UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

DaveC426913 said:
OK, but your analysis seems to presuppose that it's not horse# # # #.
If the evidence is not there to support something paranormal, then an interpretation of paranormality is an overreach. Invocation of "establishment" is effectively a conspiracy theory.

Essentially, what you're doing is poisoning the well. You're suggesting that we cannot find the "truth" because establishment stands in our way.

Consider though: What if we do have the truth? What if there are no ETs? Then both the photos and this "establishment" were - and are - correct.

No, the only choice we have is to examine the evidence we have available with a critical eye and come to the best conclusion we can (or no conclusion at all). And there's no indication in any of these photos or videos or accounts of any "establishment" conspiracy.
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Cave Dweller: "Sire, I have no need of Monsieur Chartrand's five hour lecture explaining in detail why the Sun will rise tomorrow morning. Probability via what has occurred in the past is sufficient."

Statistical-based doubter: "Yes, if Aaron Rodgers' UAP story is accompanied by pictures and video footage, by all means conduct research on the latter. I shall instead go fishing with the Walton family, after submitting my prediction that it will still be judged horse#### after the conclusion of the thorough investigation."
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C C said:
Cave Dweller: "Sire, I have no need of Monsieur Chartrand's five hour lecture explaining in detail why the Sun will rise tomorrow morning. Probability via what has occurred in the past is sufficient."

Statistical-based doubter: "Yes, if Aaron Rodgers' UAP story is accompanied by pictures and video footage, by all means conduct research on the latter. I shall instead go fishing with the Walton family, after submitting my prediction that it will still be judged horse#### after the conclusion of the thorough investigation."
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OK, this appears to be a round-about way of saying you don't think there is anything to be gained by research and analysis, since some mysterious establishment judgey-types will pass their judgment and ... I don't know, burn the evidence in a trashcan?

This is a bogeyman - one that seems to have no face or name - but can apparently control your ability to research, explore and analyze?

Regardless that's a personal philosophy and a personal choice that your efforts are in vain; it doesn't really apply to others' motivations.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
OK, this appears to be a round-about way of saying you don't think there is anything to be gained by research and analysis, since some mysterious establishment judgey-types will pass their judgment and ... I don't know, burn the evidence in a trashcan?

This is a bogeyman - one that seems to have no face or name - but can apparently control your ability to research, explore and analyze?

Regardless that's a personal philosophy and a personal choice that your efforts are in vain; it doesn't really apply to others' motivations.
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Are you contending (or suggesting) that there is a legit possibility that a rigorous examination of Rodgers' UAP account (with camera "evidence") could reveal that something genuinely anomalous slash extraordinary had occurred? Or perhaps closer to the mark, that an interpretation of that sort could fall out of it, be advocated and accepted abroad?

I would expect a fail in terms of "the astounding" as sure the sun rising. Simply due to what has come of such endeavors in the past ranging from "official" to volunteer efforts. Which is to say, I don't need an agenda either for or against "strange things". That's not what the confidence stems from.

Mind you, a team conducting such could not consist of "I Want To Believe" Fox Mulder types or even anyone sympathetic to FMs. (I.e., Skinwalker Ranch brand of expertise.)

Otherwise, it doesn't matter whether genuinely impartial people do the research, or subconsciously biased against "the extraordinary" individuals are involved, or openly biased against "the extraordinary" individuals perform it. Though the latter would unnecessarily (maybe) ensure the non-positive results. (And even conspirators can be thrown in, too, albeit that would especially be overkill for loading the dice.)

IOW, I don't care how/why the conclusion of horse#### or alternatively the "we just don't know" impotence winds up being outputted. Whether it is the result of good or sloppy work, or motivated reasoning slash motivated setup. I simply probabilistically expect it much like the lopsided college football rivalry between Alabama vs Kentucky. (Though Kentucky actually needs zero wins instead of the two or more in the history of it, to be a fit analogy. ;))
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Eh, OK. I'm still finding your argument too circumspect to quite follow your contention.

I think you're still saying that you believe you (and I guess everyone else) are subject to the authorities' say on the subject, as if that closes the door on speculation and analysis by amateurs.

But I can't be sure. even your "IOW" - where it looks like you're about to lay out your belief in no uncertain terms - turns out to be a sportsball analogy that is utterly inscrutable to me.

So to avoid appearing argumentative, I'm going to assume I'm the problem here, and just acknowledge whatever you're saying and go silent on it.
 
Yazata said:
A question I would ask is why reports of some events are accepted, while reports of other kinds of events are dismissed (often with insult and ridicule). What would justify that, if it wasn't preexisting belief on the part of the one doing the accepting and dismissing?

Or any kind of corroborating evidence. Radar in the case of UAPs, infrared, satellites, multiple human observers.

That's the crux of the matter I think.

