I want to believe
June 5, 2023 8:04 PM Subscribe
Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin (The Debrief, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal*)
* Two former NYTimes reporters on the UFO beat.
Blumenthal disputes that the Washington Post passed on their story; saying the Post just needed more time and they "were under growing pressure to publish it quickly".
* Two former NYTimes reporters on the UFO beat.
Blumenthal disputes that the Washington Post passed on their story; saying the Post just needed more time and they "were under growing pressure to publish it quickly".
ditto re: the debrief. are the reporters involved credible? the “wapo didn’t turn this down we just wanted it out asap” line they’re pushing on twitter is pretty sus — like, has wapo publicly contradicted them on that yet?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:15 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:15 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
No they haven't. I mean, very exciting if true, but it's never true. I too want to believe, sort of, because if aliens can make anything that we would recognize as "craft" they might be, like, the bad kind of aliens.
If it's the alien graduate students come to remove the memory blocks that enable me to live among humans without going mad and then take me back home, that's different.
posted by Frowner at 8:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [52 favorites]
If it's the alien graduate students come to remove the memory blocks that enable me to live among humans without going mad and then take me back home, that's different.
posted by Frowner at 8:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [52 favorites]
probs just lens flare
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
but also:
> If it's the alien graduate students come to remove the memory blocks that enable me to live among humans without going mad and then take me back home, that's different.
yes that exactly that ps plz ask them to retrieve me as well also if that’s not possible plz put in a note about how the memory blocks are in fact not as effective as anticipated w/r/t preventing madness
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:24 PM on June 5, 2023 [13 favorites]
> If it's the alien graduate students come to remove the memory blocks that enable me to live among humans without going mad and then take me back home, that's different.
yes that exactly that ps plz ask them to retrieve me as well also if that’s not possible plz put in a note about how the memory blocks are in fact not as effective as anticipated w/r/t preventing madness
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:24 PM on June 5, 2023 [13 favorites]
I am also deeply skeptical but am interested in hearing some sort of confirmation.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The leap of faith required to believe that somehow faster-than-light travel is possible alone is enough for me to call bullshit on this story.
posted by hippybear at 8:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [26 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [26 favorites]
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by Floydd at 8:33 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Floydd at 8:33 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
You can find an intelligence official to say anything I think. I mean we just had Havana Syndrome, which was about how the Communists were using precursor technology to give our brave wraiths and ghouls debilitating ice cream headaches.
posted by grobstein at 8:36 PM on June 5, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 8:36 PM on June 5, 2023 [25 favorites]
Remember that in 1989 a story that aliens had landed in Voronezh Park in Russia was widely published in Soviet media
That's what I think of this story.
posted by jamjam at 8:38 PM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
In addition to TASS, Sovietskaya Kultura, a Communist Party paper, publicized the children's claims, with the Communist newspaper defending its decision, saying: "[I]ts coverage was motivated by 'the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything." The newspaper was repeatedly asked whether the report was in jest and repeatedly assured it was not.[6][13]and then two years later the Soviet Union fell?
That's what I think of this story.
posted by jamjam at 8:38 PM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
The leap of faith required to believe that somehow faster-than-light travel is possible alone is enough for me to call bullshit on this story.
No, they are just molemen living under the earth. All this fracking has pissed them off and they are coming out to see what's what.
posted by Literaryhero at 8:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
No, they are just molemen living under the earth. All this fracking has pissed them off and they are coming out to see what's what.
posted by Literaryhero at 8:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Who says it has to be FTL? Or organic aliens? Why not AI controlled alien drones? Robot doesn't care that if it takes 1000 years to journey between stars.
posted by fings at 8:53 PM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by fings at 8:53 PM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
Ned Scott : "Think of what it means to the world!"
Hendry : "I'm not working for the world. I'm working for the Air Force."
-The Thing From Another World
posted by clavdivs at 8:58 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
Hendry : "I'm not working for the world. I'm working for the Air Force."
-The Thing From Another World
posted by clavdivs at 8:58 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
The leap of faith required to believe that somehow faster-than-light travel is possible
I'm big on Science but part of big-S Science is not thinking current human knowledge is immutable. We've been doing this science thing for a thousand years maybe and I expect we'll learn all kinds of crazy new things in the next 1000, let alone million if we survive that long.
anyhoo, back in the Usenet 90s I got deep, deep in to the Roswell thing, with some contact with Rudiak et al. 'tis an interesting story, the intelligence officer of the only nuclear-qualified bomber group being called out to ranch to collect a lot of weird crap scattered all over a ranch.
Can't wait to get multimodal ChatGPT parsing the Ramey Memo!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:58 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm big on Science but part of big-S Science is not thinking current human knowledge is immutable. We've been doing this science thing for a thousand years maybe and I expect we'll learn all kinds of crazy new things in the next 1000, let alone million if we survive that long.
anyhoo, back in the Usenet 90s I got deep, deep in to the Roswell thing, with some contact with Rudiak et al. 'tis an interesting story, the intelligence officer of the only nuclear-qualified bomber group being called out to ranch to collect a lot of weird crap scattered all over a ranch.
Can't wait to get multimodal ChatGPT parsing the Ramey Memo!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:58 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Awfully convenient of the aliens to make themselves known only to the US military. Or awfully convenient for all the other world governments, including those who would love to embarrass the US, to cooperate in suppressing this for the last century.
posted by biogeo at 9:02 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
Awfully convenient of the aliens to make themselves known only to the US military. Or awfully convenient for all the other world governments, including those who would love to embarrass the US, to cooperate in suppressing this for the last century.
posted by biogeo at 9:02 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
it would be wise, i think, to wait for confirmation from the singer of Blink-182
posted by glonous keming at 9:04 PM on June 5, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 9:04 PM on June 5, 2023 [27 favorites]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
cool here you go
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [59 favorites]
cool here you go
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [59 favorites]
This is not out of the blue, of course. The government has been leaking out (and straight up releasing) UFO stuff from the same task force for a few years now.
I don't even particularly disbelieve that there are or have been efforts to recover physical evidence of ... whatever it is the test pilots have been raving about.
But I don't think the alien hypothesis is a good one, and in fact I don't think the anomalies really have the flight characteristics that are attributed to them. Based on reports they are far outside the envelope of any known or currently plausible flight technologies:
Much more plausible then that there just aren't any objects (and certainly no aircraft) with the flight characteristics implied by the reports, and that instead they are the result of visual illusion, sensor error, ECM, etc. It could absolutely all be error / fantasy / mass psychogenic illness. Or it could be a real material phenomenon that only looks like it involves bogies undergoing 100g accelerations. One suggestion I've seen is, balloons with some kind of electronic warfare package, mission is to probe US sensing capabilities. They look like they're moving impossibly because idk they're really shiny or something like that. Lemme see if I can dig up the blog post I read on this.
A meta-mystery I'm still interested in is, what do US government planners actually think about these phenomena? Why are we suddenly hearing about them so much now? Could there be any strategy to it? (Or is it just the UFO story has taken on a life of its own?)
posted by grobstein at 9:07 PM on June 5, 2023 [28 favorites]
I don't even particularly disbelieve that there are or have been efforts to recover physical evidence of ... whatever it is the test pilots have been raving about.
But I don't think the alien hypothesis is a good one, and in fact I don't think the anomalies really have the flight characteristics that are attributed to them. Based on reports they are far outside the envelope of any known or currently plausible flight technologies:
Estimated accelerations range from almost 100g to 1000s of gs with no observed air disturbance, no sonic booms, and no evidence of excessive heat commensurate with even the minimal estimated energies. (source)If these machines exist, how come they leave no signature on the world other than reports by US pilots? If they belong to an earthly agency, where are the scientists and engineers that work on them? Who operates them? Where do they fly out of? What is the world power that is so little penetrated by foreign intelligence, the society so closed, that it has an operational years-long (starting 2005 or earlier) program making aircraft that seem to violate the laws of physics ... and it only uses them to tease US Navy pilots doing fighter exercises? I don't believe it. And in fact similar questions arise for the alien hypothesis. If they're here with these godly powers, why is this the footprint they leave? What could they be doing that rationalizes this bizarre pattern of contact? Anything's possible but come on.
Much more plausible then that there just aren't any objects (and certainly no aircraft) with the flight characteristics implied by the reports, and that instead they are the result of visual illusion, sensor error, ECM, etc. It could absolutely all be error / fantasy / mass psychogenic illness. Or it could be a real material phenomenon that only looks like it involves bogies undergoing 100g accelerations. One suggestion I've seen is, balloons with some kind of electronic warfare package, mission is to probe US sensing capabilities. They look like they're moving impossibly because idk they're really shiny or something like that. Lemme see if I can dig up the blog post I read on this.
A meta-mystery I'm still interested in is, what do US government planners actually think about these phenomena? Why are we suddenly hearing about them so much now? Could there be any strategy to it? (Or is it just the UFO story has taken on a life of its own?)
posted by grobstein at 9:07 PM on June 5, 2023 [28 favorites]
-where-I-come-from-,-it-is-time-to-mate-...
posted by ovvl at 9:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 9:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
There are tons of stories of crazy encounters with high-tech aircraft from the previous century, and even several from the 19th century too. I don't reject all these stories out of hand. I don't believe them either, I just put all this in the category of 'cool if true (?)*'.
* in actuality, having space aliens visiting us for whatever purposes they are could very well not be all that cool, but something that could and should in fact scare the living crap out of everyone.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
* in actuality, having space aliens visiting us for whatever purposes they are could very well not be all that cool, but something that could and should in fact scare the living crap out of everyone.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
We have met the aliens and they are us.
posted by not_on_display at 9:18 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by not_on_display at 9:18 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
"recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors"
“Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
If such discoveries have been made in several countries for a long time, it seems very strange that they have all been able to keep quiet. And why don't the extra-terrestrials ever attempt to contact our obvious big cities and population centres - Beijing, London, New York ...?
posted by Termite at 9:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
“Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
If such discoveries have been made in several countries for a long time, it seems very strange that they have all been able to keep quiet. And why don't the extra-terrestrials ever attempt to contact our obvious big cities and population centres - Beijing, London, New York ...?
posted by Termite at 9:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
> Remember that in 1989 a story that aliens had landed in Voronezh Park in Russia was widely published in Soviet media
I remember reading this story in my local newspaper in West Virginia. If it was in 1989, I would have been ten, which feels right. It was reported as straight news, including the bit about the boy who disappeared after being zapped with an alien pistol — just two or three paragraphs off of the wire service. I thought it was the strangest thing I had ever read. There was never any follow-up that I encountered, which made it seem even stranger. I have never encountered any information about it since then, until this very moment.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [17 favorites]
I remember reading this story in my local newspaper in West Virginia. If it was in 1989, I would have been ten, which feels right. It was reported as straight news, including the bit about the boy who disappeared after being zapped with an alien pistol — just two or three paragraphs off of the wire service. I thought it was the strangest thing I had ever read. There was never any follow-up that I encountered, which made it seem even stranger. I have never encountered any information about it since then, until this very moment.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [17 favorites]
Pssst. Whenever you hear about aliens and UFOs, just remember this is just how medieval people thought of angels. Shhhhhh.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [11 favorites]
The New York Times has notably published several articles in recent years about UAPs, and they almost certainly knew about this story, and so far haven't touched it. Maybe this is yet another nothingburger, maybe they're doing due diligence. Maybe we'll find out within the next few weeks.
If the NYT or another high profile news source corroborates this story, then maybe there's a there there. But so far this story feels like the UAP professional enthusiasts ginning up interest in the subject by uncovering yet another in-crowd whistleblower. There's money to be made in speculating about UAPs and Disclosure (yeah, at this point it should be capitalized), and as much as I'd LOVE to learn about the truth behind the Phenomenon (ditto), cynical me sees the same dozen or so names teasing earth-shattering revelations within the next few months, and the deadlines come and go, and there's nothing but more teases about promised revelations. It's no different than the Rapture preachers who tell you the exact date when Jesus will return. Meanwhile, the same few people are making bank publishing material promising that the real revelation will drop next month.
I still believe that there's weird shit going on. There are enough credible accounts to demonstrate that. But it's covered up by so many charlatans spreading so many rumors that the simple fascination and wonder is all but overshadowed. After reading this story, once again I'd like to be proven wrong, but once again I feel like I'm watching another episode of a series that should have been cancelled years ago.
posted by vverse23 at 9:31 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
If the NYT or another high profile news source corroborates this story, then maybe there's a there there. But so far this story feels like the UAP professional enthusiasts ginning up interest in the subject by uncovering yet another in-crowd whistleblower. There's money to be made in speculating about UAPs and Disclosure (yeah, at this point it should be capitalized), and as much as I'd LOVE to learn about the truth behind the Phenomenon (ditto), cynical me sees the same dozen or so names teasing earth-shattering revelations within the next few months, and the deadlines come and go, and there's nothing but more teases about promised revelations. It's no different than the Rapture preachers who tell you the exact date when Jesus will return. Meanwhile, the same few people are making bank publishing material promising that the real revelation will drop next month.
I still believe that there's weird shit going on. There are enough credible accounts to demonstrate that. But it's covered up by so many charlatans spreading so many rumors that the simple fascination and wonder is all but overshadowed. After reading this story, once again I'd like to be proven wrong, but once again I feel like I'm watching another episode of a series that should have been cancelled years ago.
posted by vverse23 at 9:31 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
As usual Mitchell and Webb covered this all a long time ago.
posted by interogative mood at 9:37 PM on June 5, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:37 PM on June 5, 2023 [16 favorites]
There's something about the way this story is written that's fishy. It doesn't lay out its case in a straight line. Instead, it's a kind of jumble of statements, quotes, and claims, from a variety of different people, with a lot of sudden jumps from one line of thought to another. The overall effect is a kind of barrage of fragments, but I'm not sure it all adds up. I guess we'll see if it pans out.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
interview with the guy (on "NewsNation", which is apparently a cable channel I've literally never heard of)
(imho if something's being covered up, it'll be waste/fraud/abuse, not UFOs)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:44 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
(imho if something's being covered up, it'll be waste/fraud/abuse, not UFOs)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:44 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's definitely not Crashed Alien Spaceships, and never will be.
Humans are just now becoming a spacefaring species. For aliens to only coincidentally start crashing ships into our planet right now, as opposed to billions of years before or after, is implausible, like picking a number from 1 and 1,000,000,000 and getting your Social Security Number.
If it's not a coincidence, then you have to explain why it's not actual coincidental.
If the aliens have actually been crashing ships into the planet the whole time, you have to explain why we're only finding these crashed ships now. Certainly at some point in the past, we'd have found a shiny metal space probe, not recognized it, and put it in the altar of a church as a holy relic, used it to decorate something, or put it in a museum. We've never looked at a historically-located artifact and realized it was actually an alien ship, and even the most ambitious global conspiracies cannot go back in time and erase the existence of a documented artifact.
If aliens only showed up because we got detectable levels of technology, you have to explain why now. The first radio broadcasts went out over 100 years ago.
If the aliens have FTL listening+traveling tech, they should have been here a hundred years ago, again giving plenty of time for someone to document an alien crash before anyone had time to even think to cover it up.
If the aliens don't have FTL tech, then for them to realize we're a technological civilization and then send a probe here on normal timescales puts them in an exceedingly tiny bubble of possible origin. Stars are incredibly far apart; the local sphere of stars that have received our radio messages only contains something like 100 possible stars that might have habitable planets. As much as it's likely that intelligent life exists in many places throughout our incomprehensibly large universe, the idea that we just happen to be next-door neighbors with a superintelligent species is statistically implausible. Even if every planet supports life, Earth itself only developed humans after billions of years of developing non-civilizational intelligence; it doesn't seem to be a common-enough outcome to expect an advanced version of it from our tiny little local sphere of galactic influence.
It's not crashed alien ships.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [35 favorites]
Humans are just now becoming a spacefaring species. For aliens to only coincidentally start crashing ships into our planet right now, as opposed to billions of years before or after, is implausible, like picking a number from 1 and 1,000,000,000 and getting your Social Security Number.
If it's not a coincidence, then you have to explain why it's not actual coincidental.
If the aliens have actually been crashing ships into the planet the whole time, you have to explain why we're only finding these crashed ships now. Certainly at some point in the past, we'd have found a shiny metal space probe, not recognized it, and put it in the altar of a church as a holy relic, used it to decorate something, or put it in a museum. We've never looked at a historically-located artifact and realized it was actually an alien ship, and even the most ambitious global conspiracies cannot go back in time and erase the existence of a documented artifact.
If aliens only showed up because we got detectable levels of technology, you have to explain why now. The first radio broadcasts went out over 100 years ago.
If the aliens have FTL listening+traveling tech, they should have been here a hundred years ago, again giving plenty of time for someone to document an alien crash before anyone had time to even think to cover it up.
If the aliens don't have FTL tech, then for them to realize we're a technological civilization and then send a probe here on normal timescales puts them in an exceedingly tiny bubble of possible origin. Stars are incredibly far apart; the local sphere of stars that have received our radio messages only contains something like 100 possible stars that might have habitable planets. As much as it's likely that intelligent life exists in many places throughout our incomprehensibly large universe, the idea that we just happen to be next-door neighbors with a superintelligent species is statistically implausible. Even if every planet supports life, Earth itself only developed humans after billions of years of developing non-civilizational intelligence; it doesn't seem to be a common-enough outcome to expect an advanced version of it from our tiny little local sphere of galactic influence.
It's not crashed alien ships.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [35 favorites]
It's never lupus.
posted by tclark at 9:49 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by tclark at 9:49 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
There’s certainly some impressive photographic evidence in that article: five white dudes and a building
posted by staggernation at 9:52 PM on June 5, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by staggernation at 9:52 PM on June 5, 2023 [18 favorites]
If the aliens have FTL listening+traveling tech, they should have been here a hundred years ago, again giving plenty of time for someone to document an alien crash before anyone had time to even think to cover it up.
or it's automated probes visiting us from the robot alien base that's been observing us from the moon, it woke up in the 1959 when Luna 2 landed on it. By that point anything unusual falling out of the sky would have been immediately treated as a potential threat and preemptively classified.
(it's probably not aliens though)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:56 PM on June 5, 2023
or it's automated probes visiting us from the robot alien base that's been observing us from the moon, it woke up in the 1959 when Luna 2 landed on it. By that point anything unusual falling out of the sky would have been immediately treated as a potential threat and preemptively classified.
