UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

At this stage, we've gone a long way towards refuting the alien spaceship hypothesis, just in this thread.

The most immediately convincing information that has been presented is the infra-red video footage that kicked up this whole fuss in the first place. But, as we've seen above, there is a perfectly credible explanation of all the features of the object seen in the video. The most sensible conclusion is that it was a jet aircraft. All the "puzzling" features of the image - the apparent rotation, the apparent speed, the "aura" around the object, the apparent saucer-like shape, have been accounted for and shown to occur in infrared images of normal, everyday jet aircraft.

Radar, you say? Well, if these were normal jet aircraft, it's hardly surprising that they appeared on radar, is it?

And the eyewitness accounts? Mostly those are people trying to interpret the infrared image without the benefit of the knowledge that we have about the images. There's also some water-cooler gossip about supposed men in black trying to cover things up, but none of that has been remotely verified.

So, what are we left with? Not much in the way of alien spaceships. The most likely explanation appears to be unidentified jet aircraft. But then again, we don't even know that they were unidentified. Chances are that the military worked out exactly what they were long ago.

What about these "tic tacs"? Well, sightings of those are from a small number of supposed witnesses. Seagulls and whales seem like a likely explanation for the ones in or above the water. We can probably put the rest of the visual sightings down to eyewitness error.

They could have been wrong, despite your demonstrated inability to admit that witnesses can ever make mistakes.

As for the radar, if it was jet planes, there's no need for artifacts. However, the point about some of the radar systems being new and unfamiliar to operators still stands as a plausible and unrefuted explanation.

Ha! Don't make me laugh. Especially when the witnesses are not independent.

Wrong again. See above.

Fortunately, we don't need to doubt most of the features of the accounts. They are explainable through mundane means, without any need to postulate little green men in spaceships.

It's extraordinary that a few people on this forum have managed to debunk your latest enthusiasm with so little effort. A dash of common sense and critical thinking, combined with a little research, is really all it takes.

 

Luckily we don't even need secret military aviation tech to explain this one. Ordinary, known, jet aircraft do the job just fine.

Obviously you're trying to muddy the waters by bringing in separate incidents. We'd need to examine each of those separately.

It's a good thing nobody does that then, isn't it?

Non-secret aircraft certainly makes best sense in the case we're discussing here. If you want to imply that this can't have a mundane explanation because government conspiracy of whatever, you need to show some evidence for your new theory.

 

wegs,

Whether not we believe that UFOs/aliens might exist should be irrelevant to evaluating this kind of thing. If you assume at the start that you're likely to find aliens - like Magical Realist does - just because you already believe in them, then you're prone to a whole host of errors. You go looking for information that tends to support your prior belief that it must be aliens, while ignoring or downplaying the importance of information that tend to refute the idea. It's called confirmation bias.

In extreme cases - as exemplified by Magical Realist - you end up throwing common sense and critical thinking out the window, so that everything starts looking like an alien spaceship or a ghost of the Loch Ness Monster, just because those things are what you want to see.

Skeptics get a bad rap from people who don't understand skepticism. Skepticism means keeping an open mind and looking at the evidence on its merits. You don't go in with a pre-determined conclusion (cf. Magical Realist). You do what a scientist does - you test multiple hypotheses that might explain the ascertainable facts, to the extent that it is possible to do so. If, in the end, you can't reach a definite resolution based on the available evidence, then you're not left with "it must have been aliens", but with "we don't know what it was (yet)". Aliens is not a default explanation (if we can't explain a sighting, it must be aliens). The default position is we don't know.

Having said that, we can often do better than "we don't know", as you've seen in this thread. While we can't be certain that the infrared footage shown here is a normal jet aircraft, there are certainly lots of good reasons to think that's what it probably shows.

It is possible that aliens are visiting Earth in spaceships. It is also possible that tiny pink dragons live in an unexplored cave in Antarctica. But both those claims are quite extraordinary. There's no good evidence that either of them is true, based on decades of data. The philosopher David Hume advised that in the case of extraordinary claims we ought to ask what is more extraordinary - that the claim is true or that the people making the claim are telling lies or are mistaken? To decide the answer to that, the only way is to look at all the available evidence, in the context of everything that we already know about the world.