My thought is that there's a huge difference between...

A. The possibility space consisting of all the hypothetical possibilities about how an unknown event might conceivably be explained. It's going to be an unbounded space by its nature, since there will be possibilities that nobody has thought of yet. Inclusion in this space will be highly speculative.

I have no real objection to including space aliens, time-travelers or interdimensional beings in this one. (I would actually encourage their inclusion, which makes me a "believer" in some eyes, I guess.) They are certainly possibilities, and there seems to be no reason to exclude them apart from preexisting ideas about what is and isn't real.

And I get the impression that's all that MR really wants to defend, their possibility. That's why I raised the issue earlier in a post directed at MR. What I was hoping for when I wrote it was inducing MR to clarify what his own position is. But JamesR jumped in with both feet, muddying the waters.

B. The actuality space consisting of the one correct explanation of what an unknown event really is. Given that it's an unknown event ex hypothesis, the contents of this space will be unknown, at least at first, even if we can assume that it's a much smaller space than the possibility space in A. The goal of inquiry is to shrink A. (the unbounded set of possible explanations) down to B. (the one correct explanation). That typically involves seeking more information.

My own skeptical fallibilism suggests to me that any flat-and-final statement of what is and isn't the case is probably impossible for beings like ourselves, who lack a "god's eye view" of reality. The best we can do is to argue about which possibility from A. seems most probable to us, based on whatever evidence that we happen to have acquired through inquiry.

I certainly don't want to argue that all possibilities are equally likely, though they might approach that situation in the absence of information that allows us to assign them weights, unless we introduce some preexisting assumptions to prune back the possibilities.

Put another way, I'm inclined to think that all of our knowledge claims are works-in-progress. In effect we are trying to grow our knowledge of the universe by lifting ourselves by our bootstraps.
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Yah, akin to some forms of scientific anti-realism taking the view that "the inductive track-record of science gives us good reasons to expect our contemporary scientific theories (etc) will be considered false or incomplete in the fullness of time". "Work in progress" certainly applies to any incidents of UAP country where lack of identification/explanation still pertains.

Going back to the initial "diving board" suggestion slash query (i.e., "What would justify that, if it wasn't preexisting belief on the part of the one doing the accepting and dismissing?")...

And we should note that kind of possibility is not referring to something absolute. It would be ridiculous to assert that those involved are universally either impartial or universally compromised on ALL occasions. Or a ludicrous belief in human perfection to contend that a human mindset is never compromised whatsoever. That motivated reasoning slash interpretation and biased preparation prior to analysis/research is NEVER the case in an individual or team.

Yet, at least currently, I don't care that much about the futility of getting inside the "black box" of what meticulously transpired to get _X_ conclusion. Even acquiring a detailed account of what was conducted is still being filtered through the cognitive limitations of the person or mediating agent writing the document (a representation isn't the original terrain of events).

Maybe it's only a tentative route I'm exploring in some devil's advocate related way, but it's enough for me that the past repeatedly reveals that a preliminary judgment about UAP stuff of "it's horse__" or "it's something ordinary" or "we don't know" will usually still be one of those options, even after the examination of evidence. (If there is anything to process beyond the story of the witnesses.)

No preexisting agenda of either camp necessary for expecting "nothing extraordinary" to be what's issued, though that "just go with the probability" approach certainly doesn't magically eliminate the possibility of bias contributing to the results. It's a view that is simply apathetic about the causes of the determination, of what happened in between input and output.

Avi Loeb brushes against the idea of preexisting preferences below, albeit arguably in a more extended context that includes all the proposals and activities he's indulged in. With the caveat, of course, that we all know he is of the "I Want To Believe" Fox Mulder category, where a "preference" is driving him, too.
- - - - - - - - -

(Sep 6, 2023) Astrophysicist Avi Loeb discusses UFOs, alien life and his controversial interstellar research
https://www.salon.com/2023/09/06/as...-and-his-controversial-interstellar-research/

EXCERPT: In your book, you called Carl Sagan's adage that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" a "logical fallacy." How and why do you think that statement is somewhat flawed or a logical fallacy?

It's used as an excuse for people who don't want to deal with an exciting possibility. They don't seek the evidence, and they argue, "Well, we don't have any evidence."

It's like a single person who looks around and says, "Well, there is no partner next to me, therefore, I might be alone." In order to find partners, you need to go to dating sites you need to look through your window. You may go outdoors to your backyard. … You need to do something.

The method we used before [for detecting extraterrestrial communication] was radio signals. That's just like waiting for a phone call. You know, if someone doesn't call you at the time that you're listening, you won't detect anything. My approach is quite different...
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With respect to mention of debunkers on the previous page, here are some film and video visual effects experts applying their practice to the flying orbs.

