No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public

[SteyrAUG]

I am, as are many, convinced that there's something in our airspace that can't be explained by any known way. The Nimitz event alone is one of many, and there's a handful of them that are a lock for me. That leaves two possibilties:

(1) It's us (human tech)
(2) It's not us

Exploring either of those options brings up a lot of interesting Qs and were covered at length in prior threads. Most probably land on option 1, but that seems to imply we have developed tech that defies physics as we know it, and highly qualified SME's who have seen the capabilities of the UFOs are clear we are not even close to such tech.

The three videos related to the Nimitz event “GIMBAL.wmv,” “GOFAST.wmv,” and “FLIR.mp4" are all unremarkable, with many reasonable explanations and generally of such low quality that like most other "ufo film" evidence are far from anything credible.

Two things drive me crazy about the whole UFO concept.

1. People in government who dismiss footage of what at the time was probably SR-71 flights as "weather balloons" because we are looking at classified tech.

2. People everywhere else who will take the grainiest footage of something in the sky and declare it to be an alien mothership.

Going all the way back to Adamski, the people who are heavily involved in exposing the UFO conspiracy do the most damage to any reasonable evaluation because they have so many credibility problems and make amazingly outlandish claims.

As a basic example of the problem, if we were actually being visited, the US would hardly be the only country to figure that out, for decades the Soviet Union was on it's highest alert scanning for things like U2s. And if both countries realized "hey...there is something bigger going on" money and resources would not have been wasted on Cold Wars, proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam and everything else.

Despite our Cold War posture, when it came time to send probes to other planets, we were the ones that sent the more successful probes to Mars and Russia had more success with Venus and we did a lot of sharing of information. If there were actually confirmed alien space craft flying around the planet you'd have seen an unprecedented level of cooperation.

[SteyrAUG]

I think the issue becomes can we rely on scientists that dismiss supernaturalism from the get go and assume as the only viable position to hold naturalism/materialism. Since naturalism is the only viable position, then it follows that non-living chemicals had to evolve into living things. What else do we have? As improbable as abiogenesis is, it had to happen that way. We're just waiting for science to catch up for the explanation. I think denying the possibility of supernaturalism is irrationalism (some do here, some don't). Even if life does begin from natural processes, here and out there, I wonder how probable it is that it would evolve past the stage of worms, to the stage of interstellar travel.

If you are waiting for science to arrive at your absolute statement, you will be waiting a LONG time because we don't have the ability to falsify or prove the idea. Unsupported absolutes are not science.

[TomMcC]

If you are waiting for science to arrive at your absolute statement, you will be waiting a LONG time because we don't have the ability to falsify or prove the idea. Unsupported absolutes are not science.

Well, I'll just say I haven't heard of or read of anything on the horizon that will replace it anytime soon. If nature is all there is then nature did it. Do I read you right?

[SteyrAUG]

Well, I'll just say I haven't heard of or read of anything on the horizon that will replace it anytime soon. If nature is all there is then nature did it. Do I read you right?

It's an idea, but only that.

We know evolution is a process that exists, we just don't know how that process originated.

We know what we know, we can guess about what we don't know for sure, but until we have a way of proving we are right...at the end of the day we don't know.

I think everything ascribed to the supernatural is simply our placeholder until we come to understand it, that is assuming it actually exists and we are perceiving things correctly. We could probably discuss the nuances of this for years without accomplishing anything more than a slightly more correct understanding of each others beliefs.

But science, if it's actual science, doesn't have a need to fill in all the blanks. The blanks are why science exists. If we truly believed we knew everything and truly believed our assumptions are correct, there wouldn't be any need for science because we'd believe that we already have all of the answers.

The reality of science is that every time we actually get an answer that is complete and definitive, it generates a hundred new questions that we didn't even know enough to ask. If science was as you say, quantum wouldn't exist because it threw everything we were confident and comfortable about into disarray and there isn't a scientist in the world who wouldn't love to be the person to arrive at a unified theory between relativity and quantum, so far there are no takers.

Science would have preferred an infinite and steady state universe that was without beginning even if we couldn't explain why. It was easier to accept, but once we discovered an expanding universe we had to accept a time when there was no space and no time, and that just created a whole bunch of new problems that we haven't completely solved and probably never will because you can't observe anything that happened before the beginning.

