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> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic) When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited? I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an

> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic) When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited? I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an “expert” in the area (having worked on those sensor systems and seen tons of footage in a former life) and I think it’s a legitimate object of some sort [1]. Though I don’t believe it’s extraterrestrial. 1. Eg. The footage of a purported object speeding right over the ocean looks just like a cruise missile flying low level.

mcpackieh 3y ago
By Mick West numerous times, for instance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
- binbag 3y ago
  Mick West is very sure he is correct. I'm not sure that's enough.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    You're right, Mick West simply insisting a thing wouldn't be enough. Luckily, Mick West presents rational arguments for you to evaluate.
  - MyThoughts100 3y ago
    This comment makes it seem like the video does not contain rational arguments. It very much does. If you're skeptical about them, why not address them.
  - seanw444 3y ago
    Have you actually watched his video on the Gimbal craft? I thought that was a big piece of evidence myself, went into his video at the recommendation of someone here on HN with heavy skepticism, and came out sufficiently convinced it was not actually a UFO. He's also classy with his debunkings. To me that's a big bonus. Other YouTubers whose niche is debunking things seem to love being snarky, sarcastic, and condescending. Doesn't make his points any more/less valid though.
    - TechBro8615 3y ago
      I'm not generally a fan of Mick West, particularly when he gets into specific debunkings of videos, because his argumentative framework depends on the same flawed approach as those he's debunking: he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here, and then claims any evidence offered against this conclusion is insufficient. He depends on the same fallacy as his opponents. The only difference is the conclusion from which he starts. And of course he has an inherent advantage of credibility because his conclusion doesn't require any extraordinary evidence. That's why it feels like he's just taking cheap shots - in many ways he's on the easier side of the debate (but ironically it's become the harder side because it's nearly impossible to deprogram his opponents out of their cult). However, I did enjoy his recent video [0] on Grusch, where he focuses on the meta arguments against the narrative itself. He does a good job of describing the logical and dialectical flaws in the claims of the so-called "whistleblower" (who needs to get approval to speak publicly), and the reporting of the story itself (which was rushed and published by the same group of people with monetary and reputational incentives to uncritically promote the same narrative for which they've previously lost credibility). [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0
      - emmelaich 3y ago
        > he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here I'd say assumption not conclusion. It sounds like a good assumption to me.
        runald 3y ago
        It's called circular reasoning. Conclusion cites the premises, which in turn the premises cite the conclusion. Evidence (or lack of) is used to prove it self. When you start with a false or circular premise, anything that follows is technically true. It's a powerful (bullshitting) tool that can be used to prove or disprove anything.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        It's bayesian reasoning. If I tell you that I predict the sun will explode tomorrow, you should consider the sun's track record of not exploding when evaluating my claim.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> U.F.O. skeptics and experts in optics have long said many of the videos and sightings by naval aviators represent optical illusions that have made ordinary objects — weather balloons, commercial drones — appear to move faster than possible. > Military officials have largely come to the same conclusion. … > Another video, known as Gimbal, shows an object that appears to be turning or spinning. Military officials now believe that is the optics of the classified image sensor, designed to help target weapons, make the object appear like it is moving in a strange way. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-reports.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-... I don’t know, define discredited. Define consensus. I really love that it’s a game developer who seems to be thinking outside the box enough to provide explanations for the public materials. I guess the expertise is not as valuable as it seems, in the narrow problem of explaining camera rendering, and indeed someone with a games background knows a lot about that.
- throwaway743 3y ago
  Honestly, Mick West reaches hard for any way to debunk everything and his conclusions on certain subjects are just flat out ridiculous. Ex: Suggesting that what kids saw at the Ariel school sighting were just puppeteers. Those kids are now adult professionals and have stuck to what they saw. Don't take my word, have an open mind and watch the past and recent interviews with them. Was great to see him put in his place on the News Nation post-interview segment.
  - parineum 3y ago
