UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

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

  1. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Wonder if Russia has a Blue Book?

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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Do you mean a Project Blue Book?

    Generalising, Russia tends to be a rather superstitious nation, as far as I'm aware. Lacking a free press, a lot of paranormal scams are still relatively free to prey on people in Russia in a way that they are no longer able to do in nations like the United States, where investigative reporting has curbed a lot of the more blatant kinds of frauds. So, for example, the idea that some people can read minds is still relatively popular in Russia, whereas it is very much a fringe belief in the United States these days.

    I don't know how much airtime UFOs get in Russia. I suspect that differences in culture between the US and Russia might make UFOs rather more popular in the US. Also, alleging government conspiracies, which tend to go hand-in-hand with UFO culture, is free speech in America, but it can get you jailed or worse in Russia.
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    A clear, hi-rez, non-blurry still shot would not give away any capabilities, yet would settle the issue nicely.
     
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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    wegs,
    Yes. That seems likely. But to say he is biased, we need some actual evidence that he's biased.
    I can't pretend to speak for him and I think this is getting to point where you'd be better off asking him about his attitudes, goals and opinions. All I can do is to go by what he writes and says in his videos. I don't see much point in speculating about possible hidden motives for which there's no good evidence. (That would be a bit like speculating about what superhuman underwater civilisations might be like, when there's nothing that points towards any of them actually existing.)

    I find it interesting that skeptic websites are often labelled as "debunking" sites, but skeptics themselves rarely describe them that way. The aim is not to "debunk", but to investigate impartially - to look at the evidence and to follow it where it leads. Compare typical Believer sites, where the main aim is often simply to publicise "cases" and to have endless discussions about "what ifs", often based on fantasies ("What do the aliens want?" "Where do They come from?" "Why do they want to hide from us?" All these questions start with a huge unevidenced assumption.)

    Is there something wrong with a person carefully reviewing and analysing a video of a UAP to try to extract as much objective data as possible from it - such as the speeds of objects seen in the video, their size, their distance from the camera, their trajectories, etc.? If the extracted data can then be used to "debunk" certain explanations for the UAP, is that a bad thing? Does it make the Mick Wests of the world sour-puss party poopers, wrecking the fun of the True Believers? What's the aim here? To get to the truth, or to prop up and protect fantasies for as long as possible (thus hiding or ignoring inconvenient truths)?

    When skeptics publish videos, they tend not to publish the ones where they couldn't get anything useful from a video, or couldn't draw any useful conclusions. That means that the ones where the skeptic throws up his hands and says "Hey, I really don't have an explanation" tend not to get put up on youtube. What would be the point? The skeptical videos that get the views are the ones where the skeptic can say "Hey, look at what I found when I analysed this video! It looks like the UAP wasn't going at supersonics speeds after all; in fact, it looks like it might have been stationary! And here's why..."
    It sounds like you think that working hard to find explanations for UFOs is a bad thing. Why is that?

    At the same time, I don't see you complaining about the True Believer obsessives who persist in actively promoting already-debunked videos. Why is the obsessive determination of a Magical Realist just fine and dandy, but obsessive determination in a skeptic is a terrible thing? Double standard, perhaps?
    Another possibility is that he wants to try to help bring some much-needed balance to discussions of UAPs. Because, let's face it, there are many more people out there pushing the fantasies of aliens than there are careful rational investigators who want to find the truth. Maybe West is hoping to educate people, out of a sense of altruism.
    I notice that whenever I refer to the True Believer "explanations" for UAPs, we often loop the discussion back to how the True Believers don't actually say they are space aliens, and how unfair it is of me to mention them as possible explanation. Perhaps, after 70 years of this stuff, Believers are feeling a bit sheepish and embarrassed, so they are wary of piling on with the space aliens thing. That's so 1950s. It's much cooler and 2020s to talk about "extradimensional beings" or "advanced time travellers" or "superhuman aquatic species".

