UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

[mugaliens]

Maybe they wanted to test how they would react under the threat of a possible Russian Attempt at a nuclear first strike.

Under this model, it would be wise to deactivate the weapons just in case someone freaks out and tried to bomb russia before they bomb us. So they deactivate the weapons as a safety measure, while conducting an emergency drill.

From this they could conclude who reacted how under pressure. Who's description of the events is most accurate, and this who were good observers. They could find out who could keep secrets as they classify the drill top secret, and have them swear to secrecy etc.

This is very inane. Both we, Russia, and all other nuclear powers have extensive protcols in place to prevent this sort of third-grade concept from ever taking place.

 

[FlexGunship]

Okay, this entire thread is just talking to me, so I'm going to skip the individual quotes and see if I can more widely address the trend I'm seeing develop.

I'm not actually attempting to explain the phenomena that are being discussed. I'm describing a position I hold. I'm also defending it with the same vigor as the purported UFO promoters (or conspiracy promoters). My goal in doing this is to advance a theory which could also explain the available evidence without having to add something "new" (aliens, spaceships, secret government programs, or even ball lightning).

The fallibility of human sensory observance is clear to me. Perhaps I have a privileged view of this, but I find it to be more consistently true than Dr. House's "everybody lies" (you know, from that Fox show). I know it sounds, maybe, overly pragmatic, but people are terrible observers. If you were to rank all forms of evidence you would find "human observation" just above "Rorschach interpretations." (A surprisingly apt comparison since you often find UFO/ghost reports take on the shape and character of the reporter.)

I see it happen often, and it's really a shame. People constantly discredit themselves to the point that there's almost no point in listening anymore:

• She was possessed by a demon
• I was abducted from my bed
• I saw the Loch Ness monster
• A ghost ate all the pie
• My uncle saw a ship disappear in the Bermuda triangle
• I know a real psychic
• I saw him move things with his mind
• They finally caught the real Bigfoot
• Okay, I was wrong last time, but this time I really was abducted
• The sun fell out of the sky and 99,999 other people saw it too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun)
• President Bush is a lizard

(The sad thing is that every person who reads that list will pick ONE of them and say: "Well, come on, man... ________ is real. Don't group it with all that other stuff.")

We are a bunch of barely observant, semi-mobile lumps of consciousness that are completely unequipped to see our own universe. It is only in the last few hundred to a thousand years that the process of science has begun to reveal the truth of the universe around us. Guess what! Reality is way cooler than all those stories we used to make up to explain it. Just stack up cosmology next to Creation theory, and compare the four forces of nature to Chi. Reality isn't limited by human imagination, but Creationism and Chi and so many other concepts so clearly are!

Yet, when we stray from properly practiced science, we revert back to our lowest form: seeing lights and shapes and interpreting them as "gods" exacting their will upon the lowly observer. When we step out of the illumination of science, we're blind again... we're back to see spirits, and shadows, and lights, and monsters everywhere!

And this isn't isolated to dumb, stupid, or crazy people... it's a universal condition! We all share in the inadequacies of our observational prowess! Even those of us who are trained to be the best observers of our species are easily fooled if they slip up in the tiniest way when "sciencing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha).

So, Nismar and Jreelawg, I hope you can see why I give a strong weighting to the illusion, confusion, hallucination, and hoax format. It has served me well. To say someone is hallucinating or confused isn't an insult. We all do it! It's not limited to mushroom-guzzling mental patients!

Have you seen 2D optical illusions? Can you even fathom how easy it would be to fool our minds with a 3D illusion? We see faces on Mars and the eyes of a hollow mask follow us around the room. If we let our guard down for even a moment we get lost in a mire of garbage information, cognitive biases, and total brain failures. Sometimes we can't even pass ideas on because our language is so clumsily crafted. We mean to say one thing to a person but they hear another; the idea is tainted forever in the mind of the other individual free to spread amongst the population.

Cynical? Maybe. But knowing you own limitations as an observer is important. As such, I will wait until we can turn science on a real flying saucer, a real ghost, a real monster, or a real anti-gravity machine before I allow the idea to creep into my brain and infest it with garbage information. It's fun to think about, but until science has really weighed in on the issue, keep that stuff away from the decision-making part of your brain. If you remain sharply skeptical you can only benefit.

Which is more likely,

1. that there exists a secret government project which carefully monitors existing domestic nuclear missile technology and develops ways to momentarily stop it remotely,
2. that an alien civilization has found a tiny blue planet covered in mold somewhere in the far reaches of the sparsely populated end of a mediocre galaxy and has seen the ape-like inhabitants mucking about with nuclear weapons so they stop in and take them offline for about half an hour out of the 60+ years that they've had them, OR
3. a bunch of us silly meat heads got confused?

I'm still arguing for #3 as hard as I can.

 

[jreelawg]

An alternative to that chain of events, is that it could have been a test to see how the faculty of the facility would behave under a given apparently threatening situation.

Maybe they wanted to test how they would react under the threat of a possible Russian Attempt at a nuclear first strike.

Under this model, it would be wise to deactivate the weapons just in case someone freaks out and tried to bomb russia before they bomb us. So they deactivate the weapons as a safety measure, while conducting an emergency drill.