Where did life first come from, doesn't matter if it happened here or came adrift on the cosmic sea, it happened first someplace. And again, we don't have any idea how that happened. We know what life forms are made of and we know how life developed from simple forms to more complex life. But we can only guess at how "creation" for lack of a better word, happened.

And if there is a creator that exists in the natural universe, then the supernatural is just another thing that exists that we have difficulty incorporating into a universe that we wish was completely governed by newtonian physics that doesn't seem to play by the rules, kind of like quantum.

So if somebody is genuinely a person of science, they will be the first to say "we don't know." We begin from "we don't know", sometimes we have an idea that we believe might be correct and when we are capable of checking it by repeatable experiments or methods of falsification we sometimes arrive at an answer and typically it is one that was not expected, and they tend to create new and more difficult questions.

If science is as you say it is, scientists would have rejected most of what we know today because we already had an answer or a really good guess. Evolution is complicated, quantum is complicated, an expanding universe that seems to have began from a singularity is complicated. These aren't the results most scientists were hoping for, all we managed to learn is that we don't know as much as we believed we did previous to these discoveries.

[WillBrink]

It's an idea, but only that.

We know evolution is a process that exists, we just don't know how that process originated.

We know what we know, we can guess about what we don't know for sure, but until we have a way of proving we are right...at the end of the day we don't know.

I think everything ascribed to the supernatural is simply our placeholder until we come to understand it, that is assuming it actually exists and we are perceiving things correctly. We could probably discuss the nuances of this for years without accomplishing anything more than a slightly more correct understanding of each others beliefs.

But science, if it's actual science, doesn't have a need to fill in all the blanks. The blanks are why science exists. If we truly believed we knew everything and truly believed our assumptions are correct, there wouldn't be any need for science because we'd believe that we already have all of the answers.

The reality of science is that every time we actually get an answer that is complete and definitive, it generates a hundred new questions that we didn't even know enough to ask. If science was as you say, quantum wouldn't exist because it threw everything we were confident and comfortable about into disarray and there isn't a scientist in the world who wouldn't love to be the person to arrive at a unified theory between relativity and quantum, so far there are no takers.

Science would have preferred an infinite and steady state universe that was without beginning even if we couldn't explain why. It was easier to accept, but once we discovered an expanding universe we had to accept a time when there was no space and no time, and that just created a whole bunch of new problems that we haven't completely solved and probably never will because you can't observe anything that happened before the beginning.

Where did life first come from, doesn't matter if it happened here or came adrift on the cosmic sea, it happened first someplace. And again, we don't have any idea how that happened. We know what life forms are made of and we know how life developed from simple forms to more complex life. But we can only guess at how "creation" for lack of a better word, happened.

And if there is a creator that exists in the natural universe, then the supernatural is just another thing that exists that we have difficulty incorporating into a universe that we wish was completely governed by newtonian physics that doesn't seem to play by the rules, kind of like quantum.

So if somebody is genuinely a person of science, they will be the first to say "we don't know." We begin from "we don't know", sometimes we have an idea that we believe might be correct and when we are capable of checking it by repeatable experiments or methods of falsification we sometimes arrive at an answer and typically it is one that was not expected, and they tend to create new and more difficult questions.

If science is as you say it is, scientists would have rejected most of what we know today because we already had an answer or a really good guess. Evolution is complicated, quantum is complicated, an expanding universe that seems to have began from a singularity is complicated. These aren't the results most scientists were hoping for, all we managed to learn is that we don't know as much as we believed we did previous to these discoveries.

If someone perfectly comfortable with believing in super natural explanations for things, and thinks scientists and science minded people think science has all the answers, then there's really nothing you or I can say that will alter that POV. Science posits a question, then attempts to answer it, and that's all their is too it at the end of the day. The biggest questions that we have, there's no definitive answers, may never be any. Then it's a matter of how much supportive evidence exists to support the Q. There's an incredible amount of supportive evidence for the Big Bang for example, but what existed prior to that is a unknown and when they use the term "singularity" it's fancy science speak for they don't know.

One can suggest higher powers were involved, and that's fine too, but there's no actual supportive evidence for it, and "it must have happened that way" positions are not evidence.

Science is about evidence, and of course does not confirm or deny in any way the existence of higher powers. I don't think most people who are believers in higher powers really appreciate/understand that aspect.