    If you feel embarrassed when I use the words "space aliens", wegs, perhaps you could suggest how you'd like me to refer to the many paranormal things that are suggested as "explanations" for UFOs. If a UAP is not "mundane", then how are we to refer to it? Call them "non-mundane things", perhaps? "Hey, you guys won't believe this, but last night a non-mundane thing flew over my house. There were non-mundane unidentified beings inside who waved at me. Then a non-mundane beam of something came down and now my mundane dog Betsy is missing!"
    People's memories and stories change over time, even when they have no conscious intention of embellishing and changing the story. People don't have to be acting in bad faith for their stories to change. What tends to happen is that memories - which are imperfect from the start - become hazy over time and also corrupted by outside influences. When you remember an incident from your past - any incident - you're not retrieving a video recording from your memory. What you're doing is reconstructing the story of what happened from the fragments of significance that have stuck in your brain. Some of those fragments will, of course, come from what you actually stored in your brain at the time. But other fragments will be drawn from things you've filed away since then - things that other people have told you, things from similar but independent incidents, things you've seen on TV or in movies, even things that never happened to you at all (like things from your dreams).
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2022
  8. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Valid points. It’s interesting the different perspective we both took away from this article. lol While I agree with everything you’ve posted here, I’ll add that it’s encouraging to see they didn’t dismiss the claims, rather they’ve put forth a decent effort but due to limited data, can’t say for sure what those 144 UAP’s are exactly.

    When it comes to the government though, they could keep secrets from the public however I’d imagine that physics-defying technology would be really difficult to “hide” without something leaking to the media, so it just leaves us with more questions.

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    Even if some of these UAP’s are space aliens, we would have to believe that suddenly, the laws of physics don’t apply, or apply to them, and that doesn’t make sense, either. If space aliens exist, maybe they wouldn’t make sense to us at all, so again…I’m left with more questions.
     
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    There's nothing ''wrong'' with a person carefully reviewing and analyzing videos of alleged UAP's to try to extract as much objective data as possible. Nothing at all. The issue for me with Mick West is it seems (just my opinion) that he is determined to debunk something, because he has a reputation to uphold. Not saying he's not interested in getting to ''the truth,'' but as a semi-pro debunker, he doesn't want to let his ''fans'' down.

    Having said that, I believe this can be a problem for space alien enthusiasts, too. They are hard-pressed to toss aside debunkers' analysis, because they ''want to believe.'' There is a lot of grey area in all of this.

    That's not what I've been saying, James. But if someone refuses to keep an open-mind, then they'll always find an answer...or several, even if those answers are shaky but ''could'' fit. Of course, the tic tac video could be any number of things, what does that do for us? Yay, it could be a bird, a weather balloon, a plane, a really fast kite...that's not worthy of publishing, in my opinion. Anyone with no experience at all, could ''guess'' all day long, and find agreement.

    Don't get me wrong, I realize that some debunkers take their time to demonstrate (with factual examples) exactly why they feel UAP's could be any number of things, not trying to disparage their hard work...but, not all debunkers do that, so they ruin it for other skeptics. Similar to how people who claim ''I was abducted by aliens and here's my story'' ruin it for those who may simply be open-minded to the possibility of alien life existing. Unfortunately, this behavior can taint what could otherwise be, healthy conversations about some of these alleged UAP claims.

    I'm not complaining about Mick West, and as mentioned above, it's not prudent to believe in space aliens, just because something has no explanation. Maybe the problem is that we seem to place UAP's in two distinct buckets - ''mundane possibilities'' or ''space aliens.'' If something isn't proven to be mundane (''unexplained''), obviously we shouldn't leap to believing it's space aliens.

    Maybe. I'll have to read more of his work. Remember though, I've admitted having only surface knowledge of West.

    LOL Maybe.

    haha! When I think of the word ''mundane,'' it means ''of this world.'' But...there needs to be another category perhaps to bring in the possibility of advanced technology...of this earth. While there isn't enough data to draw from to conclude that say the tic tac object was advanced technology perhaps from another country, to me, that could be a definite possibility.

    Yea, great point. To sum up what my takeaway is from all of these discussions, articles, sightings, government investigations, and even Mick West...is that UFO sightings went from being considered straight up jokes in the past (because they were immediately associated with hoaxes about space aliens or hallucinations by claimants, etc), to being taken a bit more seriously, now. Progress sometimes moves at the speed of an ice glacier, but...it's progress.

    (As an aside, I hadn’t been aware of some of the mundane possibilities (and the analysis behind arriving at them) that have been mentioned in the investigations so far, so I’ve gleaned quite a bit from these discussions. At the end of the day, we’re growing as critical thinkers.)

