UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[DaveC426913]

Wow. Another whiney and unprovoked flame of my character and intelligence by James R again this time under the pretext of responding to Yazata. Give him any excuse to misrepresent, belittle, psychoanalyze, insult, demonize, dehumanize, pigeonhole, and disparage me and he will be on it like white on rice. James R is the local drama queen in this thread, making the whole matter of ufos a personal vendetta he's got against me just for arguing against him all too well. He's got to attack me instead of the evidence, because there's really nothing he can say against the evidence. It's that good. And he knows it too. So I become the fool and the troll and nutcase and the conspiracy theorist and stupid moron and the fan boy he wastes his caustic and belligerent 3 post replies on instead of cooly and rationally discussing the issue of ufos themselves. I think he needs a break from ufos. Or maybe just a break from me. Maybe he'll ban me again. We're really getting to him.

The above emotionally-charged rant is right out of Trump's playbook.

All this does is make you look like you've run out of topical comments. Try to stay on-topic.

 

[(Q)]

“The proponents [of UFOs] offer up impressive quantities of principally eyewitness data, which although largely subjective and circumstantial in nature, is nevertheless quite intriguing…. Many of the high-quality sighting reports involve certain objective aspects, which, to an open-minded bystander, are quite impressive.

As a full-time, and serious-minded, UFO investigator, I strongly side with the proponents. It seems indisputable that the phenomenon is real, and that it falls outside the scope of “normal” human experience.

Would a scientist actually state the latter in bold when compared to the former in bold? Of course not, that's not evidence for the existence of anything. Eye witness accounts MUST be corroborated with evidence in order for a scientist to state the phenomenon is real, especially if it's indisputable. It clearly and obviously IS disputable.

 

[(Q)]

Below is a description of a tv show. Notice what they refer themselves to be in bold? Whether they are serious or just pretending is irrelevant to the fact that a tv show requires ratings and a good healthy dollop of viewers to watch the program. This would demonstrate there are a great deal of folks who swallow this up and actually believe the whole thing is quite serious. But, it's no different from the folks who consider themselves "specialized experts" for Bigfoot, Nessie or alien visitations. They are little more than specialized experts in delivering baloney.

It's why we have the word "Gullibility" - a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence.

"Ghost Loop - The Spirit Hunters are a team of specialized paranormal experts who rescue the living from an endless and repetitive type of haunting known as a "ghost loop." At each haunted location, they build an emotionally charged trigger environment to lure the entity and break the terrifying cycle."

 

[Magical Realist]

Hearing sounds from an aircraft depends on various factors.

Secondly, you contradicted yourself later on in this thread by linking hot air balloons as being silent crafts (they fly over our heads most days, they are not silent or quiet, by the way)..

But the obvious aside, you still have not answered the question.

You are making a factual claim on something that is unknown and unidentified.

In other words, it is no longer a UFO if you have already identified it:


You have repeatedly identified them as being not of this world, not something that humans have ever constructed.. Which means you have identified it, which means it is no longer a UFO.

Hence my question, how do you know any of this? What proof do you have for any of it?

And the follow up question is, why are you still referring to it as a UFO, when you keep identifying it as something that "defies anything humans have ever constructed"?

You keep saying it's a UFO, and you keep identifying it as being not of this world, with no proof whatsoever.

You have identified it. Stop claiming it is a UFO.

Now, onto the next contradiction..

You say this:



And then:



Do you see the contradiction you set for yourself?

Aside from the fact that these things are noisy.. I know this because they fly over my house several times a week. Usually at dawn.. *shakes fists at sky*.. When we are all asleep..