From this they could conclude who reacted how under pressure. Who were good observers. They could find out who could keep secrets as they classify the drill top secret, and have them swear to secrecy etc.

An extra possible motive could be to afterwards study the witnesses and observe what they make of what they see.

Maybe if we had records of people who were promoted, demoted, or fired, and why we could see if there was a trend.

 

[jreelawg]

One comment... I know that I'm not qualified to say what are or are not "extraordinary flight characteristics"... are you? I'm not trying to pick on you, just point out that at the most basic level of your description is the assumption that what you saw was extraordinary in its movements, that it was in flight, and that what you saw was a vehicle of some kind.

I don't assume it was what it appeared to be. What it appeared to do was move from stationary to incredible speed instantly, it made no noise, and it was visible as three blue/white lights forming a triangle.

I'm don't mean to bring this into the discussion, except to explain to Flex, honestly, what my position is and why. I'm not saying I am not fallible.

 

[nismaratwork]

I don't assume it was what it appeared to be. What it appeared to do was move from stationary to incredible speed instantly, it made no noise, and it was visible as three blue/white lights forming a triangle.

I'm don't mean to bring this into the discussion, except to explain to Flex, honestly, what my position is and why. I'm not saying I am not fallible.

OK, I wasn't trying to "getcha!", I just wanted to get an understanding of what met that criteria. I admit, that sounds very odd... it doesn't rise to the level of alien for me, but if I ever saw that I'd be pretty spooked. I'm not qualified to say what that could have been unfortunately, but I appreciate you being frank.

 

[FlexGunship]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/27/AR2010092705099.html

This is regarding the news conference that was held on the topic of the UFOs affecting the nuclear missiles. It appears that many of these men have sign affidavits attesting to the fact that they talked to someone who saw something in the sky.

Second hand information.

I ask, finally, can we please conclude (as a group) that this particular case holds little or no significant information regarding the UFO phenomenon?

 

[nismaratwork]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/27/AR2010092705099.html

This is regarding the news conference that was held on the topic of the UFOs affecting the nuclear missiles. It appears that many of these men have sign affidavits attesting to the fact that they talked to someone who saw something in the sky.

Second hand information.

I ask, finally, can we please conclude (as a group) that this particular case holds little or no significant information regarding the UFO phenomenon?

Well, that being the case (and it seems that you're correct), it's just another oversold and over-hyped news conference. Second hand eyewitness testimony is the only thing worse than eyewitness testimony. This now goes to a simple question of malfunctioning launch systems being conflated with what seems to be an institutional mythology about aliens. I would say this went from "interesting but not alien" to "mundane" in the course of a single news conference. Ah well, that's the way the cookie always seems to crumble.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I still don't have time to get into this, but I was checking in and immediately noticed this. Hopefully I will have more time to focus later this week.

From the news report posted by Flex.

Most of the witnesses had not seen anything, just spoken to someone who had seen something

Flex

Second hand information.

I don't see that the two statements are equivalent. Who is leaping to conclusions here?

There is an internal Boeing report about the failures of these systems that was later made public. When I have a chance to get around to this, I'll try to dig it up. We had a link years ago but I don't know if its still good, or where it is.

Also, has the issue of the odds of an ET encounter been addressed? I know Russ had reverted to this point of reference, which is a fallacy. We don't know the odds. We can't say how likely it might be that we would encounter Ets from time to time - it may be a near certainty, or the chances may be zero. So it makes sense to ask if there are any potential examples. So, in addition to the potential for discovery wrt unrecognized natural phenomena, which is one favored explantion for some reports, the question in regards to ET is not whether UFOs are crafts flown by aliens or alien computers. The question is, "Are any?". If there is one valid example, it is the most important story in history. This makes the entire subject worthwhile. It wouldn't be interesting if the only reports were like those we see in the tabloids, but there is a core of information that makes the subject much more interesting than that. Not to say that we should assume anything, but at least do justice to the information that exists. Be honest about it.

The point is not to argue for proof of anything. The point is to provide some context. In many cases, we have to make assumptions about phenomena not known to exist, or we have to imagine conspiracy theories, or we have to imagine some exotic technolgy that is still highly classified, or we have to assume that otherwise credible people are lying, sometimes a good number of them, in order to explain these cases away. As did Flex, skeptics will often fudge statements to make the evidence seem less compelling [i.e. most = all]. And of course, without a smoking gun, we can always imagine a way to explain away any claim. That's a given. This is especially true if we pick and choose which parts of a report are credible. In short, there are no answers here, only assumptions. As a skeptic, I think this too is important to remember. I am not impressed by sloppy skeptical arguments. In fact, sloppy misrepresentations of the facts by skeptics is what caused me to make my first post about this here at PF. The nonsense coming from so-called skeptics can be as bad as that coming from the true believers.

I would add that the Post report was rather silly. Clearly it was written with an attitude not worthy of a serious reporter [Fox News level writing]. Also, the reporter's comments about Halt were completely out of context. Halt never said that he photographed anything. That was another group of people [base security] involved in the same incident, but the reporter obviously had no actual knowledge of the Halt report. I would add that I talked with Col. Halt for over an hour by telephone. He doesn't claim that he saw ET. He doesn't know what he saw.