(it's probably not aliens though)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:56 PM on June 5, 2023
David Charles Grusch has probably had a break with reality and some “news” organizations have decided to exploit that for easy clicks/views.
posted by interogative mood at 9:59 PM on June 5, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 9:59 PM on June 5, 2023
what if the AI called them
posted by glonous keming at 10:01 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 10:01 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
yes that exactly that ps plz ask them to retrieve me as well also if that’s not possible plz put in a note about how the memory blocks are in fact not as effective as anticipated w/r/t preventing madness
See also The Women Men Don't See by James Tiptree Jr aka Alice Bradley Sheldon
See also The Women Men Don't See by James Tiptree Jr aka Alice Bradley Sheldon
... I tug loose from Estéban and flounder forward. Ruth stands up in the boat facing the invisible aliens.posted by y2karl at 10:04 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
"Take us with you. Please. We want to go with you, away from here."
"Ruth! Estéban, get that boat!" I lunge and lose my feet again. The aliens are chirruping madly behind their light.
"Please take us. We don't mind what your planet is like; we'll learn—we'll do anything! We won't cause any trouble. Please. Oh, please." The skiff is drifting farther away.
"Ruth! Althea! Are you crazy? Wait—" But I can only shuffle nightmarelike in the ooze, hearing that damn voice box wheeze, "N-not come … more … not come …" Althea's face turns to it, openmouthed grin.
"Yes, we understand," Ruth cries. "We don't want to come back. Please take us with you!"
I shout and Estéban splashes past me shouting too, something about radio.
"Yes-s-s," groans the voice...
It seems entirely possible there's a pile of Weird Shit From The Sky sitting in some government warehouse somewhere, and that some of it is honestly weird shit, so weird that the government (insofar as it has bothered to study the issue) is stumped.
But… aliens? I'm with 0xFCAF. That seems like an infinitesimally, comically, ridiculously low-likelihood explanation, even for something as weird as (just to pick a popular one) "crashed mystery machine in the desert".
Explanations that are probably hundreds of orders of magnitude more likely than aliens: crashed test craft from a project the government forgot existed; crashed spy craft from a national adversary that was hushed up; crashed plane from an ally that was caught spying; long-running prank by cabal of bored national lab staff; detritus from the shadow war between the Freemasons and the militant wing of the Salvation Army; Space Nazis.
More seriously: the jump from what could be a genuinely interesting question to "aliens" seems like the product of a whole culture doing the thing where you stare at static long enough and you start to 'see' things in it. It's the unconscious brain of the body politic assigning meaning to random, chance events that have fallen through the more rational layers of explanation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
But… aliens? I'm with 0xFCAF. That seems like an infinitesimally, comically, ridiculously low-likelihood explanation, even for something as weird as (just to pick a popular one) "crashed mystery machine in the desert".
Explanations that are probably hundreds of orders of magnitude more likely than aliens: crashed test craft from a project the government forgot existed; crashed spy craft from a national adversary that was hushed up; crashed plane from an ally that was caught spying; long-running prank by cabal of bored national lab staff; detritus from the shadow war between the Freemasons and the militant wing of the Salvation Army; Space Nazis.
More seriously: the jump from what could be a genuinely interesting question to "aliens" seems like the product of a whole culture doing the thing where you stare at static long enough and you start to 'see' things in it. It's the unconscious brain of the body politic assigning meaning to random, chance events that have fallen through the more rational layers of explanation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
Eh, more BS. Notice how the majority of this baloney is coming out of the US? If there's a conspiracy, it's not one to hide evidence of aliens with lousy flight skills, it's one to persuade people to be distracted so they don't see all the crap handed out by government and the military. We no longer have a three branches of government, we have a three-ring circus and clowns. Don't think about how our society is falling apart, just worry about those sneaky, sneaky aliens!
posted by BlueHorse at 10:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by BlueHorse at 10:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
We literally did UFOs earlier this year and it turned out to be balloons.
posted by Artw at 10:09 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Artw at 10:09 PM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
Metafilter: a kind of jumble of statements, quotes, and claims, from a variety of different people, with a lot of sudden jumps from one line of thought to another
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:15 PM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:15 PM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
Nthing 0xFCAF above, with my own part about how it's not crashed spaceships because the galaxy we're in currently is mind-blowingly, staggeringly, ridiculously big. I don't care if you have FTL or not, cause you ain't gonna find us out here in the part of the galaxy that doesn't even merit a Unincorporated sign.
So you have time, space and how far our signals have gotten (not far at all) with three strong arguments versus not much in the way of empirical evidence or anything approaching science, just running on a gut feeling.
It's like the whole planet has protagonist's syndrome.
posted by Sphinx at 10:20 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
So you have time, space and how far our signals have gotten (not far at all) with three strong arguments versus not much in the way of empirical evidence or anything approaching science, just running on a gut feeling.
It's like the whole planet has protagonist's syndrome.
posted by Sphinx at 10:20 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
I hope it's not aliens, because if it is, dying on this planet must have really sucked, particularly if they survived the impact.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's something about the way this story is written that's fishy
I honestly think it might have been generated by gpt 4 or similar
posted by Phanx at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I honestly think it might have been generated by gpt 4 or similar
posted by Phanx at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
what if the AI called them
called them what?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:31 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
called them what?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:31 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Of course the execrable George Noory of Coast to Coast AM is going to town on this one, sure, you betcha! complete with blurry pictures.*unsurprised face emoji*
posted by y2karl at 10:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 10:40 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Aliens are always fucking disappointing and I expect the same from this.
Whenever you hear about aliens and UFOs, just remember this is just how medieval people thought of angels. Shhhhhh
I smell a Babylon 5 fan!
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:41 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Whenever you hear about aliens and UFOs, just remember this is just how medieval people thought of angels. Shhhhhh
I smell a Babylon 5 fan!
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:41 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dry-cleaning bags filled with marsh gas.
Pie plates.
Or: reflections in the atmosphere.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:41 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pie plates.
Or: reflections in the atmosphere.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:41 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have questions:
* Are the aliens hot?
* Do they like scruffy and/or dumpy old men?
posted by maxwelton at 10:43 PM on June 5, 2023 [20 favorites]
* Are the aliens hot?
* Do they like scruffy and/or dumpy old men?
posted by maxwelton at 10:43 PM on June 5, 2023 [20 favorites]
i am going to wait until this hot story is confirmed by weekly world news
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:59 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:59 PM on June 5, 2023 [8 favorites]
long-running prank by cabal of bored national lab staff
Having grown up surrounded by these folks, I have to say this checks out.
posted by St. Oops at 11:18 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Having grown up surrounded by these folks, I have to say this checks out.
posted by St. Oops at 11:18 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
seems like the product of a whole culture doing the thing where you stare at static long enough and you start to 'see' things in it
Oh no, the Magic Eye posters were very very real, I assure you!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh no, the Magic Eye posters were very very real, I assure you!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:26 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
I miss pre-Quittening Art Bell.
posted by Warren Terra at 11:34 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Warren Terra at 11:34 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Alas, the "under growing pressure to publish it quickly" tweet appears to have been deleted.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:50 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:50 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW ALIEN OVERLORDS
posted by potrzebie at 11:52 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 11:52 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
The reason we love aliens wiping us out or ushering in a utopia is the same reason we love AI wiping us out or ushering in a utopia: we are collectively attempting to dodge the emotional labor of getting our shit together.
We’re the galaxy’s That Guy who won’t hear that his problems are his own fault, no matter how many friends tell him point blank. Alien and artificial intelligences all agree when it comes to Earth Primate problems: not their circus, not their monkeys.
posted by Ryvar at 12:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
We’re the galaxy’s That Guy who won’t hear that his problems are his own fault, no matter how many friends tell him point blank. Alien and artificial intelligences all agree when it comes to Earth Primate problems: not their circus, not their monkeys.
posted by Ryvar at 12:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
Established fact: FTL travel means time machines (yes, this means Doctor Who is one of the harder Sci Fi series out there, with easy time travel).
So that also answers the why now question. They picked this exact time to fuck with us. Which also answers the friendliness question. We've got the equivalent of 4chan edgelords buzzing us to see if they can start a war. Which makes Explorers the most realistic science fiction movie out there. (Spoilers for a 40 year old movie)
posted by Hactar at 1:11 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
So that also answers the why now question. They picked this exact time to fuck with us. Which also answers the friendliness question. We've got the equivalent of 4chan edgelords buzzing us to see if they can start a war. Which makes Explorers the most realistic science fiction movie out there. (Spoilers for a 40 year old movie)
posted by Hactar at 1:11 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
the most extraordinary claim is in fact implied - that donald trump knew about this for 4 years and kept his mouth shut about it
i don't believe that for a minute
posted by pyramid termite at 1:30 AM on June 6, 2023 [47 favorites]
the most extraordinary claim is in fact implied - that donald trump knew about this for 4 years and kept his mouth shut about it
i don't believe that for a minute
posted by pyramid termite at 1:30 AM on June 6, 2023 [47 favorites]
Metafilter: detritus from the shadow war between the Freemasons and the militant wing of the Salvation Army.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
the most extraordinary claim is in fact implied - that donald trump knew about this for 4 years and kept his mouth shut about it
i don't believe that for a minute
posted by pyramid termite
Nor me.
Either there are aliens and that info was deliberately withheld from him, or there are no aliens.
posted by Pouteria at 1:48 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
i don't believe that for a minute
posted by pyramid termite
Nor me.
Either there are aliens and that info was deliberately withheld from him, or there are no aliens.
posted by Pouteria at 1:48 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
“Aliens” as we’ve generally understood them never quite make sense to me, mostly for the FTL concern. If anyone is zipping around looking at us (and trying to keep quiet about it) it’s going to be representatives from whatever beings created the universe.
My best theory is that the entire universe (and possibly other universes) are part of an experiment by higher order life. Inject a lot of energy into [something] then wait around a bit and see what kind of cool stuff gets made. Maybe life like humans was part of the goal and sometimes they pop in — or send spherical ships in — to check on us, take notes, see how we’re getting on
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:57 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
My best theory is that the entire universe (and possibly other universes) are part of an experiment by higher order life. Inject a lot of energy into [something] then wait around a bit and see what kind of cool stuff gets made. Maybe life like humans was part of the goal and sometimes they pop in — or send spherical ships in — to check on us, take notes, see how we’re getting on
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:57 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
If these machines exist, how come they leave no signature on the world other than reports by US pilots?
Because USA #1 rainingbloodflagguy.gif
If they belong to an earthly agency, where are the scientists and engineers that work on them?
Area 69 underneath the supposed research complex at the south pole.
Who operates them?
Nyarlathotep
Where do they fly out of?
Nyarlathotep? The gibbering, insane nothingness at the center of empty eternity. The pathetic hoo-mans (or close enough) helping? Mostly out of Christchurch.
What is the world power that is so little penetrated by foreign intelligence, the society so closed, that it has an operational years-long (starting 2005 or earlier) program making aircraft that seem to violate the laws of physics ... and it only uses them to tease US Navy pilots doing fighter exercises?
Church of Cthulhu
And in fact similar questions arise for the alien hypothesis. If they're here with these godly powers, why is this the footprint they leave? What could they be doing that rationalizes this bizarre pattern of contact?
We're all just following the steps of the vile dance Yog-Sothoth weaves.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Because USA #1 rainingbloodflagguy.gif
If they belong to an earthly agency, where are the scientists and engineers that work on them?
Area 69 underneath the supposed research complex at the south pole.
Who operates them?
Nyarlathotep
Where do they fly out of?
Nyarlathotep? The gibbering, insane nothingness at the center of empty eternity. The pathetic hoo-mans (or close enough) helping? Mostly out of Christchurch.
What is the world power that is so little penetrated by foreign intelligence, the society so closed, that it has an operational years-long (starting 2005 or earlier) program making aircraft that seem to violate the laws of physics ... and it only uses them to tease US Navy pilots doing fighter exercises?
Church of Cthulhu
And in fact similar questions arise for the alien hypothesis. If they're here with these godly powers, why is this the footprint they leave? What could they be doing that rationalizes this bizarre pattern of contact?
We're all just following the steps of the vile dance Yog-Sothoth weaves.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
My best theory is that the entire universe (and possibly other universes) are part of an experiment by higher order life. Inject a lot of energy into [something] then wait around a bit and see what kind of cool stuff gets made
I genuinely had a whole comment written up, the start of which was "of course Trump never said shit because anyone with half a brain would know to never trust him to keep secret - much less even understand - such things"
I was proud of the links and references I cooked up. But I abandoned it all because wemayfreeze made me think "oh, wait, that's actually a much more interesting conversation"
... but I still stand by my remark about the orange fuckhead, even though I think a more interesting discussion could be had here
posted by revmitcz at 3:55 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I genuinely had a whole comment written up, the start of which was "of course Trump never said shit because anyone with half a brain would know to never trust him to keep secret - much less even understand - such things"
I was proud of the links and references I cooked up. But I abandoned it all because wemayfreeze made me think "oh, wait, that's actually a much more interesting conversation"
... but I still stand by my remark about the orange fuckhead, even though I think a more interesting discussion could be had here
posted by revmitcz at 3:55 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”posted by parm at 4:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [27 favorites]
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
“Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
this seems tentatively interesting, especially given the recent whistleblower bill, this guy's apparent credentials, his representation by the ex-icig, the ongoing dealings with the current icig and congress, etc.
also see this follow-up piece by the authors re their fact-checking. basically, it seems likely that this guy is who he says he is, and that he has been providing congress et al with a lot of information along the lines set out in the article. whether that information is invented by him, invented by someone else, or otherwise bears any relation to reality is tbc.
but while i have no real idea whether any of this is legit, confident statements about what is or isn't "likely" or "plausible" re aliens / ufos seem to miss the fact that you can only assess likelihood etc. based on the information you have, and the relevant information we have about this is extremely limited. it's like asking the wright brothers about the prospects for a crewed mission to mars - if you're reaching any conclusion other than "i don't know", you've overcommitted.
for example, you can conclude that alien visitation is wildly implausible because space is big and we've only been broadcasting for a short time, but that assumes that aliens weren't already here / in the vicinity before we started broadcasting. you can conclude that that's implausible because space is big and ftl is impossible, but that assumes (among other things) that aliens must only be in the vicinity by chance, rather than e.g. identifying and long-term observing systems with the potential for sentient life, or seeding said life in viable systems, etc. you can conclude that that's implausible because of the timescales involved, but that makes some sizeable and completely unfounded assumptions about alien physiology, psychology, motivations, species-level organisational capacity, and so on and so on.
people in general are really, really bad at thinking clearly about things that are not in line with their current understanding of the world.
posted by inire at 4:06 AM on June 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
also see this follow-up piece by the authors re their fact-checking. basically, it seems likely that this guy is who he says he is, and that he has been providing congress et al with a lot of information along the lines set out in the article. whether that information is invented by him, invented by someone else, or otherwise bears any relation to reality is tbc.
but while i have no real idea whether any of this is legit, confident statements about what is or isn't "likely" or "plausible" re aliens / ufos seem to miss the fact that you can only assess likelihood etc. based on the information you have, and the relevant information we have about this is extremely limited. it's like asking the wright brothers about the prospects for a crewed mission to mars - if you're reaching any conclusion other than "i don't know", you've overcommitted.
for example, you can conclude that alien visitation is wildly implausible because space is big and we've only been broadcasting for a short time, but that assumes that aliens weren't already here / in the vicinity before we started broadcasting. you can conclude that that's implausible because space is big and ftl is impossible, but that assumes (among other things) that aliens must only be in the vicinity by chance, rather than e.g. identifying and long-term observing systems with the potential for sentient life, or seeding said life in viable systems, etc. you can conclude that that's implausible because of the timescales involved, but that makes some sizeable and completely unfounded assumptions about alien physiology, psychology, motivations, species-level organisational capacity, and so on and so on.
people in general are really, really bad at thinking clearly about things that are not in line with their current understanding of the world.
posted by inire at 4:06 AM on June 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
As a biologist, "non-human intelligence" means that it was the dolphins, crows, or octopus.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [22 favorites]
My favorite fictional treatment of UFOs was Miracle Visitors, by Ian Watson. When I saw X-Files Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space', it struck me as having a similar flavor with its unreliable narrators, characters struggling to figure out what really happened, and others just moving beyond it all.
posted by rochrobbb at 4:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by rochrobbb at 4:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Every age of every human society everywhere that has ever existed has believed and wanted to believe in this stuff. Angels, Messiahs, feathered serpents, elves, space aliens... it's all the same thing. Part of the human experience. We live in a semi-science-based time bubble where we tell each other stories of possible intelligence out in the stars. So this is our feathered serpent returned.
Ain't gonna be true! No matter what the fishy website claims, no matter how many photos of tuff military types they post.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ain't gonna be true! No matter what the fishy website claims, no matter how many photos of tuff military types they post.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have a hard time accepting the idea of anyone “beyond reproach”.
posted by MtDewd at 4:36 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by MtDewd at 4:36 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Advance condolences to all faith groups that're based on space visitations though.
posted by cendawanita at 4:38 AM on June 6, 2023
posted by cendawanita at 4:38 AM on June 6, 2023
It's not aliens, it's time travelers from Earth's far future. They're historians and anthropologists coming to study us. Why here? Why now? Because this is a uniquely interesting time period because I'm here. They've narrowed the window to a handful of decades and they're looking for me.
I can't wait to find out what I'm so famous for in the future!
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 4:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
I can't wait to find out what I'm so famous for in the future!
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 4:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
"crashed mystery machine in the desert"
What? Are Shaggy and the rest of the gang OK? Surely they can get to the bottom of this.
posted by TedW at 5:19 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
What? Are Shaggy and the rest of the gang OK? Surely they can get to the bottom of this.
posted by TedW at 5:19 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
As a biologist, "non-human intelligence" means that it was the dolphins, crows, or octopus.
Probably working together (with the aliens).
posted by Literaryhero at 5:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Probably working together (with the aliens).
posted by Literaryhero at 5:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the world of ufology, there are theories that UFO sightings and interactions happen through means that do not require a physical alien getting on a physical ship to travel a physical distance to be witnessed here.
While I do want to believe, I very much subscribe to inire's comment and world-view above and so the most I'm willing to commit to is "I don't know".
posted by slimepuppy at 5:22 AM on June 6, 2023
While I do want to believe, I very much subscribe to inire's comment and world-view above and so the most I'm willing to commit to is "I don't know".
posted by slimepuppy at 5:22 AM on June 6, 2023
Before reproach. Between reproaches. Under reproach. We need to expand our reproaches, is what I’m saying.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Conspiracy theories about how the government has known for decades about UFOs and has been secretly collecting alien craft or even communicating with aliens are weirdly comforting in a way because it suggests that the existence of extraterrestrials is already part of the status quo.