There are many problems with eyewitness accounts. Eyewitnesses make mistakes all the time. That is not to say that people are totally unreliable. Much more commonly, some elements of an eyewitness's account of an event can be perfectly accurate, while other elements can be mistakes of interpretation or mistakes of perception or mistakes due to other factors. Also, like it or not, some "eyewitnesses" actually tell lies for various reasons.

The most commonly reported UFOs turn out to be sightings of planets, such as Venus, in the sky. The witness descriptions of what they saw are usually accurate. They get it right as to what the object they saw in the sky looked like, and where it was in the sky and what time they saw it, approximately. But their interpretation that was an alien spaceship, or other unknown object (secret military aircraft, for example) is completely wrong.

You don't need scientists' permission for that. You can believe whatever you like. It's a matter of personal taste as to whether you prefer to believe what is true, or to live in fantasy world like Magical Realist does, or a world of dark conspiracies like Q-reeus does.

Skeptics aren't telling you what to think. We are urging you to apply some common sense and critical thinking, rather than to jump to conclusions because they are attractive or comfortable.

Magical Realist typically whines about how skeptics like myself are all closed-minded and have an "agenda" to debunk his fantasies. But we're not telling him what to think any more than we're telling anybody else what to think. What irks him more than anything else is that skeptics dare to challenge his assumptions, which threatens the cozy fantasy world he has chosen to build his identity around. His anger at the skeptics is displaced anger at the discovery that his core beliefs are built on shifting and unstable foundations.

Lots of accounts seem credible. We should never rely solely on the attested good character of a witness in order to accept that what he or she reports is true. This is not to accuse eyewitnesses of lying - a mistake that Magical Realist repeatedly makes - but to recognise that eyewitnesses are imperfect human beings like the rest of us. Human beings aren't video recorders. Our memories are not a film. Even our perceptions are susceptible to all kinds of illusions and distortions.

Mostly, it's the opposite. We're far to ready to believe stuff, based on flimsy evidence. We do that for all kinds of reasons. It's part of being human.

 

(continued...)

Okay, so why ghosts and UFOs but not Bigfoot? I'm guessing that it's because you think there's better/more evidence for ghosts and aliens than there is for Bigfoot, possibly bolstered by your prior estimate that it is more likely that aliens could exist, as opposed to a Bigfoot. It's certainly true that there's more in terms of sheer volume of reports of UFOs, by orders of magnitude, but lots of reports aren't necessarily better than a few when it comes to establishing the existence of aliens. What matters is the quality of the evidence, overall. It's now about 70 years since the "modern" UFO flap started, and in all that time nobody has managed to produce anything really convincing. Think about that. It's not for a want of people looking for such stuff.

It's a common-enough shape for flying saucers. These days, people tend to report UFO shapes based on what is "expected" of such reports. The most common shapes reported (if they are more than mere lights in the sky) include saucers and cigar-shapes, but the "tic tac" shape is not unusual. Believers, of course, will tell you that there are many reports of similar shapes because those are the shapes the aliens prefer. Skeptics would suggest that, by now, we have culturally indoctrinated certain ideas of what an alien spaceship sighting should look like, so that's what people tend to report.

They can't ever be ruled out. However, hallucinations shared by more than one person are very rare.

In one sense, it might not "hurt" to believe anything that isn't true. It can even be comforting or exciting or fun to believe stuff that isn't true. The idea of alien visitors is exciting, intriguing, and fun. If some people think you're a little weird for believing in little green men, does it matter? Maybe not.

But in a wider sense, do you think it's good to believe anything somebody tells you, without question? That's what Magical Realist says he does, though I doubt he's telling the truth (see what I did there?). You are sensible enough and experienced enough to know that people make mistakes and that people don't always tell the truth, I'm sure.

