Do you belive?

[Hythlodaeus]

Thinking our planet as the only one supporting life in such a huge universe is an absurdity, so of course I believe in out-of-earth lifeforms, but if we're talking about classic UFO conspiracy, there's a lot more to be considered.

To sum it up, kinda like you said, UFO/abduction reports often seem erratic and bizarre, with no constant chain of events that can be traced or analyzed scientifically. Not that all the people who report it are liers, as plenty of 'em have been subjected to polygraph tests that yielded no positive results.

However, and according to known aerospace scientist and UFO investigator Jacques Vallée, none of it seems to make any sense whatsoever. While some cases display what we seem to understand as a classic abduction case, others are completely balls-to-the-wall insane while having evidence that something indeed happened. Now whether this is the fruit of some kind of superior intelligence or some weird natural and/or cultural phenomenon that remains unknown.

[Hobbes]

oh, undoubtedly, i don't think we've ever been "visited" and i don't think we will be any time soon, but i'd love to be wrong.

I have the opposite opinion from what I've read on the subject.

To me the best UFO cases are those reported by military and air traffic sources (specially pilots) since they are made not by the general public but by specialists and in many cases are backed with data (specially unidentified radar tracks). These cases are a minority when compared to the rest of the UFO reports but usually the incidents are usually classified as 'reliable' (several witnesses, images/radar records, etc.) and 'unexplainable'.

And, usually, the official government documents were originally classified as either 'secret' or 'top secret' before they were released to the public. And while the official position is that the phenomena doesn't pose a defense threat, some of them kinda make your neck hair stand up. Just do a search for the Malmstorm Air For Base Nuclear Missile UFO incident, where Air Force personnel reported that a hovering UFO simply hovered over a missile silo and deactivated 10 nuclear missiles inside. And that this happened again on the same day at another nuclear silo on the same base. Or, in another example, the military organization responsible for tracking the skies/space over North America, NORAD, has released documents stating that it had detected over 7,000 unidentified events over a 10 year period in the 1970s. Let's say that 99% of those can be explained as natural phenomena... but what about the remaining 1%?

Now, I understand the official government position of dismissing or refusing to provide explanation for those cases, while at the same time there are official instructions on how to report those incidents, because I honestly don't think they have better options. If they say that aliens are involved, they would need to produce proof. And even if they had proof and revealed it, they'd be admitting that they don't hold complete power anymore.

And also, because I don't believe that whomever is behind those phenomena wants to reveal itself. If they wanted to let the world know about their existence, they would have done it so by now. And while aliens are the usual culprits, there are other possibilities as valid, like time travel, other dimensions, or even humans from Earth. But to me, there's something clearly out there and examining us, since so many valid (IMO) reports exist of actual unidentified craft engaged in deliberate behavior.

[Falko]

lets wait the next 20 years where many within the population have a portable camera ready within 5 seconds
if we have so many incidents there should be clear photos of ufos  at least in developed countries (=with enough cameras)
i predict we will see fakes and somehow grainy unrecognisable pixelblobs (as before)
if they are here they seem to be quite useless its like traveling time into the stoneage and messing with the early homo sapiens with a laserponter

[Solarius Scorch]

if they are here they seem to be quite useless its like traveling time into the stoneage and messing with the early homo sapiens with a laserponter

I think it's a funny and yet profound comparison, that should be used somewhere.

[Hobbes]

lets wait the next 20 years where many within the population have a portable camera ready within 5 seconds
if we have so many incidents there should be clear photos of ufos  at least in developed countries (=with enough cameras)
i predict we will see fakes and somehow grainy unrecognisable pixelblobs (as before)
if they are here they seem to be quite useless its like traveling time into the stoneage and messing with the early homo sapiens with a laserponter

There's already plenty of videos on Youtube - the problem is that 99% of the images you get will be misinterpretations, camera defects or simply hoaxes and there's simply no time to examine all. The best reliable cases are always those were you have several witnesses and different types of records (images, radar, etc.)

Vallee (mentioned before) first considered the extraterrestrial hypothesis but later has stated other ones. That they're caused by a "non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time" that has always interacted with humanity through several means to influence it. Or that the UFOs are caused by a human faction that wants to manipulate public perception and deceive the governments, in order to change the social order. All of them are possible.

[Aldorn]

There's already plenty of videos on Youtube - the problem is that 99% of the images you get will be misinterpretations, camera defects or simply hoaxes and there's simply no time to examine all. The best reliable cases are always those were you have several witnesses and different types of records (images, radar, etc.)