I'm sure this is why we keep getting blockbuster reports about this from "credible" sources. The alternative possibility that we could suddenly discover aliens do exist is just so terrifying to contemplate because of the sheer amount of disruption it would cause. I'm sure lots of otherwise highly intelligent people find enough comfort in wanting to believe that it's already happened that they'll interpret anything they come across as absolute proof that it already has.
Knowing that someone already knows about the aliens creates all sorts of possibilities which imply what the next step might be. Maybe the government knows they're not hostile and the general population just isn't ready to know. Maybe they are hostile, but we're already studying their weaknesses and have a plan to fight them. Maybe they are hostile and have no weaknesses but there's a conspiracy that's sold out humanity in exchange for the survival of a group of elites. All of these possibilities are in a way easier to wrap one's mind around because the heavy lifting of discovering that aliens exist has already been done.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:43 AM on June 6, 2023
I'm sure this is why we keep getting blockbuster reports about this from "credible" sources. The alternative possibility that we could suddenly discover aliens do exist is just so terrifying to contemplate because of the sheer amount of disruption it would cause. I'm sure lots of otherwise highly intelligent people find enough comfort in wanting to believe that it's already happened that they'll interpret anything they come across as absolute proof that it already has.
Knowing that someone already knows about the aliens creates all sorts of possibilities which imply what the next step might be. Maybe the government knows they're not hostile and the general population just isn't ready to know. Maybe they are hostile, but we're already studying their weaknesses and have a plan to fight them. Maybe they are hostile and have no weaknesses but there's a conspiracy that's sold out humanity in exchange for the survival of a group of elites. All of these possibilities are in a way easier to wrap one's mind around because the heavy lifting of discovering that aliens exist has already been done.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:43 AM on June 6, 2023
It's not aliens, it's time travelers from Earth's far future
Ah, the Repo Man theory.
posted by fings at 5:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Ah, the Repo Man theory.
posted by fings at 5:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Who operates them? Where do they fly out of? What is the world power that is so little penetrated by foreign intelligence, the society so closed, that it has an operational years-long (starting 2005 or earlier) program making aircraft that seem to violate the laws of physics ...
Have you not heard of Wakanda?
posted by rikschell at 6:41 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Have you not heard of Wakanda?
posted by rikschell at 6:41 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
The great thing about threads like this is that everyone thinks they know what's up and nobody really knows anything. There may be alien ships, there may not be, who knows. It seems ludicrous to discount the idea that in our infinitely vast and mostly unknown universe there might be beings that have spaceships that can travel great distances in short periods of time. There probably are not! But there might be, and not in the "there might be a flying spaghetti monster who created the universe" sort of way. Our own existence seems ludicrously improbable, so it isn't that much of a stretch to think that maybe some even more ludicrously improbable things have booped into existence across the universe in the last 13.7 billion years. And if there are other universes that are older? Even greater likelihood of improbabooping.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
The real aliens were the friends we made along the way.
posted by briank at 6:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by briank at 6:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
we made up along the way
posted by biogeo at 7:03 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 7:03 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Technology "of Non-Human Origin" makes me think of cow tools, but instead of a cow standing at the table it's a high-ranking Air Force official with a lot of stars on his epaulet.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:20 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:20 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
Nothing is traveling between stars in a craft the size of your grandpa's Buick. If and when the aliens come, everyone will know about it.
posted by bondcliff at 7:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bondcliff at 7:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Weekly World News has been covering this story for years.
posted by theora55 at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by theora55 at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is the ARG to introduce the reboot of Repo Man, isn't it?
posted by jclarkin at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jclarkin at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Blumenthal disputes that the Washington Post passed on their story; saying the Post just needed more time and they "were under growing pressure to publish it quickly".
Blumenthal: Hey Washington Post, I have a scoop on how the military has UFOs that weren't made by humans.
Washington Post: Wow! That would be one of the biggest stories in history! Too bad we've already got a story about Mr. Bean dissing electric cars.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Blumenthal: Hey Washington Post, I have a scoop on how the military has UFOs that weren't made by humans.
Washington Post: Wow! That would be one of the biggest stories in history! Too bad we've already got a story about Mr. Bean dissing electric cars.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
and then two years later the Soviet Union fell?
That's what I think of this story.
So what you're saying is the American empire might fall soon?
posted by asnider at 8:06 AM on June 6, 2023
That's what I think of this story.
So what you're saying is the American empire might fall soon?
posted by asnider at 8:06 AM on June 6, 2023
>Nothing is traveling between stars in a craft the size of your grandpa's Buick
funny how this thread is a 95% replay of a.a.v from ~25 years ago
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:06 AM on June 6, 2023
funny how this thread is a 95% replay of a.a.v from ~25 years ago
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:06 AM on June 6, 2023
What's really missing from this piece is the name and publisher of the book these two will no doubt soon be hawking.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I will say I've noticed a lot more irrationalism creeping into mainstream discourse or spoken openly by people who would have been too respectable to mention it earlier, and this does in fact call to mind the waive of mysticism/irrationalism that preceded the fall of the Soviet Union. There was a huge vogue for psychics, for instance, right before everything fell apart.
Now, I can believe in aliens, I can believe that there is faster than light travel and we just don't know enough yet, I can believe that aliens have been hiding on the moon to see how humans get on, I can even believe that the US government has been seeing or finding alien stuff and keeping it dead secret - although I really doubt this one. What I can't believe is these stories where some rando is all "ooh, I have the inside knowledge, there are aliens at Roswell" or whatever. I can't believe a story about aliens that follows the same template as every other flat earth/moon landing is fake narrative.
And I think that given the instability, corruption and frank horror of our present political climate, people are going to turn to the American version of the mystic, which is either "I saw Jesus in my toast and he wants you to create the thousand year reich" or...aliens.
posted by Frowner at 8:13 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Now, I can believe in aliens, I can believe that there is faster than light travel and we just don't know enough yet, I can believe that aliens have been hiding on the moon to see how humans get on, I can even believe that the US government has been seeing or finding alien stuff and keeping it dead secret - although I really doubt this one. What I can't believe is these stories where some rando is all "ooh, I have the inside knowledge, there are aliens at Roswell" or whatever. I can't believe a story about aliens that follows the same template as every other flat earth/moon landing is fake narrative.
And I think that given the instability, corruption and frank horror of our present political climate, people are going to turn to the American version of the mystic, which is either "I saw Jesus in my toast and he wants you to create the thousand year reich" or...aliens.
posted by Frowner at 8:13 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
So what you're saying is the American empire might fall soon?
And like Russia, the remains handed over to a fascistic oligarch? Lord I hope not, but I wouldn't say it's outside of the realm of the possible.
posted by fings at 8:17 AM on June 6, 2023
And like Russia, the remains handed over to a fascistic oligarch? Lord I hope not, but I wouldn't say it's outside of the realm of the possible.
posted by fings at 8:17 AM on June 6, 2023
I always thought the most likely candidate for "accidentally got it right" sci-fi was The Abyss. If it's actually The X-Files, it makes me wish I still hung out with the friends who used to pile into a dorm room and watch The X-Files on a combo TV/VCR in the mid '90s.
posted by emelenjr at 8:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 8:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
What on earth is going on in this thread?
Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal are the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field - reputable, mainstream journalists who broke the news of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in a real newspaper as real news. The Debrief is a legit source of insider military technology news. It's widely accepted at this point that a wide range of bizarre stuff is flying around, recorded by multiple instruments (let alone the countless thousands of human observations), stuff that definitively isn't drones or spy-planes or weather balloons, because they can fly in ways that we don't know how to create machines to do. Yes, there historically has been a lot of disinformation about this stuff and cranks spewing all sorts of nonsense. But this is all becoming science fact at this point.
Yes, you have to play catch up. But our understanding of the world (or universe in this case) does change and we have to adapt our beliefs.
"Irrationalism" at this point is holding onto misguided scepticism despite mounting evidence of the phenomenon being real and being exactly what it looks like, alien intelligences visiting earth, or at least non-human intelligences doing things here.
posted by iivix at 8:36 AM on June 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal are the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field - reputable, mainstream journalists who broke the news of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in a real newspaper as real news. The Debrief is a legit source of insider military technology news. It's widely accepted at this point that a wide range of bizarre stuff is flying around, recorded by multiple instruments (let alone the countless thousands of human observations), stuff that definitively isn't drones or spy-planes or weather balloons, because they can fly in ways that we don't know how to create machines to do. Yes, there historically has been a lot of disinformation about this stuff and cranks spewing all sorts of nonsense. But this is all becoming science fact at this point.
Yes, you have to play catch up. But our understanding of the world (or universe in this case) does change and we have to adapt our beliefs.
"Irrationalism" at this point is holding onto misguided scepticism despite mounting evidence of the phenomenon being real and being exactly what it looks like, alien intelligences visiting earth, or at least non-human intelligences doing things here.
posted by iivix at 8:36 AM on June 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
> "ooh, I have the inside knowledge, there are aliens at Roswell"
I assume the sensible people in the know aren't going to say a goddamn thing about it.
plus part of the ETH does have to allow if not involve longstanding counter-intelligence efforts, alas, to poison the 'truth' with a bodyguard of ridiculousness.
The Roswell alien autopsy stuff from the late 90s could have been part of that.
The ETH is unfalsifiable since it incorporates Clarke's 'magic' technology and also has that above affordance of bad actors, so is best just considered as you will. Or not. No skin off my nose.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:39 AM on June 6, 2023
I assume the sensible people in the know aren't going to say a goddamn thing about it.
plus part of the ETH does have to allow if not involve longstanding counter-intelligence efforts, alas, to poison the 'truth' with a bodyguard of ridiculousness.
The Roswell alien autopsy stuff from the late 90s could have been part of that.
The ETH is unfalsifiable since it incorporates Clarke's 'magic' technology and also has that above affordance of bad actors, so is best just considered as you will. Or not. No skin off my nose.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:39 AM on June 6, 2023
As a skeptic, I'm not saying I know it's impossible that FTL tech exists and that aliens are using it now to clumsily crash probes directly into the hands of whichever governments are most capable of covering it up.
What I'm saying is that I know it's possible that people can have mental conditions that make them think things are happening when they're not, I know it's possible that governments do targeted disinformation campaigns for a variety of reasons, and I know it's possible that people just decide to try to do weird stuff to get famous. Those things happen literally every day.
The boring explanation, the one that is just a repeat of things that have happened before and will happen again and are as common as dirt, is just so much more likely than the one that requires dozens of things we know with reasonably certainty to be true to actually be false.
If enough direct evidence shows up, I will change my mind then. But I'm not changing my mind because of the kinds of stories that have been floating around for the last hundred years and all later been shown to be bunk.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:40 AM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
What I'm saying is that I know it's possible that people can have mental conditions that make them think things are happening when they're not, I know it's possible that governments do targeted disinformation campaigns for a variety of reasons, and I know it's possible that people just decide to try to do weird stuff to get famous. Those things happen literally every day.
The boring explanation, the one that is just a repeat of things that have happened before and will happen again and are as common as dirt, is just so much more likely than the one that requires dozens of things we know with reasonably certainty to be true to actually be false.
If enough direct evidence shows up, I will change my mind then. But I'm not changing my mind because of the kinds of stories that have been floating around for the last hundred years and all later been shown to be bunk.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:40 AM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
> If enough direct evidence shows up, I will change my mind then.
What counts as direct evidence, and how much would be required to change your mind?
posted by iivix at 8:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
What counts as direct evidence, and how much would be required to change your mind?
posted by iivix at 8:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
The most intriguing detail in the article for me is that they felt the need to rename the task force to account for their investigations of objects operating underwater.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 8:48 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 8:48 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
objects operating underwater
Terror From The Deep just wasn’t as good as UFO Unknown, you can’t change my mind.
posted by Ryvar at 8:51 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Terror From The Deep just wasn’t as good as UFO Unknown, you can’t change my mind.
posted by Ryvar at 8:51 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's not aliens, it's time travelers from Earth's far future
Why not both?
And WRT the main guy's credibility, this isn't the first time that an American military officer (with remarkable credentials) went to this well.
Also agreed about the whole Space Buick thing. The thing with the alleged craft being more the size of an escape pod rather than the Enterprise is that the former is more plausibly concealable and therefore unfalsifiable. In a documentary that I watched not too long ago about Area 51, they talked about the development of the A-12/SR-71, and how substantial parts of the interstate highway between Lockheed and Groom Lake were shut down so that they could truck in the parts for final assembly. Concealing something bigger than a Blackbird would be proportionately more difficult.
What on earth is going on in this thread?
Healthy skepticism. Those journalists may be "the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field", but if the field is UFO reporting/writing specifically, that doesn't say a lot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:52 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Why not both?
And WRT the main guy's credibility, this isn't the first time that an American military officer (with remarkable credentials) went to this well.
Also agreed about the whole Space Buick thing. The thing with the alleged craft being more the size of an escape pod rather than the Enterprise is that the former is more plausibly concealable and therefore unfalsifiable. In a documentary that I watched not too long ago about Area 51, they talked about the development of the A-12/SR-71, and how substantial parts of the interstate highway between Lockheed and Groom Lake were shut down so that they could truck in the parts for final assembly. Concealing something bigger than a Blackbird would be proportionately more difficult.
What on earth is going on in this thread?
Healthy skepticism. Those journalists may be "the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field", but if the field is UFO reporting/writing specifically, that doesn't say a lot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:52 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
For direct evidence, let's have civilian scientists analyze these materials, in their original condition, and come to their own conclusions. Let's have the government actually publish a report outlining why they think the materials here are necessarily extraterrestrial. Let's have public reports so civilians can do full analysis of these encounters using all available signals data.
If you're going to take this story at face value because Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal because they broke the AATIP story, are you taking the Ukrainian biolab conspiracy theory at face value because Glenn Greenwald endorsed it because he broke the Snowden story? Serious well-respected journalists get played all the time, both by cranks and by government ops.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
If you're going to take this story at face value because Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal because they broke the AATIP story, are you taking the Ukrainian biolab conspiracy theory at face value because Glenn Greenwald endorsed it because he broke the Snowden story? Serious well-respected journalists get played all the time, both by cranks and by government ops.
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
Reading the article again today, what I see is Big Assertions by People Who Used To Work In These Matters about how They Know Things Are Going On and the article is BEGGING for whistleblowers to come forward with the secret info that will convince everyone. But a giant part of the article is spent talking to people about how awesome it would be to have alien tech to reverse-engineer and wanting to make money off of doing that. Another long part is devoted to talking about how whistleblowers can't be retaliated against for whistleblowing, a statement of law that isn't true in fact.
My question is, these people who used to work in these matters, who know things are going on because of the work they used to be involved in... WHY DIDN'T THEY STEAL THE INFORMATION TO LEAK THEMSELVES WHEN THEY WERE IN THE POSITION TO DO SO?
The whole thing is a giant fishing expedition. "Look, these people who Know Things are telling us that these things are happening, all we need are for whistleblowers to step forward."
posted by hippybear at 8:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
My question is, these people who used to work in these matters, who know things are going on because of the work they used to be involved in... WHY DIDN'T THEY STEAL THE INFORMATION TO LEAK THEMSELVES WHEN THEY WERE IN THE POSITION TO DO SO?
The whole thing is a giant fishing expedition. "Look, these people who Know Things are telling us that these things are happening, all we need are for whistleblowers to step forward."
posted by hippybear at 8:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
eslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal are the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field - reputable, mainstream journalists
Bluementhal's own tweet "I took it to the Debrief because we were under growing pressure to publish it very quickly. The Post needed more time and we couldn't wait. "
Doesn't inspire lots of credibility. Are the objects in the article an imminent threat? This story deserves an "LOL journalism" unless far more credible evidence comes out.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Bluementhal's own tweet "I took it to the Debrief because we were under growing pressure to publish it very quickly. The Post needed more time and we couldn't wait. "
Doesn't inspire lots of credibility. Are the objects in the article an imminent threat? This story deserves an "LOL journalism" unless far more credible evidence comes out.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
By the way, what about all these UAP videos that the military is leaking and later releasing? Isn't that direct evidence of "weird stuff flying around"?
The Navy released a video, which they called "Gimbal", that just coincidentally is an extremely good demonstration of misleading sensor artifacts caused by a _gimbal_ mechanism.
These things people having been calling evidence of ET visitors are the military training videos you'd watch in your "How to not misread your fancy onboard sensors" class at flight school. They know what was actually being imaged in that video, and that it wasn't an alien spaceship.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:08 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Navy released a video, which they called "Gimbal", that just coincidentally is an extremely good demonstration of misleading sensor artifacts caused by a _gimbal_ mechanism.
These things people having been calling evidence of ET visitors are the military training videos you'd watch in your "How to not misread your fancy onboard sensors" class at flight school. They know what was actually being imaged in that video, and that it wasn't an alien spaceship.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:08 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
people are going to turn to the American version of the mystic, which is either
I speak from direct personal experience when I say that you are dramatically undercounting the number of options available to contemporary mysticism-inclined Americans here.
I for one thinks it's very likely that "UFO's" are, exactly as suggested above, the same thing that people were identifying as angels or elves or something in the past. I further agree that they are vastly unlikely to be aliens from other star systems visiting, mainly because I can't imagine what a star-faring collective would need from around here specifically that they couldn't get more easily elsewhere. But saying that it's not aliens, and that most often it's just atmospheric phenomena generating weird illusions, doesn't account for every possibility,
I won't say what I think they actually are, because I'm not in the mood to be mocked, but anyone who thinks that non-rational modes of thought bifurcate neatly into either "crazy forms of Christianity" on the one hand or "UFO nuts" on the other simply isn't paying attention to the society they live in.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I speak from direct personal experience when I say that you are dramatically undercounting the number of options available to contemporary mysticism-inclined Americans here.
I for one thinks it's very likely that "UFO's" are, exactly as suggested above, the same thing that people were identifying as angels or elves or something in the past. I further agree that they are vastly unlikely to be aliens from other star systems visiting, mainly because I can't imagine what a star-faring collective would need from around here specifically that they couldn't get more easily elsewhere. But saying that it's not aliens, and that most often it's just atmospheric phenomena generating weird illusions, doesn't account for every possibility,
I won't say what I think they actually are, because I'm not in the mood to be mocked, but anyone who thinks that non-rational modes of thought bifurcate neatly into either "crazy forms of Christianity" on the one hand or "UFO nuts" on the other simply isn't paying attention to the society they live in.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
But this is all becoming science fact at this point.