This particular story is unlikely to have any serious impact on your daily life, so it probably doesn't matter much whether you believe it was aliens or not. Believing one way or the other won't threaten you. It won't cost you anything, most likely. But if you make it a habit to believe stuff that isn't supported by reasonable evidence, then I think you end up losing something important. You end up all at sea in a fantasy world, like Magical Realist. It's a choice whether or not you want to go down that road.

It's very hard to judge the apparent size, speed or acceleration of an object by eye, especially when you don't have any familiar objects nearby to compare it to. This is the typical situation of aircraft in the sky.

That sounds like a reasonable position to me. Notice, though, that nobody dismissed this story without examining it. Magical Realist believed it without examining it, but he'll believe anything. At the end of the day, we still haven't dismissed it, even if we conclude it was probably a regular jet, for example. We don't know what it was, for sure. The best we can do is to make an informed judgment about what it probably was, and leave it at that until/unless new data comes in that can take us further.

The same advice regarding critical thinking and examining the evidence applies to conspiracy theories. We shouldn't conclude a conspiracy unless and until there is good evidence to show that there is, in fact, a conspiracy.

Needless to say, some gossip about people supposedly removing data after the event is not, in itself, persuasive evidence of a grand government conspiracy.

There are different types of "true". Something may be "true" for you in the personal sense of making you feel good, or conforming to your personal beliefs about the world. You can cherish that if it makes you happy. But the other sense of "true" brings in what everyone else can agree about. That is, can you convince anybody else that what is "true" for you is objectively true? If that's not important to you, then fine. Believe what you like. But one reason you might care - other than wanting other people on your side - is that you might prefer for yourself to believe stuff that is really true, regardless of whether it makes you happy or comfortable. If you realise that you're not an infallible observer or recorder, even of your own experiences, then it follows that the only way to work out what's really true is to compare notes with other people.

 

No. Go back and read what I wrote.

Very likely.

Like a squadron? Or a flight of several aircraft. That never happens, does it?

Would have been? So you're saying you don't know, and you're assuming again. Okay.

Wait! This isn't you making shit up, is it? You wouldn't do that, after all your whining about it. That would be hypocritical.

It's not well defined, and its apparent (not real) rotation has been explained. Watch the explanatory videos that have been posted for your education.

Pilots using the same system would no doubt see similar things.

Next!

 

Oh, and Magical Realist? Can you answer the following questions yet?

1. Do you think it's possible for an eyewitness to reach a mistaken conclusion about what he saw?
2. Do you think it is possible for a radar to register something that looks like a solid object on the radar but isn't?
3. Do you think it is possible for a radar operator to misidentify an object on radar?

A simple "yes" or "no" to each question will suffice. Shouldn't take more than a moment of your time.

Ta.

 

You sound angry again/still.

No they (we) don't.

Exhibit A: look at what I've said regarding the incident we are currently discussing.

Have I "insisted" on any particular interpretation of the data? No, I have not. You can believe whatever you like about it, like I said. I don't insist you apply common sense or think critically. You are quite welcome to remain irrational if that floats your boat. Just don't expect to bring anybody else along on your ride, apart from other irrational people.

Yes. Highly recommended. Thanks, Magical Realist! That's a great example of my good sense pitted against your irrational prejudice. Very instructive as to how these things should be approached.

What I concluded was: we don't know for sure, but the most probable explanation is that two of the policemen involved, at least, were chasing the planet Venus in their squad car, believing it to be a flying saucer. For a couple of the other observers/observations tied up with that case, the Venus explanation doesn't work, but those are really loose ends more than the central issue. For reasons I explained at some length in the thread, the weather balloon and/or meteor explanations fit the known facts pretty well.

Rather than repeat, though, I strongly urge anybody who is interested to read that thread. Here's the link:

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/portage-county-ravenna-ufo-chase-1966.158484/

 

How's it going with answering those three questions I asked you, by the way, Magical Realist? Can we expect any progress from you on that in the near future, or is it all proving to be a little too challenging for you?