Why does the government hide UFO's?

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by darksidZz, Apr 19, 2016.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    I don't agree the existence of these documents admits of the existence of a conspiracy in the govt to hide knowledge of ET's. I still maintain my thesis that what it wants to hide is its ignorance about the phenomena and the utter lack of one explanation that would fit the diversity of observed traits it exhibits. I'm pretty much in agreement with Jacques Vallee's research on UFO's and the total irrational nature of them in terms of a physical explanation.

    "Skeptics, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown."

    Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/614832
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2016
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    That's why I'm inclined to think of them as folkloric, like the medieval miracles of the Saints and visions of Jesus and Mary. I'm skeptical about whether there is any single physical phenomenon responsible for them.

    That's not to totally dismiss them. I think that the history-long (and no doubt prehistoric as well) belief in all manner of extraordinary supernatural events, beliefs found everywhere in the world, are a class of phenomenon that deserves investigation. It's just that I think that it's most likely to be social-psychological in origin.

    But... having said that, I note that Vallee's ideas are consistent with my 'Fortean' post #38, and I can't totally dismiss the possibility that something more unexpected might be happening. Maybe Vallee's right. So I'm not going to flame you for being interested in his ideas, I am too.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2016
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,543
    Really?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    In essence they are not told by so called experts that it must be this or that: They are mostly informed that it could have been this or that, and that until irrefutable evidence is available, it is simply a UFO.
    I have seen one myself.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    But applying logic and common sense, I realised that it was unlikely to be of Alien origin, and just a plain ordinary, everyday UFO:
    That though isn't exciting or mysterious enough for some of the more gullible people:
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    No. "We don't know what it could be, but let's not lose our marbles fantasizing about alternate dimensions."
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    I would expect a correlation over time between number of opportunities for recordings and the number of extant recordings.
    There are now almost as many cameras in the hands of amateur photographers 24/7 as there are people in the world.
    We should be virtually inundated with both high-quality and high-quantity evidence. Yet we are not.

    It's very difficult to refute a very large (empty) dataset. That makes a much stronger case against than hand-picked anecdotes (some dating back decades) make a case for.
     
  9. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    We have no knowledge of how many cellphone videos there are of ufos out there. There could be hundreds of these every month. Here's a list of recent sightings recorded on NUFORC's website. Going by this number I'd say videos of this phenomena are quite abundant. Check out youtube. There's plenty of them posted there.

    http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxevent.html

    Compilation of 2015 ufo videos:



    March 2015 over Graz Austria:



     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2016
  10. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,527
    There's plenty of bullshit on the web, sure, but how can you use that as proof of anything but bullshit?
     
  11. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Typical knee jerk reaction here. They ask for videos. I provide them. Then they whine about them being bullshit. That's called moving the goalposts folks. Don't ask for evidence and then claim the evidence is fake.
     
  12. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,527
    Whatever.
     
  13. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,133
    Then don't provide fake "evidence".
     
  14. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    How do you know it's fake? Sounds to me like a big fat excuse not to consider the evidence. "Hey, it's all fake. I don't have to look at any of it."
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    The large triangular aircraft in the first of MR's videos, pictured with what might be a refueling aircraft, might have been an early unsuccessful LRSB (Long Range Strike Bomber) prototype. (The eventual contract went to Northrup Grumman for what resembles an update on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.)

    See these reports (with photos):

    http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/28/mystery-aircraft-over-amarillo/

    http://theaviationist.com/tag/lrsb/

    It seems that large triangular aircraft have been seen and filmed in various places over the last few years.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    It resembles a scaled-up version of the 1990's A-12 Avenger prototype

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2016
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    Perhaps. But that isn't sufficient to explain away the black triangle ufo phenomena that was witnessed in Belgium for a whole year from 89-90 and over Phoenix in 1997 and all over the planet since then. These craft are seen with bright lights shining down and cruising at low altitudes at slow speeds. Their lights are also described as being blurry as if seen thru an energy field or thru heat. And they make no sound. Or else a very low hum.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2016
  17. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Yazata:

    A UFO is an unidentified flying object - something's in the sky and we don't know what it is. Presented with a UFO "sighting", I make no a priori assumptions about what it is. It remains unidentified until and unless somebody identifies it.