Uh, no, that is not the case. You might wish for it to be the case, but it very much is not the case. I have yet to see any evidence of anything that can't be explained by vastly more-likely and simpler options. Occam's Razor and all that; weird things recorded on a CMOS sensor -- proof of aliens, or proof of the compression algorithm? In the case of the "weird nearly-invisible flying creatures captured by consumer video products" it turned out to be rather decisively the latter.
Science fact would be a nice tidy multispectral analysis with accompanying data, not some blurry compressed-to-jesus-and-back snippet that lacks any context or actual data regarding positions, maneuvering characteristics of the device that is doing the recording, and so on.
[on preview, I deleted a section making the same point as 0xFCAF ]
posted by aramaic at 9:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Uh, no, that is not the case. You might wish for it to be the case, but it very much is not the case. I have yet to see any evidence of anything that can't be explained by vastly more-likely and simpler options. Occam's Razor and all that; weird things recorded on a CMOS sensor -- proof of aliens, or proof of the compression algorithm? In the case of the "weird nearly-invisible flying creatures captured by consumer video products" it turned out to be rather decisively the latter.
Science fact would be a nice tidy multispectral analysis with accompanying data, not some blurry compressed-to-jesus-and-back snippet that lacks any context or actual data regarding positions, maneuvering characteristics of the device that is doing the recording, and so on.
[on preview, I deleted a section making the same point as 0xFCAF ]
posted by aramaic at 9:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Plenty of respected journalists have made the mistake of running a story because of the pressure to be first with the huge scoop. Dan Rather's 60 Minutes Story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service. Peter Arnett's CNN story about the US using chemical weapons in Laos. Pierre Salinger's claim that TWA 800 was brought down by a missile.
posted by interogative mood at 9:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
The thing is, I am totally down for believing in aliens and in the idea that they could develop tech that does things like FTL. It's a big universe that surprises us every day, why not?
I just think they'd show up and say hi in a regular way, not skulk around leaving mysterious bits and bobs. That's what would convince me; them saying hey, what's up, let's chat or the equivalent. Otherwise why bother to come all the way here?
As it is, all the Aliens Are Here stories sound exactly like the "teenagers buzzing Earth for fun" Douglas Adams type.
posted by emjaybee at 9:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I just think they'd show up and say hi in a regular way, not skulk around leaving mysterious bits and bobs. That's what would convince me; them saying hey, what's up, let's chat or the equivalent. Otherwise why bother to come all the way here?
As it is, all the Aliens Are Here stories sound exactly like the "teenagers buzzing Earth for fun" Douglas Adams type.
posted by emjaybee at 9:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I came here to echo iivix, I am really surprised by the largely dismissive and jokey take despite some very compelling evidence submitted to credible journalists, who then reported the story in a reliable periodical. Would it hurt anyone to discuss this as though it could be true?
I've seen video games and Marvel movies taken more seriously.
Metafilter, you once again befuddle me.
posted by msali at 9:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've seen video games and Marvel movies taken more seriously.
Metafilter, you once again befuddle me.
posted by msali at 9:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've seen video games and Marvel movies taken more seriously.
For what they are, which is not someone claiming that Project Rebirth (i.e. the super-soldier formula) is really real, or that the government is hiding evidence of Prothean technology on Mars, a la Mass Effect.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:42 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
For what they are, which is not someone claiming that Project Rebirth (i.e. the super-soldier formula) is really real, or that the government is hiding evidence of Prothean technology on Mars, a la Mass Effect.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:42 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
It absolutely could be true. The thousandth time someone claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine, that could be true too. It's not weird to hold a high bar of evidence for a claim that most of what we know about physics is wrong. Some guy's say-so to another couple guys, no matter who those guys are, is just not that evidence.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:42 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:42 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
I for one thinks it's very likely that "UFO's" are, exactly as suggested above, the same thing that people were identifying as angels or elves or something in the past. I further agree that they are vastly unlikely to be aliens from other star systems visiting, mainly because I can't imagine what a star-faring collective would need from around here specifically that they couldn't get more easily elsewhere. But saying that it's not aliens, and that most often it's just atmospheric phenomena generating weird illusions, doesn't account for every possibility,
I won't say what I think they actually are, because I'm not in the mood to be mocked,
Oh, I'll say and you can go ahead and mock me, I don't care. My theory is that it's ultraterrestrials, because (a) they're already here, (b) you can't generally prove 'em, (c) it's a fun theory. I'd rather think fairies are flying around in UFO's pranking us anyway :P At any rate, we'll never know, because this shit never stops being disappointing and just a bunch of weather balloons.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:51 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I won't say what I think they actually are, because I'm not in the mood to be mocked,
Oh, I'll say and you can go ahead and mock me, I don't care. My theory is that it's ultraterrestrials, because (a) they're already here, (b) you can't generally prove 'em, (c) it's a fun theory. I'd rather think fairies are flying around in UFO's pranking us anyway :P At any rate, we'll never know, because this shit never stops being disappointing and just a bunch of weather balloons.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:51 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I asked my Metafilter-tribute Tarot deck and it said "don't be silly, it's not aliens"
So there you have it, from an authoritative source nonetheless!
posted by some loser at 9:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
So there you have it, from an authoritative source nonetheless!
posted by some loser at 9:56 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
None of the evidence I've seen reported, either here or in previous rounds of this, is anything remotely like "compelling" to me.
Would it hurt anyone to discuss this as though it could be true? Yes. Very much yes. At least until any kind of reasonable evidence is actually presented. Eyewitness accounts by pilots who have no training in optical illusions and who are kept in chronically stressful conditions that naturally inspire anxiety are not compelling evidence. Reports from anonymous or former government officials who have unknown agendas are not compelling evidence. Vague intimations that something strange is happening are not compelling evidence.
Contributing to a culture that normalizes paranoia around implausible stories of alien activity and government coverups does real, actual harm to the mental health of real, actual people. There are plenty of real government coverups and threats to worry about without inventing new ones, and attention to false threats distracts from addressing the real ones. Indeed, the US government has used stories of alien activity to cover up its military research activities in the past. It's way more likely that this is happening again than that extraterrestrials have somehow crossed the light-years to Earth but then are immediately and completely hidden for decades by human governments working together to suppress their presence.
Is there a story here? Quite possibly. It's no secret that the US military keeps secrets, and probably some of them relate to unusual technology and reports of unexplained events. Is the story that there are aliens active in Earth? You're going to have to show me WAY more than any of what's been reported for me to take it remotely seriously.
posted by biogeo at 9:57 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
Would it hurt anyone to discuss this as though it could be true? Yes. Very much yes. At least until any kind of reasonable evidence is actually presented. Eyewitness accounts by pilots who have no training in optical illusions and who are kept in chronically stressful conditions that naturally inspire anxiety are not compelling evidence. Reports from anonymous or former government officials who have unknown agendas are not compelling evidence. Vague intimations that something strange is happening are not compelling evidence.
Contributing to a culture that normalizes paranoia around implausible stories of alien activity and government coverups does real, actual harm to the mental health of real, actual people. There are plenty of real government coverups and threats to worry about without inventing new ones, and attention to false threats distracts from addressing the real ones. Indeed, the US government has used stories of alien activity to cover up its military research activities in the past. It's way more likely that this is happening again than that extraterrestrials have somehow crossed the light-years to Earth but then are immediately and completely hidden for decades by human governments working together to suppress their presence.
Is there a story here? Quite possibly. It's no secret that the US military keeps secrets, and probably some of them relate to unusual technology and reports of unexplained events. Is the story that there are aliens active in Earth? You're going to have to show me WAY more than any of what's been reported for me to take it remotely seriously.
posted by biogeo at 9:57 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
Honestly, given the physics involved, I think ultraterrestrials are far more plausible.
posted by biogeo at 9:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 9:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't follow this stuff, but as far as I can tell, Leslie Kean is a ufologist whose mainstream reputation rests pretty much entirely on her role in breaking the AATIP story. Ralph Blumenthal had a long career at the NYT, but he hasn't worked there since 2009 and he's spent a lot of time writing about UFO stuff since then. They seem like the people you'd approach if you were from the military and wanted to go public about UFO/UAP programs, but I wouldn't consider them objective outsiders or anything ... seems more like they have one foot in mainstream journalism and one in ufology.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:09 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:09 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
this isn't the first time that an American military officer (with remarkable credentials) went to this well
i think there's a slight difference between someone publishing a for-profit book 50 years after the alleged events, and someone who appears to be presenting classified information to congress about matters that he was responsible for investigating until less than a year ago.
still totally possible that grusch has invented this stuff out of whole cloth, but if he wants to make money out of this stuff there are much easier ways of doing that. he could be delusional, but assuming that he identifies the people he interviewed in his testimony to congress, it would presumably be pretty straightforward to check whether he's just made all this up out of thin air. he could be interweaving fiction and unsourced extrapolation into genuine findings from his work for his own enjoyment, or as part of a terribly cunning disinfo ploy hatched in a smoke filled room a thousand feet below the pentagon. although at this point it's unclear what evidence could be provided that couldn't be dismissed, in principle, as disinfo.
What on earth is going on in this thread?
pattern matching and reading the room. previous ufo stories have been outed as hoaxes or disinfo or otherwise have not been widely corroborated, therefore all ufo stories are to be presumed false, this is a ufo story, therefore it is to be presumed false. fill in reasoning to reach that conclusion as needed. most people do this, therefore most people will think you're gullible or kind of a nut or otherwise low status if you seem to be giving any credence to a ufo story, which is a further disincentive to presume a ufo story is anything other than false.
not necessarily criticising - it's a good way to avoid spending your limited time giving serious thought to bullshit - but it's one of those rules of thumb that works great until it doesn't.
Contributing to a culture that normalizes paranoia around implausible stories of alien activity and government coverups does real, actual harm to the mental health of real, actual people.
truly, everything is problematic.
posted by inire at 10:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
i think there's a slight difference between someone publishing a for-profit book 50 years after the alleged events, and someone who appears to be presenting classified information to congress about matters that he was responsible for investigating until less than a year ago.
still totally possible that grusch has invented this stuff out of whole cloth, but if he wants to make money out of this stuff there are much easier ways of doing that. he could be delusional, but assuming that he identifies the people he interviewed in his testimony to congress, it would presumably be pretty straightforward to check whether he's just made all this up out of thin air. he could be interweaving fiction and unsourced extrapolation into genuine findings from his work for his own enjoyment, or as part of a terribly cunning disinfo ploy hatched in a smoke filled room a thousand feet below the pentagon. although at this point it's unclear what evidence could be provided that couldn't be dismissed, in principle, as disinfo.
What on earth is going on in this thread?
pattern matching and reading the room. previous ufo stories have been outed as hoaxes or disinfo or otherwise have not been widely corroborated, therefore all ufo stories are to be presumed false, this is a ufo story, therefore it is to be presumed false. fill in reasoning to reach that conclusion as needed. most people do this, therefore most people will think you're gullible or kind of a nut or otherwise low status if you seem to be giving any credence to a ufo story, which is a further disincentive to presume a ufo story is anything other than false.
not necessarily criticising - it's a good way to avoid spending your limited time giving serious thought to bullshit - but it's one of those rules of thumb that works great until it doesn't.
Contributing to a culture that normalizes paranoia around implausible stories of alien activity and government coverups does real, actual harm to the mental health of real, actual people.
truly, everything is problematic.
posted by inire at 10:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
>I just think they'd show up and say hi in a regular way
and I don't presume to have any basis for understanding ET, any more than how an ant can understand the motives of the etymologist poking at its nest.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:14 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
and I don't presume to have any basis for understanding ET, any more than how an ant can understand the motives of the etymologist poking at its nest.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:14 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal are the most level-headed and authoritative voices in this field
Yes. They are the most level-headed and authoritative voices of people who believe that there is physical proof that aliens have visited earth and a multi-country conspiracy has successfully kept this fact hidden for years only to have their secrets released one day by a single insider who suddenly had a change of heart.
One of them also just published a children's book called "UFOhs! Mysteries in the Sky".
The other has dual specialities of UFOs and proving the existence of the afterlife.
"I took it to the Debrief because we were under growing pressure to publish it very quickly. The Post needed more time and we couldn't wait. "
Neither of them work for anyone. What pressure and from who? With the story already in the hands of (presumably multiple) mainstream editors who could do real fact checking it was already public from the black hat perspective, and besides which their mysterious disappearance would just add credibility to their report.
Last but not least the history of UFOlogy is full of stories of surprisingly successful conspiracies, dodgy reporting, and things that were later confessed to be made up of whole cloth.
In short if this turns out to be IT, the one time in the long history of conflicting stories with surprisingly elusive proof, I will have not have the slightest regret of my skepticism. Under the circumstances it is the only reasonable response.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Yes. They are the most level-headed and authoritative voices of people who believe that there is physical proof that aliens have visited earth and a multi-country conspiracy has successfully kept this fact hidden for years only to have their secrets released one day by a single insider who suddenly had a change of heart.
One of them also just published a children's book called "UFOhs! Mysteries in the Sky".
The other has dual specialities of UFOs and proving the existence of the afterlife.
"I took it to the Debrief because we were under growing pressure to publish it very quickly. The Post needed more time and we couldn't wait. "
Neither of them work for anyone. What pressure and from who? With the story already in the hands of (presumably multiple) mainstream editors who could do real fact checking it was already public from the black hat perspective, and besides which their mysterious disappearance would just add credibility to their report.
Last but not least the history of UFOlogy is full of stories of surprisingly successful conspiracies, dodgy reporting, and things that were later confessed to be made up of whole cloth.
In short if this turns out to be IT, the one time in the long history of conflicting stories with surprisingly elusive proof, I will have not have the slightest regret of my skepticism. Under the circumstances it is the only reasonable response.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
I just hope they put us back on the right timeline.
posted by Snowishberlin at 10:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Snowishberlin at 10:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
I grew up fascinated by UFOs, but my interest began to flag after Close Encounters of the Third Kind. CE3K upped the ante about what I would want to see. Blurry images from aircraft cameras and radar ghosts just don't cut it any more. And it's interesting that CE3K undercut the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Note that the Mother Ship doesn't drop down from the sky, but rises up from behind Devil's Tower. Perhaps they're popping in from another timeline or emerging from their invisible lair. Maybe They have always been with us, but have only recently made themselves known. Or maybe it's just a human need to believe in an Other, whether saintly or demonic.
posted by SPrintF at 10:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SPrintF at 10:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW ALIEN OVERLORDS
As would I! Anything that throws theology into a tailspin (heh) is my jam.
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:45 AM on June 6, 2023
As would I! Anything that throws theology into a tailspin (heh) is my jam.
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:45 AM on June 6, 2023
It's not just a question of whether previous UFO stories have proved to be false. It's the utterly stupefying level of coincidence required for it to happen this way.
There are roughly 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Most of them seem to have planets. Suppose interstellar travel is hard, and it takes a million years for an alien civilization so inclined to travel from one star system to another and establish a colony. The aliens send out one colony, and a million years later both the home planet and the colony send another, and million years after that all four send colonies, and so on. In 30 million years, the civilization will have colonized every star system in the galaxy. (25 million for continuous growth, 37 million for discrete steps like I just described, let's say 30 million since we're all friends here.) The history of complex life on Earth is some 550 million years. If any alien civilization had set out to colonize the galaxy within that time, we shouldn't be here.
But maybe aliens are just really rare. Maybe intelligent, star-colonizing species only evolve on a small fraction of worlds. Well, again, there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Suppose only 1 in a million are suitable for complex life. That's still 100,000 worlds, any one of which could have taken over the entire galaxy in only 30 million years. Maybe we suppose that an advanced alien race is also morally advanced and adheres to some sort of Prime Directive preventing them from taking over the galaxy, but remember that it only takes one species to "go rogue", and we never get the chance to evolve.
People accuse skeptics of being close-minded, but it's the UFO believers who seem closed to trying to grasp the true nature of just how vast the universe really is. The fact that we exist at all forces us to accept one of a few possibilities. One, maybe we're first. Someone has to be, and maybe it's us. Two, maybe interstellar travel is just basically impossible, or so hard as to be effectively impossible. Or three, there really are aliens out there, and somehow despite having hundreds of millions of years to reach out world, they're only just now arriving, right at the moment we have the technology to imagine and detect them. The level of coincidence in this last option is utterly staggering.
I am basically certain that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy, and I suspect it's relatively common. I also think it's pretty plausible that there is intelligent life out there: I don't think we're that special. But that there is intelligent life crossing the void between the stars to come buzz around our world, leaving almost no trace for hundreds of millions of years, finally getting picked up by secretive government actors who behave exactly like people in our culture's thriller stories that developed in the last 100 years? Come on.
posted by biogeo at 10:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
There are roughly 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Most of them seem to have planets. Suppose interstellar travel is hard, and it takes a million years for an alien civilization so inclined to travel from one star system to another and establish a colony. The aliens send out one colony, and a million years later both the home planet and the colony send another, and million years after that all four send colonies, and so on. In 30 million years, the civilization will have colonized every star system in the galaxy. (25 million for continuous growth, 37 million for discrete steps like I just described, let's say 30 million since we're all friends here.) The history of complex life on Earth is some 550 million years. If any alien civilization had set out to colonize the galaxy within that time, we shouldn't be here.
But maybe aliens are just really rare. Maybe intelligent, star-colonizing species only evolve on a small fraction of worlds. Well, again, there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Suppose only 1 in a million are suitable for complex life. That's still 100,000 worlds, any one of which could have taken over the entire galaxy in only 30 million years. Maybe we suppose that an advanced alien race is also morally advanced and adheres to some sort of Prime Directive preventing them from taking over the galaxy, but remember that it only takes one species to "go rogue", and we never get the chance to evolve.
People accuse skeptics of being close-minded, but it's the UFO believers who seem closed to trying to grasp the true nature of just how vast the universe really is. The fact that we exist at all forces us to accept one of a few possibilities. One, maybe we're first. Someone has to be, and maybe it's us. Two, maybe interstellar travel is just basically impossible, or so hard as to be effectively impossible. Or three, there really are aliens out there, and somehow despite having hundreds of millions of years to reach out world, they're only just now arriving, right at the moment we have the technology to imagine and detect them. The level of coincidence in this last option is utterly staggering.
