Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
But if they're explained, then they are no longer UAPs. They are IAPs--indentified aerial phenomena. Each case must be taken individually, no matter how many others have been explained.
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UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
But if they're explained, then they are no longer UAPs. They are IAPs--indentified aerial phenomena. Each case must be taken individually, no matter how many others have been explained.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Exactly what we skeptics have been saying all along.
That's a door that swings both ways.
It also means - until accounts are actually conclusively resolved - this type of induction is invalid:
No. Each case must be taken individually, no matter how many others are unexplained.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
I think this is worth highlighting as a milestone.
Let it be known to all that - here on this day, and in perpetuity - Magical Realist has finally acknowledged that
This is real progress.
Let it be known to all that - here on this day, and in perpetuity - Magical Realist has finally acknowledged that
... or unexplained.
This is real progress.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
It also, incidentally, negates this:
If two accounts point to two different causes then they point to two different causes. There are, after all, multiple causes.
The merits of case A pointing to cause X must not be considered as part of the merits of case B pointing to cause Y.
If two accounts point to two different causes then they point to two different causes. There are, after all, multiple causes.
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
In the interest of not convoluting my meaning here, I only meant that if a skeptic comes up with numerous possibilities that a UAP could be, then they've not really explained anything. It still remains unexplained. Possibilities are not the object of explaining.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
This is true.
But we have to acknowledge that, for some fraction of cases, that may be the best we can ever expect.
Some cases will never have a compelling explanation, since we will never have more evidence from that case than we do now.
In particular, we should be careful not to force the "alien spaceships" explanation.
Agree. It should go both ways.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
A teachable moment for the recent renewed interest in investigating ufos/uaps. Hopefully the same mistakes that plagued Project Bluebook will not be repeated with these new investigations. Again, investigation not debunkery.
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"Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which recommended that UFOs needed debunking. A few years later, however, Hynek's opinions about UFOs changed, and he thought they represented an unsolved mystery deserving scientific scrutiny. As the only scientist involved with US Government UFO studies from the beginning to the end, he could offer a unique perspective on Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book.
After what he described as a promising beginning with a potential for scientific research, Hynek grew increasingly disenchanted with Blue Book during his tenure with the project, leveling accusations of indifference, incompetence, and of shoddy research on the part of Air Force personnel. Hynek notes that during its existence, critics dubbed Blue Book "The Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated."[37]
Blue Book was headed by Ruppelt, then Captain Hardin, Captain Gregory, Major Friend, and finally Major Hector Quintanilla. Hynek had kind words only for Ruppelt and Friend. Of Ruppelt, he wrote, "In my contacts with him I found him to be honest and seriously puzzled about the whole phenomenon."[38] Of Friend, he wrote "Of all the officers I worked with in Blue Book, Colonel Friend earned my respect. Whatever private views he may have held, he was a total and practical realist, and sitting where he could see the scoreboard, he recognized the limitations of his office but conducted himself with dignity and a total lack of the bombast that characterized several of the other Blue Book heads."[39]
He held Quintanilla in especially low regard: "Quintanilla's method was simple: disregard any evidence that was counter to his hypothesis."[40] Hynek wrote that during Air Force Major Hector Quintanilla's tenure as Blue Book's director, "the flag of the utter nonsense school was flying at its highest on the mast." Hynek reported that Sergeant David Moody, one of Quintanilla's subordinates, "epitomized the conviction-before-trial method. Anything that he didn't understand or didn't like was immediately put into the psychological category, which meant 'crackpot'."
Hynek reported bitter exchanges with Moody when the latter refused to research UFO sightings thoroughly, describing Moody as "the master of the possible: possible balloon, possible aircraft, possible birds, which then became, by his own hand (and I argued with him violently at times) the probable."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
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"Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which recommended that UFOs needed debunking. A few years later, however, Hynek's opinions about UFOs changed, and he thought they represented an unsolved mystery deserving scientific scrutiny. As the only scientist involved with US Government UFO studies from the beginning to the end, he could offer a unique perspective on Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book.
