UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[Michael 345]

I have never ruled out extraterrestrials. I have simply suggested that the intelligences behind ufos are not of this world. That can include interdimensionals, time travelers, or paranormal beings.

ET's would be close to zero, the other three even less

If aliens exist, they could mean us harm, but maybe they don't. It's fun to ponder the unknown, at least I think so.

I suspect aliens do exist, but it is a numbers game given the dynamics of the Universe

However those same dynamics decrease of likelihood of them visiting us

I find fun in imagining them out there pondering our existence and do we mean them harm

 

[Magical Realist]

Oh, so he actually thought it was a giant flying tic tac, and not just something that looked like one? Okay, whatever you say.

I know what he means. He knows what he means. Most everyone who reads his statement knows what he means. If you're still having trouble with it I suggest going back to english class and studying up on metaphors again.

Not really.

How do you know?

The question is: was the giant tic tac there?

It's what they saw and what was spotted on radar and caught on camera.

I noticed that. Planes and drones, however, are prone to zipping around in the sky and changing direction.

You didn't say it was a plane or a drone. You said it was a whale. You can't change your story whenever it suits you.

You're getting way ahead of yourself. There's no point in speculating about beings until you've established that there are beings to speculate about. All we have established so far on that front is that you'd tremendously like there to be beings.

UFOs are craft. This is shown from hundreds of cases of them landing and having beings exit them. Many ufos have also been spotted with windows. That makes them craft.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/Landings.htm

No. Apparently he decided to do media after he "saw" the objects.

I'm sure he was asked by the media to be on the news. The fact that he went ahead and did that shows his remarkable courage and certainty about his experience.

 

[Magical Realist]

On another topic, why did you ignore most of my previous two lengthy posts to you?

Why does anybody ignore your lengthy and tedious line-by-line posts? Probably because there is no pay off to explaining anything to you. You will continue to bitch and whine and ask more questions in longer and longer posts till the poster just gets fed up with your petty game and moves on. There is no point in answering you because you are never satisfied with an answer. I call it exploding ignorance syndrome--the tendency to ask more and more questions the more information you receive. Nobody here is interested in your endlessly anal and tiresome nitpicking. That's what gets your posts unanswered.

 

[Magical Realist]

Do you think I'm doing a good job of investigating this incident, sitting in my chair browsing the internet? Most of my posts here are off the top of my head. I've consulted a few internet references from time to time, but most of my effort here has been directed at exposing the unreasonable silliness of your beliefs about the incident. I've put almost precisely zero effort into "trying to debunk" this UFO incident, so far.

Yeah we all know how you investigate. You google the latest skeptical debunk of the event and post that here as your own opinion. You might even refer to a video yourself if the video is providing a debunk, like of that explanation of the gimbal ufo really just being jet engine flare. Problem is these debunks aren't investigating anything. They aren't interviewing eyewitnesses or people who were actually there. They are only looking for excuses to dismiss the incident as a mistake or an outright hoax.

I suppose you imagine that you're an investigator who has looked into this incident thoroughly, or something. If that's what you think, you don't have the foggiest clue about what investigating something involves. Watching some credulous youtube videos is not investigation

Sure it is, especially when the video provides actual interviews and video of the incident as in this one:

Joe Nickell did some real investigating, if you need something to compare to. You know, he went out of his house, he talked to some witnesses, he searched for relevant documentation and read it and evaluated it, and so on and so forth. He interviewed some experts. He applied his own experience and skill to evaluating the matter objectively.

Joe Nickell is a career skeptic who makes his living trying to debunk everything. He writes for the Skeptical Inquirer. He is no more an expert than you are. All he does is look for possible alternative explanations for incidents in order to dismiss them as a mundane and unexceptional occurrences. IOW, he seeks to find evidence (more like excuses) for his own foregone conclusion, which is confirmation bias pure and simple:

"Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.

As such, it can be thought of as a form of selection bias in collecting evidence."--- https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/confirmation_bias.htm

Don't imagine for a moment that you've ever actually investigated any of the woo you believe in. I'm quite confident you have never left your armchair.

I don't need to when there are people more qualified than I already doing that for me:

 

[James R]

Magical Realist:

I know what he means. He knows what he means. Most everyone who reads his statement knows what he means. If you're still having trouble with it I suggest going back to english class and studying up on metaphors again.

Recall how this started. I said that he reported seeing something that looked like a tic tac. You said, no no no, he said it was a tic tac. Now, after further questioning from me, you've changed your tune, essentially to agree with what I said in the first place. The rest is just you whining.

Let's move on.

It's what they saw and what was spotted on radar and caught on camera.