Once again for like the hundredth time:

"The USAF defines a UFO as: Anything that relates to any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be identified as a familiar object. (USAF Regulation 200-2)"

 

[(Q)]

Once again for like the hundredth time:

"The USAF defines a UFO as: Anything that relates to any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be identified as a familiar object. (USAF Regulation 200-2)"

Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons including sky lanterns, satellites, and astronomical objects such as meteors, bright stars, and planets. A small percentage are hoaxes. Fewer than 10% of reported sightings remain unexplained after proper investigation, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. While proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) suggest that these unexplained reports are of alien spacecraft, the null hypothesis cannot be excluded that these reports are simply other more prosaic phenomena that cannot be identified due to lack of complete information or due to the necessary subjectivity of the reports. Instead of accepting the null hypothesis, UFO enthusiasts tend to engage in special pleading by offering outlandish, untested explanations for the validity of the ETH. These violate Occam's razor. Wiki

 

[James R]

Wow. Another whiney and unprovoked flame of my character and intelligence by James R again this time under the pretext of responding to Yazata. Give him any excuse to misrepresent, belittle, psychoanalyze, insult, demonize, dehumanize, pigeonhole, and disparage me and he will be on it like white on rice.

I was responding to Yazata, who was actually taking your side, in a sense. He mentioned you by name several times in his post, which I quoted, as a means of comparing and contrasting our (yours and my) approaches to evaluating UFO sightings. My aim in my response was to show where I disagreed with his position. The example of the UFO True Believer that is closest at hand in this thread is you, and your views were referred to explicitly by Yazata. At this point in time you have a very long record of posting here on this topic. Over time, patterns become apparent. Opinions and attitudes become clear.

You complain about my using your posts to draw conclusions about your beliefs and your attitudes. It's one thing for you to disagree with me, or to try to show what is wrong in my analysis. It is another for you to whine about it. I do not believe I have misrepresented your position. There are many examples on record in this thread alone, showing how you approach UFO claims. I invite readers to read your posts and my posts and to judge for themselves whether I am right or wrong.

My reply to Yazata was not primarily about you. Probably you missed the wood for the trees, there, even though I thought I made my point reasonably clearly.

Another thing I might say is that you really ought to stop attacking my character if you want to maintain any credibility when you whine about me attacking your character. Maybe if you focussed less on me as a person and more on what I have to say about UFOs you would have learned how to approach the study of UFOs from an unbiased perspective by now.

James R is the local drama queen in this thread, making the whole matter of ufos a personal vendetta he's got against me just for arguing against him all too well.

Heh. Nice try there. You can barely put an argument of your own together, regarding UFOs. Most of your time here is spent cutting and pasting the words or videos of other people. As a True Believer, you start with a ready-made conclusion. The only real argument I've ever seen you try to make is that all eyewitnesses are always unimpeachable sources of accurate information about UFO sightings. What that argument boils down to is that you think it's just fine to put blind faith in unreliable testimony. I have explained why that approach is unworkable, in detail on many occasions, often with examples.

He's got to attack me instead of the evidence, because there's really nothing he can say against the evidence. It's that good.

Post after post where I walk you through what is lacking in your evidence. Over years. And here you are, dishonestly claiming I have nothing to say in response to your evidence.

When will you stop telling outright lies?

I have explained why your beliefs about UFOs are faith-based rather than rational, in detail, but you'll go to almost any lengths to protect that fragile construct you've made for yourself. Denial and pretense are par for the course with you.

I think he needs a break from ufos. Or maybe just a break from me. Maybe he'll ban me again. We're really getting to him.

As you are well aware, you regularly get yourself banned because you refuse to put in the bare minimum amount of effort required to examine any UFO case honestly. Most of your temporary bans here, as you know, have resulted from you merely cutting and pasting videos or text from other sites, without any value-added content or analysis of your own. It's lazy and a waste of space. You think that you can "win" your argument for aliens essentially by spamming sciforums with a deluge of unconsidered, low-quality information from dubious sources. I have tried to gently encourage you to engage your brain and actually think things through rather than taking your usual faith-based, belief-led lazy approach to these things. Moreover, our site posting guidelines explicitly state that claims should be supported with arguments and evidence. Spamming faith-based claims is unacceptable behaviour.

