UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

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"According to the University of Maine Lobster Institute, the chances of catching a blue-coloured lobster are 1 in 2 million, while the odds of capturing an albino or calico lobster are even rarer - 1 in 100 million and 1 in 30 million, respectively, says the institute. "Jun 15, 2022

https://www.google.com/search?q=odd...0j0i390l5.26023j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

That was my response too, when I read it. There's no way that anyone could know that. All people can say today is that if aliens ever visited the Earth, they don't seem to have left any credible traces that those people are aware of.

"Officially happened"?

The vast bulk of Earth's geological and biological history took place before human beings were present to "confirm" anything. The traces that most of those events have left to the present are very fragmentary, if they exist at all.

That's way too strong. It just seems ridiculous if taken literally.

Just think of the number (big powers of ten) of planets out there, in this and countless other stellar systems. I would expect that most of them lack any beings in a position to "confirm" anything.

I certainly wouldn't want to say that nothing has ever happened in those places. Or that these places don't have pasts until human beings arrive and start to piece things together.

Suppose that the Curiosity rover finds evidence of ancient flooding and lakes on Mars, that existed perhaps a billion years ago. Evidence of events long gone, that presumably took place with nobody present to witness it. Do we really want to argue that those events couldn't have taken place, because nobody was present to confirm what happened?

Do we really want to argue that countless unknown things couldn't have happened because they leave no traces today for us to find?

That starts to suggest a rather bizarre highly idealistic ontology in which our cognition creates whatever we "discover".

In my opinion the best thing to say about past events that leave no traces (or events on exoplanets unreachable by us) is that whatever those events were, they are unknown to us, not that the events couldn't have happened.

 

That's what I was getting at. At best we can only guess what those events were that occurred in the primeval stages of our planet. But again absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Reality occurs whether there is evidence left of it occurring or not. It's like variables A and B and so on. We know they exist and yet don't know what they are.

Interestingly physicist John Wheeler held to the opposite view:

“the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. (...) we would seem forced to say that no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. The universe does not 'exist, out there' independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe”
― John Archibald Wheeler

 

Yeah, noone could know that. Certainly it's true that the scientific consensus is that there is zero compelling evidence of it having happened. But that's as far as one can go when there is a lack of evidence about something that is, as far as we can tell, possible.

Didn't you know!? There's an "official" book, written by "officials", about what has and has not happened.

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I think they mean that scientific consensus would be that, while possible (assuming it is not shown to be impossible), there is no compelling evidence to suggest that it has happened.

That's why we can not claim that any specific thing actually happened, unless there is compelling evidence for that specific thing. We can claim certain mechanisms took place because there is evidence for those mechanisms - such as how the Mariana trench was formed.
It's much like we can know how a lottery is played and won, without knowing the specific winning number for a given draw, or who specifically won it (or indeed if anyone did). We can know the general mechanisms, but not the specific detail. Similarly we can know some of the mechanisms of things like evolution, and of the geological history of our planet, without knowing the detail. Because there is evidence for those mechanisms.

Agreed. Reality is what it is. Just because we currently don't know something doesn't mean that it isn't part of reality.

Isn't it more akin to certain interpretations of QM: consciousness determines reality etc, and until observed it is in a state of indeterminacy. Does the moon exist if noone is looking at it, for example? (Rhetorical here but a non-rhetorical question for another thread, perhaps.)

Agreed.

 

The Chief Apparatchik: "Everything must be validated or invalidated first, before acceptance and action."

But fortunately for us, ancient humans were not robots of strict procedure who made zero leaps of reckless inference and faith. Not highly regulated automatons who assumed no concepts/beliefs, and took no risks and chances, until a slow, meticulous process conducted over months or years -- with dense, mediating bureaucracy to wade across -- had thoroughly validated each _X_ to be the case.

"When can we eat that strange fruit of the only plant growing here, Aunt Egah? I'm starving in this barren place."

"Patience, patience, grasshopper. According to the last smoke signal I received over a chain hill sequence spanning 17,880,000 cubits from the Red Grotto Institute, we may receive either the negative or positive results about the sample -- complete with a stamped approval from the Nanny State -- in another 8 moon cycles. That excludes this last stack of paperwork yet to be filled out and returned by messenger fowl."​

 

And there you have it folks. Science and The Scientific Method, the crowning intellectual achievements of the human race - reduced to "we can only guess".

Now that's some serious science-denial.

Why did we even come down from the trees? All knowledge is just guesswork.