Myself, I try to remain agnostic about it all. As you pointed out, evolution is a fact, that much we know. What got all that started is unknown and the choices are:

God(s)
Aliens
Panspermia (but that sorta passes the buck on origins)
Nature

Minus any evidence to the contrary, nature is the default answer, so getting back on topic, with our n=1 example (Earth...) we simply don't know if life is common, incredibly rare, or we are it in the universe. By the numbers, the last one is statistically unlikely as you know, but fact is, science is still trying to answer that Q. As the man said:

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' - Arthur C. Clarke

[tn1911]

The three videos related to the Nimitz event “GIMBAL.wmv,” “GOFAST.wmv,” and “FLIR.mp4" are all unremarkable, with many reasonable explanations and generally of such low quality that like most other "ufo film" evidence are far from anything credible.

Well then lets here your "many reasonable explanations" then?

Oh and please allow them to account for all the very credible eye witnesses who saw them and maneuvered against them, the radar data from the Nimitz, Princeton and two airborne E-2 Hawkeyes...

[SteyrAUG]

Well then lets here your "many reasonable explanations" then?

Oh and please allow them to account for all the very credible eye witnesses who saw them and maneuvered against them, the radar data from the Nimitz, Princeton and two airborne E-2 Hawkeyes...

They aren't "my" explanations and they are easily found if anyone has even the slightest inclination to do even the most minimum research. Additionally, the explanations don't in any way impugn the integrity of the military pilots and to the best of my knowledge none of the pilots have declared them to be alien space craft.

But as I've stated before, when we actually have some kind of artifact that can be studied, then we can begin this conversation to a point beyond mere speculation.

Right now we have Harry Reid and Marco Rubio who are excited about an idea that the evidence they will evaluate might provide something new. If you want to put your faith in them, that is up to you.

[SteyrAUG]

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' - Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke really did have a way with words.

[tn1911]

They aren't "my" explanations and they are easily found if anyone has even the slightest inclination to do even the most minimum research. Additionally, the explanations don't in any way impugn the integrity of the military pilots and to the best of my knowledge none of the pilots have declared them to be alien space craft.

But as I've stated before, when we actually have some kind of artifact that can be studied, then we can begin this conversation to a point beyond mere speculation.

Right now we have Harry Reid and Marco Rubio who are excited about an idea that the evidence they will evaluate might provide something new. If you want to put your faith in them, that is up to you.

Nope... you posted them as your position. You stated that "The three videos related to the Nimitz event “GIMBAL.wmv,” “GOFAST.wmv,” and “FLIR.mp4" are all unremarkable, with many reasonable explanations".... so lets here them, not excuses...

I'm waiting... lets hear it kid...

[SteyrAUG]

Nope... you posted them as your position. You stated that "The three videos related to the Nimitz event “GIMBAL.wmv,” “GOFAST.wmv,” and “FLIR.mp4" are all unremarkable, with many reasonable explanations".... so lets here them, not excuses...

I'm waiting... lets hear it kid...

So if I post Sagan's position on something it automatically becomes mine to defend? Seriously.

So let's start with extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But you want examples, ok.

These three videos videos has prompted a number of explanations, including drones or unidentified terrestrial aircraft, anomalous or artefactual instrument readings, physical observational phenomena (e.g., parallax), human observational and interpretive error.

As of 2020, the aerial phenomena recorded from the Nimitz and Roosevelt events are characterized by the US Department of Defense as "unidentified". Widespread media attention to these events has motivated theories and speculations from private individuals and groups about the underlying explanation(s), including those focused upon pseudoscience topics such as Ufology. Regarding the pseudoscientific explanations, writer Matthew Gault stated that these events "reflect the same pattern that's played out dozens of times before. Someone sees something strange in the sky...and the public jumps to an illogical conclusion."

Mundane, non-pseudoscientific explanations include instrument or software malfunction/anomaly/artifact, human observational illusion (e.g., parallax) or interpretive error, or common aircraft (e.g., a passenger airliner) or aerial device (e.g., weather balloon), with the science writer Mick West stating that the reported objects in these incidents are "most likely...a relatively slow-moving object like a bird or a balloon," and that "the jet filming it is moving fast, so this creates an illusion of speed against the ocean." West stated that the GIMBAL video can be explained as footage of a distant plane with the apparent rotation actually being the glare in the IR camera rotating.

You will of course want sources...

https://www.cnet.com/news/ufo-navy-a...-to-the-stars/

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/0...edy-of-errors/

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/navy-v...fos-not-aliens

There ya go kid.