Years ago, you might have been able to legitimately plead ignorance and claim that you did not understand what was required of you when posting claims of UFOs. It is no longer possible for you to play dumb on that one. I have been far too patient with you for that smokescreen to work any more. These days, when you get yourself banned from sciforums it is your deliberate choice, every time. You know exactly what you need to do to achieve your desired outcome in that regard. Truth be told, I think you engineer your own bans so that you can complain about being persecuted and so on. It's an excuse for you to whinge. I do notice, however, that as your warning points accumulate your behaviour always mysteriously improves for a while, only to deteriorate predictably again as old warning points expire. So far, you have managed to dance along the line of just avoiding an automatic permanent ban. I might even say you're skilled at that. But don't for a moment think that I'm not onto your game. It's been years, Magical Realist. You're an open book to me.

 

[Magical Realist]

I was responding to Yazata, who was actually taking your side, in a sense. He mentioned you by name several times in his post, which I quoted, as a means of comparing and contrasting our (yours and my) approaches to evaluating UFO sightings. My aim in my response was to show where I disagreed with his position. The example of the UFO True Believer that is closest at hand in this thread is you, and your views were referred to explicitly by Yazata. At this point in time you have a very long record of posting here on this topic. Over time, patterns become apparent. Opinions and attitudes become clear.

You complain about my using your posts to draw conclusions about your beliefs and your attitudes. It's one thing for you to disagree with me, or to try to show what is wrong in my analysis. It is another for you to whine about it. I do not believe I have misrepresented your position. There are many examples on record in this thread alone, showing how you approach UFO claims. I invite readers to read your posts and my posts and to judge for themselves whether I am right or wrong.

My reply to Yazata was not primarily about you. Probably you missed the wood for the trees, there, even though I thought I made my point reasonably clearly.

Another thing I might say is that you really ought to stop attacking my character if you want to maintain any credibility when you whine about me attacking your character. Maybe if you focussed less on me as a person and more on what I have to say about UFOs you would have learned how to approach the study of UFOs from an unbiased perspective by now.


Heh. Nice try there. You can barely put an argument of your own together, regarding UFOs. Most of your time here is spent cutting and pasting the words or videos of other people. As a True Believer, you start with a ready-made conclusion. The only real argument I've ever seen you try to make is that all eyewitnesses are always unimpeachable sources of accurate information about UFO sightings. What that argument boils down to is that you think it's just fine to put blind faith in unreliable testimony. I have explained why that approach is unworkable, in detail on many occasions, often with examples.


Post after post where I walk you through what is lacking in your evidence. Over years. And here you are, dishonestly claiming I have nothing to say in response to your evidence.

When will you stop telling outright lies?

I have explained why your beliefs about UFOs are faith-based rather than rational, in detail, but you'll go to almost any lengths to protect that fragile construct you've made for yourself. Denial and pretense are par for the course with you.


As you are well aware, you regularly get yourself banned because you refuse to put in the bare minimum amount of effort required to examine any UFO case honestly. Most of your temporary bans here, as you know, have resulted from you merely cutting and pasting videos or text from other sites, without any value-added content or analysis of your own. It's lazy and a waste of space. You think that you can "win" your argument for aliens essentially by spamming sciforums with a deluge of unconsidered, low-quality information from dubious sources. I have tried to gently encourage you to engage your brain and actually think things through rather than taking your usual faith-based, belief-led lazy approach to these things. Moreover, our site posting guidelines explicitly state that claims should be supported with arguments and evidence. Spamming faith-based claims is unacceptable behaviour.

Years ago, you might have been able to legitimately plead ignorance and claim that you did not understand what was required of you when posting claims of UFOs. It is no longer possible for you to play dumb on that one. I have been far too patient with you for that smokescreen to work any more. These days, when you get yourself banned from sciforums it is your deliberate choice, every time. You know exactly what you need to do to achieve your desired outcome in that regard. Truth be told, I think you engineer your own bans so that you can complain about being persecuted and so on. It's an excuse for you to whinge. I do notice, however, that as your warning points accumulate your behaviour always mysteriously improves for a while, only to deteriorate predictably again as old warning points expire. So far, you have managed to dance along the line of just avoiding an automatic permanent ban. I might even say you're skilled at that. But don't for a moment think that I'm not onto your game. It's been years, Magical Realist. You're an open book to me.