After what he described as a promising beginning with a potential for scientific research, Hynek grew increasingly disenchanted with Blue Book during his tenure with the project, leveling accusations of indifference, incompetence, and of shoddy research on the part of Air Force personnel. Hynek notes that during its existence, critics dubbed Blue Book "The Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated."[37]
Blue Book was headed by Ruppelt, then Captain Hardin, Captain Gregory, Major Friend, and finally Major Hector Quintanilla. Hynek had kind words only for Ruppelt and Friend. Of Ruppelt, he wrote, "In my contacts with him I found him to be honest and seriously puzzled about the whole phenomenon."[38] Of Friend, he wrote "Of all the officers I worked with in Blue Book, Colonel Friend earned my respect. Whatever private views he may have held, he was a total and practical realist, and sitting where he could see the scoreboard, he recognized the limitations of his office but conducted himself with dignity and a total lack of the bombast that characterized several of the other Blue Book heads."[39]
He held Quintanilla in especially low regard: "Quintanilla's method was simple: disregard any evidence that was counter to his hypothesis."[40] Hynek wrote that during Air Force Major Hector Quintanilla's tenure as Blue Book's director, "the flag of the utter nonsense school was flying at its highest on the mast." Hynek reported that Sergeant David Moody, one of Quintanilla's subordinates, "epitomized the conviction-before-trial method. Anything that he didn't understand or didn't like was immediately put into the psychological category, which meant 'crackpot'."
Hynek reported bitter exchanges with Moody when the latter refused to research UFO sightings thoroughly, describing Moody as "the master of the possible: possible balloon, possible aircraft, possible birds, which then became, by his own hand (and I argued with him violently at times) the probable."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
Completely agree. It’s the difference between a discussion and a debate, and we need more of that. Of course, investigations may lead to debunking the claims as being unidentified, but debunking wouldn’t be the default position.
There really should be no default position. Everyone leaves their biases at the door and approaches UAP’s with no agenda, simply interested in examining the claims as individual cases, to see where the evidence leads.
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Does Mick West make a living as a debunker? Really? I didn't realise there was money in it. Who pays his salary?
On another matter, are you equally skeptical of people who make money by promoting UFO claims - e.g. through revenue from their youtube channels?
Who's assuming?
I agree that, for the moment, it is "unexplained". However, there's no good reason to assume it's not something mundane. Why would you assume it isn't mundane?
Source, please.
Whether or not aliens exist isn't a popularity contest. It's not about who tells the most exciting story, or who is the most charismatic persuader, or who you would prefer to believe, or who you trust more. It should be about the evidence.
Pilots may have many years of experience witnessing "various flying objects", but 99.99% of all of the flying objects they've witnesses have been mundane flying objects - readily identifiable aircraft, birds, tossed footballs, etc. Seeing what looks like a giant flying tic tac is not something that pilots see under "normal" circumstances. Their experience with aircraft will not, therefore, automatically apply when trying to judge the speed, size, composition etc. of a sighted "tic tac". Chances are, they haven't sighted flying tic tacs any more than any non-pilot person would have.
I don't see how being "actually there" adds much to the credibility of a UAP/UFO report. Eyewitness reports always come from people who were (or claim to have been) actually there. But there's no reason to suppose, therefore, that their reports are accurate, or that the conclusions they draw about what they saw will be any more reliable than those of skeptics who watch the video they took of what they saw, say.
UFO skeptics, it turns out, often have many years of experience of their own. Their experience is not in witnessing various flying objects by being "actually there", but in analysing reports of unusual flying objects.
I find it strange when people play up the "experience" and "expertise" of those who report UFOs yet discount the experience and expertise of skeptics who analyse those reports, especially when the experience and expertise of the eyewitnesses is often irrelevant to deciding what the UFO might be, whereas the experience and expertise of the skeptic is often directly applicable.
Huh?
Something is unidentified until it is identified.
The problem here is that UFO believers make exaggerated claims in which they "identify" UFOs as alien spaceships and the like, in the absence of persuasive evidence to that effect.
Why not?
West applied expertise in the analysis that the eyewitnesses clearly lack. The pilots obviously weren't fully aware of the relevant characteristics of the infrared cameras on their aircraft, nor did they attempt to analyse the information from those cameras to deduce the actual flight characteristics of the "tic tac". West did investigate the cameras and did analyse the data from them.