    > Those kids are now adult professionals and have stuck to what they saw. Knowing what we know about memory, that is not at all surprising.
    - adriand 3y ago
      I understood intellectually the problems with memory but I never felt them viscerally until I listened to The Coldest Case in Laramie, which is a podcast series about what it sounds like. There are interviews with various people who are utterly believable, but at some point the host gains access to the police reports and interview transcripts from when the crime took place, and she reacquaints these people with what they stated originally. They are totally baffled. They literally cannot believe that what they remember happening in vivid detail never happened, that what they stated in reports from 20 or 30 years ago - which must be true - has little relation to their present day recollections. Hearing the disbelief and confusion in their voices really made the fallibility of memory real to me.
tashoecraft 3y ago
VFX artists react had a pretty good video where they're pretty sure the footage over the ocean is just a bird. The oddness is due to the camera optics and the vessel that's recording it traveling extremely fast.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? I find it really remarkable how far behind the curve HN is on this topic. It's literally the nerdiest, most avant-garde topic of all. Yet here people behave like their own grandfathers. TheHill.com reports on Congress acting on the mounting evidence for ET craft crash retrieval programs illegally hidden from democratic oversight, people on HN discuss whether birds fly high.
  - tashoecraft 3y ago
    No we’re logical. Did a 20-30year old looking at a monitor screen maybe get stumped? Or it’s aliens. What’s more likely?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kortilla 3y ago
    > Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? No, that’s why it’s newsworthy. What’s your point?
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    The Hill is reporting on the shenanigans of opportunist or dumb as rocks congresspeople who figured out there’s some demographic of marginal voter who cares about this.
    - somewhat_drunk 3y ago
      Exactly. That right wing grifters have piled onto the current UFO conspiracy push doesn't lend it any additional credibility. If anything, it detracts from it.
jncfhnb 3y ago
I find the gimbal one to be… really dumb. The navy releases a video called gimbal and doesn’t say anything. Later experts look at it and say, “looks like gimbal lock”. And what… people don’t believe that the navy also concluded it was gimbal lock?
- postalrat 3y ago
  Based not on the video but on the testimony of the pilots.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Ok but like, wouldn’t it make more sense to believe the pilot saw something and it was not the thing captured on video?
baja_blast 3y ago
One thing about the object flying over the ocean people often ignore was the setting was at black hot, meaning the object was significantly colder than the water below. I have some speculate that it could be a bird but I can't see how a bird could be so cold unless it was dead.
colanderman 3y ago
"Gimbal" is a speck of dust (or fly, or bird poo) on the lens of a gimbal-mounted heat-tracking camera. The entire video is predictable given the physics of such a device [1]. Not my idea, it's been around since this news first broke [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20019375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20019375 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pimpampum 3y ago
  Totally, Gimbal and Gofast were immediately discredited as Gimbal, well, being the gimbal of the sensor + contrast enhacement and Gofast being the parallax effect on a probably balloon moving at normal wind speeds. The last one I haven't seen conclusions, but if you squint it looks like an airliner at a distance. Finally the green tringle one also was discarded as a lens artifact.
- z7 3y ago
  How does one explain the eyewitness testimony of the 4 people involved? >Fravor reported that he saw an object, white and oval, hovering above an ocean disturbance. He estimated that the object was about 40 feet (12 m) long.[7][4] Fravor and another pilot, Alex Dietrich, said in an interview that a total of four people (two pilots and two weapons systems officers in the back seats of the two airplanes) witnessed the object for about 5 minutes.[8] Fravor says that as he spiraled down to get closer to the object, the object ascended, mirroring the trajectory of his airplane, until the object disappeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Background
  - colanderman 3y ago
    The history of UFO sightings is nothing but eyewitness testimony, often from groups of people. If there weren't a video this wouldn't have escaped the tabloids. Adding a video which is a textbook demonstration of gimbal+heat tracking behavior does not lend weight to their testimony. EDIT: The testimony you quoted isn't even associated with "Gimbal", it's associated with the decade-earlier "FLIR" video.
reso 3y ago
The gimbal video gets its name from the strange way the object appears to rotate in the footage, what some people have claimed is “the craft reconfiguring itself”. Ive seen convincing analyses that this rotation effect is the objects infrared shadow changing shape as it moves relative to the observer. The shape change is almost exactly what we would expect if we were observing a two engine plane, and one engine became occluded behind the body of the plane, hiding its infrared signature from the observer.

