9 ms·

"... Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had

"... Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft." Can you imagine that someone this clear-headed was ever the President of the United States?

daghamm 2y ago
He is today 99 years old and still the most clear headed president.
api 2y ago
[flagged]
- mulderc 2y ago
  Sorry buy Reagan was pretty awful during most of his time in office cognitively and reportedly would just turn his hearing aid off during meetings he found boring and zone out. Biden is way more engaged than he was.
  - QuizzicalCarbon 2y ago
    [flagged]
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - delecti 2y ago
    I'm not sure where this idea came from, because Biden seems relatively sharp to me. Not a genius, not a rhetorical master, but relatively sharp. He does have a stutter though, and you can see he occasionally stumbles on a word before rewording the sentence he's trying to say.
  - kingkawn 2y ago
    And you? Why do you ramble nothingness?
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    Biden nailed the state of the union speech so well that republicans accused him of being on stimulants. He was specifically called “over caffeinated” by hannity. He’s literally not sleepy joe, and “Zion don” would best stop throwing stones while they live in glass houses. Meanwhile we have this fking gem from trump circa 2016 and he’s only gotten less coherent: “ Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."
jdewerd 2y ago
I know, right? Of course, the American Electorate was quick to rectify its accidental moment of sanity by promptly voting him out after he installed Volcker and hiked rates to the moon (and then rewriting history to say that Carter was a bad president and Reagan tamed inflation). He was not the president we deserved, but he was the president we needed.
- bluejekyll 2y ago
  Who knows which single thing lost Carter the election, but the Reagan campaign appears to have back channeled with Iran to delay any hostages being released, ‘The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Mr. Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election. To forestall such a scenario, Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.’ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-...
  - pixl97 2y ago
    >The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp In US politics it really is true with one political party that every accusation in a confession.
  - throwaway743 2y ago
    Reagan campaign paid Iran millions to stall the release of the hostages and shortly after winning the election they were released. Pretty shitty, and treasonous imo to be using your own fellow citizens being held hostage as political leverage.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Carter is straight up the best president we’ve had since FDR and yes I will die on that hill, specifically I will die on the hill which says that Carter was way better than JFK. Carter is straight up the best individual person we have elected in 100+ years. Glad to see at least HN agrees that he was based.
belter 2y ago
"I have a great relationship with the aliens. They love me. We’re going to do great things together. The aliens told me they’ve never seen a leader as strong as me. They said that."
ak_111 2y ago
To blow your mind even further he also wrote an entire book accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.
- n1b0m 2y ago
  https://forward.com/opinion/539385/president-jimmy-carter-apology-israel/?amp=1 https://forward.com/opinion/539385/president-jimmy-carter-ap...
- andsoitis 2y ago
  > accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make. Carter explained that he is not using the word to describe racism, but the desire to acquire, occupy, confiscate and then to colonize Palestinian land. Source: https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/january/cartervisit.html https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/january/cartervisit.html The problem is that that is not apartheid. Apartheid “separateness” is explicitly a racist ideology and about forcing people to live in separate lands, not about colonizing.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    South Africa very much used townships and bantustans as a means of pushing both black South Africans and Namibians off land they wanted for whites. Yes, it is explicitly a racist ideology, but part of that racism is used to justify a treatment of others that enables confiscation and colonization.
    - andsoitis 2y ago
      The Bantu peoples also pushed the original inhabitants of Southern Africa off of their land (San, Khoi). If we’re going to apply the term apartheid to non-South African contexts[1] then we should also be intellectually rigorous in applying it in the case where the San and Khoi were victims of the Bantu expansion (and later European and Asian). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people [1] It is worth noting that we also don’t use the word apartheid to describe the actions and regimes of older times that we see all over the world.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
WillAdams 2y ago
The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from: - I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence. to: - I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board. That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  It’s also hard to achieve interstellar travel in the first place, so if you grant an alien civilization the ability to harness energy to that degree, it doesn’t seem incomprehensible to grant them the ability to control/harness maneuvering ability to enter our solar system. (I’m on the side of “we will die out before ever interacting with intelligent alien life”, but I still think it’s non-zero.)
- dahart 2y ago
  > the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous Wait, which UFO thing are you referring to? Carter never thought it was anything extraterrestrial, he stated that he assumed it was a natural or man-made event. Are you saying it’s strange that some people believe in aliens?
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    I think it's strange to believe that a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed due to the requirements of: - velocity --- it would need to be moving quickly and would have to decelerate (requires energy) to do more than pass through - life support/technology requirements and attendant heat signature --- interstellar space is _cold_ and not conducive to either, so requires on-going energy output - size requirements --- basically, an entire ecological system needs to be moved around --- how many trees does one person require to produce sufficient oxygen for them to breathe? (a quick search has an answer from 1--8) &c. See Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel _Aurora_ for a well-researched examination of this.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
schiffern 2y ago
