UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[Magical Realist]

I just have a higher standard of evidence than you do.

So out of all the dozens of ufo/uap cases presented in this thread, many backed up with multiple eyewitnesses, radar, video, drawings, and even sonar, what more evidence do you require? Define exactly what enough evidence would be for you, turning you from being a skeptic to a believer. Surely even the most hardcore skeptic must admit the only temporary nature of his skepticism. Unless ofcourse it really IS a bias based on deliberate and irrational denial.

 

[James R]

In 1984, you are to believe whatever the Party tells you to believe, even if what they tell you to believe contradicts your own experience.

Perhaps in some ways, that isn't unlike how things are today.

Better choose your Party carefully, if this is how you go about deciding what to believe!

 

[C C]

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Is there a UFO intuition, like the "streamer" instinct of the proletariat, below? Something that circumvents the rational processes and formal procedures of the Party establishment? If so, what does it deliver -- a firm feeling that _X_ indeed cannot be identified?

1984: His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer...

[...] "Steamer' was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster than sound.

Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest window. ​

_

 

[James R]

So out of all the dozens of ufo/uap cases presented in this thread, many backed up with multiple eyewitnesses, radar, video, drawings, and even sonar, what more evidence do you require? Define exactly what enough evidence would be for you, turning you from being a skeptic to a believer. Surely even the most hardcore skeptic must admit the only temporary nature of his skepticism.

You ought to recall that skeptics have told you over and over that they (we) are open minded, ready and willing to change their beliefs in the light of new and better evidence.

Belief is dependent on becoming convinced that something is a fact. To become convinced, skeptics seek evidence. In contrast, acolytes of a faith become convinced because a claim appeals to them emotionally, or because somebody they like/respect told them the claim was true, or because the claim makes them feel comfortable, or sometimes just because the claim sounds exciting.

In other words, there are better and worse ways to become convinced that something is true. For example, coming to believe that Trump won the election in 2019 because you like Trump and you like the idea of being ruled over by an authoritarian strong man rather than somebody who respects the idea of a democratic republic would be bad reasons to become convinced that Trump won the election. In contrast, coming to believe that Trump lost the 2019 election because the vote count evidences that fact, along with the absence of evidence of any significant electoral fraud, would be a better reason to develop a particular belief about who won the 2019 Presidential race.

So, let's consider the dozen of UFO/UAP cases you've mentioned. Oh, but wait! We've already been through all that, haven't we?

The multiple eyewitnesses are human beings whose perceptions are not completely reliable. Even if their perceptions were reliable, their interpretations of those perceptions might well be mistaken. Also, we need to keep in mind that we have no access to their actual perceptions - only to their half-remembered reports about their perceptions. We're also aware that human memory is malleable in light of cognitive biases, wishful thinking, contamination from outside sources etc.

I haven't seen any raw radar records. When and if I do, I'll be happy to take a look. I don't know about you. I'm assuming you haven't seen any either or else you probably would have presented some by now.

The videos we have of the tic-tac incidents have been analysed by experts. You will be aware that several plausible interpretations of what they show have been suggested, to compete with your unwarranted assumption that those videos show something out of the ordinary.

Drawings fall into the category of eyewitness testimony and suffer from all the same issues.

You ask: what more would I require to turn me from a skeptic to a believer?

I ask: A believer in what, exactly?

I'm already a believer that some video footage was taken by some Navy pilots, for instance. I'm also happy enough to accept, provisionally of course, that the footage is genuine.

What would I need to become convinced that the video shows an alien spaceship? I'd need more independent evidence, basically. I'd need some other, much clearer videos, rather than the ones with the fuzzy, ill-defined blobs that are probably jet exhausts seen in infrared. A few visible-light clear and close-up photographs of the same objects would be a useful addition. Some clear video footage (undoctored, naturally) of a little green alien waving at the fighter jet through the window of the cockpit of its alien spacecraft would be fantastic.

In the absence of anything like that, I'd be happy to listen to any radio transmissions by any aliens from their craft to the Navy jets and ships, if those were available.

The gold standard of evidence for me to believe your tic tacs were alien craft would be if the Navy could physically produce such a craft - perhaps one that was kind enough to land on the flight deck of the Nimitz or something like that and submit to a detailed inspection (with appropriate records of such inspection being kept and made available, of course).