mcpackieh 3y ago

By Mick West numerous times, for instance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

binbag 3y ago
Mick West is very sure he is correct. I'm not sure that's enough.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  You're right, Mick West simply insisting a thing wouldn't be enough. Luckily, Mick West presents rational arguments for you to evaluate.
- MyThoughts100 3y ago
  This comment makes it seem like the video does not contain rational arguments. It very much does. If you're skeptical about them, why not address them.
- seanw444 3y ago
  Have you actually watched his video on the Gimbal craft? I thought that was a big piece of evidence myself, went into his video at the recommendation of someone here on HN with heavy skepticism, and came out sufficiently convinced it was not actually a UFO. He's also classy with his debunkings. To me that's a big bonus. Other YouTubers whose niche is debunking things seem to love being snarky, sarcastic, and condescending. Doesn't make his points any more/less valid though.
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    I'm not generally a fan of Mick West, particularly when he gets into specific debunkings of videos, because his argumentative framework depends on the same flawed approach as those he's debunking: he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here, and then claims any evidence offered against this conclusion is insufficient. He depends on the same fallacy as his opponents. The only difference is the conclusion from which he starts. And of course he has an inherent advantage of credibility because his conclusion doesn't require any extraordinary evidence. That's why it feels like he's just taking cheap shots - in many ways he's on the easier side of the debate (but ironically it's become the harder side because it's nearly impossible to deprogram his opponents out of their cult). However, I did enjoy his recent video [0] on Grusch, where he focuses on the meta arguments against the narrative itself. He does a good job of describing the logical and dialectical flaws in the claims of the so-called "whistleblower" (who needs to get approval to speak publicly), and the reporting of the story itself (which was rushed and published by the same group of people with monetary and reputational incentives to uncritically promote the same narrative for which they've previously lost credibility). [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvhMMhW-JN0
    - emmelaich 3y ago
      > he starts from the conclusion that the aliens are not here I'd say assumption not conclusion. It sounds like a good assumption to me.
      - runald 3y ago
        It's called circular reasoning. Conclusion cites the premises, which in turn the premises cite the conclusion. Evidence (or lack of) is used to prove it self. When you start with a false or circular premise, anything that follows is technically true. It's a powerful (bullshitting) tool that can be used to prove or disprove anything.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        It's bayesian reasoning. If I tell you that I predict the sun will explode tomorrow, you should consider the sun's track record of not exploding when evaluating my claim.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> U.F.O. skeptics and experts in optics have long said many of the videos and sightings by naval aviators represent optical illusions that have made ordinary objects — weather balloons, commercial drones — appear to move faster than possible. > Military officials have largely come to the same conclusion. … > Another video, known as Gimbal, shows an object that appears to be turning or spinning. Military officials now believe that is the optics of the classified image sensor, designed to help target weapons, make the object appear like it is moving in a strange way. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-reports.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-... I don’t know, define discredited. Define consensus. I really love that it’s a game developer who seems to be thinking outside the box enough to provide explanations for the public materials. I guess the expertise is not as valuable as it seems, in the narrow problem of explaining camera rendering, and indeed someone with a games background knows a lot about that.

throwaway743 3y ago
Honestly, Mick West reaches hard for any way to debunk everything and his conclusions on certain subjects are just flat out ridiculous. Ex: Suggesting that what kids saw at the Ariel school sighting were just puppeteers. Those kids are now adult professionals and have stuck to what they saw. Don't take my word, have an open mind and watch the past and recent interviews with them. Was great to see him put in his place on the News Nation post-interview segment.
- parineum 3y ago
  > Those kids are now adult professionals and have stuck to what they saw. Knowing what we know about memory, that is not at all surprising.
  - adriand 3y ago
    I understood intellectually the problems with memory but I never felt them viscerally until I listened to The Coldest Case in Laramie, which is a podcast series about what it sounds like. There are interviews with various people who are utterly believable, but at some point the host gains access to the police reports and interview transcripts from when the crime took place, and she reacquaints these people with what they stated originally. They are totally baffled. They literally cannot believe that what they remember happening in vivid detail never happened, that what they stated in reports from 20 or 30 years ago - which must be true - has little relation to their present day recollections. Hearing the disbelief and confusion in their voices really made the fallibility of memory real to me.

tashoecraft 3y ago

VFX artists react had a pretty good video where they're pretty sure the footage over the ocean is just a bird. The oddness is due to the camera optics and the vessel that's recording it traveling extremely fast.