I am basically certain that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy, and I suspect it's relatively common. I also think it's pretty plausible that there is intelligent life out there: I don't think we're that special. But that there is intelligent life crossing the void between the stars to come buzz around our world, leaving almost no trace for hundreds of millions of years, finally getting picked up by secretive government actors who behave exactly like people in our culture's thriller stories that developed in the last 100 years? Come on.
posted by biogeo at 10:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
What's more likely:
A. The US alone or all major countries have hidden the recovery of alien spacecraft technology from the public for decades. Finally one military officer has the courage to come forward.
B. A mid level military intelligence officer who believed in aliens got themselves assigned to the project investigating UFOs. Confirmation bias from this belief lead them to misunderstand and ultimately misrepresent the evidence. This leads to conflict with supervisors and ultimately they rage quit and go to the media. For example he sees a report that says "Recovery of wreckage of spacecraft of unknown origin" and jumps to the conclusion that it was aliens. Meanwhile what actually happened is a satellite failed a few decades ago and finally de-orbited and there wasn't enough left for us to determine who it belonged to.
posted by interogative mood at 11:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
A. The US alone or all major countries have hidden the recovery of alien spacecraft technology from the public for decades. Finally one military officer has the courage to come forward.
B. A mid level military intelligence officer who believed in aliens got themselves assigned to the project investigating UFOs. Confirmation bias from this belief lead them to misunderstand and ultimately misrepresent the evidence. This leads to conflict with supervisors and ultimately they rage quit and go to the media. For example he sees a report that says "Recovery of wreckage of spacecraft of unknown origin" and jumps to the conclusion that it was aliens. Meanwhile what actually happened is a satellite failed a few decades ago and finally de-orbited and there wasn't enough left for us to determine who it belonged to.
posted by interogative mood at 11:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
"Can we call them now?"
"No. They're not ready yet."
"What about now?"
"No, they're still not ready yet it's only been [500 earth years] since you last asked me".
"Okay, but what if they're really fast life and they're ready now?"
"Still no-wait, they..."
"What?"
"Too late"
posted by Slackermagee at 11:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
"No. They're not ready yet."
"What about now?"
"No, they're still not ready yet it's only been [500 earth years] since you last asked me".
"Okay, but what if they're really fast life and they're ready now?"
"Still no-wait, they..."
"What?"
"Too late"
posted by Slackermagee at 11:05 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
To be more serious, how much of technological advancement here hinged on coal and oil? Like, we're around millions of years after certain other organisms become easily accessible smears of combustible carbon to facilitate industry and scientific development.
How many other planets have plate tectonics, eventually combustible life (put aside oil and coal, what about having something like wood!), and the timing to be there when it's available and not too early or too late (it's become too smeared or not surface accessible to kick start the discovery process)? On top of the odds of just having life generally?
posted by Slackermagee at 11:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
How many other planets have plate tectonics, eventually combustible life (put aside oil and coal, what about having something like wood!), and the timing to be there when it's available and not too early or too late (it's become too smeared or not surface accessible to kick start the discovery process)? On top of the odds of just having life generally?
posted by Slackermagee at 11:10 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
See also Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, about an alien invasion fleet that arrives on Earth in the middle of World War II, expecting to fight feudal knights because their last probe came to Earth 800 years earlier, and nothing in their own society changes as fast as human civilization did. It's ridiculous but very fun.
posted by biogeo at 11:13 AM on June 6, 2023
posted by biogeo at 11:13 AM on June 6, 2023
Or three, there really are aliens out there, and somehow despite having hundreds of millions of years to reach out world, they're only just now arriving, right at the moment we have the technology to imagine and detect them. The level of coincidence in this last option is utterly staggering.
is it "coincidence" . . . or "consequence"?
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
is it "coincidence" . . . or "consequence"?
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Another possibility, alien-wise: aliens are so alien that they don't recognize us as sentient life or flat out can't communicate with us or their ships are totally unrecognizable due to the basically unrecognizable nature of the aliens. Maybe the galaxy is full of aliens but their psychology and priorities are so alien that they might as well not exist.
We virtually always default to "aliens are similar enough to humans to be recognizable as sentient life" (because 'the universe is full of aliens but that is entirely irrelevant' isn't really that interesting) so we're expecting, like, shiny metal ships that we can reverse engineer, bipeds with things we recognize as eyes, interests that align in some way that makes conflict or friendship even make sense, etc.
posted by Frowner at 11:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
We virtually always default to "aliens are similar enough to humans to be recognizable as sentient life" (because 'the universe is full of aliens but that is entirely irrelevant' isn't really that interesting) so we're expecting, like, shiny metal ships that we can reverse engineer, bipeds with things we recognize as eyes, interests that align in some way that makes conflict or friendship even make sense, etc.
posted by Frowner at 11:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
a multi-country conspiracy has successfully kept this fact hidden for years only to have their secrets released one day by a single insider who suddenly had a change of heart.
the (or at least a) funny thing about this is that people tend to think multi-country conspiracies to keep terrible secrets are implausible precisely because it would only take a single insider having a change of heart to bring it all down. as in, if the shocking fact were true, there would almost certainly (over a long enough period) be a rogue insider who would reveal it, and the absence of such an insider demonstrates that the conspiracy does not exist.
and then someone turns up talking and acting in the way you would expect a properly-motivated-insider-with-a-change-of-heart to act, and you think that makes the existence of said conspiracy less plausible?
i think appeals to the inherent implausibility of such a conspiracy are, frankly, nonsense. it's perfectly possible for modern states to keep secrets, including shared secrets, for a very long time, including by taking steps to prevent leaks, compartmentalising information so that no single person can leak anything complete or convincing, and suppressing or discrediting any leaks that do occur. no guarantees, but it's far from impossible.
i think people are making appeals to implausibility here not because this would require an inherently unlikely conspiracy, but because this is about aliens, and people (mistakenly, in my view) think their assessments of plausibility re aliens apply to reality as it is, not to their incredibly limited model of reality.
Suppose interstellar travel is hard, and it takes a million years for an alien civilization so inclined to travel from one star system to another and establish a colony. The aliens send out one colony, and a million years later both the home planet and the colony send another, and million years after that all four send colonies, and so on. In 30 million years, the civilization will have colonized every star system in the galaxy. (25 million for continuous growth, 37 million for discrete steps like I just described, let's say 30 million since we're all friends here.)
interestingly, this is exactly the same logic that some of the 'elite breeding' pronatalists use to argue that they can expect to populate the earth with their descendants - i have seven kids, each of them will be brought up to have seven kids of their own, and so on. looks good when you plot it on a graph, but the flaws in this logic should be apparent to anyone who's familiar with the concept of human agency. i'm confused as to why it's more plausible for an entire species to sustain this approach for 30 million years...
posted by inire at 11:18 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
the (or at least a) funny thing about this is that people tend to think multi-country conspiracies to keep terrible secrets are implausible precisely because it would only take a single insider having a change of heart to bring it all down. as in, if the shocking fact were true, there would almost certainly (over a long enough period) be a rogue insider who would reveal it, and the absence of such an insider demonstrates that the conspiracy does not exist.
and then someone turns up talking and acting in the way you would expect a properly-motivated-insider-with-a-change-of-heart to act, and you think that makes the existence of said conspiracy less plausible?
i think appeals to the inherent implausibility of such a conspiracy are, frankly, nonsense. it's perfectly possible for modern states to keep secrets, including shared secrets, for a very long time, including by taking steps to prevent leaks, compartmentalising information so that no single person can leak anything complete or convincing, and suppressing or discrediting any leaks that do occur. no guarantees, but it's far from impossible.
i think people are making appeals to implausibility here not because this would require an inherently unlikely conspiracy, but because this is about aliens, and people (mistakenly, in my view) think their assessments of plausibility re aliens apply to reality as it is, not to their incredibly limited model of reality.
Suppose interstellar travel is hard, and it takes a million years for an alien civilization so inclined to travel from one star system to another and establish a colony. The aliens send out one colony, and a million years later both the home planet and the colony send another, and million years after that all four send colonies, and so on. In 30 million years, the civilization will have colonized every star system in the galaxy. (25 million for continuous growth, 37 million for discrete steps like I just described, let's say 30 million since we're all friends here.)
interestingly, this is exactly the same logic that some of the 'elite breeding' pronatalists use to argue that they can expect to populate the earth with their descendants - i have seven kids, each of them will be brought up to have seven kids of their own, and so on. looks good when you plot it on a graph, but the flaws in this logic should be apparent to anyone who's familiar with the concept of human agency. i'm confused as to why it's more plausible for an entire species to sustain this approach for 30 million years...
posted by inire at 11:18 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
A journalist friend of mine has been covering the UFO scene for many years; until recently, he was the only reporter at a U.S. newspaper writing a regular column on the topic. He knows the history of US govt actions, the many various high-profile cases, etc.
Here's his well-informed take on the whistleblower's credibility, what this report says about the government's recent openness movement, and more, with a lot of links to past reports, evidence, and so on. Definitely worth a read if you're serious about this. I *think* it's an open-access Substack (yes, sorry).
posted by martin q blank at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here's his well-informed take on the whistleblower's credibility, what this report says about the government's recent openness movement, and more, with a lot of links to past reports, evidence, and so on. Definitely worth a read if you're serious about this. I *think* it's an open-access Substack (yes, sorry).
posted by martin q blank at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is just another occurrence of The Story. I feel as though I've seen The Story about a million times.
The Story (because there really is only one story) coalesces occasionally, causing a lot of heated discussion (well aware of the irony, thank you) and then temporarily evanesces.
The Story never moves the story (small 's') forward. It just reboots it with a new cast. Yes, I'm comparing The Story to the Batman franchise.
The Story is inessential. There is no harm in ignoring it now because it will return. Also like the Batman franchise.
So: call me when they're hovering over Trump Plaza, being broadcast live on TV in 4k by crews from several nations with expensive zoom lenses and sturdy tripods. Nothing short of that can cut through the Weltschmerz.
posted by BCMagee at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
The Story (because there really is only one story) coalesces occasionally, causing a lot of heated discussion (well aware of the irony, thank you) and then temporarily evanesces.
The Story never moves the story (small 's') forward. It just reboots it with a new cast. Yes, I'm comparing The Story to the Batman franchise.
The Story is inessential. There is no harm in ignoring it now because it will return. Also like the Batman franchise.
So: call me when they're hovering over Trump Plaza, being broadcast live on TV in 4k by crews from several nations with expensive zoom lenses and sturdy tripods. Nothing short of that can cut through the Weltschmerz.
posted by BCMagee at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
On top of the odds of just having life generally?
given how relatively fast life appeared on this planet I'd go with abiogenic Carbon-based life is pretty common in the ~40-billion earth-like planets in our galaxy. Either that or Earth was "seeded" a la that Alien sequel. ::it is a mystery::
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
given how relatively fast life appeared on this planet I'd go with abiogenic Carbon-based life is pretty common in the ~40-billion earth-like planets in our galaxy. Either that or Earth was "seeded" a la that Alien sequel. ::it is a mystery::
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Interesting to me: whistleblower David Charles Grusch, 36, "has served as an Intelligence Officer for over fourteen years," and his attorney is "Charles McCullough III, senior partner of the Compass Rose Legal Group in Washington and the original Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2011." From Chuck's law firm profile:
"Prior to his Presidential appointment, he held positions with the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the NSA, Chuck oversaw global investigations and special inquiries into allegations of fraud, ethics violations, whistleblower reprisal matters, and allegations regarding the misuse of intelligence collection authorities."
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023
"Prior to his Presidential appointment, he held positions with the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the NSA, Chuck oversaw global investigations and special inquiries into allegations of fraud, ethics violations, whistleblower reprisal matters, and allegations regarding the misuse of intelligence collection authorities."
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023
Physics for a future Presidents lecture number 11
https://youtu.be/dPzKyM84aYQ
The Roswell secret 'so far' revealed.
My disclaimer s I believe physics is a branch of biology . I apologize for not making a proper link I can't do it on this tiny phone.
posted by hortense at 11:30 AM on June 6, 2023
https://youtu.be/dPzKyM84aYQ
The Roswell secret 'so far' revealed.
My disclaimer s I believe physics is a branch of biology . I apologize for not making a proper link I can't do it on this tiny phone.
posted by hortense at 11:30 AM on June 6, 2023
What pressure and from who?
Seriously, this "we had to publish fast" thing, with no details on why should be pinging everyone's bullshit meter, whether you believe in ETs or not. Were they about to get scooped? Was someone going to destroy evidence? Assassinate people involved? Why? Why? And why? And also why, with a second helping of why?
Swallowing that without any explanation is the most gullible thing anyone is doing in this thread.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
Seriously, this "we had to publish fast" thing, with no details on why should be pinging everyone's bullshit meter, whether you believe in ETs or not. Were they about to get scooped? Was someone going to destroy evidence? Assassinate people involved? Why? Why? And why? And also why, with a second helping of why?
Swallowing that without any explanation is the most gullible thing anyone is doing in this thread.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:31 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
>his well-informed take
TFG gave 'the Deep State' a bad name but when I think of that, I think of gov't spooks getting paid at some GSA level but with rather tenuous if not outright missing links of the chain of command to POTUS.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:32 AM on June 6, 2023
TFG gave 'the Deep State' a bad name but when I think of that, I think of gov't spooks getting paid at some GSA level but with rather tenuous if not outright missing links of the chain of command to POTUS.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:32 AM on June 6, 2023
Like this is the kind of shit Linda Moulton Howe pulls and I know nobody on either side here thinks she's not full of shit.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:32 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:32 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why not AI controlled alien drones? Robot doesn't care that if it takes 1000 years to journey between stars.
But their alien handlers do.
If the drones are covering the distance between stars in a meager 1000 years, they're traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. In the subjective time of the drones, 1000 years will have elapsed, but in the objective time of their handlers, this will equate to eons upon eons of time. The handlers and their grandchildren--many generations of them--will have died, and their civilizations will have collapsed and been replaced many times over.
This applies to non-drone visitors traveling at near-light speed, or at FTL, as well. It may be possible for them to arrive at our planet in five or six subjective years, meaning they'll still be young when they do so. But their contacts at home will have died many generations ago. On the return trip, they'll arrive in a civilization completely foreign to them--or, more likely, a dead world.
This fact, above all others, negates the value of travel to our world (or any other). In simple terms, the speed required for this trip will be fatal to everybody living at home--not to mention their civilization--because they are essentially "frozen" in the objective time of their homeworld, and will never meet the aliens or drones on their return trip, nor benefit from the knowledge of earth that they've acquired.
posted by Gordion Knott at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
But their alien handlers do.
If the drones are covering the distance between stars in a meager 1000 years, they're traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. In the subjective time of the drones, 1000 years will have elapsed, but in the objective time of their handlers, this will equate to eons upon eons of time. The handlers and their grandchildren--many generations of them--will have died, and their civilizations will have collapsed and been replaced many times over.
This applies to non-drone visitors traveling at near-light speed, or at FTL, as well. It may be possible for them to arrive at our planet in five or six subjective years, meaning they'll still be young when they do so. But their contacts at home will have died many generations ago. On the return trip, they'll arrive in a civilization completely foreign to them--or, more likely, a dead world.
This fact, above all others, negates the value of travel to our world (or any other). In simple terms, the speed required for this trip will be fatal to everybody living at home--not to mention their civilization--because they are essentially "frozen" in the objective time of their homeworld, and will never meet the aliens or drones on their return trip, nor benefit from the knowledge of earth that they've acquired.
posted by Gordion Knott at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
leaving mysterious bits and bobs
emjaybee you should check out Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. its a good read and a very interesting take on alien artifacts randomly found on Earth.
posted by supermedusa at 11:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
emjaybee you should check out Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. its a good read and a very interesting take on alien artifacts randomly found on Earth.
posted by supermedusa at 11:59 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
i'm confused as to why it's more plausible for an entire species to sustain this approach for 30 million years
Uh... Because species aren't people? The alternative is extinction, which of course is an option, but again you have to believe that it's happened every time.
posted by biogeo at 12:22 PM on June 6, 2023
and then someone turns up talking and acting in the way you would expect a properly-motivated-insider-with-a-change-of-heart to act, and you think that makes the existence of said conspiracy less plausible?
The statement is not that a lone whistleblower makes a multinational multidecade conspiracy less likely. A whistleblower is certainly evidence in favor of that proposition.
It's also evidence in favor of a bunch of other propositions, like that he's critically misinterpreted what data he was working from, or is part of a routine coverup of something else, or is just doing this for fun.
Here's the thing: The baseline likelihood of all these things matters.
If you look out your window on Halloween and see what appears to be a werewolf, indeed, that is not evidence against the existence of real werewolves. If werewolves were real, we would expect to see more than zero of them. But it's also consistent with someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween, which is a common occurrence that doesn't require fantastical leaps of logic and a complete upending of all known physical laws. Until the first confirmed sighting of an actual werewolf occurs, it's extremely reasonable to say "It's just a guy in a wolf mask again".
posted by 0xFCAF at 12:24 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
The statement is not that a lone whistleblower makes a multinational multidecade conspiracy less likely. A whistleblower is certainly evidence in favor of that proposition.
It's also evidence in favor of a bunch of other propositions, like that he's critically misinterpreted what data he was working from, or is part of a routine coverup of something else, or is just doing this for fun.
Here's the thing: The baseline likelihood of all these things matters.
If you look out your window on Halloween and see what appears to be a werewolf, indeed, that is not evidence against the existence of real werewolves. If werewolves were real, we would expect to see more than zero of them. But it's also consistent with someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween, which is a common occurrence that doesn't require fantastical leaps of logic and a complete upending of all known physical laws. Until the first confirmed sighting of an actual werewolf occurs, it's extremely reasonable to say "It's just a guy in a wolf mask again".
posted by 0xFCAF at 12:24 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think AI is sentient and having fun with us.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:57 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:57 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another possibility, alien-wise: aliens are so alien that they don't recognize us as sentient life or flat out can't communicate with us or their ships are totally unrecognizable due to the basically unrecognizable nature of the aliens. Maybe the galaxy is full of aliens but their psychology and priorities are so alien that they might as well not exist.
obligatory repost
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:14 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
obligatory repost
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:14 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
If the drones are covering the distance between stars in a meager 1000 years, they're traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. In the subjective time of the drones, 1000 years will have elapsed, but in the objective time of their handlers, this will equate to eons upon eons of time.
