2 ms·

The Great "Drone" Flap of 2024

5 points by keepamovin 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
[flagged]
- keepamovin 2y ago
  If you need a chorus, sounds like you don't have conviction. Want to lay it out? You comment a lot on UFO posts, right? What's your primary interest? Ruling out NHI as a cause? Why? Personal or professional reasons?
  - ggm 2y ago
    Personal. It feels like a misapplied Occam's razor to put unknowns down to alien intelligence, rather than human or meteorological sources. I appreciate some people think "an open mind" in this matter is some exemplar. I'm not one of them. I'm an athiest too. Not agnostic. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-officials-say-most-northeast-drone-sightings-are-actually-manned-aircraft-2024-12-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-officials-say-most-north... (also on HN)
    - keepamovin 2y ago
      Cool, I get that from your perspective, you're simply keeping an open mind, too. Just in a different way, right? I wonder tho - is there nothing that could be said to budge your view? In case there is, for a start, can I refer you to Karl Nell's excellent overview of the 1st principles argument for the existence of NHI? -- Also, on to the drone flap specifically: I checked that link and...ugh...the federal (Kirby) and much other official response to the drone flap has been an as yet unmitigated shambles, and deferring to that weakens any points you make. If you search for it, you'll see that there's reports that FBI and WH are internally in melt down over this issue. It's clear from their public statements they're gaslighting the public, which is terrible, and it's obvious they have failed to respond credibly at all. For instance: so "no evidence" of a threat is now the minimum safe distance? Seems an irresponsible standard to have given "suspicion" of a threat is reasonable grounds if you care about security. Also, they've frequently said they're not a threat and there's no security issue, but how can they know that while simultaneously admitting they have no idea what they are, and can't trace their origin? Unknown craft, with anomalous characteristics (long loiter, no FLIR signature), just chilling out above military bases and people's homes? Nothing to see? Zero threats given? Is it: they don't believe it's a threat, or they say that because they don't have a counter? And would they mind to deign and inform us on what basis they make their assessment that these unknowns are no threat? This phony, deceptive response is the total opposite of how the military would react to an unknown incursion normally. Absolute shambles. People are not happy with the response, and no longer accepting the untrustworthy dismissals that this unpermitted, uncontrolled, un-countered incursion is a nothing burger that poses zero threat and requires no response. Maybe you're different, but you should be disgusted with this deeply flawed response. It's certainly not metrological, and even if it's human the official line is still abominable. But all that said, what's your Occam's limit point for this event, if you're thinking about it?
      - keepamovin 2y ago
        Wow crazy that ggm's root comment was flagged on this tiny post (3 - 4 upvotes). Sure it was a little strident but it wasn't abusive. Yet it was flagged dead. Crazy. And my comments were downvoted. Pretty weird. The long arm of information suppression even stretches into HN. smh. We were all set to have a good discussion I thought - hahaha! :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gdubs 2y ago
Specifically regarding the activity of the past month, assuming for a second that the early reports of what's been flying over New Jersey are credible – acknowledging that as this becomes a bigger and bigger story the number of misattributions will certainly grow – then at best this feels like a real failure of public communications. I'm reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot right now, and it's fascinating to be reminded of how the Apollo mission – which we all tend to celebrate as this scientific success – was really about the nuclear arms race. More to the point, it was about demonstrating technological superiority with rockets. Now, this whole situation has gotten conflated with what we can just call 'orbs' or the ongoing UAP fascination – of which there have been congressional inquiries, lots of news stories, speculation, some fairly credible military pilots coming forward, etc. But what appears to be happening over new jersey – again, from second-hand reporting – sounds more like the types of man-made drones you would expect to see in a war zone (or even agricultural setting) rather than over suburbs. There would be some obvious explanations: Military testing out their gear, geological mapping, etc. If these reports are accurate, and there are SUV-sized, fixed-wing drones above NJ, and they're the military's – you'd expect some benign explanation: "we're doing a geological survey and there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about." We have no evidence they're denying anything. They could just be struggling to articulate "we're aware of the reports, but haven't seen any reliable evidence to back up what people are reporting." But that's not what they've said. They've simply said there's no evidence this represents a threat. Well, I'm sorry but that's horrible public messaging. If there are SUV-sized drones in busy population centers that haven't been attributed to a particular group, they are implicitly a threat. [And is such a stark contrast with our stance during the Apollo era of not signaling weakness – sorry to be US-centric here, but that's where I am.] As a Carl Sagan fan, I grew up as a skeptic. But you don't have to think these specific things are alien to think that it's problematic that they seem to be free to do whatever they want with no consequence, and continue to apparently persist despite tons of media scrutiny. Which leads ultimately to, can someone who has experience shooting bird photos please spend a week in New Jersey with a fast telephoto lens? Unless we get some evidence one way or another, this seems like it will just continue to spin and ultimately make people panic. We're already seeing that happen. Public messaging is an art, and right now it's being handled terribly.