 

[Chronos]

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish anxiety from fact. Some people see things that cause more fear in others than themselves. An unprejudiced mind is required to properly consider context and circumstances. The evidence to date leans in favor of the skeptics, but, not exclusively.

 

[alt]

Okay, this entire thread is just talking to me, so I'm going to skip the individual quotes and see if I can more widely address the trend I'm seeing develop.

I'm not actually attempting to explain the phenomena that are being discussed. I'm describing a position I hold. I'm also defending it with the same vigor as the purported UFO promoters (or conspiracy promoters). My goal in doing this is to advance a theory which could also explain the available evidence without having to add something "new" (aliens, spaceships, secret government programs, or even ball lightning).

You continue to speak in the same breath, of credible and incredible things, as though to associate the former with the latter. Secret government programs are not incredible things IMO.

The fallibility of human sensory observance is clear to me. Perhaps I have a privileged view of this,

Also, on other manifold occassions, the infallibility, astuteness, and truth inferred or deduced from minimal information, is clear to me. Many people get it right, as well as wrong. I have a privileged view of this.

but I find it to be more consistently true than Dr. House's "everybody lies" (you know, from that Fox show).

.. don't know him or the show. Too much Tee Vee clouds the mind.

I know it sounds, maybe, overly pragmatic, but people are terrible observers.

I know it sounds, maybe, overly pragmatic, but many people are excellent observers.

If you were to rank all forms of evidence you would find "human observation" just above "Rorschach interpretations." (A surprisingly apt comparison since you often find UFO/ghost reports take on the shape and character of the reporter.)

I see it happen often, and it's really a shame. People constantly discredit themselves to the point that there's almost no point in listening anymore:

• She was possessed by a demon
• I was abducted from my bed
• I saw the Loch Ness monster
• A ghost ate all the pie
• My uncle saw a ship disappear in the Bermuda triangle
• I know a real psychic
• I saw him move things with his mind
• They finally caught the real Bigfoot
• Okay, I was wrong last time, but this time I really was abducted
• The sun fell out of the sky and 99,999 other people saw it too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun)
• President Bush is a lizard

(The sad thing is that every person who reads that list will pick ONE of them and say: "Well, come on, man... ________ is real. Don't group it with all that other stuff.")

Awww .. what a stupid list. What is the purpose of it ? We KNOW that there are stoopid people around, but what is the purpose of it ? Why not as well, post a list of great scientists, detectives, intuitive bussinessmen / speculators - all brilliant people who excel in their ability to deduce correctly ?

We are a bunch of barely observant, semi-mobile lumps of consciousness that are completely unequipped to see our own universe.

I think your use of the collective noun here, is spurious. You continue to decpreciate humanity at all cost.

It is only in the last few hundred to a thousand years that the process of science has begun to reveal the truth of the universe around us. Guess what! Reality is way cooler than all those stories we used to make up to explain it. Just stack up cosmology next to Creation theory, and compare the four forces of nature to Chi. Reality isn't limited by human imagination, but Creationism and Chi and so many other concepts so clearly are!

What does this have to do with the possibility of secret advanced military technology ?

Yet, when we stray from properly practiced science, we revert back to our lowest form: seeing lights and shapes and interpreting them as "gods" exacting their will upon the lowly observer. When we step out of the illumination of science, we're blind again... we're back to see spirits, and shadows, and lights, and monsters everywhere!

The properly practiced science of today is the magic of yesterday - to the common man. The magic or impossibility of today is the properly practised science of tommorrow. And the people of any era, including ours, often have a great disparity in their understanding. That is, there are people on this Earth who still believe it's flat, and there are others who believe we're close to a TOE.

You continue to want to tar everyone who doesn't believe as you do, with the same brush.

And this isn't isolated to dumb, stupid, or crazy people... it's a universal condition! We all share in the inadequacies of our observational prowess! Even those of us who are trained to be the best observers of our species are easily fooled if they slip up in the tiniest way when "sciencing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha).

Life to you, seems to be a stasis of slip up, error and inadequacy.

So, Nismar and Jreelawg, I hope you can see why I give a strong weighting to the illusion, confusion, hallucination, and hoax format. It has served me well. To say someone is hallucinating or confused isn't an insult. We all do it! It's not limited to mushroom-guzzling mental patients!

The format of illusion, confusion, hallucination and hoax serves you well ? I guess it would if that's what you're asserting it all is.

Mind you, as an aside, some of the greatest ideas and the greatest insights have come to the greatest of men (science included) in states of hallucination - hynagogia I think they call it.

Have you seen 2D optical illusions? Can you even fathom how easy it would be to fool our minds with a 3D illusion? We see faces on Mars and the eyes of a hollow mask follow us around the room. If we let our guard down for even a moment we get lost in a mire of garbage information, cognitive biases, and total brain failures. Sometimes we can't even pass ideas on because our language is so clumsily crafted. We mean to say one thing to a person but they hear another; the idea is tainted forever in the mind of the other individual free to spread amongst the population.