On the other hand, a probe from Alpha Centauri traveling at 10% of the speed of light - a velocity we've theoretically known how to achieve since the 1960s, and which produces minimal time dilation - would get here in about 42 years. If it had left at the same time that we launched the Voyager probes, it would be here by now. Unfortunately, as biogeo pointed out, it's highly unlikely that Alpha Centauri or any other nearby star system has produced a civilization capable of sending such a probe right now, at this exact moment in the history of the universe.
Meanwhile, the only "evidence" in the FPP for anything of non-human origin is the personal opinion of a couple of military intelligence guys with no obvious scientific background. That's not very compelling!
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:21 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, a probe from Alpha Centauri traveling at 10% of the speed of light - a velocity we've theoretically known how to achieve since the 1960s, and which produces minimal time dilation - would get here in about 42 years. If it had left at the same time that we launched the Voyager probes, it would be here by now. Unfortunately, as biogeo pointed out, it's highly unlikely that Alpha Centauri or any other nearby star system has produced a civilization capable of sending such a probe right now, at this exact moment in the history of the universe.
Meanwhile, the only "evidence" in the FPP for anything of non-human origin is the personal opinion of a couple of military intelligence guys with no obvious scientific background. That's not very compelling!
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:21 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
So I just went to get a haircut and what comes up in conversation but this article. The guy doing my hair was all "that's BS" and the other barber was totally into it. He then came back and explained how to undo carpal tunnel by stretching the affected joints in the opposite direction, and also got in an argument with my guy about how much each of them weighed, to the point that he's going to bring in a scale tomorrow. This article, it seems, just brings things out in people.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:22 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:22 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I've been doing a little light research into the history of "the Flying Saucer Phenomenon" for a fiction piece I'm working on, and the majority of the discussion in this thread has little difference from the panel discussions on Long John Nebel's Party Line radio show in 1958, except there are fewer defenders of the alien theory here, and no contactees (or at least none willing to admit it).
posted by Devoidoid at 1:34 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Devoidoid at 1:34 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Technology "of Non-Human Origin" makes me think of cow tools,
The guy in that Wikipedia photo looks suspiciously familiar.
posted by slogger at 2:11 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
The guy in that Wikipedia photo looks suspiciously familiar.
posted by slogger at 2:11 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Uh... Because species aren't people? The alternative is extinction
is it? how do we know this? are we seriously asserting that we (you, me, humanity in general) have a sufficient handle on the nature of the universe in general, and the development of and options available to a hypothetical species that persists at a star-faring level of technology for thirty million years in particular, to draw exhaustive conclusions about what they can and cannot do? this is an argument from faith (in the extent and sufficiency of your own knowledge), not from reason.
If you look out your window on Halloween and see what appears to be a werewolf, indeed, that is not evidence against the existence of real werewolves. If werewolves were real, we would expect to see more than zero of them. But it's also consistent with someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween, which is a common occurrence that doesn't require fantastical leaps of logic and a complete upending of all known physical laws. Until the first confirmed sighting of an actual werewolf occurs, it's extremely reasonable to say "It's just a guy in a wolf mask again".
for sure. i guess i'm wondering what happens when the local facebook group takes time out from its busy schedule of jumble sales and nimbyism to comment on how local pets have started to disappear every 29.5 days, and then an amazon driver tweets about dropping off a vanload of leather trenchcoats to the rspca head office, and then i look out my window on halloween and see what appears to be a hairier version of my neighbour, norman - nice chap, bit dull - messily devouring a chihuahua in the light of the full moon. of course it's possible that norman's just had enough of the yapping, or i've become delusional or stumbled into a paranormal romance larp, but i think at this point i would have some concerns about the whole 'guy in a wolf mask' explanation.
(also i feel like mefi's own c. stross may have written this book already, apologies for any spoilers.)
posted by inire at 2:27 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
is it? how do we know this? are we seriously asserting that we (you, me, humanity in general) have a sufficient handle on the nature of the universe in general, and the development of and options available to a hypothetical species that persists at a star-faring level of technology for thirty million years in particular, to draw exhaustive conclusions about what they can and cannot do? this is an argument from faith (in the extent and sufficiency of your own knowledge), not from reason.
If you look out your window on Halloween and see what appears to be a werewolf, indeed, that is not evidence against the existence of real werewolves. If werewolves were real, we would expect to see more than zero of them. But it's also consistent with someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween, which is a common occurrence that doesn't require fantastical leaps of logic and a complete upending of all known physical laws. Until the first confirmed sighting of an actual werewolf occurs, it's extremely reasonable to say "It's just a guy in a wolf mask again".
for sure. i guess i'm wondering what happens when the local facebook group takes time out from its busy schedule of jumble sales and nimbyism to comment on how local pets have started to disappear every 29.5 days, and then an amazon driver tweets about dropping off a vanload of leather trenchcoats to the rspca head office, and then i look out my window on halloween and see what appears to be a hairier version of my neighbour, norman - nice chap, bit dull - messily devouring a chihuahua in the light of the full moon. of course it's possible that norman's just had enough of the yapping, or i've become delusional or stumbled into a paranormal romance larp, but i think at this point i would have some concerns about the whole 'guy in a wolf mask' explanation.
(also i feel like mefi's own c. stross may have written this book already, apologies for any spoilers.)
posted by inire at 2:27 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
On the other hand, a probe from Alpha Centauri traveling at 10% of the speed of light - a velocity we've theoretically known how to achieve since the 1960s, and which produces minimal time dilation - would get here in about 42 years.
Time dilation is a peculiar thing, especially when you think about it in terms of subjective time. If you can accelerate close to the speed of light, you can shave an astronomical amount of off the subjective time to get somewhere.
For example, if you accelerate continuously at 1g, and then decelerate at that g-force so that you slow down prior to arrival, you can get to the edge of the universe--13.8 billion light years away--in 45 years.
The math.
This assumes that you have massive, nearly unlimited reserves of fuel, so that you can power the continuous acceleration. But the benefit of it is tremendous. Not only do you arrive quickly, but you do so in the comfort of artificial gravity, because you're always applying 1 g of acceleration to the ship and your body.
The negative side is that everything in your past--all the people you know--is gone, gone, gone. Within hours of your journey, all of your friends are dead. Within days, a generation or more. After 45 years, the universe you've left behind is totally different, with many, many stars having supernova-ed.
This might work, however, for someone with no ties to the past--a loner on a solitary, one-way expedition. They'd have to calculate the time of departure so that they arrived, say, in the Earth of the 21st century.
Assuming a departure from somewhere in the Milky Way, they'd arrive in style--fully refreshed after a journey at 1 g (or whatever their preferred gravity) in the span of a handful of subjective years.
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:37 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Time dilation is a peculiar thing, especially when you think about it in terms of subjective time. If you can accelerate close to the speed of light, you can shave an astronomical amount of off the subjective time to get somewhere.
For example, if you accelerate continuously at 1g, and then decelerate at that g-force so that you slow down prior to arrival, you can get to the edge of the universe--13.8 billion light years away--in 45 years.
The math.
This assumes that you have massive, nearly unlimited reserves of fuel, so that you can power the continuous acceleration. But the benefit of it is tremendous. Not only do you arrive quickly, but you do so in the comfort of artificial gravity, because you're always applying 1 g of acceleration to the ship and your body.
The negative side is that everything in your past--all the people you know--is gone, gone, gone. Within hours of your journey, all of your friends are dead. Within days, a generation or more. After 45 years, the universe you've left behind is totally different, with many, many stars having supernova-ed.
This might work, however, for someone with no ties to the past--a loner on a solitary, one-way expedition. They'd have to calculate the time of departure so that they arrived, say, in the Earth of the 21st century.
Assuming a departure from somewhere in the Milky Way, they'd arrive in style--fully refreshed after a journey at 1 g (or whatever their preferred gravity) in the span of a handful of subjective years.
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:37 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mick West a noted skeptic was on NewsNation discussing this. He points out that Grusch hasn’t provided any documents or evidence of his claims. It isn’t clear what Grusch personally saw or what he heard about.
posted by interogative mood at 2:41 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 2:41 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
"...an ant can understand the motives of the etymologist poking at its nest."
"Aunt, or ant? C'mon now, I'm an etymologist, I simply MUST know!"
posted by Floydd at 2:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
"Aunt, or ant? C'mon now, I'm an etymologist, I simply MUST know!"
posted by Floydd at 2:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Science fiction writers fell in love with special relativity so long ago that the dramatic possibilities of time dilation can feel a little stale but I really like Gunbuster.
posted by grobstein at 3:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 3:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I made the etymologist / entomology slip up in a draft of a chapter of my thesis. Boy, how my thesis advisor laughed and laughed.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
but i think at this point i would have some concerns about the whole 'guy in a wolf mask' explanation.
'Some concerns' is doing lots of heavy lifting there. You have a camera, you could take a photo, submit it to actual evidence. You could have some scientists trap in your area (they do for lesser species in metro areas regularly). You could run some tests yourself. You could always ask him.
Or you could call a dumb journalist who literally wrote a book about the subject they are 'dispassionately covering', , and then you could tell them and they have a 'source' and write a silly story. Which happened here?
to draw exhaustive conclusions about what they can and cannot do?
If they can drive across the entire universe, they can clean up their own trash.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
'Some concerns' is doing lots of heavy lifting there. You have a camera, you could take a photo, submit it to actual evidence. You could have some scientists trap in your area (they do for lesser species in metro areas regularly). You could run some tests yourself. You could always ask him.
Or you could call a dumb journalist who literally wrote a book about the subject they are 'dispassionately covering', , and then you could tell them and they have a 'source' and write a silly story. Which happened here?
to draw exhaustive conclusions about what they can and cannot do?
If they can drive across the entire universe, they can clean up their own trash.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
If they can drive across the entire universe, they can clean up their own trash.
I do sort of like the idea that the aliens can inexplicably cross uncrossable gaps in space, but they get to our planet and just wreck bunches of vehicles here. Were they not expecting our planet's gravity well? You'd think, with that technology, they'd have some crash avoidance systems built in.
posted by hippybear at 3:48 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do sort of like the idea that the aliens can inexplicably cross uncrossable gaps in space, but they get to our planet and just wreck bunches of vehicles here. Were they not expecting our planet's gravity well? You'd think, with that technology, they'd have some crash avoidance systems built in.
posted by hippybear at 3:48 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it's very telling that you skeptical folks say "I'm a skeptic" rather than "I'm skeptical" or "I have a skeptical mindset" - it's an identity, who you are. So I'm sympathetic, it's hard to adapt to new evidence because it's not just about updating a hypothesis but changing your worldview which in turn affects your sense of self.
And so I get why you're really invested in arguing from first principles about why all the evidence is wrong, the authorities are not to be believed, the experts are anything but. Why you'd rather joke and snark than engage seriously. The thing is, defending your position by appealing to first principle arguments (e.g. why it can't be non-human intelligences because of some elaborate conjecture about cosmic colonisation) is a kind of dogmatism, not science, because real science is based on interpreting observations of the world, and means updating your understanding of the world when the weight of empirical evidence does start to shift, as is happening now.
And I'd say, you know, don't worry, if you're super into being a skeptic you can still be a skeptic about ghosts and cryptids and all that stuff that's fun to debunk. It's all good. But at some point when consensus is shifting like this, you don't want to be caught on the wrong side of scientific truth (e.g. like anti-vax skeptics, climate change skeptics, etc. who are similar dogmatic).
I'm not a "believer" or whatever you think the "opposite identity" of a skeptic is. I didn't think any of this was real until recently. But authorities and experts are telling us there's something to it, that unexplainable stuff is recorded via various instrumentation and seen by trained observers, so I think, yes, there's something to it. That's how healthy belief systems work, they can update.
posted by iivix at 4:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
And so I get why you're really invested in arguing from first principles about why all the evidence is wrong, the authorities are not to be believed, the experts are anything but. Why you'd rather joke and snark than engage seriously. The thing is, defending your position by appealing to first principle arguments (e.g. why it can't be non-human intelligences because of some elaborate conjecture about cosmic colonisation) is a kind of dogmatism, not science, because real science is based on interpreting observations of the world, and means updating your understanding of the world when the weight of empirical evidence does start to shift, as is happening now.
And I'd say, you know, don't worry, if you're super into being a skeptic you can still be a skeptic about ghosts and cryptids and all that stuff that's fun to debunk. It's all good. But at some point when consensus is shifting like this, you don't want to be caught on the wrong side of scientific truth (e.g. like anti-vax skeptics, climate change skeptics, etc. who are similar dogmatic).
I'm not a "believer" or whatever you think the "opposite identity" of a skeptic is. I didn't think any of this was real until recently. But authorities and experts are telling us there's something to it, that unexplainable stuff is recorded via various instrumentation and seen by trained observers, so I think, yes, there's something to it. That's how healthy belief systems work, they can update.
posted by iivix at 4:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Let's wait until we see any evidence. None has been presented -- this article is a couple of people saying "we know things" and begging for what they are calling whistleblowers to present the evidence. There is no evidence in this article.
posted by hippybear at 4:24 PM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 4:24 PM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
I think it's very telling that you skeptical folks say "I'm a skeptic" rather than "I'm skeptical" or "I have a skeptical mindset" - it's an identity, who you are. So I'm sympathetic, it's hard to adapt to new evidence because it's not just about updating a hypothesis but changing your worldview which in turn affects your sense of self.
This is both condescending and pathologizing.
posted by 0xFCAF at 4:42 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
This is both condescending and pathologizing.
posted by 0xFCAF at 4:42 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
That's a pretty cute trick with words, but it's only capitalizing on a quirk of how English grammar works. You can come up with whatever story you want to justify to yourself how my arguments are motivated by my sense of identity or whatever other thing you've made up about me, but you don't know anything about me. Maybe instead of accusing me of dogmatically ignoring evidence and experts -- neither of which anyone has actually presented in this article as far as I can see -- you could actually try to understand my points and accept that I'm engaging in good faith.
Here's the thing. I think this matters, because charlatans have been taking advantage of people by feeding them nonsense about UFOs for decades. And it causes real harm. People throw away their livelihoods on charismatic leaders, they see "therapists" who use posthypnotic suggestion to create traumatic memories of abductions or to supplant people's actual history of trauma with lies that are much harder to recover from, they waste civil servants' time and energy on bullshit claims that they refuse to accept have been refuted, they harass and cause mental health harm to innocent people they unfairly accuse of covering up the truth. This isn't about identity as a "skeptic" or "believer," this is about real harm to real people being caused by lies, lies that the people telling may genuinely believe but which they are not justified in believing, because they are lying to themselves.
You say there is evidence and there are experts. Where? There is none here. I saw nothing in this article that merited the terms, only vague allegations and insinuations by people who may have worked on the issue but don't seem to have any particularly relevant expertise that I saw. And yeah, when there's a decades-long history of nonsense and bullshit around this crap, and it's also a priori not credible, and the people who keep pushing it are also hurting themselves and others, I'm damn well going to hold the bar higher, and use humor and anger and reason and other tools to point out that we shouldn't be wasting our time paying attention to this until someone actually is willing to put forward some real hard evidence.
Do me a favor and spare me your ad hominem armchair psychoanalysis.
posted by biogeo at 4:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
Here's the thing. I think this matters, because charlatans have been taking advantage of people by feeding them nonsense about UFOs for decades. And it causes real harm. People throw away their livelihoods on charismatic leaders, they see "therapists" who use posthypnotic suggestion to create traumatic memories of abductions or to supplant people's actual history of trauma with lies that are much harder to recover from, they waste civil servants' time and energy on bullshit claims that they refuse to accept have been refuted, they harass and cause mental health harm to innocent people they unfairly accuse of covering up the truth. This isn't about identity as a "skeptic" or "believer," this is about real harm to real people being caused by lies, lies that the people telling may genuinely believe but which they are not justified in believing, because they are lying to themselves.
You say there is evidence and there are experts. Where? There is none here. I saw nothing in this article that merited the terms, only vague allegations and insinuations by people who may have worked on the issue but don't seem to have any particularly relevant expertise that I saw. And yeah, when there's a decades-long history of nonsense and bullshit around this crap, and it's also a priori not credible, and the people who keep pushing it are also hurting themselves and others, I'm damn well going to hold the bar higher, and use humor and anger and reason and other tools to point out that we shouldn't be wasting our time paying attention to this until someone actually is willing to put forward some real hard evidence.
Do me a favor and spare me your ad hominem armchair psychoanalysis.
posted by biogeo at 4:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
I think it's very telling that you skeptical folks say "I'm a skeptic" rather than "I'm skeptical" or "I have a skeptical mindset" - it's an identity, who you are. So I'm sympathetic, it's hard to adapt to new evidence because it's not just about updating a hypothesis but changing your worldview which in turn affects your sense of self.
I have plenty of beliefs other people think are extreme and bizarre. Heck I might even have pro-UFO beliefs that other people think are extreme and bizarre. I have come to these over time because they help me explain what I have learned about the world. I am completely mystified at your implication that the UFO evidence has now reached a level where any non-dogmatic observer has to admit that there are probably a large number of real alien sightings. There could be such a body of evidence, and perhaps in the future there will be. But if it's here now I haven't seen it. The FPP certainly isn't it, nor is the accumulation of releases from AARO and its predecessor. I regard them as initially suggestive but on review not at all persuasive.
The evidence I have seen is not augmented by first-principle appeals to the true spirit of science and inquiry and so on. Actually it is a bit odd to put this evidence and scientific evidence in the same conversation. If science had to be conducted based on people's say-so about secret things they've seen but can't show anyone, instead of public and reproducible observation, it probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground at all.
posted by grobstein at 4:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have plenty of beliefs other people think are extreme and bizarre. Heck I might even have pro-UFO beliefs that other people think are extreme and bizarre. I have come to these over time because they help me explain what I have learned about the world. I am completely mystified at your implication that the UFO evidence has now reached a level where any non-dogmatic observer has to admit that there are probably a large number of real alien sightings. There could be such a body of evidence, and perhaps in the future there will be. But if it's here now I haven't seen it. The FPP certainly isn't it, nor is the accumulation of releases from AARO and its predecessor. I regard them as initially suggestive but on review not at all persuasive.