Netiquette

• Abide by basic standards of good manners and courtesy. Remember the human who is reading your post.
• Do not insult or harass other members.
• Avoid engaging with members with whom you have a personality clash.
• Beware of the potential for discussions to become heated - particularly religious and political discussions.
• Do not flame other members.
• Do not engage in ad hominem attacks (i.e. attack the argument, not the person).

 

[Kristoffer]

I've wondered for years why MR hasn't switched to unexplained-mysteries.com or whatever it's called.
My conclusion is: he loves annoying science minded people.
AKA trolling.

 

[DaveC426913]

Netiquette

• Abide by basic standards of good manners and courtesy. Remember the human who is reading your post.
• Do not insult or harass other members.
• Avoid engaging with members with whom you have a personality clash.
• Beware of the potential for discussions to become heated - particularly religious and political discussions.
• Do not flame other members.
• Do not engage in ad hominem attacks (i.e. attack the argument, not the person).

To-wit:

Wow. Another whiney and unprovoked flame of my character and intelligence by James R again this time under the pretext of responding to Yazata. Give him any excuse to misrepresent, belittle, psychoanalyze, insult, demonize, dehumanize, pigeonhole, and disparage me and he will be on it like white on rice. James R is the local drama queen in this thread,

 

[Magical Realist]

I've wondered for years why MR hasn't switched to unexplained-mysteries.com or whatever it's called.
My conclusion is: he loves annoying science minded people.
AKA trolling.

With a 3650 post thread and still going strong, I can't be annoying too many people.

 

[James R]

DaveC is right, Magical Realist. Your fragile flower complaints would be more convincing if you weren't constantly dishing out insults yourself.

 

[Q-reeus]

'Chapter three - skeptics and UFO's', from 10:24 - 24:00, covers some key objections of skeptics/debunkers endlessly recycled here. 'Billions of high-res phone cameras are out there', 'witness unreliability', Gimbal footage 'misidentification', and why e.g. 'a UFO landing at Yankee Stadium' would still be dismissed by hardened scoffers.

'Final chapter - Nimitz encounter', 24:00 to end, recounts all the reasons why the 'tic-tac' encounters were more than adequate evidence for reality of UFO's as non-mundane.
I only object to the narrator's limiting the possibilities to aliens from another planet, or top secret military craft. My own view, close to that of Jacques Vallee in his later years as UFO investigator, is well known here, having being stated multiple times.

 

[(Q)]

With a 3650 post thread and still going strong, I can't be annoying too many people.

Think nothing of it, why would anyone be annoyed with those who have flushed reason, common sense and facts down the toilet?

 

[DaveC426913]

With a 3650 post thread and still going strong, I can't be annoying too many people.

No but you are entertaining quite a few.

 

[foghorn]

”If every UFO report could be convincingly credited to some conventional astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon, there would be no UFO mystery. It is precisely because so many UFO reports cannot logically be blamed on stars, planets, satellites, airplanes, balloons, etc., that a UFO mystery has existed since at least the mid-1940s.


The most convincing UFO reports were produced in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by airline pilots, military pilots and ex-military pilots. These men had the training and the experience to be able to distinguish between normal sky sights and highly abnormal sights. They knew what airplanes looked like, and what meteors looked like, having seen them many times. Their visual observations were frequently supported by radar data which showed essentially the same thing. They were therefore able, on many occasions, to methodically eliminate conventional phenomena from consideration when trying to identify UFOs.


In those same decades, most UFO sightings were made in the daytime and frequently at close range, when shapes and surface features could be distinguished, thus making positive identification of normal sights easier and the descriptions of unusual sights more detailed. When all normal explanations had been eliminated, the witnesses could concentrate on those aspects of the experience which were most abnormal.


