UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Sean Kirkpatrick interview with Politico magazine 12 Nov 2023
" Seligman: The last year has been a rollercoaster for AARO. Has any of the controversy over the whistleblower testimony, the Chinese spy balloon, the website delay, contributed to your decision to leave?

Kirkpatrick: No, these are all expected challenges. The balloon, that’s a very interesting case of the interagency in the U.S. government trying to understand the differences between a known anomalous thing, if you will, and an unknown anomalous thing. Our job is harder than “Hey, there’s a Chinese spy balloon, you know what it is? What is it doing?” That’s not our job. Our job is to understand the unknowns and what could be there.......

Kirkpatrick:.......David Grusch is a unique instance in that he has refused to come and share any of that information. We still can’t get him to come in. I’ve got five different people who have gone to talk to him to get him to come in. And the answers have always been everything from “We’re not cleared” to “It would jeopardize his whistleblower protections” to “Why can’t we just go get the information that he shared from the IG?” It’s every excuse that I have heard, why not to come in. And that’s been a challenge because now here we are, we’re about to put out Volume One of the historical review, which I believe captures most all of the people that he’s spoken with, but I can’t say that 100 percent because I can’t hear what he thinks he has. If he has evidence, I need to know what that is."
" Seligman: Are aliens real?
Kirkpatrick: That is a great question. I love that question. Number one, the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens, right? Because if we don’t prove there are aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good.

Two, from a scientific perspective: The scientific community will agree that it is statistically invalid to believe that there is not life out in the universe, as vast as the universe is and the number of galaxies and solar systems and planets. That is what part of NASA’s mission is to look for that life. The probability, however, that that life is intelligent and that it has found Earth and that it has come to Earth and that it has repeatedly crashed in the United States is not very probable.

So part of what we’ve been trying to do, and part of what I will continue to do until I’m done, is raise the level of the conversation. Let me explain. If you are talking with NASA or the European Space Agency, and you’re talking about looking for life out in the universe, it is a very objective, very scientifically sound discussion and discourse. As that discussion gets closer to the solar system, somewhere around Mars, it turns into science fiction. And then as you get even closer to Earth, and you cross into Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes conspiracy theory.

We need to change the level of the [public] conversation. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve engaged academia to work on a number of scientific papers that look at the probabilities of these things, and what are the signatures associated with that? So that we can benchmark what we’re doing in scientific proofs and in scientific fact and not hearsay and pointing fingers and government cover ups and conspiracies with no evidence of any of them."

Both quotes same article:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/12/sean-kirkpatrick-ufos-pentagon-00126214

 

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Here's where the Yahoo article got its "just might have had some merit after all" interpretation. The developments are from those that AARO inferred as Grusch's original sources.

The "things and events that really happened" could be almost anything. Like what caused _X_ and _Y_ persons near the start of the grapevine or mythology chain to get the idea that there was alien debris and bodies, rather than anyone actually witnessing such.

The over-protectiveness about the witness identities probably means that this investigation is rubbing against the territory of SAPs, as well as involving those who were grunts back then but have since moved up in the hierarchy.

So little will be revealed in the end other than the hanging suggestion that "black projects got misconstrued as ET technology and biological remains by hipster dufuses working at the edge of those operations. Whose names we still cannot divulge, possibly until the next century."
- - - - - - - - - -

AARO Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick Holds an Off-Camera Media Roundtable
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transc...patrick-holds-an-off-camera-media-roundtable/

DR. KIRKPATRICK: [...] Now, we have interviewed a whole range of people, over 30 people now. I think we've interviewed most of the people that he [Grusch] may have talked to, but we don't know that. And we have extended an invitation at least four or five times now for him to come in over the last eight months or so and has been declined.

[...] Q: One quick follow up question. So, you said you think you've all talked to the same people David Grusch did. Are you able to expand on that? What did they share with you all?