Other things might also convince me, but you haven't brought much else over the years other than your usual dubious eyewitness stories, third-hand "reports" by UFO believer propaganda shows that only ever play lip service to any actual analysis of cases, the usual fuzzy photos and videos (often of dubious provenance), and a few dubious claims that some innocuous-looking physical evidence must have been left lying around by aliens.

How about we try the same question in reverse, Magical Realist?

What would it take for you to stop believing in aliens? (For "aliens", please substitute super-advanced aquatic species who live in Atlantis or whatever today's woo it is that you think is responsible for most UFO sightings.)

 

[foghorn]

I understand why you find skeptics annoying. It's their incessant demands for actual evidence for the things you accept on the basis of your faith.

Lol, I had to look twice there at who you were replying to, I thought it was wegs.
I took that thought about wegs too long ago on this thread.
Wegs seems to have a need to put faith into things because that's wegs religious mentality coming through.
I have to say this is not the same with all religious people.
I also find some of wegs posts conveniently overlooking of things others have explained to him/her before.

 

[wegs]

I’m not “religious,” I’d say spiritual. Religion to me is dogmatic and legalistic, and that’s not me. Kind of where Jan Ardena and I parted views.

But, this thread isn’t about religion. That’s an entirely different sub-forum.

As it relates to UAP’s, I’m more of a skeptic and have shared that. Not sure why people make up stuff that’s not true about other members, but that’s life I guess.

 

[Michael 345]

why people make up stuff

Why people pester others also

As far as green, or any other colour, aliens existing in this Universe, bound to be

Visited this planet, sorry have not enough patience to type out the millions of zeros before getting to type a 1

That is how low a percentage I would put such a visit

"But what if they had advanced technology and could travel faster than light?"

OK OK - take off 1 zero

 

[wegs]

Why people pester others also

As far as green, or any other colour, aliens existing in this Universe, bound to be

Visited this planet, sorry have not enough patience to type out the millions of zeros before getting to type a 1

That is how low a percentage I would put such a visit

"But what if they had advanced technology and could travel faster than light?"

OK OK - take off 1 zero

Yea, this is where my skepticism comes in. If there are space aliens out there, I’m not convinced by whatever “evidence” there exists currently, to believe that they’ve visited Earth. If they visited before our existence (humans) - wouldn’t we have found artifacts of sone kind? But, it makes for a good philosophical discussion, I suppose.

 

[Michael 345]

wouldn’t we have found artifacts of sone kind?

Very doubtful. Considering the number of quite large, by archaeologist estimates, of the number of people living in the current found digs. Of all those people very little remains of personal artifacts

The rubbish heap outside a landed space craft would be miniscule

Even a crashed craft would be buried under a few tonnes of overgrowth and if crashed into the sea many tonnes of dead plankton and sea animals

Good luck finding a sea crashed space craft

 

[Yazata]

Better choose your Party carefully, if this is how you go about deciding what to believe!

I think that in the novel 1984 the point was that there's no choice. There's no alternative, there's no escape to anywhere (even inside the privacy of your own mind) outside the control of the Party. That's the essence of totalitarianism as I see it.

We don't choose the Party, the Party chooses us. We have no say in the matter.

 

[Magical Realist]

I ask: A believer in what, exactly?

A believer in ufos/uaps as witnessed and caught on video. That they are more than just mundane objects or mistaken weather balloons but constitute a phenomenon in themselves that is as yet unexplained and needs to be studied. Believing they are aliens from outer space is, as you well know, not necessary to believe in them. You simply have to accept that all these metallic discs and ovals and triangles and 40 ft long tic tacs are real and unknown.

How about we try the same question in reverse, Magical Realist?

What would it take for you to stop believing in aliens? (For "aliens", please substitute super-advanced aquatic species who live in Atlantis or whatever today's woo it is that you think is responsible for most UFO sightings.)

I was merely speculating about them being an underwater species. My firmer conclusion is that they are real unknown objects that defy the laws of physics in their witnessed performance, What would it take for me to stop believing in them? It would have to come out that all the sightings and videos of ufos have been an enormous hoax all these years and has been pulled off by a conspiracy of human deceivers intent on fooling all of us just for the hell of it. That's not going to happen. Every new sighting presents further evidence that ufos are real and not a hoax or a mistaken object. They all point to one real phenomenon that exhibits common traits of appearance and flight performance.