The evidence I have seen is not augmented by first-principle appeals to the true spirit of science and inquiry and so on. Actually it is a bit odd to put this evidence and scientific evidence in the same conversation. If science had to be conducted based on people's say-so about secret things they've seen but can't show anyone, instead of public and reproducible observation, it probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground at all.
posted by grobstein at 4:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's always easy to accuse someone else of being dogmatic. How does one even defend against such a charge, except being agreeing with you? Undefeatable argument really.
But it's just shitty to suggest that people aren't willing to incorporate new evidence into their worldview, while simultaneously ignoring extremely basic examples of what reasonable evidence would look like to that person.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:01 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
But it's just shitty to suggest that people aren't willing to incorporate new evidence into their worldview, while simultaneously ignoring extremely basic examples of what reasonable evidence would look like to that person.
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:01 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
For example, if you accelerate continuously at 1g, and then decelerate at that g-force so that you slow down prior to arrival, you can get to the edge of the universe--13.8 billion light years away--in 45 years.
Provided you don't encounter even a dust mote along the way. Good luck with that.
posted by y2karl at 5:08 PM on June 6, 2023
Provided you don't encounter even a dust mote along the way. Good luck with that.
posted by y2karl at 5:08 PM on June 6, 2023
...also checking in from alt.alien.vistors...
posted by banshee at 5:09 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by banshee at 5:09 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: five white dudes and a building
posted by loquacious at 5:27 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by loquacious at 5:27 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
I want to be clear up front that I'm not suggesting "aliens" is a good explanation. With that said, the "FTL, no way" counterargument doesn't seem like a slam dunk to me.
First of all, there are known biological organisms that have been alive for what seems to us to be a very long time. Thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. Perhaps (in some cases) more. Moreover, there are known biological organisms that, as far as we've been able to tell, do not seem to age. And even if an alien civilization isn't that way naturally, it doesn't seem terribly unlikely that a sufficiently advanced technological civilization could become that way.
And even if aging is still a factor for any specific individual, what about something like a sufficiently advanced colony of bee-like things? Pack a ship with a bunch of drones, and a whooooooooooooooooooole bunch of eggs in some sort of suspended animation, and send them out into the unknown with instructions to report back on the findings... eventually. What does the queen, safe and cozy back home, care that individual drones won't necessarily have terribly fulfilling lives?
And why are we even limiting the discussion to biological organisms in the first place?
So, with all that, who's to say an alien civilization cares that a trip will take it an amount of time that seems unfathomable to us?
But further: There are known solutions to Einstein's field equations (describing the shape of spacetime) that, while not technically being "faster than light", effectively remove the importance of the apparent fact that nothing can go faster than light. Wormholes, for example, or the Alcubierre Drive. These things are not woo-woo sci fi; they are just as valid, according to the mathematics of general relativity, as is the seemingly (mostly) flat spacetime of the universe as we have observed it so far. Unless there's some reason we don't know of, the best argument against these things right now is (admittedly humongous, at least from our current point of view) infeasibility of technology and/or resource availability, not any sort of apparent scientific impossibility.
So sure, that star over there is four light years away if you just look up in the sky and point at it, but there may be shortcuts to it. And in fact a sufficiently advanced civilization might be able to make shortcuts.
posted by Flunkie at 6:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
First of all, there are known biological organisms that have been alive for what seems to us to be a very long time. Thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. Perhaps (in some cases) more. Moreover, there are known biological organisms that, as far as we've been able to tell, do not seem to age. And even if an alien civilization isn't that way naturally, it doesn't seem terribly unlikely that a sufficiently advanced technological civilization could become that way.
And even if aging is still a factor for any specific individual, what about something like a sufficiently advanced colony of bee-like things? Pack a ship with a bunch of drones, and a whooooooooooooooooooole bunch of eggs in some sort of suspended animation, and send them out into the unknown with instructions to report back on the findings... eventually. What does the queen, safe and cozy back home, care that individual drones won't necessarily have terribly fulfilling lives?
And why are we even limiting the discussion to biological organisms in the first place?
So, with all that, who's to say an alien civilization cares that a trip will take it an amount of time that seems unfathomable to us?
But further: There are known solutions to Einstein's field equations (describing the shape of spacetime) that, while not technically being "faster than light", effectively remove the importance of the apparent fact that nothing can go faster than light. Wormholes, for example, or the Alcubierre Drive. These things are not woo-woo sci fi; they are just as valid, according to the mathematics of general relativity, as is the seemingly (mostly) flat spacetime of the universe as we have observed it so far. Unless there's some reason we don't know of, the best argument against these things right now is (admittedly humongous, at least from our current point of view) infeasibility of technology and/or resource availability, not any sort of apparent scientific impossibility.
So sure, that star over there is four light years away if you just look up in the sky and point at it, but there may be shortcuts to it. And in fact a sufficiently advanced civilization might be able to make shortcuts.
posted by Flunkie at 6:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I agree that "FTL is clearly impossible" is probably not the best argument. But hypothesizing unknown mechanisms for interstellar travel that make it easier makes the statistical argument worse, not better. I think my estimate above of 1 million years to double the number of colonies is wildly conservative, even assuming only known physics. If we imagine that interstellar travel is actually easier than we think, then the travel time and colonization time come way down, meaning the number of opportunities an interstellar civilization would have had to fully colonize the galaxy by now goes way up. So where are they? Why didn't any one of them colonize Earth millions of years ago, occupying the ecological niche of intelligence that we instead evolved to fill? Of the millions of potential civilizations on the billions of worlds in the galaxy, none of them took the path of expanding into all the habitats available to them, the one thing that is most characteristic of life as we know it? For the entire potentially millions of years of their history? The cold logic of the Fermi paradox is pretty hard to escape. Either intelligent life is very rare (or short-lived) in our galaxy, or interstellar travel is very hard, or we're just mind-bogglingly lucky. Because at the astronomical scales of billions of worlds and billions of years, even a single space-faring civilization that is willing and able to colonize should have already snapped up the entire galaxy in the blink of an eye, if any have evolved, and if it's possible to do so.
posted by biogeo at 9:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 9:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
The argument I'm making about interstellar travel is not so much that it's impossible in a 1+1=3 kind of way, but implausible in the sense of "does not help explain the current evidence we have". It raises more questions than it answers.
If the hypothesis is "aliens could (and do?) visit us, either by FTL or by patience", then we need additional theories to explain the lack of observations we'd expect from that.
- How has there never been an alien space probe recovered before we knew that it should be covered up? The existence of mysterious artifacts is well-documented but none of them have turned out to be "is the steering wheel to an Alpha Centaurian Buick". That's a remarkable coincidence.
- Maybe you can argue it's not a coincidence, and that aliens can travel interstellar distances but only decided to do so such that they made terrestrial evidence for it starting in ca.1947. How did they know to do that? FTL movement doesn't imply FTL listening; our radio signals had hardly gone anywhere by that point. Remarkable coincidence that one of our extremely-nearby neighbors happened to have the requisite tech to come kinda say hello.
- How did a multinational coverup successfully persist through the fall of the Soviet Union? Remarkable coincidence that the one major government to effectively dissolve, giving ample opportunity for someone to leak hard evidence, just didn't.
- Shouldn't there be multiple visiting species, at least some of which are willing to make explicit contact? Being visited by only by species unwilling to make explicit contact would be a remarkable coincidence in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets.
- If they're colluding to avoid us finding out, why are they doing such a bad job of it? Either ~zero people should know, or ~everyone. Aliens being clumsy enough to be discovered, but only by governments who are good at keeping secrets, implies threading an incredibly slim needle that they'd have no way of knowing about until they got here. Remarkable coincidence.
- How have none of them ever produced identifiable radio signals, i.e. how would they know ahead of time what kind of sensing equipment we have and what would be considered unusual? Remarkable coincidence that none of them have ever have a decodable digital signal that a civilian picked up on.
You can just keep listing coincidences (and indeed biogeo has some more) here. FTL / extreme patience might be a possibility, but it makes it harder to answer the questions about UAPs, not easier.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:28 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
If the hypothesis is "aliens could (and do?) visit us, either by FTL or by patience", then we need additional theories to explain the lack of observations we'd expect from that.
- How has there never been an alien space probe recovered before we knew that it should be covered up? The existence of mysterious artifacts is well-documented but none of them have turned out to be "is the steering wheel to an Alpha Centaurian Buick". That's a remarkable coincidence.
- Maybe you can argue it's not a coincidence, and that aliens can travel interstellar distances but only decided to do so such that they made terrestrial evidence for it starting in ca.1947. How did they know to do that? FTL movement doesn't imply FTL listening; our radio signals had hardly gone anywhere by that point. Remarkable coincidence that one of our extremely-nearby neighbors happened to have the requisite tech to come kinda say hello.
- How did a multinational coverup successfully persist through the fall of the Soviet Union? Remarkable coincidence that the one major government to effectively dissolve, giving ample opportunity for someone to leak hard evidence, just didn't.
- Shouldn't there be multiple visiting species, at least some of which are willing to make explicit contact? Being visited by only by species unwilling to make explicit contact would be a remarkable coincidence in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets.
- If they're colluding to avoid us finding out, why are they doing such a bad job of it? Either ~zero people should know, or ~everyone. Aliens being clumsy enough to be discovered, but only by governments who are good at keeping secrets, implies threading an incredibly slim needle that they'd have no way of knowing about until they got here. Remarkable coincidence.
- How have none of them ever produced identifiable radio signals, i.e. how would they know ahead of time what kind of sensing equipment we have and what would be considered unusual? Remarkable coincidence that none of them have ever have a decodable digital signal that a civilian picked up on.
You can just keep listing coincidences (and indeed biogeo has some more) here. FTL / extreme patience might be a possibility, but it makes it harder to answer the questions about UAPs, not easier.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:28 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, I guess I should repeat that I'm not suggesting that "aliens" seems like a good answer. My beef is only with the assumed strength of the "Can't go FTL, therefore not aliens" argument.
posted by Flunkie at 9:38 PM on June 6, 2023
posted by Flunkie at 9:38 PM on June 6, 2023
Now I really wished that life was abundant.
Just so we'd have a bunch of examples of sentient intelligences co-arising, or melding (instead of straight up colonization) of potentially radically different species early in their spacefaring history.
So we can use those examples (if there are enough of them) to see if species that thought that they would encounter no other intelligences develop along different lines of cultural outlooks compared to optimistic and confirmed cultures. All other things being equal.
posted by porpoise at 11:13 PM on June 6, 2023
Just so we'd have a bunch of examples of sentient intelligences co-arising, or melding (instead of straight up colonization) of potentially radically different species early in their spacefaring history.
So we can use those examples (if there are enough of them) to see if species that thought that they would encounter no other intelligences develop along different lines of cultural outlooks compared to optimistic and confirmed cultures. All other things being equal.
posted by porpoise at 11:13 PM on June 6, 2023
Keep in mind that one his his specific claims is also that members of the Executive Branch have lied to Congress about all this for decades. This would have included people like Harry Reid who as Senate Majority leader got all this rolling by passing the legislation for funding of increased investigation of UAP/UFOs.
posted by interogative mood at 11:15 PM on June 6, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 11:15 PM on June 6, 2023
The number one sign of a crackpot is that at the slightest criticism they immediately turn to accusing everybody else of being a dogmatist stuck in their narrow world-view, circling their small-minded ivory tower wagons, probably because of that sweet sweet grant money; meanwhile the crackpot has ascended to lofty heights of reason and enlightenment. A crackpot can best be detected by the proportion of actual research and argument done vs attacking everyone else for being dogmatists. Add in a healthy dose of the desire to feel superior and above everyone else.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:50 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:50 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
What I think I’ve learned from various articles and skeptic sites.
Robert Bigelow is an ultra wealthy conspiracy nut who bought the so called Skinwalker Ranch and funds a number of UFO related organizations. He is also a big donor and friend of Harry Reid. When Harry Reid was Senate Majority Leader he had the Pentagon start officially investigating the UFO reports by putting funding into the defense appropriations bill.
As this was seen as a joke in the Pentagon and a waste of time the people who ended up on the project were mostly ufologist / true believer types and even TV host/personality Travis Taylor famous for a program on the Skinwalker Ranch.
This lead eventually to the release of the UFO videos that made headlines in 2020. At this point it became clear to a lot of people that perhaps this effort needed to be brought under the direction of someone with a bit more scientific rigor.
Senator Kristin Gilbrand worked to help create a new organization AARO ( All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) in 2022. This is lead by Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick is open to the possibility of alien visitors and has written a paper with Avi Loeb (the Harvard professor of astronomy who is at least crackpot adjacent).
Kirkpatrick seems to be making an effort to bring more skepticism and rigor to the progress and seems to be pushing out the camp of true believers.
This has lead to tensions in the office and may be a factor in the complaint filed by Grusch.
posted by interogative mood at 1:20 AM on June 7, 2023 [30 favorites]
Robert Bigelow is an ultra wealthy conspiracy nut who bought the so called Skinwalker Ranch and funds a number of UFO related organizations. He is also a big donor and friend of Harry Reid. When Harry Reid was Senate Majority Leader he had the Pentagon start officially investigating the UFO reports by putting funding into the defense appropriations bill.
As this was seen as a joke in the Pentagon and a waste of time the people who ended up on the project were mostly ufologist / true believer types and even TV host/personality Travis Taylor famous for a program on the Skinwalker Ranch.
This lead eventually to the release of the UFO videos that made headlines in 2020. At this point it became clear to a lot of people that perhaps this effort needed to be brought under the direction of someone with a bit more scientific rigor.
Senator Kristin Gilbrand worked to help create a new organization AARO ( All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) in 2022. This is lead by Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick is open to the possibility of alien visitors and has written a paper with Avi Loeb (the Harvard professor of astronomy who is at least crackpot adjacent).
Kirkpatrick seems to be making an effort to bring more skepticism and rigor to the progress and seems to be pushing out the camp of true believers.
This has lead to tensions in the office and may be a factor in the complaint filed by Grusch.
posted by interogative mood at 1:20 AM on June 7, 2023 [30 favorites]
Alien technology would be more highly classified than everything Snowden revealed, so David Grusch being outside of prison says he knows nothing meaningful.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:16 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:16 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
The cold logic of the Fermi paradox is pretty hard to escape.
counterpoint: it's not.
the paradox is a description of the discrepancy between the supposedly high a priori likelihood of intelligent extraterrestrial life and our lack of conclusive evidence of such life. its ‘cold logic’ is based, like every scientific argument about reality, on a series of facts and hypotheses. we have very strong evidence for some of those: there are billions of sun-like stars in our galaxy that are older than our sun, many of which are likely to have planetary systems. others are unsupported conjecture.
there have been dozens of counter-hypotheses that seek to resolve the paradox by attacking the underlying chain of reasoning, including many that don’t fall under ‘life is rare / travel is hard / humans are mind-bogglingly lucky’. for example, aliens broadcast via means we can’t currently detect, or are incomprehensibly different such that our assumptions about likely behaviour don’t hold true, or galactic colonisation has never gone beyond a certain point for one or other reason, or the existence of aliens is being deliberately concealed (by themselves and / or earth governments).
we have zero evidence for or against the vast majority of these, and it’s pure hubris to think that one can assign meaningful probabilities and reason from those to a ‘likely’ conclusion in the absence of such evidence. like, what is “the statistical argument” based on? the number of sun-like stars and exoplanets plus a tottering tower of unsupported assumptions? come on now.
also, side note, one of the steps in the paradox’s chain of reasoning – one might say the key step! – is to say that given all the preceding steps, the earth should already have been visited by aliens (in person or at least via probes), but there is no convincing evidence that this has happened - hence the paradox. one might, if one were a particularly icy logician, think that this disqualifies the paradox from being used to argue that purported evidence of such visitations is not, in fact, convincing.
posted by inire at 4:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
counterpoint: it's not.
the paradox is a description of the discrepancy between the supposedly high a priori likelihood of intelligent extraterrestrial life and our lack of conclusive evidence of such life. its ‘cold logic’ is based, like every scientific argument about reality, on a series of facts and hypotheses. we have very strong evidence for some of those: there are billions of sun-like stars in our galaxy that are older than our sun, many of which are likely to have planetary systems. others are unsupported conjecture.
there have been dozens of counter-hypotheses that seek to resolve the paradox by attacking the underlying chain of reasoning, including many that don’t fall under ‘life is rare / travel is hard / humans are mind-bogglingly lucky’. for example, aliens broadcast via means we can’t currently detect, or are incomprehensibly different such that our assumptions about likely behaviour don’t hold true, or galactic colonisation has never gone beyond a certain point for one or other reason, or the existence of aliens is being deliberately concealed (by themselves and / or earth governments).
we have zero evidence for or against the vast majority of these, and it’s pure hubris to think that one can assign meaningful probabilities and reason from those to a ‘likely’ conclusion in the absence of such evidence. like, what is “the statistical argument” based on? the number of sun-like stars and exoplanets plus a tottering tower of unsupported assumptions? come on now.
also, side note, one of the steps in the paradox’s chain of reasoning – one might say the key step! – is to say that given all the preceding steps, the earth should already have been visited by aliens (in person or at least via probes), but there is no convincing evidence that this has happened - hence the paradox. one might, if one were a particularly icy logician, think that this disqualifies the paradox from being used to argue that purported evidence of such visitations is not, in fact, convincing.
posted by inire at 4:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
The argument I'm making about interstellar travel is not so much that it's impossible in a 1+1=3 kind of way, but implausible in the sense of "does not help explain the current evidence we have". It raises more questions than it answers.
If the hypothesis is "aliens could (and do?) visit us, either by FTL or by patience", then we need additional theories to explain the lack of observations we'd expect from that.
there are many such theories, including many that can only be interpreted as requiring ‘remarkable coincidences’ if you make certain assumptions, for which – again – there is no evidence for or against. some suggestions below re alternative theories that point to the unsupported assumptions being made. i have no idea if any of these theories bear the faintest relationship to the truth, but there is as much evidence to support these as the alternatives (i.e. none):
- How has there never been an alien space probe recovered before we knew that it should be covered up? The existence of mysterious artifacts is well-documented but none of them have turned out to be "is the steering wheel to an Alpha Centaurian Buick". That's a remarkable coincidence.
probes are rare, crashes are rarer, the world is big, it’s only in recent decades that we’ve had the capability to detect, track down and recover them. or the aliens only start giving a shit and sending out probes from their 3d printer under the surface of europa once we reach a certain level of tech. or probes were previously recovered and not publicised for a variety of reasons. or they were publicised historically via mediums that haven’t been preserved or can’t now be understood.
