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I don't get why someone would see lights in the sky and jump to anything other than "domestic/commercial aircraft". Why would aliens or foreign powers light the

I don't get why someone would see lights in the sky and jump to anything other than "domestic/commercial aircraft". Why would aliens or foreign powers light their vehicles up for easy spotting? I would really start to worry if I spotted an aircraft at dusk/night with no lights on it.

jerlam 2y ago
They were primed by social media and other sources to believe it.
- evan_ 2y ago
  Not to mention, videos of "drones" are hot right now and get a lot of traffic, so if you can convince yourself that the lights you see in the sky above the airport are drones, you too can get some of those eyeballs
dfxm12 2y ago
Most people don't know what airplanes really look like or what lights they have on them. To most people, any flying object is unidentified and any aerial phenomenon is unexplained. We use pennies more regularly than we see airplanes, but how many can pick the right penny from this lineup? https://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/groups/cognition/tutorials/penny/pennies.html https://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/groups/cognition/tutorial... It gets easier to believe when supposed trustworthy sources: news outlets, the government as a whole and even specific senators/ex governors, fan the flames of conspiracy instead of common sense.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  i have not used a penny in at least 5 years, i see planes on the daily - but get your point. pennies are useless junk, straight to the recycling bin for me. really epitomizes our dysfunction that we are unable to stop making them
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    I have to keep making pennies to replace the ones you're throwing away! Don't destroy currency! I put mine in baggies and use them as weights
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      dealing with them in any other way is literally not economical to me if it takes more than like a quarter of a second of time.
      - ggm 2y ago
        A quarter of a second or a bit of a second ain't worth a dime.
outworlder 2y ago
Aliens are just good neighbors and figured out FAA regulations before visiting.
refulgentis 2y ago
To me, people are A) out of touch with how degenerate our information environment has gotten B) generally, how little people look into things outside their wheelhouse. It's not any one individual thing. You can even reframe some (one?) of the factors as Great Democracy Saving. But they add up to: it is rational to not really trust anything, and people don't mind if you were wrong if you just didn't trust The Man/They, so there's more incentive to not trust, than trust. Hyperbole from people who should know better doesn't help. Ex. a quite intelligent AI commentator tweeted yesterday, asking why there hasn't been a reckoning for anyone who publicly worried about effects of AI imagery on truth.
wat10000 2y ago
The Governor of Maryland posted a video of lights in the sky that were very clearly not any kind of aircraft. Because they were stars. Naturally, this dimwit took the opportunity to blame the feds for failing to act. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who ordinarily just never look up in their daily lives. And instead of thinking “I’m not familiar with this stuff so I don’t know what I’m seeing,” they manage to conclude “I’m seeing something strange and nobody knows what it is.”
- ekidd 2y ago
  Even 30 years ago, if you had a clear sky in countryside, you could see the occasional satellite. Very tiny, much tinier than airplane lights, and surprisingly fast. Today, there are a lot more. And of course there have always been plenty of airplane lights. Not to mention Venus, which more than one fighter pilot has tried to shoot down.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    I got to see an ISS flare once, that was fun
willy_k 2y ago
There are without a doubt large drones with nav lights flying around multiple states at night now. There are a lot of people seeing drones where they aren’t, too, and it would be odd if that weren’t happening. But to take that and say “nothing to see here” is ignoring the mass of solid video and official non-statement evidence to the contrary. I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or helicopter at first, but it was too close to the ground (seemed a few hundred feet up at most), had the mismatched light pattern characteristic of trans-wing drones, and moved too slowly for other types of aircraft. And most damningly it didn’t make any noise audible from the ground, something not even stealth bombers can accomplish. Honestly, it kind of freaked me out having some previously abstract news-cycle object just floating ominously down the road across from me. EDIT: I thought that HN of all places would be able to pick what’s actually happening from what’s not; Mass hysteria occurring and drones being everywhere are not mutually exclusive, and a critical analysis of the info available makes it very clear that there are mysterious drones out at night. Seeing one article about people misidentifying things only tells you that people are misidentifying things, it says nothing about the countless videos showing positively identified drones, and certainly not about the fact that the government has repeatedly stated that there are drones doing this. And given all of that, downvoting someone giving their personal account with reasonable criticality is at best ignorant.
- engcoach 2y ago
  You can't gauge the airspeed of an airplane from the ground. What you are observing is the ground speed, which is affected by winds. So a small Cessna flying into a heavy headwind can appear to move very, very slowly relative to the ground.
  - willy_k 2y ago
    I’m aware of that, and I tried to think that was what was happening. But the motion apart from speed was nothing like a typical plane, and the other factors led me to conclude it was a drone. When I say the FAA light patterns were off, what I mean is that it had two red lights on the outside, and two green lights on the inside. AFAIK, the only type of aircraft that might have that configuration is a trans-wing drone.
mrandish 2y ago
It's also clear that some more recent reports are trolls flying their Costco drones around. Amazingly, as documented on the news and YouTube, there are now people flying their personal drones at night in an effort to find and follow the 'original' drones (!) I assume they are now all following each other around, creating new reports of "Mysterious Drone Swarm Sighted". :-) Of course, not all "Lights in the Sky" are airplanes, helicopters, drones, stars, satellites or reflections of ground-based lights. There was an interesting sighting in Arizona two weeks ago analyzed and explained by the indefatigable Mick West (2 min video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00KT4PCd-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00KT4PCd-0.
shreddit 2y ago
Even then my first thought would be “military” or “idiot with a plane license” before worrying about “attack of the flying saucers”. I worry more about things I can’t see…
lm28469 2y ago
Same reason people hearing moose or coyotes think they're about to get attacked by a skin walker: ignorance and being primed by social medias
Lerc 2y ago
The problem is that too many people don't know what 'normal' is and nobody can pay attention to everything all of the time. When attention is drawn to something, and without the ability to judge if something is unusual, the inclination is to believe that noticing for the first time is the same as occurring for the first time. The additives added to tap water to make them generate rainbows is a good example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw There is a BBC Radio program called More or Less, which covers analysis of statistics in the media. They have a motto "Is that a big number?" which is a great starting point for any investigation, essentially asking if the observation is what you would expect if nothing newsworthy were occurring. It's worth keeping that idea floating in your head.
op00to 2y ago
Obviously they would have lights to blend in with all the other air traffic! /s