It's what they say they saw. As for what was spotted on radar - if anything was - we have no idea what that was. As for the camera, it looks like a jet exhaust to me.

You didn't say it was a plane or a drone. You said it was a whale. You can't change your story whenever it suits you.

I don't have a story. You're the one telling the story about the alien spaceship, remember.

I suggested that the disturbance in the water might have been a whale or a submarine. That remains a live option.

UFOs are craft.

Then why is there a "U" in UFO? Apparently, they have all been identified as "craft".

This is shown from hundreds of cases of them landing and having beings exit them.

Your attempts to distract from the discussion won't work. If you want to discuss supposed landings or alien sightings, that's an entirely different conversation. Of course, those are even less plausible than the one we're having.

Yeah we all know how you investigate. You google the latest skeptical debunk of the event and post that here as your own opinion.

I just told you: I've done virtually no investigating here. Neither have you. You don't know what investigation is.

You might even refer to a video yourself if the video is providing a debunk, like of that explanation of the gimbal ufo really just being jet engine flare.

I posted a video that shows, quite plausibly, the origin of those fuzzy rotating "UFOs" on the IR gimbal cameras, explained by an expert.

If you deny that this explanation is plausible, go find your own experts.

Problem is these debunks aren't investigating anything.

Sure they are. They are investigating, for instance, the characteristics of the images typically produced by gimballed IR cameras. That information helps us to understand how certain images can be created by those cameras.

The alternative is to operate in a vacuum, where we know nothing about how the video footage was taken, so that we're left only to make dubious, ill-founded assumptions about what the footage shows. I know that's your preferred operating mode, but it's not what a competent critical thinker does.

They aren't interviewing eyewitnesses or people who were actually there.

Eyewitnesses has been interviewed many times by many different people, including skeptical investigators, as I previously pointed out.

They are only looking for excuses to dismiss the incident as a mistake or an outright hoax.

As I also pointed out, their motives are irrelevant, even if they have the motives you assume they have. What matters is whether the evidence for the LGM holds up or not. And it doesn't.

Sure it is, especially when the video provides actual interviews and video of the incident as in this one:

Apart from the interviews with people who were involved, that video includes virtually no actual footage from the incident. There is one short clip of IR footage from the planes, which may or may not be from the incident (there's no way to tell). The rest has a gigantic "RECREATION" message plastered over some imaginative animations that somebody created. It's all very well produced, but none of the recreated footage shows what was actually seen.

One interesting snippet I took away, though, was the fact that only one radar picked up any UFOs - the radar on the ship. The fighter jets' radars showed nothing at any time, even when the ship's radar was showing a "merge plot" - i.e. when the fighter jets should been in exactly the same position as the "UFO". The radar system on the ship was new. It had teething problems. Its software was being worked on. It showed many spurious tracks over many days prior to the incident. It's all highly suggestive of a computer glitch.

Joe Nickell is a career skeptic who makes his living trying to debunk everything.

Does he? Is he a full time debunker? Who pays him?

He writes for the Skeptical Inquirer.

And so? If he wrote for "UFO fan club" would you be more likely to believe him?

He is no more an expert than you are.

In other words, you're saying he is well informed and a competent investigator of these matters. Good.

All he does is look for possible alternative explanations for incidents in order to dismiss them as a mundane and unexceptional occurrences.

Something that everybody should be doing. You never bother, though. Why is that? Afraid of what you might find?

I don't need to...

You don't want to, you mean.

 

[Magical Realist]

Recall how this started. I said that he reported seeing something that looked like a tic tac. You said, no no no, he said it was a tic tac. Now, after further questioning from me, you've changed your tune, essentially to agree with what I said in the first place. The rest is just you whining.

That's not what happened at all. You said he said that it looked like a 40 ft a tic tac. I said no he didn't and even quoted him saying it being a 40 ft tic tac. Then you sarcastically whined about it being an actual 40 ft tic tac, to which I responded we all know what he means when he says that. You were proven both wrong and deliberately obtuse. End of story.

 

[Michael 345]

Then why is there a "U" in UFO? Apparently, they have all been identified as "craft".

Make it a UFC
Problem solved

 

[James R]

That's not what happened at all. You said he said that it looked like a 40 ft a tic tac. I said no he didn't and even quoted him saying it being a 40 ft tic tac. Then you sarcastically whined about it being an actual 40 ft tic tac, to which I responded we all know what he means when he says that. You were proven both wrong and deliberately obtuse. End of story.

We all know what he means, eh?

Well, then, how about you tell us what he meant when he said "It was a 40 foot long tic tac".

