UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Magical Realist, Oct 10, 2017.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    He did show us an example of his litmus test being diligently applied in this post, with eyebrow-raising results!

     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2022
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    I thought you infracted posters for not posting commentary/analysis along with youtube videos. Is this a case of do as I say not as I do?
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    No. Infracting is not some zero tolerance iron fist; it is part of a tempered, reasonable escalation of response to an historically unreasonable member who has had plenty of explicit, detailed warnings to correct their habitual vexatious behavior.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2022
    Kristoffer likes this.
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    In the case of the video I posted, I assumed the context would be clear to anybody who has already read this far through the thread. There's even a clear title on the video, "Gimbal UFO - A new Analysis", which tells you what it is about.

    I have discussed the incident to which this video refers at length in this thread, previously. This video is just an extra update from an expert who has analysed the FLIR footage. I think it will interest those who want to look into the case in more depth. To summarise briefly: the video proves beyond reasonable doubt that the object in the FLIR video is not carrying out any spectacular manoeuvers such as impossible accelerations or changes in speed. In fact, it looks a lot like it might be a regular jet plane.

    Having said that, if I failed to provide commentary on the video before, I have now done so. I will be very happy to discuss the content further with you if you wish. [I'm betting you'll shade your eyes from this terrible sight that you don't want to see - good evidence that your supposedly physics-defying UFO is nothing of the kind.]
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Meanwhile, don't think that nobody noticed that you ignored my previous post, Magical Realist. All you seem to be able to do is bitch and whine these days. It must be because at some level you appreciate just how poor a case for the paranormal you have made. The problem seems to be that this would require some effort or thought on your part, which all seems a bit too hard for you.
     
  9. river

    Messages:
    17,307
    Highlighted

    How fast was this " jet plane " travelling at ?
     
  10. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    It looks nothing like a jet plane. It looks like a rotating top. And the pilots who saw it agree. They even said there was a whole fleet of them on the SA. If it was a jet plane, the pilots with all their experience would most certainly recognize it as such.







     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2022
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Oh look. MR has an opinion about what something looks like.

    That - and 5 bucks - will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. *


    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!





    "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."
    - Maurice Switzer



    * I'm not doing this simply to poke fun at you, MR. Your contributions to the thread often lower the quality more than raise it. Maybe - for the sake of the thread - eschew offering opinions about things you clearly have skills to offer opinions about.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2022
    foghorn likes this.
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Did you watch the video? What did it say?
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Thank you, Captain Obvious.

    Did you watch the video? Do you have anything useful to say about the content of the video? Or are you just going to keep restating the bleeding obvious and your own beliefs ad nauseam?

    Whatever gave you that idea?

    Bear in mind that this thing was only seen on the FLIR camera. They didn't sight it with their naked eyes or anything like that. They did what you're doing, essentially - interpreting the image on their screen. The only difference is that those guys might have understood some of the helpful numbers and readouts on their instrument displays, due to their training, which you don't have. On the other hand, it seems likely that they didn't understand how the FLIR equipment actually works in the level of detail needed to correctly interpret what they were seeing at the time.

    Fortunately for you and I, there are experts who have done the analysis and can explain the footage, with reference to the detailed behaviour of the camera and the tracking pod on the aircraft, as well as the flight behaviour of the aircraft filming the UFO.
     
  14. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Yes...cameras like eyes generally provide us with an accurate visual representation of reality. There is no known mechanism (like the diamond shape of the aperture in other cameras) in them that would change a regular jet plane image into the image of a rotating top, West's contrived analysis notwithstanding. If it was a glare it would have no shape at all. It would look like a glare or a blob, not an unvarying shape that rotates.

    Oh? And how many hours in a navy fighter jet has West logged in? I'd say if we are talking know how and experience the pilots' knowledge of the FLIR operation logically surpasses that of West's. West is consumed with confirmation bias, forcing his superficial understanding of the equipment into his unrelenting assumption of some glitch or mistake behind the video. I wouldn't trust his ad hoc and self-serving synopsis as far as I could spit. And the Navy itself has confirmed the footage as being of a UAP. I'm sure it had the expertise and technical data to determine if its shape and movement was caused by some camera pod glitch . It did not.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2022
  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Don't be ridiculous. You haven't the faintest idea about FLIR imaging, artifacting or distorting to say there is no known way this could happen. Stay in your lane.
     