 

[C C]

MR is offering explanations - the title of the thread isn’t about evidence of UAP’s per se, it’s about explanations. MR accepts some of the explanations that haven’t been peer reviewed by the science community.

Explanations would seem to consist of an object being identified or perhaps losing status as an object at all (via being a glitch, misconception, etc).

That is, it seems more like MR would want to maintain the indeterminate classification of a presumed aerial entity (when applicable to it defying identification).

Of course, UFO buffs who have an agenda ranging from "they're space aliens" to "they're supernatural pranksters slash outside the simulation manipulators" to "they're time travelers" would want such anonymity lifted and be precisely validated as such. However, after decades, there seems to be no smoking gun success at that -- for whatever reasons in the submitted jumble or pile (including orchestrated obfuscation).

MR, on the other hand, may arguably be content that a flying candidate simply resist identification/explanation (remain a UFO) and thereby preserve its "object of interest" as an anomaly.

MR's role/service to the subforum itself is as an immunizing agent whose provocations keep the other side's immune defenses robust, rather than those otherwise sliding into atrophy from lack of conflict or challenge.

_

 

[Yazata]

So out of all the dozens of ufo/uap cases presented in this thread, many backed up with multiple eyewitnesses, radar, video, drawings, and even sonar, what more evidence do you require? Define exactly what enough evidence would be for you, turning you from being a skeptic to a believer.

That would depend on what it is that I'm supposed to believe.

I think that the existence of countless accounts more than justifies the conclusion that unknown objects sometimes traverse Earth's skies. So by definition, UFOs in the broad sense obviously exist. Everything seen in the sky isn't nicely identified with helpful little labels. I'm already a stout believer in that. I suspect that most of our movement-"skeptics" could be dragged (kicking and screaming in some cases) to that conclusion as well.

We all kind of implicitly accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason and assume that if an unknown sighting is made, that the sighting has an explanation of some kind. Some sufficient reason exists for the fact of the sighting. It isn't enough to just accept that there was an appearance in the sky, we want to what it was and why it appeared like that. (Perhaps that's a fundamental difference between humans and other animals.)

This thread's disagreements seem to arise at this point. What sort of ideas should we appeal to in crafting our explanations? There are UFO believers who believe that the sufficient reason for the UFO sightings is the presence of alien spaceships. There are movement-"skeptics" who believe that the sufficient reason for the UFO sightings must be assumed a-priori to fall within the scope of the familiar and mundane. (All of their "debunking" seems to consist of that kind of reductionism.)

I'm struck by how closely this argument tracks the never-ending theism-atheism arguments, with the UFO believers taking the role of the theists, and the "skeptics" taking the role of the atheists.

Which leaves agnostics such as myself. In terms of the UFO arguments, that would seem to be a position that holds that something seems to have been happening in some subset of these cases that seemingly doesn't reduce easily to facile explanatory accounts spun only in terms of what is already believed. There might be something new and interesting making an appearance here. There might be an opportunity to actually learn something.

That's not exactly a belief. It's more of a heuristic hypothesis.

Surely even the most hardcore skeptic must admit the only temporary nature of his skepticism. Unless ofcourse it really IS a bias based on deliberate and irrational denial.

I think that more than enough evidence exists (even fragmentary as it is in the public domain) to justify my (truly skeptical) position that something seems to have been happening and at this point I have no clue what the explanation is. Certainly things might (probably will) happen in the future that will motivate my revisiting that position and modifying it various ways.

Space aliens/time travelers/whatever might leave less ambiguous evidence of their presence and the UFO believers will be proven to be right. Experimental aircraft prototypes might be unveiled. Hitherto unexpected physical phenomena might be discovered. Perhaps more conclusive explanations in terms of what "skeptics" already believe will appear, proving them right. I don't know. (Which is kind of the point in this thread, I think, and what historical skepticism was about.)

I guess that my position is to argue against premature conclusions either way. That just biases what should be an open-minded investigation. And emotionally, I'm motivated to stand up to what I perceive as bullying, just because somebody entertains hypotheses that others find unwelcome.