Did he mean that it looked like a 40 foot long tic tac, or did he mean it was an actual giant 40 ft long tic tac?

See, because I said that what he meant was that it looked like a tic tac. But now you tell me that "everyone" knows he didn't mean that at all?

And you've got yourself all worked up about that?

---
By the way, is this your entire response to everything I wrote to you in my previous reply, or is there more coming?

 

[Magical Realist]

See, because I said that what he meant was that it looked like a tic tac.

Actually no. You weren't discussing anything he meant. You claimed he said it looked like a 40 ft tic tac. And I proved you wrong. Then you bitched that he must mean it is a real 40 ft tic tac. To which I replied everyone knows what he means. And they do. If you don't, then google "metaphor".

By the way, is this your entire response to everything I wrote to you in my previous reply, or is there more coming?

You mean will I go thru your long-ass tedious line-by-line post to respond to you in kind? I already told you why people don't bother to respond to that shit. Don't be surprised if those people include myself.

 

[James R]

Magical Realist:

This is ridiculous. Let me ask you some questions. You can answer "yes" or "no".

1. Did Fravor describe the thing he saw as a "tic tac"?
2. Do you think that Fravor actually thought it was a tic tac (as in the snack food)?
3. If Fravor did not think it was actual snack food, do you think that he was making a comparison of its shape to the shape of the snack food?
4. Would it be fair to conclude that Fravor thought the UFO looked like a tic tac?

My answers to these 4 questions are: yes, no, yes and yes.

How about you?

If we can agree that Fravor thought the UFO looked like a tic tac, then we're in agreement on this minor matter.

So, what do you think? Did he think it looked like a tic tac? Did he compare it to a tic tac in multiple interviews? Did he know the difference between snack food and the UFO?

You whine on and on about this, when all the time I think you actually agree with me on this point.

Meanwhile, of course, you ignore the actually important matters that I raised in my previous post.

What's wrong with you?

 

[Magical Realist]

If we can agree that Fravor thought the UFO looked like a tic tac, then we're in agreement on this minor matter.

I think that's what most people know he meant despite you saying otherwise. So just to recap, you were wrong about him saying it looked like a 40 ft tic tac, and you were wrong about him meaning it was an actual tic tac. Anything else you wanna get wrong, or are we done here?

What's wrong with you?

Nothing wrong here. Should there be?

 

[James R]

Magical Realist, do you for one moment think that you've won a major victory over me if you use a quote from Fravor that I provided that shows him saying "It was a 40 foot long tic tac" rather than "It looked like a 40 foot long tic tac"?

I provided the quote, after all. It's there in black and white for anybody who is interested. And you, yourself, say we all know what he means when he says it was a tic tac. Namely, he means that it looked like a tic tac. Like I said. Also, I might point out that he has given many interviews, and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find one where he says the words "It looked like a tic tac", or something similar.

Do you now feel like a big man who has scored important points in this debate we're having?

Because the reality is that you've acted like a child throwing a pointless tantrum. Again.

And you've ignored all the really important stuff to concentrate on this.

It really speaks volumes about you.

 

[Magical Realist]

Magical Realist, do you for one moment think that you've won a major victory over me if you use a quote from Fravor that I provided that shows him saying "It was a 40 foot long tic tac" rather than "It looked like a 40 foot long tic tac"?

I provided the quote, after all. It's there in black and white for anybody who is interested. And you, yourself, say we all know what he means when he says it was a tic tac. Namely, he means that it looked like a tic tac. Like I said. Also, I might point out that he has given many interviews, and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find one where he says the words "It looked like a tic tac", or something similar.

Do you now feel like a big man who has scored important points in this debate we're having?

Because the reality is that you've acted like a child throwing a pointless tantrum. Again.

And you've ignored all the really important stuff to concentrate on this.

It really speaks volumes about you.

Being wrong isn't the end of the world dude. Consider it a learning experience.

 

[James R]

Back to the case.

Interestingly, Fravor himself apparent takes issue with some of the other eyewitnesses in his case.

For example, Fravor dismisses the story about Men in Black removing the radar records as false, and he is critical of the testimony of the radar operator Kevin Day.

Just above, Magical Realist posted a nicely produced fictional video of the incident, produced by Dave Beaty. Fravor himself described that video as a "cartoon".

All these comments were made at the UFO Fest in McMinnville, Oregon, if you want to look it up.