    It is faulty reasoning to assume that if we have an unexplained UFO, then it must be an alien spaceship. One problem with pseudoscientists is that they constantly pretend to have knowledge they don't have. They don't appreciate that it is ok to say "I don't know (yet)." Some mysteries take time to solve. Some remain unsolved. That's ok. Sometimes we can't find enough information to solve a mystery. Sometimes there just isn't enough information available to find. But if we don't know something, that doesn't mean it's acceptable to jump to outlandish conclusions that "the paranormal" is somehow involved. We'd need actual evidence to suggest any such conclusion.

    As I tried to point out to MR earlier, for many unsolved mysteries we only have a list of possible explanations, not certain ones. So, for a UFO sighting, alien spaceships is one possible explanation. But there are usually many other possible explanations (it was the planet Venus, it was reflected light from a terrestrial source, etc.) If we haven't ruled out the possibilities with confounding evidence, they remain possibilities.

    Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. To settle on the conclusion that a particular UFO is an alien spaceship we need very good evidence. Lacking that, it is far more likely, based on prior experience of such things, that the UFO has a mundane explanation (even if we don't know for sure what it is).

    I completely agree with all this.

    UFO enthusiasts jump very quickly from "Somebody saw an unexplained light in the sky" to "It's aliens from the planet Zog come to experiment on human beings, and the government knows it and there's a grand conspiracy to keep the knowledge from the general public. And the motivations of the Zoggians are X, Y and Z, and the nature of the Zoggians is A, B and C, and we can fit all other historical mysteries into this Zoggian framework we've just fantasised" etc. etc.

    Magical Realist:

    You seem determined to keep missing the point, no matter how many times I carefully explain it to you and repeat myself.

    Let me say it again:

    I don't know that your favorite UFO sighting is not an alien spaceship.
    I don't know that your favorite ghost sighting is not a real ghost.
    I have not claimed that the light in the sky, or the fuzzy blur in the photo is not a real thing. I do not deny the "evidence".
    I question your interpretation of the evidence (which, I add, is of typically poor quality, often of dubious provenance, and open to multiple interpretations).

    Moreover, you don't know what these things are any more than I do. If you had any better evidence than you typically provide, you would have no trouble supporting your conclusions. But whenever I examine any of your claims in depth, they turn out to be flimsy and full of wishful thinking.
     
  18. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    The problem with this quote is that educated skeptics rarely, if ever, flatly deny the existence of unexplained phenomena. It is an easy strawman caricature of the "skeptic" to paint the skeptic as a closed-minded cynic. In fact, skeptics are mostly just realists rather than fantasists. This puts them at odds with those who love to fantasise and who rush from the light in the sky to aliens from the planet Zog, ignoring all the messy but vital steps in between.

    Nobody wants to look stupid. So, when informed by the skeptic that the light in the sky was just the moon, it can be easier to clamp down and insist that the skeptic is wrong, rather than admitting one's own error.
     
  19. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    The history of skeptical explanations for ufos begs to differ, ranging from swamp gas to mass hysteria to the planet Venus to even false memories. The ridiculousness of these explanations underscores the hidden agenda of the skeptic to never even admit the possibility of an unknown phenomenon and instead fabricate silly unlikely rationalizations that have no evidence whatsoever. It's not even good science. It's just brushing off something as something else that is known and calling it a day. See your hero Joe Nickel for example. This guy takes like 2 or 3 details of the sighting or event, and then ignores all the rest in fashioning his explanation for it. It's dishonest and laden with bias.

    http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.o...enfield-poltergeist-joe-nickell-explains-all/
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2016
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    So what's your interpretation of the evidence, assuming as you now claim that there IS evidence for the existence for the ufo phenomenon. Surely you must have firm convictions about what this all means to be so assured that my interpretation is so questionable.
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    +1
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    The photograph is evidence. It is not evidence of what that thing is.
     
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,608
    It's evidence that the phenomenon is real even though we at present can't identify what it is.
     

Share This Page