 

"Scientism is the view that science is the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth. According to this view, only science can render truth about the world and reality, and therefore, science should determine normative and epistemological values in society. Scientism is often a point of contention in philosophy. Moreover, it is often associated with logical positivism.

The term scientism also has a pejorative meaning. Sometimes, we use this word to refer to science applied in excess or improper usage of science or scientific claims."

https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-science-and-scientism/#:~:text=Conclusion,about the world and reality.

 

Luckily, nobody is advocating Scientism. It is as bad as - and the polar opposite of - "it's all guesswork".

Polar extremism is rarely useful.

 

You are correct

To strong to be be taken literally

No evidence, didn't happen is suited to court room exchanges where the other side has not produced any evidence of a made claim

Events which have occurred and have left no evidence, as you you state YOU

neither would I

Cannot remember the author of a book I read many moons ago which entertained the speculation of life forms on Jupiter being in the form of what would look like earthly helium balloons

I thought "ummmm doubtful they exist but but but not totally impossible. However if life exists on Jupiter I'd be thinking it would be more at microbe level"

Reappraising No evidence, didn't happen along the lines of life forms on Jupiter being giant helium balloons in apprentice I happy with the expression

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That's it. I'd say when I think of the term 'extraordinary,' I think of something not only out of the mundane (boring, everyday) variety, but something that could be considered completely unfamiliar to every human on the planet. Unless we start mislabeling the tic tac flying object for example as possibly something mundane, those types of maneuvers and the rest of the pilots' testimonies seem out of the ordinary, of what they're accustomed to viewing in the day to day operations of their jobs.

Maybe that is the litmus test for me personally - if the person making the claim is an ''expert'' in their field and they are making claims to suggest something extraordinary has occurred, I'm going to pay closer attention, than to someone who has a ''cool story'' to share, but no evidence, background or experience in the matter. That doesn't mean that what they've witnessed is indeed extraordinary just based on their own opinions, but extraordinary enough to conduct a rigorous analysis.

Agreed. Unfortunately, it is a phrase often used to dismiss someone's voice in an argument. ''Splitting hairs'' comes to mind, as well, but sometimes it's not splitting hairs at all, and more than you're trying to share a view that hasn't been considered.

 

This phrase fits best.

True.

Agree with this, too.

Prefacing this with - I agree, there is no evidence for space aliens visiting Earth.

However, if you, James R, wanted to find out if there actually is any evidence to challenge that, where would you even begin?

 

You wouldn't. You'd wait for someone to present to you what they think is evidence. And go from there.

 

Scientists are exploring space all the time. How does science know what to look for in terms of evidence? Is it simply a matter of going with what we already know about “life”?

 

It is true that before Hubble if you asked for funding to explore whether space was expanding or not you probably would be laughed at and therefore not many would go down that path.

An example today would be asking for funding to build a sensitive telescope specifically outfitted to search for industrial pollution, fluorocarbons, etc as that might be a more direct way to look for life elsewhere instead of looking for oxygen.

However if one scientist did find those things, he/she would be awarded a prize and everyone would hop on the bandwagon.

 

NASA's UFO investigation proceeds "full force"

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/19/nasa_ufo_investigation/

"NASA is pushing ahead to recruit a panel of experts and publish a much-awaited report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), all with a budget of up to $100,000.

UAPs are observations of strange airborne objects and other things in the sky that cannot be immediately explained. Everyone's heard of the UFO; UAP is the term government officials prefer.

Uncle Sam has helped launch a renewed interest in UAPs, admitting its g-men and g-women have amassed a collection of evidence of the phenomena the over the years. Some of the most intriguing recordings include declassified footage released by the US Department of Defense of pilots reporting mysterious entities that appear to be flying at breakneck speeds, although these claims are hotly disputed.

NASA announced it was also going to conduct an independent study of its own, earlier this year. Now, Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), said NASA is taking the project seriously. "We're going full force," he said in a town hall meeting this week, reported by Space.com. "This is really important to us, and we're placing a high priority on it."


NASA is now in the process of finalizing a panel of 15 to 17 experts to analyze and process evidence of UAPs; the information is expected to be released to the public after the nine-month-long study launches around October.

Panel members include "some of the world's leading scientists, data practitioners, artificial intelligence practitioners, aerospace safety experts, all with a specific charge, which is to tell us how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP," Evans said. The project is expected to cost no more than $100,000...."

 

That's a pretty low budget, but I suppose we have to start somewhere.

Exciting news!

 

Barely enough to cover the vaseline to smudge all the camera lenses and all the hubcaps for yeeting...

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