Why do you still prefer to take the pilots' uneducated opinions over West's careful analysis?
"Unknowable" is a strange word to use. Why would you assume that the identify of the "tic tac" is "unknowable"? Isn't that just giving up before you even start looking for an explanation?
Mick West hasn't assumed that it will be impossible to ever work out what's in the video. On the contrary, he has done his best to try to narrow down the range of things that could have produced the data we have.
Again with "unknowable". There is an important difference between "unknowable" and "currently unknown".
The problem seems to be that you're not just believing what the skilled pilots report that they saw. You're also believing their interpretation of what they saw.
Why? What makes you think that their interpretations (impressions, guesses) are likely to be superior to the kind of actual analysis done by people like Mick West?
Boiled down, the pilots say they don't know what it was that they saw.
If they are assuming, in addition, that there can't be a mundane explanation for what they saw, then they appear to have been proven wrong already, since investigators like Mick West have shown that a mundane explanation is possible, even plausible.
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Yes, it is true that I don't believe any pilots who claim they saw alien spaceships or other alien technology.
The reason is simple: there's insufficient evidence to convince me that that's what they saw.
You, on the other hand, have never needed actual evidence for your beliefs.
Practically everybody else in the thread has been using "mundane" to mean that the UFOs have causes that do not require that they amount to a discovery of something new under the sun, which no human has ever proven to exist before (like alien spaceships, for example).
I have already addressed the point that all the "difficult" UFO cases are, by their nature, unusual or "extraordinary". If they weren't, they would have already been explained. The "ordinary, not very interesting" UFO reports make up the 99.99% of UFOs that turn out quickly to have been mistaken sightings of weather balloons, the planet Venus, drones, regular human aircraft, non-unusual weather phenomena, etc. The "difficult" UFO cases are the remaining 0.01%, where circumstances were sufficiently "unusual" to make identification of the UFO problematic.
This is the same point raised by wegs. See my response, above.
You might expect wrong, then. There are lots of cases of mistaken identify when military pilots have misidentified things as "enemies" that are not actually such. I'm sure you could find some if you took some time to look.
In general, I think you will find that the skeptics here (who are, for the most part, measured and non-violent) only object to actual claims of extraterrestrial or heavenly origin that are not backed up with any persuasive evidence of such.
Well, for starters, he writes books on “debunking,” so likely he earns some income from that. I don’t care honestly that he authors books and spends his time as a skeptical investigator when it comes to UAP’s, but it would be naive to think he’s not somewhat biased because of it. If you made a living selling cigarettes, you would probably tune out the reasonable arguments as to why cigarettes are harmful. That said, my knowledge of Mick West is surface level, so…I may be entirely wrong about him. *shrug*
Yes, I’m equally skeptical of those who have YouTube channels with large followings for example or series on Netflix etc …pushing the idea that space aliens exist and they’re visiting our planet.
The pilots who witnessed the tic tac video and the Pentagon’s investigation of their claims, seem genuine to me. No agenda. They may be making money off media interviews after the fact but that doesn’t seem to be what drove them to wanting their claims to be examined.
Hmm.
I never stated that I’m assuming it’s not mundane. I’m taking the position that “unidentified” may mean mundane or otherwise, until we learn more. It may be mundane but we haven’t discovered what that mundane explanation might be, yet.
As an aside, some of the questions you’re responding to, have been addressed in posts further along in the thread (by me). I know we all reply at our own convenience, but it might be helpful to read past where we left off to see if your questions have been answered. I feel like we’re time traveling back to the past lol, but that’s the nature of forums.
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
"Top Pentagon officials told a House panel on Tuesday that there are now close to 400 reports from military personnel of possible encounters with UFOs -- a significant increase from the 144 tracked in a major report released last year by the U.S. intelligence community."--- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pen...-theyre-investigating-video/story?id=84753756
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Source?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I don't know of any extraterrestrial claims that the pilots made about uaps. You have otoh consistently doubted their claims of uap's unusual maneuvers and flight behavior based on no evidence whatsoever. As if you know what they saw better than what they say they saw.