These abnormal aspects included the shapes of UFOs and their behavior. Most of the UFOs seen in the daytime were said to have had simple geometric shapes--discs, ovals, spheres, cylinders--and surfaces that looked like metal. Such shapes are not only nonexistent among known aircraft, but contrary to all known theories of flight, in most cases offering control and performance disadvantages rather than advantages.


Even more unusual were the specifics of their flight performance: silent hovering, silent high-speed flight, extreme acceleration, supersonic flight at low altitude without sonic booms, and violent, very high-g maneuvers. The actions of many UFOs have suggested that they fly independently of the air and even of the force of gravity. The accomplishment of these maneuvers has been among the major goals of the world's aerospace industry for decades.

On the basis of their appearance, behavior and frequent well-kept, tight formation flights, we must face the possibility that some UFOs may be manufactured, high-tech vehicles…."---Don Berliner, UFO researcher, author, FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research), “Is There a Case for UFO’s?”
===============================================================
Peter Davenport, Director, NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center) (Ronald Story, Encyclopedia)


“The proponents [of UFOs] offer up impressive quantities of principally eyewitness data, which although largely subjective and circumstantial in nature, is nevertheless quite intriguing…. Many of the high-quality sighting reports involve certain objective aspects, which, to an open-minded bystander, are quite impressive.


As a full-time, and serious-minded, UFO investigator, I strongly side with the proponents. It seems indisputable that the phenomenon is real, and that it falls outside the scope of “normal” human experience.


Strong evidence suggests that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is being caused by palpable, solid objects whose characteristics are not of human design, and whose behavior is suggestive of intelligent control.”

http://www.ufoevidence.org/NewSite/Papers/UFOQuotes.htm

I reported to JamesR the MR cut and paste post above, for having no comment from MR.
JamesR has decided to ignore my post. MR has a guardian angel.
The Magical roundabout continues.

 

[Magical Realist]

Earl of Kimberly, former Liberal Party spokesman on aerospace, and member of the House of Lords, England, 1979

"UFOs defy worldly logic... The human mind cannot begin to comprehend UFO characteristics: their propulsion, their sudden appearance, their disappearance, their great speeds, their silence, their manoeuvre, their apparent anti-gravity, their changing shapes."

General Carlos Castro Cavero, General in the Spanish Air Force, 1976

"I myself have observed one [UFO] for more than an hour... It was an extremely bright object, which remained stationary there for that length of time and then shot off towards Egea de los Caballeros, covering the distance of twenty kilometers in less than two seconds. No human device is capable of such a speed."

Donald (Deke) Slayton, "Mercury Seven" astronaut, 1951

"I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then realized that no kite is gonna [sic] fly that high. As I got closer, it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing, it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disc. About that same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from me - and there I was, running at about 300 miles an hour. I tracked it for a little while, and then all of sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45-degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared".

Captain Robert Salas, USAF, during a videotaped interview for the Disclosure program.

"The security guard called and said, “Sir, there’s a glowing red object
hovering right outside the front gate. I’ve got all the men out here with
their weapons drawn.” We lost between 16-18 ICBMs (nuclear tipped Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles) at the same time UFOs were in the area… (A high ranking Air Force officer) said, “Stop the investigation; do no more on this and do not write a final report. I heard that many of the guards that reported the incident were sent off to Vietnam."

Representative Jerry L. Pettis stated in 1968, during the House Committee on Science and Astronautics UFO Hearings:

“Having spent a great deal of my life in the air, as a pilot, I know that many pilots have seen phenomena that they could not explain. These men, most of whom have talked to me, have been very reticent to talk about this publicly, because of the ridicule that they were afraid would be heaped upon them. However, there is a phenomenon here that isn’t explained.”

The former CIA director is famously quoted for his words about UFOs, in which he basically admits they are real and really being covered up by US officials.


"Reportedly, a spaceship landed and it was all hushed up, quieted, and nobody ever heard much of it. I called Curtis Lemay and I said 'General, I know we have a room at Wright Patterson where you put all this secret stuff; could I go in there?' I never heard him get mad, but he got madder at hell at me, cussed me out -said don't ever ask me that question again."