 

[sideshowbob]

So out of all the dozens of ufo/uap cases presented in this thread, many backed up with multiple eyewitnesses, radar, video, drawings, and even sonar, what more evidence do you require?

Drawings? I think I've mentioned before that there was a story in the National Enquirer with a title something like "Man photographs UFO in his back yard". The article had a DRAWING of a man photographing a UFO. (What happened to the photographs?)

That's what I mean by a low standard of evidence.

Lights are poor evidence. Eyewitnesses are poor evidence, no matter how many there are - and until you understand that, your standard of evidence is too low.

You're lumping bad evidence in with better evidence to shore up your preconceived notions about what the evidence represents.

Define exactly what enough evidence would be for you, turning you from being a skeptic to a believer.

A believer in what? I can't believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft until there is an explanation of how they could possible get here.

Surely even the most hardcore skeptic must admit the only temporary nature of his skepticism.

EXACTLY! You're beginning to have an inkling. Of course it is temporary. ALL science is temporary. It is ALWAYS subject to change, depending on what evidence might be available in the future.

Unless ofcourse it really IS a bias based on deliberate and irrational denial.

As I have said, I am NOT biased against aliens. I think it's practically inevitable that there is life out there (though the probability of intelligent life is somewhat lower). What I don't accept is the long-jump from lights in the sky to alien visitors.

 

[Magical Realist]

And just like that, we haven't missed a beat.

Regarding the word ''skeptic,'' I take that word to mean someone who is on the fence, not necessarily an unreasonable naysayer. They tend to come down from the fence, when there is irrefutable proof; they're not likely to take someone's word for it, as evidence.

I don't see skeptics as sitting on the fence. Their whole agenda is to debunk all sightings of ufos as errors in perception, camera glitches, birds, weather balloons, etc. They are in no way open to the ufo being a phenomena itself that eludes us. The real fencesitters are the agnostics who acknowledge the possibilities that ufos are real phenomena in themselves or some mundane object. Like a real scientist, they don't presume to know what the ufo is or isn't. Hence they remain the most objective and honest students of the phenomenon. IMO Yazata is a good example of this unbiased position.

 

[wegs]

Perhaps there are levels of skepticism, depending on the types of claims that one is asked to review. I've never liked the phrase ''extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,'' because what does that mean, exactly? What does extraordinary evidence even look like, when we're talking about UAP's? I'd prefer sticking with ''claims (of any nature) require evidence.''

Can evidence be subjective? The standard practice that science has for evaluating claims, is to rule out the mundane, and weigh evidence that potentially conflicts with that. The back and forth between claimant and the scientist, who pushes back, asking for more evidence until it no longer conflicts, is the goal. (of the healthy skeptic)

I see skepticism serving as a guide in some ways, moving someone who is assessing various claims (whatever they may be), closer to objective truth. Unfortunately, that tends to leave eyewitness reports out in the cold, doesn't it?

What Is "Healthy Skepticism" in Science? (futurism.com)

 

[Michael 345]

''extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,'' because what does that mean, exactly?

extraordinary claim - aliens have landed

extraordinary evidence - alien is on the TV giving interview with the assistance of the aliens AI language translation putting out several Earth language translations

These languages were collected, over a number of years, from numerous countries old television shows which have been travelling outwards ever since TV broadcasting began

claims (of any nature) require evidence.''

That's a given

Healthy skepticism is asking questions which try to tease out any malady the evidence might be suffering from

Healing any malady found is the responsibility of the scientists

 

[wegs]

extraordinary claim - aliens have landed

extraordinary evidence - alien is on the TV giving interview with the assistance of the aliens AI language translation putting out several Earth language translations

I think you're the first member in this thread to give an example. lol!

 

[Michael 345]

I think you're the first member in this thread to give an example. lol!

Think you were the first to ask the question

 

[DaveC426913]

I don't see skeptics as sitting on the fence. Their whole agenda is ...

Who cares what you think of skeptics?

I see Magical Realist beliviers as baby-eaters. Does my opinion of you lessen your ability to argue your case? (How about if I digress to trolling every dozen posts or so to make sure no one forgets that I think you're a baby-eater? Will that help or hurt the discussion?)

What does this have to do with the topic at-hand? Have we examined all the cases? None left? Produce something convincing, and keep your well-poisoning fallacies for your diary please.