Cynical? Maybe. But knowing you own limitations as an observer is important. As such, I will wait until we can turn science on a real flying saucer, a real ghost, a real monster, or a real anti-gravity machine before I allow the idea to creep into my brain and infest it with garbage information. It's fun to think about, but until science has really weighed in on the issue, keep that stuff away from the decision-making part of your brain. If you remain sharply skeptical you can only benefit.

Truly, I don't think I've seen such depreciation of mankind in a long time.

Which is more likely,

1. that there exists a secret government project which carefully monitors existing domestic nuclear missile technology and develops ways to momentarily stop it remotely,
2. that an alien civilization has found a tiny blue planet covered in mold somewhere in the far reaches of the sparsely populated end of a mediocre galaxy and has seen the ape-like inhabitants mucking about with nuclear weapons so they stop in and take them offline for about half an hour out of the 60+ years that they've had them, OR
3. a bunch of us silly meat heads got confused?

I'm still arguing for #3 as hard as I can.

Are you ? LOL ..

In post #126 I said ..
But I should iterate here - my strong assertion in this thread, is that they are not extraterrstrials. The militaty thing is a possible alternative. Can you think of any others, other than 'stoopid hallucinating people' ?

Yet in post #128 you rebuked me for this, and said ..
And I can't think of a more biased thing to say than "stupid hallucinating people."

Though now, you're positing ..
a bunch of us silly meat heads got confused? as being the ONLY alternative, and arguing for it as hard as you can ..

Get a grip !

edited - 2nd last line changed.

 

[FlexGunship]

I don't see that the two statements are equivalent. Who is leaping to conclusions here?

There's nothing to this report. The only reason anyone is giving it any weight is because the word "nuclear" is involved. If there had been a power mishap at a Dairy Queen we wouldn't be hearing anything about it.

Also, has the issue of the odds of an ET encounter been addressed? I know Russ had reverted to this point of reference, which is a fallacy. We don't know the odds. We can't say how likely it might be that we would encounter Ets from time to time - it may be a near certainty, or the chances may be zero. So it makes sense to ask if there are any potential examples.

Red herring.

As did Flex, skeptics will often fudge statements to make the evidence seem less compelling [i.e. most = all].

Yikes... really, Ivan? Check out the edit history on my post. You'll notice that I haven't edited it and it still says: "It appears that many of these men have sign affidavits attesting to the fact that they talked to someone who saw something in the sky." There's even a typo in there that I didn't fix.

As did Ivan, most "true believers" will sully any point rather than address the core issue. In this case it's the issue of reliable testimony.

And of course, without a smoking gun, we can always imagine a way to explain away any claim. That's a given. This is especially true if we pick and choose which parts of a report are credible. In short, there are no answers here, only assumptions. As a skeptic, I think this too is important to remember. I am not impressed by sloppy skeptical arguments. In fact, sloppy misrepresentations of the facts by skeptics is what caused me to make my first post about this here at PF. The nonsense coming from so-called skeptics can be as bad as that coming from the true believers.

And yet the skeptics always seem to come out on top! Seems like the two positions might not quite be equal.

I would add that the Post report was rather silly. Clearly it was written with an attitude not worthy of a serious reporter [Fox News level writing]. Also, the reporter's comments about Halt were completely out of context. Halt never said that he photographed anything. That was another group of people [base security] involved in the same incident, but the reporter obviously had no actual knowledge of the Halt report. I would add that I talked with Col. Halt for over an hour by telephone. He doesn't claim that he saw ET. He doesn't know what he saw.

Meh, the whole event was rather silly.

 

[FlexGunship]

In post #126 I said ..
But I should iterate here - my strong assertion in this thread, is that they are not extraterrstrials. The militaty thing is a possible alternative. Can you think of any others, other than 'stoopid hallucinating people' ?

Yet in post #128 you rebuked me for this, and said ..
And I can't think of a more biased thing to say than "stupid hallucinating people."

Though now, you're positing ..
a bunch of us silly meat heads got confused? as being the ONLY alternative.

Get a grip !

I don't know if you misunderstood, or if this is intentional misconstruction, but my post was trying to tell you clearly that the two alternatives are not "military" and "hallucination." If you read the whole thing you'd know that.

Further more, in the quote you pulled out, I was drawing attention to the fact that you grouped the words "stupid" and "hallucinating." That's a biased view of people who hallucinate.

Lastly, I believe we were still talking about the Iran UFO at that point.

If I'm the one in need of a better grip, then you've already fallen off the edge.

 

[alt]

Further more, in the quote you pulled out, I was drawing attention to the fact that you grouped the words "stupid" and "hallucinating." That's a biased view of people who hallucinate.

Oh .. you were correcting my grammar then - my tautology.

Like, as in 'silly' being a biased view of people who are 'meat heads'

Got it now.

 

[nismaratwork]

Bottom line: this report (having read it now) covers a SINGLE malfunction in 1968... the rest is hearsay about seeing flying disks and a theory that, "they are trying to send us a message."

ONE malfunction in the 60's in Montana is just that... one malfunction. The rest are the usual "sightings", and the source no longer matters, especially as they've become convinced of an entire narrative which calls their objectivity into question. The only remarkable thing here is that the reporting leading up to this press event was so incredibly misleading.