DR. KIRKPATRICK: No. For a variety of reasons, so we -- we, obviously, we are obligated to protect all these people's identities for – for all kinds of reasons. What they are reporting, we are documenting. They are reviewing and then revalidating that this is what they want to say. We then research all of that collectively. There is a – there is a, if you think of it as a story arc, there's a number of people that kind of fit into this story arc.

But then there's these little offshoots and variations on themes. We're investigating each and every one of them. We're cross-referencing those. There are some bits of information that are turning out to be things and events that really happened. A lot of it is still under review, and we're putting all that together into our historical report.
_

 

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That's quite a claim. Sounds like a lie to me. Unless you can prove it. Can you?

Oh look! Here's some data on that now!

 

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Perfect.

Because the amount of data acquired over three quarters of a century that has confirmed exotic origins of UAPs is exactly zero, to several decimal places.

We're done here folks. We all agree. Who'd've thunk Magical Realist would have the last - and most rational word - in the thread about UAPs? Go figger!

 

Yes. See post 543.

 

Biased? Beings and ufonauts.

Are these quotes below statements or speculation? My bold in both quotes.

 

And someone lying or being hypocritical is good for the "discussion"?
Using past quotes is a way of letting others know if a post's author is being just that.

 

Re witnesses are always reliable:

I saw an experiment years ago that was fascinating. Two groups of college students were interviewed. The interview was set up in half a dozen rooms that all opened on a common area. The interviewer would go in with one student at a time, and half a dozen interviews would happen at the same time. The interviews themselves were about something innocuous (diet choices or something.) But at some point during the interview, the interviewer would "hear a noise" and open the door to the common area. There, two actors would be portraying a simple but noteworthy scene - say, a man forcibly taking a water bottle from a woman, or a woman hitting the man over the head with something. They would "hear a noise" at preplanned staggered times, so that each interviewee saw a different scene.

The first group completed the interview, and then at the end the interviewer would ask the question "what did you see when I opened the door?" The interviewees in this first group answered more or less accurately. Some had not seen the scene well and got some of the details wrong.

The second group completed the interview, and then they were asked to go out to the (now-empty) common area and wait a little while. An interviewer made a comment like "that thing that happened was strange, huh?" before they left the interviewees by themselves. About ten minutes later an interviewer came back and asked everyone what they saw. And at that point, almost 50% of the interviewees told the interviewer the same story, even though they had all seen different scenes.

I can't find the study report now; I will keep looking for it.

This phenomenon is extremely common. Humans are social animals, and if people observe different things that they assume should be the same, then they will "remember" differently if they hear someone else describe it differently. It's important to realize that this is NOT lying - this is how our system of recall works. This is also why police are so adamant that witnesses are separated after seeing a crime. If they don't separate them, they will all tend to generate a consensus on what they saw, no matter what they _actually_ saw. Again, no intentional deception intended - a simple process of "yeah, I THOUGHT I saw a guy with a gun, but after hearing what Joe said I'm sure it was just a screwdriver or something."

This tends to get worse as people get older and their memories start to go. They begin to "confabulate" - to fill in the missing portions of their memory with expected content, or content as explained by others. Again the important thing to realize here is that this is not lying. Although it gets worse as we get older, we all do this, because no one remembers everything they saw. We can't store that much data. So we make assumptions.

This is yet another reason that eyewitness reports vary greatly in accuracy, due to a great many factors - even if the person is being honest about what they saw.

 

Yes, experiments showing the unreliability of perception and memory are legion.

The annals are lousy with studies of scenes where subjects are shown a scene and asked to describe it later. The results show how astonishingly people get stuff wrong, don't see stuff that was there and even see stuff thst wasn't there.

If you haven't seen it, a particularly fascinating one is Count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball. (If you have seen it - no spoilers!)

 

Thing about these tests is that they show the fallibility of perception when distracted and focusing on something else. Do they have any tests of what a pilot sees in front of him while flying a jet?

 

I refer you back to the oft-referenced case where Scott Kelly's co-pilot - who had nothing better to do but observe (a holy grail of a scenario wherein the observer was both in an excellent position to observe accurately and highly-qualified to do) - declared he was so sure he'd seen an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon that he made the pilot turn around and go back to verify it.