More relevant information:

• Regarding the "tic tac" video with the blurry thingy, the people who released that (not the Pentagon, by the way) claim to have "chain of custody" documentation that verifies that the footage is authentic, but nobody has ever seen this. The people who released the video provided some documentation to a friendly reporter, who concluded "we have no proof of any [official Pentagon] release, let alone what is being touted [the videos] is even the same evidence connected to this DD Form 1910."
• Apparent acceleration of the object on the video appears to be not an actual acceleration of the object, but an artifact due to somebody changing the zoom level of the image.
• At the time of the incident the Nimitz carrier had only returned to the fleet after major four-year-long overhaul, also known as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH). This process included installing various upgrades, such as systems associated with the latest operational iteration of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and its embedded Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture. This is a critical detail. When the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered the Tic Tac in 2004, it was in the midst of the first ever carrier-strike-group-level operations of the initial iteration of the CEC. In other words, the radar system was brand new and had never been tested before. Glitches were to be expected.
  
• Moreover, the new radars, being more sensitive than the ones before, might well have detected other things and misidentified them as UFOs. Candidates include birds, small balloons, insect clouds, ice crystals, windborne debris, and various other things found in the atmosphere.
• Fravor did not take the video of the tic tac.
• Experts who have analysed the FLIR video say that it is consistent with a commercial jet moving away from the fighter plane, at a distance of about 15 miles.

 

[James R]

Being wrong isn't the end of the world dude

Nothing I said was wrong.

 

[Magical Realist]

Experts who have analysed the FLIR video say that it is consistent with a commercial jet moving away from the fighter plane, at a distance of about 15 miles.

Would these be the same "experts" who claim the Gimbal ufo infrared video was a jet's engine flare too? That seems to be a common claim among skeptics. Do they have any idea why these so-called jets wouldn't already be identified by the ship's radar or why they wouldn't be transponding IFF to the radars?

http://www.dean-boys.com/extras/iff/iffqa.html

 

[James R]

Would these be the same "experts" who claim the Gimbal ufo infrared video was a jet's engine flare too?

Yes. All those videos are gimbal camera FLIR videos, as I understand it.

That seems to be a common claim among skeptics.

Yes. The informed consensus seems to be that these are images of jets, as you say.

Do they have any idea why these so-called jets wouldn't already be identified by the ship's radar or why they wouldn't be transponding IFF to the radars?

Probably.

 

[Magical Realist]

The informed consensus seems to be that these are images of jets, as you say.

Informed consensus? Really? How would you know how many believe they're jets? Did you take a poll?

Probably.

In other words they don't have any idea. That's what I thought. Convenient speculations contrary to real world facts..

 

[Magical Realist]

Back to the case.

Interestingly, Fravor himself apparent takes issue with some of the other eyewitnesses in his case.

For example, Fravor dismisses the story about Men in Black removing the radar records as false, and he is critical of the testimony of the radar operator Kevin Day.

Just above, Magical Realist posted a nicely produced fictional video of the incident, produced by Dave Beaty. Fravor himself described that video as a "cartoon".

All these comments were made at the UFO Fest in McMinnville, Oregon, if you want to look it up.

More relevant information:

• Regarding the "tic tac" video with the blurry thingy, the people who released that (not the Pentagon, by the way) claim to have "chain of custody" documentation that verifies that the footage is authentic, but nobody has ever seen this. The people who released the video provided some documentation to a friendly reporter, who concluded "we have no proof of any [official Pentagon] release, let alone what is being touted [the videos] is even the same evidence connected to this DD Form 1910."
• Apparent acceleration of the object on the video appears to be not an actual acceleration of the object, but an artifact due to somebody changing the zoom level of the image.
• At the time of the incident the Nimitz carrier had only returned to the fleet after major four-year-long overhaul, also known as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH). This process included installing various upgrades, such as systems associated with the latest operational iteration of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and its embedded Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture. This is a critical detail. When the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered the Tic Tac in 2004, it was in the midst of the first ever carrier-strike-group-level operations of the initial iteration of the CEC. In other words, the radar system was brand new and had never been tested before. Glitches were to be expected.
  
• Moreover, the new radars, being more sensitive than the ones before, might well have detected other things and misidentified them as UFOs. Candidates include birds, small balloons, insect clouds, ice crystals, windborne debris, and various other things found in the atmosphere.
• Fravor did not take the video of the tic tac.
• Experts who have analysed the FLIR video say that it is consistent with a commercial jet moving away from the fighter plane, at a distance of about 15 miles.

For someone who claims to have no story, you sure have a lot of specific details you're pushing.

 

[Yazata]

Why does anybody ignore your lengthy and tedious line-by-line posts?