 

[FlexGunship]

Oh .. you were correcting my grammar then - my tautology.

Like, as in 'silly' being a biased view of people who are 'meat heads'

Got it now.

There's a stark contrast between calling a hallucinating person "stupid" and describing the human race as "silly meat heads." The condition of hallucination has been shown to affect all individuals regardless of IQ or knowledge; so it is certainly not limited to "stoopid" people. The condition of poor observation is also a conditional affecting all humans, regardless of IQ.

If you literally cannot tell the difference between a broad statement about the human race as a whole and an insult directed at those who experience a hallucination, then I sincerely don't know how you can take part in this conversation. I'll leave the discussion there for the benefit of the thread as a whole.

I will continue more relevant discussion in a separate post.

 

[FlexGunship]

Bottom line: this report (having read it now) covers a SINGLE malfunction in 1968... the rest is hearsay about seeing flying disks and a theory that, "they are trying to send us a message."

I think that's an important distinction. You can almost tell how good an observation is by how much interpretation comes with it. Someone who says: "I saw a red light in the sky" is more reliable than someone who says: "they are trying to send a message" simply because they have provided less interpretation of their experience.

There also seems to be a human impetus to support one's conclusions by bending or exaggerating since the passing on of information so often loses impact as compared to the original event.

"Yeah, I caught this fish... it was huge. No, seriously, dude... HUGE! I thought I had caught a Volvo at first."

ONE malfunction in the 60's in Montana is just that... one malfunction. The rest are the usual "sightings", and the source no longer matters, especially as they've become convinced of an entire narrative which calls their objectivity into question. The only remarkable thing here is that the reporting leading up to this press event was so incredibly misleading.

Well, people love UFO stories. I do, too. I'm waiting for a seriously compelling one; the day we find out we've been visited by ETs or that the U.S. military has discovered some amazing new insight into the workings of the universe there will be a real cause célèbre.

We should also keep in mind the constant desire for attention from our fellow humans. I think this goes a long way to explaining abduction stories and alien contact stories. It's not that it's actually impossible, it's just much more likely that the person is feeling lonely, has convinced themselves they've experienced some amazing event, and just "went with it."

 

[mugaliens]

I hope you can see why I give a strong weighting to the illusion, confusion, hallucination, and hoax format. It has served me well. To say someone is hallucinating or confused isn't an insult. We all do it! It's not limited to mushroom-guzzling mental patients!

Our brains are incredible pattern recognition machines. They evolved that way as the ability to recognize patterns rapidly and accurately increased our chances of survival. The problem is, they evolved in the woodlands, jungles, and deserts. They're far beyond the times when it comes to modern society, whether it's the concrete urban jungles or various things we have flying and orbiting overhead.

This fallability is further exacerbated by the deluge of UFO programs on TV. Watching them actually trains one's brain to falsely recognize various things as a UFO instead of puzzling out what what they really might be.

Have you seen 2D optical illusions? Can you even fathom how easy it would be to fool our minds with a 3D illusion?

As in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKanr-kNEJs"?

But knowing you own limitations as an observer is important.

Absolutely.

Which is more likely,

1. that there exists a secret government project which carefully monitors existing domestic nuclear missile technology and develops ways to momentarily stop it remotely,
2. that an alien civilization has found a tiny blue planet covered in mold somewhere in the far reaches of the sparsely populated end of a mediocre galaxy and has seen the ape-like inhabitants mucking about with nuclear weapons so they stop in and take them offline for about half an hour out of the 60+ years that they've had them, OR
3. a bunch of us silly meat heads got confused?

I'm still arguing for #3 as hard as I can.

Probably. I wouldn't close the door on #1, though. Whether it's true or not, I haven't a clue. It is. however, plausible.

 

[nismaratwork]

Our brains are incredible pattern recognition machines. They evolved that way as the ability to recognize patterns rapidly and accurately increased our chances of survival. The problem is, they evolved in the woodlands, jungles, and deserts. They're far beyond the times when it comes to modern society, whether it's the concrete urban jungles or various things we have flying and orbiting overhead.

This fallability is further exacerbated by the deluge of UFO programs on TV. Watching them actually trains one's brain to falsely recognize various things as a UFO instead of puzzling out what what they really might be.



As in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKanr-kNEJs"?



Absolutely.



Probably. I wouldn't close the door on #1, though. Whether it's true or not, I haven't a clue. It is. however, plausible.

#1 is still plausible, but the problem is that this story is no longer valid support for that hypothesis. Ah well.

 

[FlexGunship]

Probably. I wouldn't close the door on #1, though. Whether it's true or not, I haven't a clue. It is. however, plausible.

Well, here's where I've been misquoted so many times. I'm going to be very very clear: clandestine military operations are (at the moment) a better explanation for some sightings than ETs or even ICHH (illusion, confusion, hallucination, and hoax).

However, you must apply some filters here, especially since there is a strong precedent with the F-117, the B-2, and the SR-71. I firmly believe the U.S. military is testing some of the most advanced aircraft ever conceived right now, and they are doing it secretly! However, history has shown, they don't operate with signal lights, they make noise, they don't perform 'impossible' maneuvers, and (in general) they don't operate above populated areas or interfere with the normal workings of other governmental agencies.