VFX artists debunk flying UFO videos

VIDEO EXCERPTS: U.S military drone captures video orb-like objects. [...] this straight up just looks like a balloon. There's a moment there where it looks like the classic like latex balloon.

[...] This reminds me of a lot of the other videos we saw, which is an object flying in a straight line at like seemingly crazy speeds. The airplane itself is flying at a great speed in a direction, like you know 300 miles an hour potentially. Anything you see from this perspective it's going to travel against the plane of the ground.

It's a classic Michael Bay shot. So he's got the camera whipping along, you're looking at somebody standing there, and the background's just a big motion blur. ... This is the same effect, but you're even further back and you're going even faster, and the camera zoomed in even more. So as the drone is following it, hitting this big sweep across the background as it's kind of just locked onto this balloon as it's flying past it.

That looks like a balloon to me, it's a balloon. I think we bunked this one pretty hard. We debunked it. Yeah, to bunk it is actually to prove it's real, my bad.

All the orb videos I've seen up to this point they look exactly like this thing flying. Never changes directions, it's always in a straight line, because it's being filmed from an airplane. Which flies in a straight line...​

--> Link to video
 
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C C said:
W

That looks like a balloon to me, it's a balloon. I think we bunked this one pretty hard. We debunked it. Yeah, to bunk it is actually to prove it's real, my bad.

All the orb videos I've seen up to this point they look exactly like this thing flying. Never changes directions, it's always in a straight line, because it's being filmed from an airplane. Which flies in a straight line...​
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See now, I think this is a case of skeptics not doing due diligence (or maybe I just didn't listen to their entire explanation). I think their assessment is lazy. Doesn't mean it's wrong (it could indeed be a balloon), I just think they're too sure.


1. They came to a hasty conclusion.

Sure, it's round and in the air, but it's moving awfully fast for a balloon.
A few hypotheses that support the idea that is might still be a balloon:
  • Sped up footage?
The first thing I checked when analyzing this video was the apparent play rate. You can get an rough estimate of that by analyzing the movements of the people on the ground. They appear to be real-time i.e. not sped up. That would suggest the speed of the balloon is likewise not sped-up.

Conclusion: Implausible.​
  • Wind?
Yes. Could be a high-ish wind carrying the balloon. Though there's no corroborating evidence of wind, that doesn't rule it out. We don't know the altitude so we can't really say that there couldn't be such a wind at-altitude.

Conclusion: Plausible.
​
  • Parallax?
The UAP's apparent movement (all of it or just a portion of it) could be an illusion caused by movement of the observer drone.

The drone will be tracking the ground targets, so we should not expect to see any apparent movement of those in the observer view. However, any object that gets between drone and ground targets will pass through the view as if it is moving, creating the parallax illusion.
​
  • Unfortunately, we don't know the drone-to-UAP distance or the UAP-to-ground distance, and we don't know if - or how fast - the drone might be moving. Which means we can't verify this.
Conclusion: Plausible.

​
The upshot is that - just because it is spherical doesn't mean it is a balloon. Representation of such a simple shape may not be convincing enough to dismiss a UAP account when there is other data we can bring to bear. That other data should be examined.

​
2. They over-reached with their conclusion.

Their explanation does not qualify as "debunked" - they have not demonstrated that it's a balloon, simply that it could be. So, not actually debunked.​


So yep. Just like their are overly-enthusiastic believers, there are also overly-enthusiastic skeptics.
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Also, when it comes to research balloons, it's pretty much standard to attach some meter or piece of equipment to them. Nobody is just sending up balloons for the hell of it. But the pics of spherical uaps show no attachment.

Research balloon:

tiuVI2w.jpg
 
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Magical Realist said:
Also, when it comes to research balloons, it's pretty much standard to attach some meter or piece of equipment to them.
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I don't think anyone was suggesting it might be a research balloon in an active military zone.

The fact that it might not look like a thing we wouldn't expect to be there anyway doesn't really add clarity either way.
 
https://themessenger.com/news/nasa-release-date-unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-report-uaps

"The U.S. space agency NASA will release its hotly anticipated report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs, on Thursday Sept. 14 at approximately 9:30 a.m. Eastern, the agency said in a press release.

The report is the culmination of a months-long investigation into various observations of events in the sky recorded over recent years by the U.S. military, civilians and other organizations. These events have defied obvious explanation as aircraft or natural phenomena, like oddly-shaped clouds.

In June 2022, NASA announced it would convene a team of researchers and other experts to look into these events from a scientific perspective. The main purpose of the investigation, the agency said, is to look at the data available, determine what rises to the top as most interesting for scientists to study further, give recommendations on how to collect more data and lay out how to study these phenomena moving forward.

Ultimately, the agency wants to put more constraints on what constitutes a UAP and what does not. So far, NASA has been very clear in its stance that UAP observations are overwhelmingly unlikely to be evidence of alien life...."
 