>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial. For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones! Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  The first day of epistemology 101 (it wasn't actually a 100 series course) the initial exercise was to spot the flaws in Descarté's arguments. So yes, we can't even know (know used in the epistemological sense) that we ourselves exist, so everything else is just gradations of levels of justification and belief. Some explanations have more justification than others.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  You're just making a long winded argument from ignorance, and strawmanning what Carter said. He said his knowledge influenced his belief. That is different from saying he knew it wasn't possible.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. By this line of thinking we can never put “100% confidence” into anything at all. But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”, therefore this is just a cheap argument to say we must assign every claim a non-zero chance of being true. > This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial. You’re mincing claims, jumping from obscure physics to “Epistemology 101” and trying to lump it all together as “totally uncontroversial”, but it’s really just an attempt at moving the goal posts with fancy language and big words. It doesn’t change the fact that the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as the way the date of the encounter doesn’t even match other records of the event or even appear to be in the same season at which the event occurred, or that none of the other people present appear to have come away with similar observations. Talking about physics and GR and QCD and Epistemology 101 doesn’t change anything. It’s just superfluous jargon.
perrygeo 2y ago
Unfortunately some of Carter's contemporaneous head's of state were not so clear headed. In 1977 Eric Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada, spent 45 minutes discussing his theories about UFOs to the United Nations. He claimed to have seen many and was convinced they were driven by “highly intelligent aliens of extraterrestrial origin." He even met with Carter about it. Two years later Gairy's government was overthrown by revolutionaries and he had to flee his home country - his strange obsession with UFOs is just an historical footnote.
zrn900 2y ago
> his knowledge of physics... ...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. Us trying to 'interpret and judge' the technological level of such a civilization today would be akin to a never-contacted tribe seeing a helicopter and deducing that it cant be real because 'people cant fly'.
- klyrs 2y ago
  > solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we could launch a ChatGPT-enabled* probe to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about a century with today's technology. If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist. Or if they do, they will not necessarily contribute significantly to our ability to traverse interstellar distances. While it is hubris to assume that we know everything; it is foolhardy to assume that there is gold at the end of the rainbow. * note that ChatGPT is rather pathetic compared to intelligent life; but it's what we can ship today
  - galaxyofdoom 2y ago
    [dead]
  - zrn900 2y ago
    > Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds. > If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist. That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered. It was already 'outside' our understanding then, and it still is. We take some things 'just as they are' and accept them, like quantum entanglement. We think we explain them through some unproven theories to avoid admitting the fact that they upended our earlier paradigm of how things are. A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.
keepamovin 2y ago
Did he mean that like: - "I know I saw something that violated my laws of physics, but my knowledge of physics prevented me from believing it (was a physical object/ was real/ was actually behaving in the physics-violating way I saw)." or - "From my knowledge of physics it was clear that aliens could not get here, so whatever I saw could not have been their craft." or something else?
- karmakaze 2y ago
  This seems to be over-analyzing. I take it to mean it didn't feel like any kind of physical object to him. You know how in the moment you're either going to react with "oh shit!" or "curious..." because you made an unconscious snap judgement. I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that.
  - keepamovin 2y ago
    It's not over analyzing, hahaha! :) We're going to get more by analyzing what it is. I get what you're sayin' but it's important to consider the possible meanings, right? I think your take is fair, but it's just another interpretation like mine. Otherwise how it's taken or presented could be totally different to how it's intended. > I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that. No but he could have considered more on reflection then provided an answer that was the result of that. Hahaha! :) This discussion between us is like proof of why it's important to consider. We don't want Jimmy Carter to be a puppet for whatever ideology or theory, we want to know what we thought. Hahah! :) But I also reflect that maybe these sort of statements where it's ambiguous isn't that important to consider, because you can't really know, ya know what i mean? :) Hahah. So funny you say over analyzing but then we get down into analysis of it hahahaha! :)
ta1243 2y ago
Obama was erudite and clear headed. Clinton and Bush I were fine too.
- bequanna 2y ago
  Obama was charismatic and an excellent speaker. But overall, a pretty middling presidency in terms of actual accomplishments.
sgnelson 2y ago
Jimmy Carter may have been one of the most decent human beings the US has ever had as a President. I think the way that the Republican party treated (both then and now) a southern, small family farmer who served in the military and taught Sunday school is one of those ironies that shows what values the Republican party actually believes in. And this has obviously only accelerated massively since Trump.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  I find people to be inconsistent. This conversation has happened more than once: "I really like Carter's presidency because he was a good person." "Oh so you must hate Clinton." "Well, you can't judge a president based on his personal life." "..."
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    Ok so you're assuming Clinton was a terrible person, I'm assuming off of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Is there anything else to reach that conclusion?
    - paulddraper 2y ago
      Yeah, when judging personal character, I can't imagine cheating on your spouse would put you in the "good" category. But maybe I'm old-fashioned like that.
canadianfella 2y ago
[dead]