I don't want to get sucked into an endless 'James vs Jan Ardena' style confrontation that runs for hundreds of posts with no hope of resolution. James apparently enjoys it but I don't. I don't enjoy reading it and enjoy being part of it even less. So James and I will just have to agree to disagree.

I personally think that these 'tic tac' episodes are perhaps the best UFO cases that I recall ever seeing. That's not a question, it's a statement. I'm impressed by the fact that radar observed something, that when aircraft were directed to the coordinates specified by the radar, they visually saw something. (Thus confirming the radar sighting.) I'm impressed by the fact that multiple pilots in multiple aircraft saw it from various perspectives. (Thus reducing the likelihood of perceptual errors.) And I'm impressed by the fact that it was captured on video imagery. (Another confirmation of its physical reality.) I'm (tentatively at this point) inclined to think that this kind of fairly robust observational confirmation suggests that something was physically there. I accept as a working hypothesis that this particular UFO actually existed in the objective reality that all of us share.

As it what it was, I have no idea. That's not a question, it's a statement. JamesR referred to me as "alien-believers like yourself" (post #2987 near the bottom), just because I'm not prepared to agree with his entirely speculative hypothesis that this was a whole collection of psychological, perceptual and technical faults, that all mysteriously converged in one time and place in the form of one reasonably coherent "sighting". For James, the idea that this UFO physically existed in objective reality is somehow equivalent to "alien-belief". Which as I pointed out in an earlier post is a mistake.

Frankly, I'm not convinced that James is even arguing with me when he quotes my words. His perceived opponent is his "alien-believer" straw-man. I just provide him with an occasion to bash it. Never mind that my own view is more nuanced than that and that I don't fit the specification. I'll do.

I do think that 'aircraft of some unknown type' is the most plausible assumption, but am fully aware that it is an assumption. All of my remarks in that regard have clearly been labeled "speculation". When I first did that, James attacked me for concocting what he called a "conspiracy theory". But when Joe Nickell speculated (that's all it was, despite Joe saying that it's what he "believes") that this was what Joe termed a "drone", James suddenly seems to have started approving of that idea, believing that coming from Joe's mouth it's ammo against people like me. Despite my having been the first in this thread to raise the possibility (which James initially dismissed).

Interestingly, Joe Nickell's "drone" speculation isn't entirely consistent with the rest of James' shotgun-style "skeptical" case: Can we be sure that the pilots really saw anything and weren't experiencing perceptual and memory defects? Can we be sure that what they think they saw was the same thing? Can we be sure that whatever they arguably saw had anything to do with the radar returns? Those kind of questions can be multiplied endlessly... except that if we favor a "drone" explanation, we seem to be conceding that it was a "drone" that was really observed. (Suggesting that even Joe Nickell sees the weakness in the kind of case James is trying to make.)

Probably because there is no pay off to explaining anything to you.

I'm not exactly in any position to 'explain' things. All I'm doing in this thread is stating my own opinions and my reasons for holding them. I feel that there's no need to repeat those opinions and arguments over and over. My views have already been expressed. Other Sciforums readers will have to make up their own minds. I can't do it for them and wouldn't want to try.

You will continue to bitch and whine and ask more questions in longer and longer posts till the poster just gets fed up with your petty game and moves on. There is no point in answering you because you are never satisfied with an answer. I call it exploding ignorance syndrome--the tendency to ask more and more questions the more information you receive.

In a way it's the bread-and-butter of philosophy. When confronted with anything, however mundane, we can ask "why?". If we receive an answer, we can ask "why?" about each element of the answer. And the thing quickly compounds and explodes. When it comes to fundamental assumptions, I think that behaving this way can be healthy. (It is rather corrosive of foundationalism though.) Many of our fondest beliefs may ultimately be supported by little more than "just because!!"

https://www.iep.utm.edu/found-ep/

But applied to everyday life, to common perception and cognition, it becomes a highly corrosive sort of skepticism (in the strong philosophical sense, the denial that any sort of knowledge is even possible). If every belief that we hold raises questions, and if every justification for our belief raises its own questions, then an infinite regress problem seems to ensue. That highly corrosive skeptical compound can be used for dissolving scientific beliefs just as easily as UFOs.

I sense that's part of what your own argument with James is about. You seem to want to treat observation sentences as foundational, as not requiring further justification: The pilot saw the 'tic tac'. That's our initial given, not an intermediate lemma that needs its own justification. Arguably, science often does the same when it bases itself on "observations", whether of nature or experimental results. The logical positivists tried (without much success) to formalize that idea in the earlier 20th century. We see hints of it in the 'Copenhagen interpretation' too.

https://www.rit.edu/cla/philosophy/quine/observation_sentences.html