Vallee (mentioned before) first considered the extraterrestrial hypothesis but later has stated other ones. That they're caused by a "non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time" that has always interacted with humanity through several means to influence it. Or that the UFOs are caused by a human faction that wants to manipulate public perception and deceive the governments, in order to change the social order. All of them are possible.

I always wonder how much a supra power would care about humanity... Eventually earth, without really making distinction between us and what we are used to name animals and plants...
If something take care of us, this means it is perhaps itself not so advanced as we would like to think...

[Solarius Scorch]

I always wonder how much a supra power would care about humanity... Eventually earth, without really making distinction between us and what we are used to name animals and plants...
If something take care of us, this means it is itself not so advanced as we would like to think...

But we also don't know what it meant to be a superior intelligence. Perhaps it meant to think of lower intelligences much as we do about fish - which is, not much unless for practical purposes - but on the other hand, perhaps they would have a culture that inclines them to care about us. We just have no data on it whatsoever.

[Souljah1214]

yeah... i also belive that pilots (civilians and military) are credibel persons... Just check out Thomas Mantell or the Gorman Dogfight. Just some examples.... I understand second hand information needs to be handled with care. But i guess a person, qualified for piloting an aircraft, can decide he or she saw something strange, or a new type of airplane (since the design of aircrafts are so similiar)


a bit offtopic..... (i know, iknow again but...) Please help me out with this one. I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 with XP installed on it. I have this problem running games, that they are running well, and then the games start to lag. Im not trying to play the latest games, but like IL2 (which should run perfectly) or Grand Prix Legends (which is a stone age game from 98) etc. I think i have the problem source, since this machine uses an Mobility Radeon X1400 but in my machine specs it says Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset Family. I got the correct driver, and when i want to install it, it says that it cannot find the proper hardware (or something like that). As you all can guess, im not that technical wizard as some of you seems to be, but i like videogaming:) I would appreciate some help of you really.

P.S.: OXC never lagged so it gets from me 5star rating

[Falko]

from https://debunker.com/ufo.html =>  https://debunker.com/texts/black_box_approach_to_ufo_perceptions.html

Aircraft pilots are an excellent example. Just what does their perceptual training consist of? Maccabee (et al.) would have us believe that decades of cockpit experience have developed in such people a dispassionate reflex to note the characteristics of any and all sudden visual apparitions. But this is unreasonable: surviving pilots are people of rapid action, not calm contemplation. Any unusual perception may instinctively be interpreted immediately in its most dangerous possible incarnation, and avoidance action must be executed quickly. Only later, when a sense of surprise (and by conditioned reflex, danger) has passed, can the pilot react closer to the human norm, with curiosity and careful observation.

And what is the most dangerous thing a pilot can see out the window in mid- flight? It is another aircraft, on collision course. The training in observation which pilots therefore obtain over their flying careers is to instantly see if the visual apparition is consistent with some interpretation of an approaching physical aircraft, and if so, react to avoid collision. "Better safe than sorry" is a prudent motto in mid-air.

Hence it should come as no surprise that pilots have repeatedly misinterpreted distant fireball meteors as nearby jets or rockets, have thrown their aircraft into violent evasive maneuvers to dodge a falling satellite sixty miles overhead, have made turns to avoid running into the cloud-shrouded rising crescent moon, and similar cases. Such misperceptions -- which err on the side of caution and hence tend to enhance the survival rate of the percipients -- are regular features of UFO reports by pilots. This is so much so that even Dr. J. Allen Hynek of the Center for UFO Studies remarked in one of his books that "Surprisingly, pilots are among the poorest observers of UFOs" -- a valid generalization which Hynek did not draw appropriate conclusions from, and which he repudiated (or forgot) in later years.

[Souljah1214]

Ok i understand the logic behind this... but whats up with the radar signals? i cant firmly belive that everytime some weather phenoma is behind the "alerts" that would mean all the passenger planes and military jets are this shit of a technology? today we also have to take in consideration the drones (i hate those bastards!)

[yrizoud]

Mandatory XKCD approach:

[Falko]

there is a xkcd for everything
i am no expert in "ufo/alien sightings" (outside of the tv/pc screen) or even amateur
finding the text/link above took a bit time
and am not interested finding more "debunk" texts for the next "but what about ..."-topic sorry

Spoileron radar:

without any idea about reliability of radar my trust in this technique took a downturn with some plane crashes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 (not recent but i read about that because some one saw similarities to 370)

[Souljah1214]

No worries Falko... i didnt wanted you to bring an academic opinion... but i respect your words...

so i guess this topic is drained to the bone... since none of us can bring the "smokingbarrel"

but if an intergalactic war erupts... i hope to "see" you guys in the trenches:D