    Michael 345 likes this.
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    In the case of an infrared camera, we have no direct experience with the "reality" that is depicted. We humans cannot see infrared with unaided eyes. Therefore, all infrared images must be processed for display and interpreted by the viewer.

    In any case, nobody is claiming that the FLIR camera didn't show something "real".
    Explain the flaws in West's technical analysis, seeing as you claim it is "contrived".

    Go on. Show us all your expertise in this field, Magical Realist.

    Or stop pretending and telling lies.
    That's completely irrelevant to understanding the principles of operation of a FLIR camera.
    It's obvious that it does not. Did you watch West's video? Or do you only watch stuff that reinforces your existing biases, on principle?
    Nothing in his analysis is "forced". He uses the visible readings on the FLIR display. You could check the analysis for yourself, if you were really the expert you claim you are. Of course, you aren't, and you know it.
    There's nothing ad hoc about it. It doesn't matter what you trust, either. Nobody cares what you believe, Magical Realist, especially given your woeful track record in being right about any of this kind of stuff.
    That was never in dispute.
    What makes you sure about that?
    What makes you sure about that?
     
  17. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    True, otherwise we wouldn't use them (eyes and cameras) as often as we do.

    I'm not sure that I want to say that. I don't want to say that the object was rotating like a top, only that it appeared that way.

    Right. I personally trust the equipment and those experienced in its use more than I trust some armchair debunker who seemingly lacks any expertise in the subject.

    He definitely seems to be motivated by his desire to believe that nothing new, interesting or unexpected can possibly happen in reality as he conceives it.

    I think that one can plausibly argue that particular aspects of these sightings might have various alternative explanations. Though we might ask 'alternative' as opposed to... what? I think that Mick West (and James R) have this idee fixe in their heads that what they are battling is alien spaceships (an idea which they believe, seemingly largely on faith, is a-priori ridiculous). So wittingly or not, they put themselves in the position of battling even the possibility of anything new and unexpected happening in reality as they conceive it to be.

    That's not a psychological place where I want to be.

    I started to watch one of his videos once and was immediately put off by his sarcastic tone of voice. There's just something about Mick West's personality that puts me off bigtime. An arrogant dismissal of anyone who disagrees with him.

    Yes, the unclassified UAP preliminary assessment that was made public was accompanied by a much longer classified report. According to those who saw it, that report consists of detailed technical examinations of multiple sightings by various experts. The reason the report is classified is that it includes lots of technical information on various radars, the FLIR cameras and so on, and how these instruments might be spoofed or present false indications. (They obviously don't want that kind of information in the hands of potential enemies, hence the security classification.)

    So while I agree with Mick West that there might be explanations that are more acceptable to him (nothing new or interesting to see here, move on) for individual aspects of these sightings, what impressed the UAP investigators and what to my knowledge Mick has never satisfactorily addressed, is how these UAP sightings were corroborated in multiple modalities. One can explain away a radar, visual or infrared contact in isolation. Though that shouldn't be done too quickly, since these are excellent systems with some of the world's most skilled aviators/operators. But if a radar contact is the result of some defect in the radar (possible, if highly unlikely), what explains a visual contact when aviators are vectored to the position of the supposedly false radar contact? If the visual contact is the result of perceptual error (possible if highly unlikely), what explains the infrared camera photos?

    (And Mick's approach is extremely corrosive, since any scientific observation or report can be attacked the same way, by bringing up the possibility of experimental error that (entirely speculatively, no evidence necessary) might hypothetically have falsely produced the observed result. So if any scientific result might be the result of error -- wave magic wand -- then all of science is discredited.)

    But what explains why all of these faults were happening at once? What explains all of them appearing to converge on particular objects and each seeming to corroborate the others? It's the consilience objection mentioned multiple times earlier in the thread. It's the principle upon which the "Scientific Method's" vaunted ideal of verification is based.
     
    Magical Realist likes this.
  18. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    The New York Times article provides some valuable context to this now infamous spinning top video. Context...context!

    "The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.

    “These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”

    In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were videotaped, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching."---- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html
     
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    A pity it's behind a paywall.
     
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
  21. foghorn Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,453
    Fighter pilots know their physics?
    Mick West

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2022
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    The way I heard it, naval exercises were being held in the Atlantic somewhere east of Norfolk VA. And day after day, multiple strange radar contacts would approach and then assume fixed locations in the sky despite winds aloft, as if they were observing the exercises. So aircraft were vectored by radar to investigate the things. And whatever they were, they easily evaded the aircraft. I believe that they were seen visually as well as with the targeting pod cameras (infrared?)