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Magical Realist said:
The U.S. space agency NASA will release its hotly anticipated report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs, on Thursday Sept. 14 at approximately 9:30 a.m. Eastern,
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UFO believers need to prepare themselves for disappointed as yet another committee finds not much to see here.

Predictions/guesses:
  • Report will say that many UAP reports lack sufficient detail to enable a positive ID.
  • Report will say that NASA can't positively ID some of the military-related reports, because the military has not provided all the information it has. Perhaps the military has identified some of these things. Stay tuned for the military report (later).
  • Report will say that UAP are an ongoing topic of public interest.
  • Report will say that NASA cannot rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial spacecraft etc., but that NASA has seen no evidence that tends to confirm the existence of any such craft.
  • Report will suggest that UFO enthusiasts should up their game in recording UAP sightings.
  • Report will say that people reporting UAPs should not be stigmatised, as this tends to prevent the collection of high-quality data, which is exactly what is needed to identify stuff.
  • Report might suggest the creation of a centralised repository of data for recording UAP reports and their associated evidence.
  • UFO believers will claim that report is a white-wash and that the Men in Black are covering up what they really know about the aliens.
  • UFO believers will largely ignore any advice NASA includes in the report, and continue with business as usual in their online Believer enclaves.
 
Here's NASA (from the just-released UAP report) on eyewitness evidence (aka "reports") of UAPS:

Yet, without calibrated sensor data to accompany it, no report can provide conclusive evidence on the nature of UAP or enable a study into the details of what was witnessed. While witnesses may be inherently credible, reports are not repeatable by others, and they do not allow a complete investigation into possible cognitive biases and errors (such as accuracy in perception, or misperception caused by environmental factors, errors in the recording device, judgment or misjudgment of distance or speed, for example). Therefore, the reports do not alone constitute data that can support a repeatable, reproducible analysis, and the hypothesis that what was witnessed was a manifestation of known natural or technological phenomena cannot be falsified.
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Well, who'da thunk it? NASA agrees with me - and all the other skeptics who have been saying this stuff for years -that multiple anecdotes do not equal evidence.

Moreover, NASA - unlike some UFO believers I have come across - recognises that people who report seeing UAPs can be biased, in error, have inaccurate perceptions, misperceive things due to environmental factors, and misjudge things such as distances and speeds. And all this, despite those same people possibly being "inherently credible" on other topics.
 
James R said:
Here's NASA (from the just-released UAP report) on eyewitness evidence (aka "reports") of UAPS:

Yet, without calibrated sensor data to accompany it, no report can provide conclusive evidence on the nature of UAP or enable a study into the details of what was witnessed. While witnesses may be inherently credible, reports are not repeatable by others, and they do not allow a complete investigation into possible cognitive biases and errors (such as accuracy in perception, or misperception caused by environmental factors, errors in the recording device, judgment or misjudgment of distance or speed, for example). Therefore, the reports do not alone constitute data that can support a repeatable, reproducible analysis, and the hypothesis that what was witnessed was a manifestation of known natural or technological phenomena cannot be falsified.
​
Well, who'da thunk it? NASA agrees with me - and all the other skeptics who have been saying this stuff for years -that multiple anecdotes do not equal evidence.

Moreover, NASA - unlike some UFO believers I have come across - recognises that people who report seeing UAPs can be biased, in error, have inaccurate perceptions, misperceive things due to environmental factors, and misjudge things such as distances and speeds. And all this, despite those same people possibly being "inherently credible" on other topics.
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Yup, just about all the points you predicted in post 9252 are covered, save the last two for which we need to see the reaction to the report.
 
Remember that MR doesn't actually think about anything. His only visible skill is cut-and-paste.
 
Magical Realist said:
Study on the unusual flight characteristics of UAPs:

https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/physics_fac_scholar/58/
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EXCERPTS: We consider a handful of well-documented encounters, including the 2004 encounters with the Nimitz Carrier Group off the coast of California [...] The observed flight characteristics of these craft are consistent with the flight characteristics required for interstellar travel, i.e., if these observed accelerations were sustainable in space, then these craft could easily reach relativistic speeds within a matter of minutes to hours and cover interstellar distances in a matter of days to weeks, proper time.

[...] While the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis can be neither verified nor ruled out at this time, it is useful to consider whether the characteristics of these UAVs tend to support or rule out the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. Given the estimated accelerations of these UAVs, it is useful to consider the time it would take them to travel interstellar distances​

With the recent conferences downplaying these earlier interpretations, a 2019 paper is the place to go for nostalgia. It sounds familiar, though, like one that appeared in a SarahEllard thread, or something, in the past.

EDIT: Yah, it is that one: https://www.sciforums.com/threads/p...t-to-sea-level-in-0-79-sec-50-000-mph.165997/
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