ago
It's not just blurry photos. There are also military pilot sightings corroborated with radar and FLIR, and the vehicles move in ways not possible with currently available human technology and science.
- space_fountain 4y ago
  But only at extreme range and sort of hard to make out. Like idk we live in a big world and fly a lot of military aircraft. It would be a bit surprising if we didn’t sometimes encounter edge cases in all of that that can’t quite be explained. And remember these things are just barely unexplainable, the vast majority of these types of sightings are explained we’re just left with literally a handful that are too tough
- simonh 4y ago
  A whole bunch of those have since been positively confirmed as operator error or calibration issues. Also these cases are often from new kit the operators were unfamiliar with, I don’t see how that can be a coincidence. The fact is we should expect a certain amount of false positives. So the real question is do we see more of these cases than we’d probably get anyway.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    Yeah it is still "blurry photos" in principle. But people see things like "FLIR" and they assume that the technology is perfect.
- pshc 4y ago
  Ultimately we have to ask ourselves what’s more likely, super intelligent aliens getting almost-caught sneaking around in the liminal zones of perception? Or human error, sensory fallibility, and ghost stories?
  - colordrops 4y ago
    I really don't know to be honest. The universe is improbable enough as it is. And we humans can sneak around the liminal zones of animal perception without much difficulty. To think that we are at the top of the tree of life is ridiculously improbable considering the number of species out there, in the millions. We just aren't able to perceive the ones more advanced than us, other than confusing glimpses, no more than an ant can understand us, and gets confused when we put a stick in its path.
- perlgeek 4y ago
  Most of these turn out to be sensor artifacts, operator errors and the likes, and even some blatant fakes. The problem is: it takes much more effort to investigate (and possibly debunk) each of these occurrences than to shout "UFO! UAP!". It always reminds of the rule of bullshit: it takes 10x more effort to debunk bullshit than to produce it. Thus if you don't want to be tangled up in believing lots of bullshit, you have to develop a certain resistance to it. We as a public have not developed that certain resistance to uncertainty in observations, and still jump on them, thinking this time it could really be aliens.
- gruez 4y ago
  >>There will always be some blurry / ambiguous photos. The fact that no sharp pictures show alien spacecraft means that blurriness is the phenomenon. >It's not just blurry photos. There are also military pilot sightings corroborated with radar and FLIR Can you link to specific incidents? All the ones I'm aware of are all pretty blurry/ambiguous. That makes sense, considering that if there was a high quality photo of an alien aircraft, it would be a settled matter and we won't have to speculate on an internet forum about whether they exist or not.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  There also is a simple explanation for it, pilots are quite reliant these days on sensor data if the sensors telling them that there is something there their brains might fill the gap. Also pilots have been reporting seeing UFOs for nearly 100 years, arguably this is one of the first times we have some sensor data to back visual reports.

colordrops 4y ago

It's not just blurry photos. There are also military pilot sightings corroborated with radar and FLIR, and the vehicles move in ways not possible with currently available human technology and science.

space_fountain 4y ago
But only at extreme range and sort of hard to make out. Like idk we live in a big world and fly a lot of military aircraft. It would be a bit surprising if we didn’t sometimes encounter edge cases in all of that that can’t quite be explained. And remember these things are just barely unexplainable, the vast majority of these types of sightings are explained we’re just left with literally a handful that are too tough
simonh 4y ago
A whole bunch of those have since been positively confirmed as operator error or calibration issues. Also these cases are often from new kit the operators were unfamiliar with, I don’t see how that can be a coincidence. The fact is we should expect a certain amount of false positives. So the real question is do we see more of these cases than we’d probably get anyway.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Yeah it is still "blurry photos" in principle. But people see things like "FLIR" and they assume that the technology is perfect.
pshc 4y ago
Ultimately we have to ask ourselves what’s more likely, super intelligent aliens getting almost-caught sneaking around in the liminal zones of perception? Or human error, sensory fallibility, and ghost stories?
- colordrops 4y ago
  I really don't know to be honest. The universe is improbable enough as it is. And we humans can sneak around the liminal zones of animal perception without much difficulty. To think that we are at the top of the tree of life is ridiculously improbable considering the number of species out there, in the millions. We just aren't able to perceive the ones more advanced than us, other than confusing glimpses, no more than an ant can understand us, and gets confused when we put a stick in its path.
perlgeek 4y ago
Most of these turn out to be sensor artifacts, operator errors and the likes, and even some blatant fakes. The problem is: it takes much more effort to investigate (and possibly debunk) each of these occurrences than to shout "UFO! UAP!". It always reminds of the rule of bullshit: it takes 10x more effort to debunk bullshit than to produce it. Thus if you don't want to be tangled up in believing lots of bullshit, you have to develop a certain resistance to it. We as a public have not developed that certain resistance to uncertainty in observations, and still jump on them, thinking this time it could really be aliens.
gruez 4y ago
>>There will always be some blurry / ambiguous photos. The fact that no sharp pictures show alien spacecraft means that blurriness is the phenomenon. >It's not just blurry photos. There are also military pilot sightings corroborated with radar and FLIR Can you link to specific incidents? All the ones I'm aware of are all pretty blurry/ambiguous. That makes sense, considering that if there was a high quality photo of an alien aircraft, it would be a settled matter and we won't have to speculate on an internet forum about whether they exist or not.
dogma1138 4y ago
There also is a simple explanation for it, pilots are quite reliant these days on sensor data if the sensors telling them that there is something there their brains might fill the gap. Also pilots have been reporting seeing UFOs for nearly 100 years, arguably this is one of the first times we have some sensor data to back visual reports.