    Do you believe that you’ve learned anything from this thread discussion, James?
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2022
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I don't see a problem with him being biased. That simply means he'll be more diligent chasing down data for the case.

    The point is: we don't have to trust him. He's not saying "Take my word for it". He's saying "Here is some data; here are some things we can deduce ... at least, I can deduce. If you follow my analysis and conclude it is sound, you might deduce the same thing. But do not take my word for it; do your own calculations. You have exactly as much access to the account as I do." (That's science, baby.)


    Contrast that with "It looked like a big tic-tac. Trust me on this; I was there; you weren't."
     
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  11. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I really like this! This is helpful.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    wegs have you ever considered a career as a Conflict Resolution Strategist?
     
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Lol!

    Hmm…
     
  14. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "The Navy has said it has top-secret information about unidentified flying objects that could cause "exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States" if released.

    A Navy representative responded to a Freedom of Information Act request sent by a researcher named Christian Lambright by saying the Navy had "discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET," Vice reported last week.

    But the representative from the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence said "the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States."

    https://www.businessinsider.com/nav...to-ufo-sightings-would-damage-security-2020-1
     
  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    AATIP, the ufo/uap Pentagon task force that ran from 2007 to 2012, released a 1500 page database of encounters with uaps, 342 cases of which describe radiation burns and mental effects resulting from those encounters. This is a well documented effect of ufos dating back for decades. Below is such an incident that occurred in Manitoba Canada in 1967...

    https://www.livescience.com/ufo-report-human-biological-injuries

    "The database of documents includes more than 1,500 pages of UFO-related material from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — a secretive U.S Department of Defense program that ran from 2007 to 2012. Despite never being classified as secret or top secret, the AATIP only became known to the public in 2017, when former program director Luis Elizondo resigned from the Pentagon and released several now-infamous videos of an unidentified aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways to the media....

    ...The report describes 42 cases from medical files and 300 "unpublished" cases where humans sustained injuries after alleged encounters with "anomalous vehicles," which include UFOs. In some cases, humans showed burn injuries or other conditions related to electromagnetic radiation, the report said — some of them appearing to have been inflicted by "energy related propulsion systems." The report also noted cases of brain damage, nerve damage, heart palpitations and headaches related to anomalous vehicle encounters."
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    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/falcon-lake-incident-book-anniversary-1.4121639

    "Stan Michalak can still vividly remember when his dad came home sick and injured after something happened in the Falcon Lake woods in Manitoba on the May long weekend of 1967.

    It was something that put his family life into upheaval and remains one of the world's best-known UFO encounters.

    "I recalled seeing him in bed. He didn't look good at all. He looked pale, haggard," said Michalak, who was nine years old at the time and was allowed to see his dad for a couple of minutes on the day after what soon become known as the Falcon Lake incident.

    Then there was the smell.

    "When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad," said Michalak, who co-authored the book When They Appeared with Winnipeg UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski."

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    Last edited: Jun 25, 2022
  16. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, this is creepy. Those “marks” don’t look like your everyday sunburn.
     
  17. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Here's the very detailed drawing he made while the ufo was before him. Kinda refutes the claims by skeptics that he was drunk and somehow injured himself and so fabricated the entire incident to...to...well, who knows why?

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    Last edited: Jun 25, 2022
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not supporting or refuting the account or anything, simply pointing that it is neither difficult nor uncommon to get a funny-lookin; sunburn:


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  19. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Yea...that's it. He was laying out with a grid on his stomach and got sunburned. Makes perfect sense.

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  20. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    lol True. The guy in the pic MR posted - seems like a strange pattern for it to be sunburn on his stomach, though.

    What do you think that pattern could be of, MR?
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    As I said: not supporting or refuting the account. I am just assuaging wegs' concern. As a sunburn - it's not exactly weird.
     
  22. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    It's where the grid plate on the side of the ufo expunged hot gases at one point in the encounter. It's all right there in his account. Did you read it?
     
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    What? No it doesn't.

    Skeptic: "Is it possible you made this up?"
    Claimant: "I did not."
    Skeptic: "Darn. Well you said you didn't, so I guess you've run rings around us logically."
     

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