    The similarity between these contacts and the Nimitz events off San Diego is striking. The difference here, based on what little has leaked to the public, is that there were more than one of these mystery objects at a time and they seemed to show more intelligent control, clearly taking an interest in the naval exercises from how they positioned themselves in the sky.

    They had no difficulty evading the Navy's best jet fighters.

    If they were just station-keeping for hours in one fixed high altitude spot regardless of the winds aloft, that doesn't seem consistent with any publicly known aircraft type either. So it seems to me that there's a real likelihood that something new might to have been making an appearance.

    They got the Navy's attention,
     
    Magical Realist likes this.
  23. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,356
    Doesn't look like that to me.
    Appeal to authority, I'm afraid. Whether the person has expertise or not is irrelevant compared to what they actually say. In this case, regarding the equipment, it is quite clear he understands far more about what it actually does, and what the numbers mean, than the pilots.
    It's his career. He is a debunker. Of course he is motivated by that. But, again, you need to listen to his actual arguments and show them to be incorrect. If you do you will see that he offers far more plausible explanations that fit the known facts, whether he is an expert or not.
    Unless all the facts are known, and unless you can demonstrate with a very high degree of confidence, that explanation X is the true explanation, then there is always room for various alternative explanations. Not just with regard UFOs but regarding every effort to put an explanation to the observed facts.
    I'm not sure that's correct.
    First, alien spaceships IS a priori ridiculous. That should not be controversial. The idea is absurd. It is a possible explanation, sure, but so far down on the list of possible explanations that one should always conclude "I don't know" before concluding "alien spaceships".
    Second, Mick West IS battling the claims that they are alien spaceships, as is JamesR each time MR claims the latest footage and report to be of alien origin. But at the root of what Mick West does is study UFO reports and tries to come up with plausible mundane explanations. And he more often than not succeeds. He doesn't debunk the idea that they are alien, he simply debunks the interpretations made about the footage that leads people to conclude "alien".
    Nonsense. There is the adage that remarkable claims need remarkable evidence etc, and all Mick West does is attempt to show that the "remarkable evidence" should not rationally be accepted as if it is.
    And I'm sure they don't want to be in a psychological place where every initially unexplained phenomenon is treated as if it is remarkable, with false conclusions coming from that interpretation. Being able to, and willing to, identify something as probably mundane rather than extraordinary should be applauded, not criticised.
    I have watched many of his videos and find him neither arrogant nor sarcastic. He explains his thought processes and how he reaches his conclusions quite clearly and thoughtfully. He is usually quite open to the idea that he may have gotten something wrong in his analysis, and he welcomes discussion. Can you provide example of his arrogance and sarcastic tone? That way I may better see where you're coming from.
    Maybe you are simply put off by his British accent?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Your conclusion is nonsense. Science is a matter of reproducibility, so discrediting "all of science" for reasons you suggest is nonsense. Unfortunately UAPs aren't a scientific experiment. An individual occurrence is not reproducible. (And linking multiple occurrences of UAPs as if they are the same phenomena is flawed from the outset.) All one can do is look at the evidence and see what can explain that evidence the best. Mick West does a very good job of providing plausible explanations.
    I accept that he tends to look at things piecemeal rather than looking at the whole, but he has set himself up as a debunker, i.e. as someone who debunks claims - mostly of "aliens!" Whittling down the evidence on a piecemeal basis is to sow reasonable doubt into that claim. And he does a very good job of it.
    The only thing his approach is corrosive of is the belief that the phenomenon should be reasonably considered aliens.
    The issue is that people are likely corroborating incorrect interpretations of the various bits of equipment. And if the interpretations of what each bit of equipment is reasonably shown to be incorrect, how reliable or reasonable will an explanation be based on numerous such incorrect/unreasonable explanations?

    Also bear in mind that one should surely start from the position that "aliens" is not the answer. Yes, I know you'll say that it's not "aliens" but "unidentified", but being unidentified is not really the claim that Mick West (or JamesR) are arguing against. If "aliens!" is a more reasonable answer than "I don't know, it's still unidentified", then okay, convince me.
     
    foghorn likes this.

Share This Page