daghamm 2y ago

He is today 99 years old and still the most clear headed president.

api 2y ago

[flagged]

mulderc 2y ago
Sorry buy Reagan was pretty awful during most of his time in office cognitively and reportedly would just turn his hearing aid off during meetings he found boring and zone out. Biden is way more engaged than he was.
- QuizzicalCarbon 2y ago
  [flagged]
shrimp_emoji 2y ago
[flagged]
- delecti 2y ago
  I'm not sure where this idea came from, because Biden seems relatively sharp to me. Not a genius, not a rhetorical master, but relatively sharp. He does have a stutter though, and you can see he occasionally stumbles on a word before rewording the sentence he's trying to say.
- kingkawn 2y ago
  And you? Why do you ramble nothingness?
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Biden nailed the state of the union speech so well that republicans accused him of being on stimulants. He was specifically called “over caffeinated” by hannity. He’s literally not sleepy joe, and “Zion don” would best stop throwing stones while they live in glass houses. Meanwhile we have this fking gem from trump circa 2016 and he’s only gotten less coherent: “ Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."

jdewerd 2y ago

I know, right? Of course, the American Electorate was quick to rectify its accidental moment of sanity by promptly voting him out after he installed Volcker and hiked rates to the moon (and then rewriting history to say that Carter was a bad president and Reagan tamed inflation). He was not the president we deserved, but he was the president we needed.

bluejekyll 2y ago
Who knows which single thing lost Carter the election, but the Reagan campaign appears to have back channeled with Iran to delay any hostages being released, ‘The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Mr. Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election. To forestall such a scenario, Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.’ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-...
- pixl97 2y ago
  >The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp In US politics it really is true with one political party that every accusation in a confession.
- throwaway743 2y ago
  Reagan campaign paid Iran millions to stall the release of the hostages and shortly after winning the election they were released. Pretty shitty, and treasonous imo to be using your own fellow citizens being held hostage as political leverage.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Carter is straight up the best president we’ve had since FDR and yes I will die on that hill, specifically I will die on the hill which says that Carter was way better than JFK. Carter is straight up the best individual person we have elected in 100+ years. Glad to see at least HN agrees that he was based.