And it turned out to be a balloon.

So,
1] not only do pilots make mistakes even when they are uni-tasking and perfectly set up for observing, but
2] under such ideal circumstances, even pilots mistake mundane weather balloons for UAPs.


A military pilot - doing nothing but observing - misidentifies (of all things) a balloon.



How dead does this horse need to get?

 

Do you have a link to this incident?

Technically he did see a uap until he was able to visually debunk it as a balloon. There was nothing faulty about his perception of it as far as I can tell..

 

It has been brought up here several times. Google "scott kelly co-pilot UFO balloon bart simpson" and take your pick.

His perception was faulty enough that he was unable to identify a hundred foot tall Bart Simpson balloon as anything other than a UFO. That's pretty faulty. Despite having ideal circumstances to get it right.

As such, it is qualitatively similar to any (in fact, better than many) other eyewitness sightings of something that looks like a UFO to the witness - it just happens that this is one of the exquisitely rare circumstances where we have been able to go back and verify it irrefutably. And it turned out to be a Bart Simpson balloon.

It begs the question: historically, how many eyewitness reports of UFOs that have been reported were actually balloons but we never had that chance to confirm? The percentage is irrefutably greater than zero. It could be one hundred percent; we can't be sure. All we can say is it's definitely somewhere between zero and one hundred percent.


So, again:

Trained military pilots do make identification mistakes and do make intepretation mistakes.
Trained military pilots do make such mistakes even in ideal observing and uni-tasking situations.
Even trained military pilots mistake such mundane things as balloons for UFOs (and, again even under ideal observing conditions).


That's three dead horses that have been stinking up this place for a looooong time. They're buried now.

 

Thing is the Naval pilot sightings of uaps off of the coast of Virginia Beach in 2015 for instance were witnessed routinely by multiple pilots, not just once or twice. Hence ex-pilot Ryan Graves' congressional testimony advocating more investigation into them, particularly after one near collision incident. These weren't balloons.

 

They don't actually know that. They are presumed not to be balloons.

They cannot know what they are not until and unless they know what they are.

 

Wrong. One can easily rule out an explanation without knowing what the uap is. In this case it was the flight behavior and appearances of the objects. That data ruled out balloons. But they still remain unidentified. Once again only the data drives the conclusions as well as the withholding of conclusions.

 

Can't say it's "flight" if you can't know it's flying. Can't know it's flying if you don't know what it is.

Many times, very small, very slow, very nearby things have been mis-identified as very large, very fast, very distant things.
Until it is identified as some thing, such mis-identifications cannot be ruled out.

As demonstrated, ballons can look like anything.
"It doesn't look like a balloon I've seen before" does not rule out balloon.

Yup. And it cannot be concluded that it is not a balloon.


You are making the very mistake you keep accusing skeptics of making. You see a few bits of data and you "deny" possibilities - insisting instead that it "must" not be [the thing you've decided it can't be].

 

Yes you can. Hence the term "ufo". It was a flying object because it was seen and detected on radar as flying.

Oh? Is that what they are doing here? What evidence do you have of this?

LOL Most the time balloons look like balloons instead of anything else.

I posted what data ruled out balloons. What data do you have showing they were balloons?

 

Balloons do that.

What? Yes, there are cases where small, slow near things have been mistaken for large, fast, distant things. Surely you do not deny this. Maybe you need to resarch a ew more cases.

So an object appearing to move fast may be an object actually moving slow. Such as a balloon.
So it can't be ruled out, not without a fair bit more data.

You're acting the fool and a troll again.

Except it didn't.

You are the eone claiming it "must" not be some thing.
I am not claiming it "is" or "must" be a balloon. Only that it can't be ruled out.
As you know perfectly well.

No one on this planet is fooled into thinking hat you wrote, above, is a valid argument. Including you. Which is why it qualifies as trolling. Because you know better.

And if you continue this line of foolish trolling, you'll be reported.

 

LOL A sure sign you have lost the argument and are fleeing to James' skirts again to get me banned.