jerlam 2y ago

They were primed by social media and other sources to believe it.

evan_ 2y ago
Not to mention, videos of "drones" are hot right now and get a lot of traffic, so if you can convince yourself that the lights you see in the sky above the airport are drones, you too can get some of those eyeballs

dfxm12 2y ago

Most people don't know what airplanes really look like or what lights they have on them. To most people, any flying object is unidentified and any aerial phenomenon is unexplained. We use pennies more regularly than we see airplanes, but how many can pick the right penny from this lineup? https://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/groups/cognition/tutorials/penny/pennies.html https://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/groups/cognition/tutorial... It gets easier to believe when supposed trustworthy sources: news outlets, the government as a whole and even specific senators/ex governors, fan the flames of conspiracy instead of common sense.

whimsicalism 2y ago
i have not used a penny in at least 5 years, i see planes on the daily - but get your point. pennies are useless junk, straight to the recycling bin for me. really epitomizes our dysfunction that we are unable to stop making them
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I have to keep making pennies to replace the ones you're throwing away! Don't destroy currency! I put mine in baggies and use them as weights
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    dealing with them in any other way is literally not economical to me if it takes more than like a quarter of a second of time.
    - ggm 2y ago
      A quarter of a second or a bit of a second ain't worth a dime.

outworlder 2y ago

Aliens are just good neighbors and figured out FAA regulations before visiting.

refulgentis 2y ago

To me, people are A) out of touch with how degenerate our information environment has gotten B) generally, how little people look into things outside their wheelhouse. It's not any one individual thing. You can even reframe some (one?) of the factors as Great Democracy Saving. But they add up to: it is rational to not really trust anything, and people don't mind if you were wrong if you just didn't trust The Man/They, so there's more incentive to not trust, than trust. Hyperbole from people who should know better doesn't help. Ex. a quite intelligent AI commentator tweeted yesterday, asking why there hasn't been a reckoning for anyone who publicly worried about effects of AI imagery on truth.