belter 2y ago

"I have a great relationship with the aliens. They love me. We’re going to do great things together. The aliens told me they’ve never seen a leader as strong as me. They said that."

ak_111 2y ago

To blow your mind even further he also wrote an entire book accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.

n1b0m 2y ago
https://forward.com/opinion/539385/president-jimmy-carter-apology-israel/?amp=1 https://forward.com/opinion/539385/president-jimmy-carter-ap...
andsoitis 2y ago
> accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make. Carter explained that he is not using the word to describe racism, but the desire to acquire, occupy, confiscate and then to colonize Palestinian land. Source: https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/january/cartervisit.html https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/january/cartervisit.html The problem is that that is not apartheid. Apartheid “separateness” is explicitly a racist ideology and about forcing people to live in separate lands, not about colonizing.
- vidarh 2y ago
  South Africa very much used townships and bantustans as a means of pushing both black South Africans and Namibians off land they wanted for whites. Yes, it is explicitly a racist ideology, but part of that racism is used to justify a treatment of others that enables confiscation and colonization.
  - andsoitis 2y ago
    The Bantu peoples also pushed the original inhabitants of Southern Africa off of their land (San, Khoi). If we’re going to apply the term apartheid to non-South African contexts[1] then we should also be intellectually rigorous in applying it in the case where the San and Khoi were victims of the Bantu expansion (and later European and Asian). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people [1] It is worth noting that we also don’t use the word apartheid to describe the actions and regimes of older times that we see all over the world.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

WillAdams 2y ago

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from: - I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence. to: - I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board. That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.

sokoloff 2y ago
It’s also hard to achieve interstellar travel in the first place, so if you grant an alien civilization the ability to harness energy to that degree, it doesn’t seem incomprehensible to grant them the ability to control/harness maneuvering ability to enter our solar system. (I’m on the side of “we will die out before ever interacting with intelligent alien life”, but I still think it’s non-zero.)
dahart 2y ago
> the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous Wait, which UFO thing are you referring to? Carter never thought it was anything extraterrestrial, he stated that he assumed it was a natural or man-made event. Are you saying it’s strange that some people believe in aliens?
- WillAdams 2y ago
  I think it's strange to believe that a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed due to the requirements of: - velocity --- it would need to be moving quickly and would have to decelerate (requires energy) to do more than pass through - life support/technology requirements and attendant heat signature --- interstellar space is _cold_ and not conducive to either, so requires on-going energy output - size requirements --- basically, an entire ecological system needs to be moved around --- how many trees does one person require to produce sufficient oxygen for them to breathe? (a quick search has an answer from 1--8) &c. See Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel _Aurora_ for a well-researched examination of this.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

schiffern 2y ago

>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial. For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones! Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc

galangalalgol 2y ago
The first day of epistemology 101 (it wasn't actually a 100 series course) the initial exercise was to spot the flaws in Descarté's arguments. So yes, we can't even know (know used in the epistemological sense) that we ourselves exist, so everything else is just gradations of levels of justification and belief. Some explanations have more justification than others.
technothrasher 2y ago
You're just making a long winded argument from ignorance, and strawmanning what Carter said. He said his knowledge influenced his belief. That is different from saying he knew it wasn't possible.
Aurornis 2y ago
> One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim. By this line of thinking we can never put “100% confidence” into anything at all. But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”, therefore this is just a cheap argument to say we must assign every claim a non-zero chance of being true. > This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial. You’re mincing claims, jumping from obscure physics to “Epistemology 101” and trying to lump it all together as “totally uncontroversial”, but it’s really just an attempt at moving the goal posts with fancy language and big words. It doesn’t change the fact that the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as the way the date of the encounter doesn’t even match other records of the event or even appear to be in the same season at which the event occurred, or that none of the other people present appear to have come away with similar observations. Talking about physics and GR and QCD and Epistemology 101 doesn’t change anything. It’s just superfluous jargon.