Therefore, in my carefully considered opinion, it's not a very good explanation in these types of situations. This particular instance has shown this to be true yet again.

Could there be a secret government agency called the "Men In Black?" Sure! But there's no reason to believe that.

Could the greatest breakthrough in aerial maneuvering have happened under the watch of the U.S.A.F.? Sure! but there's no reason to believe that.

Could there be cross-breeding between reptile aliens and humans? Sure! But there's no reason to believe that.

Could people often mistake confusing events and report them erroneously? Sure! And there's lots of reasons to believe that.

EDIT: Typo

 

[FlexGunship]

Probably. I wouldn't close the door on #1, though. Whether it's true or not, I haven't a clue. It is. however, plausible.

Actually, Mug, if you entirely ignore the sightings outside of the building, this hypothesis gets a little bit better. It would make sense for the military/government to have a way to remotely disable a nuclear missile silo in the event that it were overrun and the operating crew were taken hostage.

In that case, it would simply be a switch unknown to the operators (for security reasons) which could be remotely triggered. Of course, there would be no reason at all to involve an aircraft/balloon/disc to accomplish this; so that part of the "report" is still superfluous.

I still think, however, that the primary operating crew would be informed of the test if that were the case. Simulating intermittent malfunctions would surely demoralize the operators there ("first my Walkman breaks, now the integrated nuclear missile launch system breaks... what next?").

 

[nismaratwork]

Actually, Mug, if you entirely ignore the sightings outside of the building, this hypothesis gets a little bit better. It would make sense for the military/government to have a way to remotely disable a nuclear missile silo in the event that it were overrun and the operating crew were taken hostage.

In that case, it would simply be a switch unknown to the operators (for security reasons) which could be remotely triggered. Of course, there would be no reason at all to involve an aircraft/balloon/disc to accomplish this; so that part of the "report" is still superfluous.

I still think, however, that the primary operating crew would be informed of the test if that were the case. Simulating intermittent malfunctions would surely demoralize the operators there ("first my Walkman breaks, now the integrated nuclear missile launch system breaks... what next?").

It's very hard to imagine that a missile launch control site could be overrun, and if it were you'd need to extract the relevant codes from personal. The most efficient means of stopping such a scenario is just to blow the silo to hell in that event, introduce an incapacitant into the air supply, rely on the loyalty and training of the personnel, and at the most you could shoot down a ballistic missile when you KNOW where it's being launched. Once the silo doors open, a cruise missile or F-** could blast the missile with no fear of a nuclear detonation.

The only feasible reason to shut down the launch capability of a control center is offensive in nature, or as a means to delay a hostile launch.

 

[FlexGunship]

The only feasible reason to shut down the launch capability of a control center is offensive in nature, or as a means to delay a hostile launch.

Heh, I didn't say it was likely... only more likely. You have a good point, of course. I would, again, emphasize the very low probability of there existing a device which could "universally" deactivate the launch electronics of a nuclear missile. As evidence I point to the "universal remote control."

Ever try to set one of those up? "If you have Sony, point the remote at the TV and press Fn + 5, and channel-up... if you have Panasonic, point the remote at the sun and press Ctrl + Alt while cycling through volume settings."

 

[nismaratwork]

Heh, I didn't say it was likely... only more likely. You have a good point, of course. I would, again, emphasize the very low probability of there existing a device which could "universally" deactivate the launch electronics of a nuclear missile. As evidence I point to the "universal remote control."

Ever try to set one of those up? "If you have Sony, point the remote at the TV and press Fn + 5, and channel-up... if you have Panasonic, point the remote at the sun and press Ctrl + Alt while cycling through volume settings."

I honestly don't know enough about nuclear weapons' launch systems to have a clue, and I assume anyone who does isn't at liberty to speak of it. I suppose you could be right, but it may be there's a safeguard of some kind that be triggered in a fairly universal sense, given the common genesis of the designs. It's also possible that the previous sentence is laughable, but I AM pretty sure that we'll never know!

 

[FlexGunship]

I suppose you could be right, but it may be there's a safeguard of some kind that be triggered in a fairly universal sense, given the common genesis of the designs.

When i was in the military/aerospace industry (for a short time) there weren't even common mechanisms for shutting down cockpit power in a fighter. The mechanism for disengaging the HUD (specifically) was non-trivially different for both fighters I worked on.

We should also keep in mind that this wasn't some sort of loss of power, the missiles actually were taken out of ready status. In the industry I work in now, we have many ways of forcing a machine into a safe condition. I can point to a single wire (one of many) that, if cut or removed, would bring the machine safely to a halt and stay there. The power is up and everything is running, the machine is simply in a "stop in safe" mode.

There's more than one wire, too, I should emphasize.

 

[alt]

There's a stark contrast between calling a hallucinating person "stupid" and describing the human race as "silly meat heads." The condition of hallucination has been shown to affect all individuals regardless of IQ or knowledge; so it is certainly not limited to "stoopid" people. The condition of poor observation is also a conditional affecting all humans, regardless of IQ.