5 points by keepamovin 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

[flagged]

keepamovin 2y ago
If you need a chorus, sounds like you don't have conviction. Want to lay it out? You comment a lot on UFO posts, right? What's your primary interest? Ruling out NHI as a cause? Why? Personal or professional reasons?
- ggm 2y ago
  Personal. It feels like a misapplied Occam's razor to put unknowns down to alien intelligence, rather than human or meteorological sources. I appreciate some people think "an open mind" in this matter is some exemplar. I'm not one of them. I'm an athiest too. Not agnostic. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-officials-say-most-northeast-drone-sightings-are-actually-manned-aircraft-2024-12-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-officials-say-most-north... (also on HN)
  - keepamovin 2y ago
    Cool, I get that from your perspective, you're simply keeping an open mind, too. Just in a different way, right? I wonder tho - is there nothing that could be said to budge your view? In case there is, for a start, can I refer you to Karl Nell's excellent overview of the 1st principles argument for the existence of NHI? -- Also, on to the drone flap specifically: I checked that link and...ugh...the federal (Kirby) and much other official response to the drone flap has been an as yet unmitigated shambles, and deferring to that weakens any points you make. If you search for it, you'll see that there's reports that FBI and WH are internally in melt down over this issue. It's clear from their public statements they're gaslighting the public, which is terrible, and it's obvious they have failed to respond credibly at all. For instance: so "no evidence" of a threat is now the minimum safe distance? Seems an irresponsible standard to have given "suspicion" of a threat is reasonable grounds if you care about security. Also, they've frequently said they're not a threat and there's no security issue, but how can they know that while simultaneously admitting they have no idea what they are, and can't trace their origin? Unknown craft, with anomalous characteristics (long loiter, no FLIR signature), just chilling out above military bases and people's homes? Nothing to see? Zero threats given? Is it: they don't believe it's a threat, or they say that because they don't have a counter? And would they mind to deign and inform us on what basis they make their assessment that these unknowns are no threat? This phony, deceptive response is the total opposite of how the military would react to an unknown incursion normally. Absolute shambles. People are not happy with the response, and no longer accepting the untrustworthy dismissals that this unpermitted, uncontrolled, un-countered incursion is a nothing burger that poses zero threat and requires no response. Maybe you're different, but you should be disgusted with this deeply flawed response. It's certainly not metrological, and even if it's human the official line is still abominable. But all that said, what's your Occam's limit point for this event, if you're thinking about it?
    - keepamovin 2y ago
      Wow crazy that ggm's root comment was flagged on this tiny post (3 - 4 upvotes). Sure it was a little strident but it wasn't abusive. Yet it was flagged dead. Crazy. And my comments were downvoted. Pretty weird. The long arm of information suppression even stretches into HN. smh. We were all set to have a good discussion I thought - hahaha! :)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gdubs 2y ago

Specifically regarding the activity of the past month, assuming for a second that the early reports of what's been flying over New Jersey are credible – acknowledging that as this becomes a bigger and bigger story the number of misattributions will certainly grow – then at best this feels like a real failure of public communications. I'm reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot right now, and it's fascinating to be reminded of how the Apollo mission – which we all tend to celebrate as this scientific success – was really about the nuclear arms race. More to the point, it was about demonstrating technological superiority with rockets. Now, this whole situation has gotten conflated with what we can just call 'orbs' or the ongoing UAP fascination – of which there have been congressional inquiries, lots of news stories, speculation, some fairly credible military pilots coming forward, etc. But what appears to be happening over new jersey – again, from second-hand reporting – sounds more like the types of man-made drones you would expect to see in a war zone (or even agricultural setting) rather than over suburbs. There would be some obvious explanations: Military testing out their gear, geological mapping, etc. If these reports are accurate, and there are SUV-sized, fixed-wing drones above NJ, and they're the military's – you'd expect some benign explanation: "we're doing a geological survey and there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about." We have no evidence they're denying anything. They could just be struggling to articulate "we're aware of the reports, but haven't seen any reliable evidence to back up what people are reporting." But that's not what they've said. They've simply said there's no evidence this represents a threat. Well, I'm sorry but that's horrible public messaging. If there are SUV-sized drones in busy population centers that haven't been attributed to a particular group, they are implicitly a threat. [And is such a stark contrast with our stance during the Apollo era of not signaling weakness – sorry to be US-centric here, but that's where I am.] As a Carl Sagan fan, I grew up as a skeptic. But you don't have to think these specific things are alien to think that it's problematic that they seem to be free to do whatever they want with no consequence, and continue to apparently persist despite tons of media scrutiny. Which leads ultimately to, can someone who has experience shooting bird photos please spend a week in New Jersey with a fast telephoto lens? Unless we get some evidence one way or another, this seems like it will just continue to spin and ultimately make people panic. We're already seeing that happen. Public messaging is an art, and right now it's being handled terribly.