wat10000 2y ago

The Governor of Maryland posted a video of lights in the sky that were very clearly not any kind of aircraft. Because they were stars. Naturally, this dimwit took the opportunity to blame the feds for failing to act. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who ordinarily just never look up in their daily lives. And instead of thinking “I’m not familiar with this stuff so I don’t know what I’m seeing,” they manage to conclude “I’m seeing something strange and nobody knows what it is.”

ekidd 2y ago
Even 30 years ago, if you had a clear sky in countryside, you could see the occasional satellite. Very tiny, much tinier than airplane lights, and surprisingly fast. Today, there are a lot more. And of course there have always been plenty of airplane lights. Not to mention Venus, which more than one fighter pilot has tried to shoot down.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I got to see an ISS flare once, that was fun

willy_k 2y ago

There are without a doubt large drones with nav lights flying around multiple states at night now. There are a lot of people seeing drones where they aren’t, too, and it would be odd if that weren’t happening. But to take that and say “nothing to see here” is ignoring the mass of solid video and official non-statement evidence to the contrary. I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or helicopter at first, but it was too close to the ground (seemed a few hundred feet up at most), had the mismatched light pattern characteristic of trans-wing drones, and moved too slowly for other types of aircraft. And most damningly it didn’t make any noise audible from the ground, something not even stealth bombers can accomplish. Honestly, it kind of freaked me out having some previously abstract news-cycle object just floating ominously down the road across from me. EDIT: I thought that HN of all places would be able to pick what’s actually happening from what’s not; Mass hysteria occurring and drones being everywhere are not mutually exclusive, and a critical analysis of the info available makes it very clear that there are mysterious drones out at night. Seeing one article about people misidentifying things only tells you that people are misidentifying things, it says nothing about the countless videos showing positively identified drones, and certainly not about the fact that the government has repeatedly stated that there are drones doing this. And given all of that, downvoting someone giving their personal account with reasonable criticality is at best ignorant.

engcoach 2y ago
You can't gauge the airspeed of an airplane from the ground. What you are observing is the ground speed, which is affected by winds. So a small Cessna flying into a heavy headwind can appear to move very, very slowly relative to the ground.
- willy_k 2y ago
  I’m aware of that, and I tried to think that was what was happening. But the motion apart from speed was nothing like a typical plane, and the other factors led me to conclude it was a drone. When I say the FAA light patterns were off, what I mean is that it had two red lights on the outside, and two green lights on the inside. AFAIK, the only type of aircraft that might have that configuration is a trans-wing drone.

mrandish 2y ago

It's also clear that some more recent reports are trolls flying their Costco drones around. Amazingly, as documented on the news and YouTube, there are now people flying their personal drones at night in an effort to find and follow the 'original' drones (!) I assume they are now all following each other around, creating new reports of "Mysterious Drone Swarm Sighted". :-) Of course, not all "Lights in the Sky" are airplanes, helicopters, drones, stars, satellites or reflections of ground-based lights. There was an interesting sighting in Arizona two weeks ago analyzed and explained by the indefatigable Mick West (2 min video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00KT4PCd-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00KT4PCd-0.

shreddit 2y ago

Even then my first thought would be “military” or “idiot with a plane license” before worrying about “attack of the flying saucers”. I worry more about things I can’t see…

lm28469 2y ago

Same reason people hearing moose or coyotes think they're about to get attacked by a skin walker: ignorance and being primed by social medias

Lerc 2y ago

The problem is that too many people don't know what 'normal' is and nobody can pay attention to everything all of the time. When attention is drawn to something, and without the ability to judge if something is unusual, the inclination is to believe that noticing for the first time is the same as occurring for the first time. The additives added to tap water to make them generate rainbows is a good example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw There is a BBC Radio program called More or Less, which covers analysis of statistics in the media. They have a motto "Is that a big number?" which is a great starting point for any investigation, essentially asking if the observation is what you would expect if nothing newsworthy were occurring. It's worth keeping that idea floating in your head.

op00to 2y ago

Obviously they would have lights to blend in with all the other air traffic! /s