If you literally cannot tell the difference between a broad statement about the human race as a whole and an insult directed at those who experience a hallucination, then I sincerely don't know how you can take part in this conversation. I'll leave the discussion there for the benefit of the thread as a whole.

I will continue more relevant discussion in a separate post.

So now, you're trying to make a case that I called ALL hallucinating people stoopid. How trite are you going to get here, in order to extricate yourself from your own creation? In the same post, I said in response to a comment of yours ..

Mind you, as an aside, some of the greatest ideas and the greatest insights have come to the greatest of men (science included) in states of hallucination - hynagogia I think they call it.

..hardly expressing a belief that ALL hallucinating people are stoopid.

And once again, you express your view that in general, the human race are "silly meatheads". Of course, you include yourself in this description too, I take it ?

 

[FlexGunship]

And once again, you express your view that in general, the human race are "silly meatheads". Of course, you include yourself in this description too, I take it ?

Absolutely. I had an entire thread dedicated to the times I thought I saw something inexplicable and forced myself to discount my observations.

Let me bring this back to the most relevant part of the discussion. Our brains are marvels of evolution no matter what biological criteria you use to judge them, however, they fall short in almost every observational aspect.

Firstly, we have a limited angle of view:
[PLAIN]http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/personnel/al/papers/64vision/17_files/image026.jpg

Within that limited angle of view, we have blind spots:
[PLAIN]http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/b/images/blindspot.jpg

After accounting for blind spots, what we can see is only the tiniest part of the EM spectrum:
[URL]http://www.nivitech.com/EM-spectrum.jpg[/URL]

Even when we can see something, we can't draw a straight line with our minds:

Even if we could draw a stright line, we wouldn't be able to tell what color we're looking at:

(Those are the same color, btw)
http://www.optics4kids.com/illusions/images/colorillusion.gif

And then, when we're all done gathering garbage information, our brain mashes it together with all kinds of other stuff we've got stored there:
EDIT: IMAGE DELETED BY AUTHOR

Even if you ignore all of the things we CAN'T see, sometimes we see things images and dots that AREN'T EVEN THERE!
[PLAIN]http://www.brother.co.uk/images/database/defaultshare/all/Brother_Magic_Eye_6.jpg
[URL]http://savasplace.com/content/files/Image/ultimate_optical_illusion.gif[/URL]

For these reasons, we have invented science. We have developed a tool and a process which, all things being equal, is most likely to yield correct results and build a true picture of reality. We've gotten this far as a species because we actively disregard what our senses tell us (i.e. light moves instantaneously, some objects are solid) and ignore intuition.

So, until science has something to say about the UFO phenomenon, I will continue to hold human observation as the guilty party in these sightings.

 

[alt]

I suggest you divert your discussion back to the topic of the thread lest the thread be locked. Some of us are still trying to hold meaningful discourse.

OK. I don't think that all observations and reports of UFO's are the product of silly meatheads as you claim.

As I personally don't believe in ET's (although I can't outrightly exclude the possibility), when thinking about what some (such as this thread subject) might be attributed to, I can only deduce human ingenuity. And that leads to me to consider the likelihood of advanced military technology. I of course can't say much more than this.

But given the propensity that humans have for conquest, I think it quite likely that this is the case.

Unless someone has proof however, we can only speculate. No proof or disproof of anything has yet resulted from this thread. Therefore, as always, UFO threads such as this are going to be speculative, and polarized toward each contributors beliefs.

PS - you might consider amending / deleting your visual aids a few posts back, as they have blown out my (and presumably others) screen size out an impractical width.

Edit - 1st line corrected

 

[FlexGunship]

And that leads to me to consider the likelihood of advanced military technology. I of course can't say much more than this.

And I don't think you need advanced military technology to explain it. In my opinion, leaping to this conclusion is simply "wishful thinking." I wish it were true, too... I'd like the idea of that security, and I'd like the idea that such technology exists.

PS - you might consider amending / deleting your visual aids a few posts back, as they have blown out my (and presumably others) screen size out an impractical width.

Consider it amended. Thanks.

 

[alt]

And I don't think you need advanced military technology to explain it. In my opinion, leaping to this conclusion is simply "wishful thinking." I wish it were true, too... I'd like the idea of that security, and I'd like the idea that such technology exists.

I have no great need or desire to wish for anything in this regard, therefore, I can confidently say that it's not 'wishful thinking' on my part.

 

[FlexGunship]

I have no great need or desire to wish for anything in this regard, therefore, I can confidently say that it's not 'wishful thinking' on my part.

Perhaps "wishful" is not the correct adjective here. The type of thinking I'm trying to describe is really "biased" thinking. Our brains are trained to suspect complexity where misunderstanding is occurring; sometimes that complexity is demonstrated as an "easy to grasp" idea.

"Advanced military technology" is like a blanket you can throw over many kinds of cognitive fires. The phrase is a simple way to express complex ideas (something our brains loooove). We use the phrase to explain things we can't explain under the guise of simplistic representative-complexity.