Loquebantur 3y ago
Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? I find it really remarkable how far behind the curve HN is on this topic. It's literally the nerdiest, most avant-garde topic of all. Yet here people behave like their own grandfathers. TheHill.com reports on Congress acting on the mounting evidence for ET craft crash retrieval programs illegally hidden from democratic oversight, people on HN discuss whether birds fly high.
- tashoecraft 3y ago
  No we’re logical. Did a 20-30year old looking at a monitor screen maybe get stumped? Or it’s aliens. What’s more likely?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kortilla 3y ago
  > Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? No, that’s why it’s newsworthy. What’s your point?
- Spooky23 3y ago
  The Hill is reporting on the shenanigans of opportunist or dumb as rocks congresspeople who figured out there’s some demographic of marginal voter who cares about this.
  - somewhat_drunk 3y ago
    Exactly. That right wing grifters have piled onto the current UFO conspiracy push doesn't lend it any additional credibility. If anything, it detracts from it.

jncfhnb 3y ago

I find the gimbal one to be… really dumb. The navy releases a video called gimbal and doesn’t say anything. Later experts look at it and say, “looks like gimbal lock”. And what… people don’t believe that the navy also concluded it was gimbal lock?

postalrat 3y ago
Based not on the video but on the testimony of the pilots.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Ok but like, wouldn’t it make more sense to believe the pilot saw something and it was not the thing captured on video?

baja_blast 3y ago

One thing about the object flying over the ocean people often ignore was the setting was at black hot, meaning the object was significantly colder than the water below. I have some speculate that it could be a bird but I can't see how a bird could be so cold unless it was dead.

colanderman 3y ago

"Gimbal" is a speck of dust (or fly, or bird poo) on the lens of a gimbal-mounted heat-tracking camera. The entire video is predictable given the physics of such a device [1]. Not my idea, it's been around since this news first broke [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20019375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20019375 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pimpampum 3y ago
Totally, Gimbal and Gofast were immediately discredited as Gimbal, well, being the gimbal of the sensor + contrast enhacement and Gofast being the parallax effect on a probably balloon moving at normal wind speeds. The last one I haven't seen conclusions, but if you squint it looks like an airliner at a distance. Finally the green tringle one also was discarded as a lens artifact.
z7 3y ago
How does one explain the eyewitness testimony of the 4 people involved? >Fravor reported that he saw an object, white and oval, hovering above an ocean disturbance. He estimated that the object was about 40 feet (12 m) long.[7][4] Fravor and another pilot, Alex Dietrich, said in an interview that a total of four people (two pilots and two weapons systems officers in the back seats of the two airplanes) witnessed the object for about 5 minutes.[8] Fravor says that as he spiraled down to get closer to the object, the object ascended, mirroring the trajectory of his airplane, until the object disappeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos#Background
- colanderman 3y ago
  The history of UFO sightings is nothing but eyewitness testimony, often from groups of people. If there weren't a video this wouldn't have escaped the tabloids. Adding a video which is a textbook demonstration of gimbal+heat tracking behavior does not lend weight to their testimony. EDIT: The testimony you quoted isn't even associated with "Gimbal", it's associated with the decade-earlier "FLIR" video.

reso 3y ago

The gimbal video gets its name from the strange way the object appears to rotate in the footage, what some people have claimed is “the craft reconfiguring itself”. Ive seen convincing analyses that this rotation effect is the objects infrared shadow changing shape as it moves relative to the observer. The shape change is almost exactly what we would expect if we were observing a two engine plane, and one engine became occluded behind the body of the plane, hiding its infrared signature from the observer.