​

 

[DaveC426913]

... there is a phenomenon here that isn’t explained.”​

This excerpt sort of sums up the whole post.

We all agree there are phenomena here that aren't explained.

It's pretty darned implausible that these are all due to misidentifications of mundane phenom.
It's pretty darned implausible that these are all due to mass hallucinations.
It's pretty darned implausible that these are all hoaxes.
It's pretty darned implausible that these are all trumped up and embellished.
It's pretty darned implausible that these are actual alien craft.

Funny thing is - of those options - the first four are already known to happen. They are fact. Humans do misidentify things**. Humans do hallucinate. Humans do make hoaxes. Humans do embellish and lie. (There are many more possibilities, but I don't think it adds to this to list them.) ** including recordings by machines

I am not suggesting that all these reports are due to one of those options. What I'm pointing out is that - as incredibly unlikely as they are, they are still more likely than the fifth option - because the fifth options requires the conjecture of - not merely known human behavior - but the existence an entire alien civilization.

It is the option for which there is no independent corroborating evidence that is is factually proven to exist. In other words, in looking for evidence that might corroborate of UFOs sightings, one must invent the explanation out of whole cloth - for no reason other than to explain this phenomenon.

And that's what makes the alien craft hypothesis highly suspect.

To be clear: nobody is categorically ruling aliens out. But if one is going to compel into existence an entire alien civilization just to justify that explanation of UFOs, one had better start producing evidence of this civilization independent of UFO reports in a hurry. Otherwise you're putting your conclusion in your premise.

 

[Magical Realist]

And that's what makes the alien craft hypothesis highly suspect.

In all those quotations not one mention was made of them being aliens. All that is put forward is the existence of these mysterious objects, wherever they may come from or whomever may be in control of them. But as usual it's always easier for a skeptic to attack the alien hypothesis, a classic case of constructing and debunking a strawman as a distraction from the incredibly solid evidence for ufos. But don't worry Dave. James R leads the pack in this tactic, always ridiculing and mocking the alien theory because...well because it's just so professionally scientific to ridicule and mock other theories. It would serve all posters well to review James' and my posts and compare how many times I mention aliens or ET's to how many times James does. It's the one thing James has become a master at-- repeatedly refuting a theory that was never put forth in the first place.

 

[Q-reeus]

In all those quotations not one mention was made of them being aliens. All that is put forward is the existence of these mysterious objects, wherever they may come from or whomever may be in control of them. But as usual it's always easier for a skeptic to attack the alien hypothesis, a classic case of constructing and debunking a strawman as a distraction from the incredibly solid evidence for ufos. But don't worry Dave. James R leads the pack in this tactic, always ridiculing and mocking the alien theory because...well because it's just so professionally scientific to ridicule and mock other theories. It would serve all posters well to review James and my posts and compare how many times I mention aliens or ET's to how many times James does. It's the one thing James has become a master at-- repeatedly refuting a theory that was never put forth in the first place.

Now come on MR - confess how many times you have settled on little green alien men (how sexist!) piloting saucers etc. from another planet circling a star far, far away.
AT LEAST ZERO TIMES!

 

[Magical Realist]

'Chapter three - skeptics and UFO's', from 10:24 - 24:00, covers some key objections of skeptics/debunkers endlessly recycled here. 'Billions of high-res phone cameras are out there', 'witness unreliability', Gimbal footage 'misidentification', and why e.g. 'a UFO landing at Yankee Stadium' would still be dismissed by hardened scoffers.

'Final chapter - Nimitz encounter', 24:00 to end, recounts all the reasons why the 'tic-tac' encounters were more than adequate evidence for reality of UFO's as non-mundane.
I only object to the narrator's limiting the possibilities to aliens from another planet, or top secret military craft. My own view, close to that of Jacques Vallee in his later years as UFO investigator, is well known here, having being stated multiple times.

Excellent points and analysis of skeptics' complaints. Totally demolishes Armored Skeptic's jet flare debunk of that Navy FLIR ufo video. Tks for posting.