EDIT: Although this type of thinking doesn't necessarily yield incorrect thinking (calling a collection of cyclic wind patterns a "hurricane," for example, allows us to discuss many intermingled complex weather phenomena), it's wrong to use it without having at least set a base line for that idea.

I think I would feel better if someone were to try to define "advanced military technology" for me. At least then there could be rational discourse about which sighting MIGHT be attributed to it. "What properties could this technology have and by which mechanism could it have these properties?"

 

[jreelawg]

I think I would feel better if someone were to try to define "advanced military technology" for me. At least then there could be rational discourse about which sighting MIGHT be attributed to it. "What properties could this technology have and by which mechanism could it have these properties?"

If we knew the answers to those questions, and were on PF telling the world, I'm sure the military, or whoever the pilots are, they wouldn't appreciate it. And this raises a point which kind of ruins the fun for me. If the phenomena is related to man made craft, then there are probably underlying secrets which are of extreme sensitivity. If this technology is secret, maybe there is a good reason, and maybe it is in the best interest to keep it this way. And as long as countries like North Korea and Iran are around, technological secrets of a certain natures ought to be locked up and the key thrown away.

 

[FlexGunship]

If we knew the answer to those questions, and were on PF telling the world, I'm sure the military wouldn't appreciate it. And this raises a point which kind of ruins the fun for me. If the phenomena is related to man made craft, then there are probably underlying secrets which are of extreme sensitivity. If this technology is secret, maybe there is a good reason, and maybe it is in the best interest to keep it this way. And as long as countries like North Korea and Iran are around, technological secrets of a certain natures ought to be locked up and the key thrown away.

That's really not a reasonable reaction though. To be honest, it actually sounds as if you're oversimplifying the technical achievement you're trying to champion.

If we were to say: "the USAF has a jet that is entirely invisible due to metamaterials in the fuselage" that would be a null statement even if it were 100% true. There's nothing to be gained from this statement. The engineering hours and the physical knowledge that would go into that type of development entirely precludes the viability of a reaction from an opposing air force just because of the disclosure of that information.

Think about it because there really is no precedent.

If the USAF came out with the statement: "Dear North Korea, we have a jet that is invisible, can make 90 degree turns instantaneously, is remotely operated, runs indefinitely, and can leave the atmosphere and basically drop directly down on your nation," what possibly could be the result other than the demoralization of an opposing nation?

What is far more likely is what is happening with the F-22. Truncation of fact. Not disinformation, just truncation. "The F-22 can reach mach 2.7." Well, obviously that's not it's actual top speed! They don't disclose that! "The F-22 is practically invisible to radar." I bet it is! It might even be invisible to radar for all practical purposes.

"Secret" technology is the clever application of existing technology. I don't know of a single instance where truly new technology has been released in a military vehicle first. I'd be interested if we could establish a precedent.

 

[jreelawg]

In a way, I suspect that the above is the case, but I feel uncomfortable assuming the implied world view. In essence, it is more fun to wonder if we are being visiting by aliens, what they might be like, what they might want etc, than it is to wonder if there is a some government conspiracy. I imagine wishful thinking may plays a role in the fact that so many people support the ET hypothesis. Another common error people make, is the assumption that because they were in the military, or were an astronaut, or worked at a nuclear weapons storage facility, that they would be privy to any kind of secret except that which their job requires.

There does seam to be at least one interesting painting of what looks like a flying saucer from the 1700's, but most ancient astronaut stuff is beyond ridiculous. And there are some pre 19'th century UFO reports, but I have seen nothing convincing.

 

[jreelawg]

That's really not a reasonable reaction though. To be honest, it actually sounds as if you're oversimplifying the technical achievement you're trying to champion.

If we were to say: "the USAF has a jet that is entirely invisible due to metamaterials in the fuselage" that would be a null statement even if it were 100% true. There's nothing to be gained from this statement. The engineering hours and the physical knowledge that would go into that type of development entirely precludes the viability of a reaction from an opposing air force just because of the disclosure of that information.

Think about it because there really is no precedent.

If the USAF came out with the statement: "Dear North Korea, we have a jet that is invisible, can make 90 degree turns instantaneously, is remotely operated, runs indefinitely, and can leave the atmosphere and basically drop directly down on your nation," what possibly could be the result other than the demoralization of an opposing nation?

What is far more likely is what is happening with the F-22. Truncation of fact. Not disinformation, just truncation. "The F-22 can reach mach 2.7." Well, obviously that's not it's actual top speed! They don't disclose that! "The F-22 is practically invisible to radar." I bet it is! It might even be invisible to radar for all practical purposes.

"Secret" technology is the clever application of existing technology. I don't know of a single instance where truly new technology has been released in a military vehicle first. I'd be interested if we could establish a precedent.

The problem with all of that, is that if we did have a craft which could do what UFO's are reported to do, then people would want to know how it is possible. How would a physics professor act when a student asked him how the declassified craft is able to seam to defy the laws of physics. It would imply secret physics. ET craft would imply unknown physics. I would prefer the hypothesis that it's actually some kind of hoax, by product of known technology, or natural phenomena.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

"I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence."

-Feynman.

And I take that stance until real evidence shows otherwise. We even have quack astronauts who believe in X Files type ****. You can cherry pick them from any field.