perrygeo 2y ago

Unfortunately some of Carter's contemporaneous head's of state were not so clear headed. In 1977 Eric Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada, spent 45 minutes discussing his theories about UFOs to the United Nations. He claimed to have seen many and was convinced they were driven by “highly intelligent aliens of extraterrestrial origin." He even met with Carter about it. Two years later Gairy's government was overthrown by revolutionaries and he had to flee his home country - his strange obsession with UFOs is just an historical footnote.

zrn900 2y ago

> his knowledge of physics... ...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. Us trying to 'interpret and judge' the technological level of such a civilization today would be akin to a never-contacted tribe seeing a helicopter and deducing that it cant be real because 'people cant fly'.

klyrs 2y ago
> solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we could launch a ChatGPT-enabled* probe to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about a century with today's technology. If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist. Or if they do, they will not necessarily contribute significantly to our ability to traverse interstellar distances. While it is hubris to assume that we know everything; it is foolhardy to assume that there is gold at the end of the rainbow. * note that ChatGPT is rather pathetic compared to intelligent life; but it's what we can ship today
- galaxyofdoom 2y ago
  [dead]
- zrn900 2y ago
  > Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds. > If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist. That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered. It was already 'outside' our understanding then, and it still is. We take some things 'just as they are' and accept them, like quantum entanglement. We think we explain them through some unproven theories to avoid admitting the fact that they upended our earlier paradigm of how things are. A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.

keepamovin 2y ago

Did he mean that like: - "I know I saw something that violated my laws of physics, but my knowledge of physics prevented me from believing it (was a physical object/ was real/ was actually behaving in the physics-violating way I saw)." or - "From my knowledge of physics it was clear that aliens could not get here, so whatever I saw could not have been their craft." or something else?

karmakaze 2y ago
This seems to be over-analyzing. I take it to mean it didn't feel like any kind of physical object to him. You know how in the moment you're either going to react with "oh shit!" or "curious..." because you made an unconscious snap judgement. I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that.
- keepamovin 2y ago
  It's not over analyzing, hahaha! :) We're going to get more by analyzing what it is. I get what you're sayin' but it's important to consider the possible meanings, right? I think your take is fair, but it's just another interpretation like mine. Otherwise how it's taken or presented could be totally different to how it's intended. > I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that. No but he could have considered more on reflection then provided an answer that was the result of that. Hahaha! :) This discussion between us is like proof of why it's important to consider. We don't want Jimmy Carter to be a puppet for whatever ideology or theory, we want to know what we thought. Hahah! :) But I also reflect that maybe these sort of statements where it's ambiguous isn't that important to consider, because you can't really know, ya know what i mean? :) Hahah. So funny you say over analyzing but then we get down into analysis of it hahahaha! :)

ta1243 2y ago

Obama was erudite and clear headed. Clinton and Bush I were fine too.

bequanna 2y ago
Obama was charismatic and an excellent speaker. But overall, a pretty middling presidency in terms of actual accomplishments.

sgnelson 2y ago

Jimmy Carter may have been one of the most decent human beings the US has ever had as a President. I think the way that the Republican party treated (both then and now) a southern, small family farmer who served in the military and taught Sunday school is one of those ironies that shows what values the Republican party actually believes in. And this has obviously only accelerated massively since Trump.

paulddraper 2y ago
I find people to be inconsistent. This conversation has happened more than once: "I really like Carter's presidency because he was a good person." "Oh so you must hate Clinton." "Well, you can't judge a president based on his personal life." "..."
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  Ok so you're assuming Clinton was a terrible person, I'm assuming off of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Is there anything else to reach that conclusion?
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    Yeah, when judging personal character, I can't imagine cheating on your spouse would put you in the "good" category. But maybe I'm old-fashioned like that.

canadianfella 2y ago

[dead]