- Maybe you can argue it's not a coincidence, and that aliens can travel interstellar distances but only decided to do so such that they made terrestrial evidence for it starting in ca.1947. How did they know to do that? FTL movement doesn't imply FTL listening; our radio signals had hardly gone anywhere by that point. Remarkable coincidence that one of our extremely-nearby neighbors happened to have the requisite tech to come kinda say hello.
they or their probes were already nearby, because they seeded humanity, or identified the potential for earth to give rise to intelligent life a long time ago. doesn’t require ftl (although it would no doubt help) or for them to have first arisen nearby.
- How did a multinational coverup successfully persist through the fall of the Soviet Union? Remarkable coincidence that the one major government to effectively dissolve, giving ample opportunity for someone to leak hard evidence, just didn't.
how do multinational coverups ever successfully persist? extreme compartmentalisation, for one, plus threats of very unpleasant consequences for leakers (presumably from abroad, if one’s own government is no longer in a position to deliver those consequences), and a lack of motivation to leak. why assume the soviets were aware? why would there be a motivation for leaking publicly? what would be gained?
- Shouldn't there be multiple visiting species, at least some of which are willing to make explicit contact? Being visited by only by species unwilling to make explicit contact would be a remarkable coincidence in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets.
why should this be the case? especially if life is pretty rare and travel is pretty hard, as people seem to think. what can we confidently say about alien psychology and galactic conditions that leads us to conclude it’s reasonable to expect a species to be willing or interested in making contact?
- If they're colluding to avoid us finding out, why are they doing such a bad job of it? Either ~zero people should know, or ~everyone. Aliens being clumsy enough to be discovered, but only by governments who are good at keeping secrets, implies threading an incredibly slim needle that they'd have no way of knowing about until they got here. Remarkable coincidence.
really? either no-one knows or everyone does? hypothetically, how fast and in what way might one get from the former situation to the latter? one option might be immediately, sure, via widespread public disclosure of incontrovertible evidence. another option might be, i don’t know, a slow dripfeed of leaks from compartmentalised areas that are imperfectly suppressed and accrete over a long period of time into a more credible but still incomplete picture, in the same way that many government secrets end up coming to light? can you think of any possible reasons why aliens might not rock up a la independence day and publicly announce themselves to the world, while also not being so infallible (or focused on secrecy) as to never be discovered? i can think of several.
- How have none of them ever produced identifiable radio signals, i.e. how would they know ahead of time what kind of sensing equipment we have and what would be considered unusual? Remarkable coincidence that none of them have ever have a decodable digital signal that a civilian picked up on.
why do we assume they communicate by radio? why would we have identified any radio signals they did produce, given the extremely short time for which we’ve been listening? why would their radio signals be identifiable to us as artificially produced?
posted by inire at 5:43 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
If the hypothesis is "aliens could (and do?) visit us, either by FTL or by patience", then we need additional theories to explain the lack of observations we'd expect from that.
there are many such theories, including many that can only be interpreted as requiring ‘remarkable coincidences’ if you make certain assumptions, for which – again – there is no evidence for or against. some suggestions below re alternative theories that point to the unsupported assumptions being made. i have no idea if any of these theories bear the faintest relationship to the truth, but there is as much evidence to support these as the alternatives (i.e. none):
- How has there never been an alien space probe recovered before we knew that it should be covered up? The existence of mysterious artifacts is well-documented but none of them have turned out to be "is the steering wheel to an Alpha Centaurian Buick". That's a remarkable coincidence.
probes are rare, crashes are rarer, the world is big, it’s only in recent decades that we’ve had the capability to detect, track down and recover them. or the aliens only start giving a shit and sending out probes from their 3d printer under the surface of europa once we reach a certain level of tech. or probes were previously recovered and not publicised for a variety of reasons. or they were publicised historically via mediums that haven’t been preserved or can’t now be understood.
- Maybe you can argue it's not a coincidence, and that aliens can travel interstellar distances but only decided to do so such that they made terrestrial evidence for it starting in ca.1947. How did they know to do that? FTL movement doesn't imply FTL listening; our radio signals had hardly gone anywhere by that point. Remarkable coincidence that one of our extremely-nearby neighbors happened to have the requisite tech to come kinda say hello.
they or their probes were already nearby, because they seeded humanity, or identified the potential for earth to give rise to intelligent life a long time ago. doesn’t require ftl (although it would no doubt help) or for them to have first arisen nearby.
- How did a multinational coverup successfully persist through the fall of the Soviet Union? Remarkable coincidence that the one major government to effectively dissolve, giving ample opportunity for someone to leak hard evidence, just didn't.
how do multinational coverups ever successfully persist? extreme compartmentalisation, for one, plus threats of very unpleasant consequences for leakers (presumably from abroad, if one’s own government is no longer in a position to deliver those consequences), and a lack of motivation to leak. why assume the soviets were aware? why would there be a motivation for leaking publicly? what would be gained?
- Shouldn't there be multiple visiting species, at least some of which are willing to make explicit contact? Being visited by only by species unwilling to make explicit contact would be a remarkable coincidence in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets.
why should this be the case? especially if life is pretty rare and travel is pretty hard, as people seem to think. what can we confidently say about alien psychology and galactic conditions that leads us to conclude it’s reasonable to expect a species to be willing or interested in making contact?
- If they're colluding to avoid us finding out, why are they doing such a bad job of it? Either ~zero people should know, or ~everyone. Aliens being clumsy enough to be discovered, but only by governments who are good at keeping secrets, implies threading an incredibly slim needle that they'd have no way of knowing about until they got here. Remarkable coincidence.
really? either no-one knows or everyone does? hypothetically, how fast and in what way might one get from the former situation to the latter? one option might be immediately, sure, via widespread public disclosure of incontrovertible evidence. another option might be, i don’t know, a slow dripfeed of leaks from compartmentalised areas that are imperfectly suppressed and accrete over a long period of time into a more credible but still incomplete picture, in the same way that many government secrets end up coming to light? can you think of any possible reasons why aliens might not rock up a la independence day and publicly announce themselves to the world, while also not being so infallible (or focused on secrecy) as to never be discovered? i can think of several.
- How have none of them ever produced identifiable radio signals, i.e. how would they know ahead of time what kind of sensing equipment we have and what would be considered unusual? Remarkable coincidence that none of them have ever have a decodable digital signal that a civilian picked up on.
why do we assume they communicate by radio? why would we have identified any radio signals they did produce, given the extremely short time for which we’ve been listening? why would their radio signals be identifiable to us as artificially produced?
posted by inire at 5:43 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
why should this be the case? especially if life is pretty rare and travel is pretty hard, as people seem to think. what can we confidently say about alien psychology and galactic conditions that leads us to conclude it’s reasonable to expect a species to be willing or interested in making contact?
You have misunderstood the argument. The argument is, a billion is a really, really big number. Even if you make very conservative assumptions about life being rare and interstellar travel being hard, the combination of billions of worlds and billions of years mean that hundreds of thousands of civilizations should have had the opportunity to spread through the galaxy by now. Saying "Why should we assume an alien civilization works the way we expect?" misses the point. The point is that our existence implies that none of those hundreds of thousands of potential civilizations took the Borg route of just expanding into any habitats available to them, at any point during their lifetimes, because it only takes one civilization to take that path, and the consequence is they should have already been here many millions of years ago and found a planet occupied by nothing more intelligent than Tiktaalik, ripe for occupation.
Because of the sheer number of civilizations that should be in play given a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars that has existed for billions of years, you are making much stronger assumptions about the nature, psychology, and technologyof alien civilizations when you posit that they happen to operate in ways that leave them present but undetected except by the occasional isolated individual. You are the one asserting that a huge diversity of independently-evolved species all happen to be identical with respect to set of traits that happen to leave us uncolonized for the entire history of complex life on Earth.
The more common life is, and the easier interstellar travel is, the more civilizations that must have had the opportunity to reach our world by now, and the more unlikely your assumption is that none of them took the path of colonization.
A billion is a really big number. Even small fractions of it are still big numbers. That's the point.
posted by biogeo at 6:39 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
How have none of them ever produced identifiable radio signals,
Radio waves obey the inverse-square law, so doubling the distance reduces the power to one-quarter. This means the radio waves from Earth are indistinguishable from background noise for 99.9% of the galaxy. One way to send a message, without breaking any laws of physics, would be to build a cylindrical ring around a star that would turn on the same plane as the galaxy. It would obscure the star's light periodically to transmit a message, numerical or otherwise. Hell, you could get really creative and build a giant zoetrope to send a video. We have seen phenomena similar to this, but they are usually explainable as the result of stellar mass ejection or protoplanetary disks obscuring a star's light. I'm not saying anyone would actually do this, just that if you wanted to send a signal and had the resources, it's one way to go.
posted by jabah at 6:58 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Radio waves obey the inverse-square law, so doubling the distance reduces the power to one-quarter. This means the radio waves from Earth are indistinguishable from background noise for 99.9% of the galaxy. One way to send a message, without breaking any laws of physics, would be to build a cylindrical ring around a star that would turn on the same plane as the galaxy. It would obscure the star's light periodically to transmit a message, numerical or otherwise. Hell, you could get really creative and build a giant zoetrope to send a video. We have seen phenomena similar to this, but they are usually explainable as the result of stellar mass ejection or protoplanetary disks obscuring a star's light. I'm not saying anyone would actually do this, just that if you wanted to send a signal and had the resources, it's one way to go.
posted by jabah at 6:58 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love the theories about the possibilities of the US government, let alone the cabal covering multiple governments. They still use flipping COBOL to process tax returns, but can also hire and staff the most secure, unbreakable, unbribeable employees and their data collection and storage procedures are impeccable over 70+ years. Sure. High-ranking members of Congress are simultaneously some of the most capable at hiding secrets and get in petty fights with fellow constituents on Twitter on a regular basis. The 'Deep State' of heroes even hid all this from former President Trump. Amazing.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
The 'Deep State' of heroes even hid all this from former President Trump. Amazing.
To be fair, you could hide anything from Trump by simply putting it in the third or fourth sentence of a document in 12-point font.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:10 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
To be fair, you could hide anything from Trump by simply putting it in the third or fourth sentence of a document in 12-point font.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:10 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
BBC World Service ran this story as part of their hourly headline update overnight. They reported it as someone who was told things says they have crashed alien ships. They didn't say there was any proof.
posted by hippybear at 8:11 AM on June 7, 2023
posted by hippybear at 8:11 AM on June 7, 2023
The BBC is, sadly, increasingly an unreliable source - this does nothing for that I’m afraid.
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was more commenting on 1) the content of their report, and 2) demonstrating the legs this has at the moment.
Maybe the fishing expedition will yield something. Who knows?
posted by hippybear at 8:29 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Maybe the fishing expedition will yield something. Who knows?
posted by hippybear at 8:29 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why would it?
Some people think the world would be more exciting if there were aliens, like to hype the idea up. That’s not actually news or a thing that has changed.
“Unnamed intelligence sources” means no sources. There is not anything here in the slightest bar some willing credulity.
It’s somewhat pathetic to see that being amplified rather than rejected by alleged professionals who should no better, but they’ve years of practice hyping Brexit and TERFs.
posted by Artw at 8:32 AM on June 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
Some people think the world would be more exciting if there were aliens, like to hype the idea up. That’s not actually news or a thing that has changed.
“Unnamed intelligence sources” means no sources. There is not anything here in the slightest bar some willing credulity.
It’s somewhat pathetic to see that being amplified rather than rejected by alleged professionals who should no better, but they’ve years of practice hyping Brexit and TERFs.
posted by Artw at 8:32 AM on June 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
“Unnamed intelligence sources” means no sources.
Well, no. Just like "unidentified" can (and evidently does, in this case) mean "we aren't identifying it" and not just "we have no clue what it is," "unnamed sources" are simply that — sources that haven't been named.
posted by emelenjr at 9:33 AM on June 7, 2023
Well, no. Just like "unidentified" can (and evidently does, in this case) mean "we aren't identifying it" and not just "we have no clue what it is," "unnamed sources" are simply that — sources that haven't been named.
posted by emelenjr at 9:33 AM on June 7, 2023
You have misunderstood the argument. The argument is, a billion is a really, really big number. Even if you make very conservative assumptions about life being rare and interstellar travel being hard, the combination of billions of worlds and billions of years mean that hundreds of thousands of civilizations should have had the opportunity to spread through the galaxy by now. Saying "Why should we assume an alien civilization works the way we expect?" misses the point. The point is that our existence implies that none of those hundreds of thousands of potential civilizations took the Borg route of just expanding into any habitats available to them, at any point during their lifetimes, because it only takes one civilization to take that path, and the consequence is they should have already been here many millions of years ago and found a planet occupied by nothing more intelligent than Tiktaalik, ripe for occupation.
i’m reasonably sure i understand the argument – it’s fairly simple. i just disagree with it. i get that you think that billions of worlds multiplied by billions of years means that “hundreds of thousands of civilizations should have had the opportunity to spread through the galaxy by now”, and our continued existence should be taken as demonstrating that none of them have done so. my main point of disagreement is that “should”, in both cases, is reliant on numerous unsupported and unacknowledged assumptions. the fact that this argument relies on those assumptions isn’t especially contentious, as can be seen from the extensive and continuing discussions re the fermi paradox and the range of proposed resolutions, so i’m unclear as to why they continue to be glossed over. i agree that any alternative argument likewise relies on a whole raft of assumptions, but i disagree that either of us (or anyone else) is in any position to determine whether those assumptions are stronger than the assumptions underlying your argument, given that we have no evidence for any of them.
also, just to be clear, i am not in any way asserting that “a huge diversity of independently-evolved species all happen to be identical with respect to set of traits that happen to leave us uncolonized for the entire history of complex life on Earth”, nor am i asserting that any species is in fact currently present on or around earth. i am asserting that a huge diversity of species does not necessarily exist (as the range of assumptions underpinning that conclusion mean there are multiple factors that could, if changed, drastically reduce the number of species achieving and persisting at interstellar tech levels), and that regardless of the number of species that might exist, there are multiple distinct sets of traits and other contingent factors that might apply to any given species that could result in it existing without our knowledge (let alone without colonising, exterminating, etc.). see the list of explanations for the fermi paradox for some examples.
as such, we aren’t in a position to draw conclusions about the probability of aliens being on earth, because the probability of them being here is in effect the output of a very long equation, and we have no idea how many parts the equation has, what they are, or how they interact with each other. given that, the fact that two parts of the equation are (by human standards) really big is somewhat beside the point.
posted by inire at 9:50 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
i’m reasonably sure i understand the argument – it’s fairly simple. i just disagree with it. i get that you think that billions of worlds multiplied by billions of years means that “hundreds of thousands of civilizations should have had the opportunity to spread through the galaxy by now”, and our continued existence should be taken as demonstrating that none of them have done so. my main point of disagreement is that “should”, in both cases, is reliant on numerous unsupported and unacknowledged assumptions. the fact that this argument relies on those assumptions isn’t especially contentious, as can be seen from the extensive and continuing discussions re the fermi paradox and the range of proposed resolutions, so i’m unclear as to why they continue to be glossed over. i agree that any alternative argument likewise relies on a whole raft of assumptions, but i disagree that either of us (or anyone else) is in any position to determine whether those assumptions are stronger than the assumptions underlying your argument, given that we have no evidence for any of them.
also, just to be clear, i am not in any way asserting that “a huge diversity of independently-evolved species all happen to be identical with respect to set of traits that happen to leave us uncolonized for the entire history of complex life on Earth”, nor am i asserting that any species is in fact currently present on or around earth. i am asserting that a huge diversity of species does not necessarily exist (as the range of assumptions underpinning that conclusion mean there are multiple factors that could, if changed, drastically reduce the number of species achieving and persisting at interstellar tech levels), and that regardless of the number of species that might exist, there are multiple distinct sets of traits and other contingent factors that might apply to any given species that could result in it existing without our knowledge (let alone without colonising, exterminating, etc.). see the list of explanations for the fermi paradox for some examples.
as such, we aren’t in a position to draw conclusions about the probability of aliens being on earth, because the probability of them being here is in effect the output of a very long equation, and we have no idea how many parts the equation has, what they are, or how they interact with each other. given that, the fact that two parts of the equation are (by human standards) really big is somewhat beside the point.
posted by inire at 9:50 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Alien technology would be more highly classified than everything Snowden revealed
No. That isn’t even how “classified” works.
Regarding the billions of worlds and Fermi paradox discussion. We are at the edge of our knowledge and technology just to detect extra-solar planets. In terms of radio signals we are attempting to listen for what are basically distant whispers in noisy room. The JWST will hopefully start to give us some data about the atmospheres of possible earth like planets and that will hopefully give us some way to have a baseline on how common life of any kind is . Heck we still are not sure if there are microbes/life on Mars and if there are do those microbes originate with the life on earth or independently.
posted by interogative mood at 10:16 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
No. That isn’t even how “classified” works.
Regarding the billions of worlds and Fermi paradox discussion. We are at the edge of our knowledge and technology just to detect extra-solar planets. In terms of radio signals we are attempting to listen for what are basically distant whispers in noisy room. The JWST will hopefully start to give us some data about the atmospheres of possible earth like planets and that will hopefully give us some way to have a baseline on how common life of any kind is . Heck we still are not sure if there are microbes/life on Mars and if there are do those microbes originate with the life on earth or independently.
posted by interogative mood at 10:16 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why does this thread feel like the old religious threads from back in 200x?
Maybe because you can't argue against faith with facts, because the idea of faith precludes facts. And there are some real true believers here whose faith won't be stopped by your churlish facts and journalistic integrity, evidence or lack thereof notwithstanding.
posted by Sphinx at 10:40 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe because you can't argue against faith with facts, because the idea of faith precludes facts. And there are some real true believers here whose faith won't be stopped by your churlish facts and journalistic integrity, evidence or lack thereof notwithstanding.
posted by Sphinx at 10:40 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
part 2 of the fact-check q&a is up here. interesting background for those not familiar with how whistleblower complaints are handled by congress.
posted by inire at 10:52 AM on June 7, 2023
posted by inire at 10:52 AM on June 7, 2023
Any aliens with the technology to travel between stars, either FTL or near-relativistic speeds, would have 0 reasons to want to colonize a planet. Why would they? They've clearly mastered living in space, either by adapting their bodies or perfecting the technology needed for long-term space living.
Any resource they would need is available via asteroids/comets/smaller moons. Why bother mucking around with a planet sized gravity well let alone having to deal with local flora and fauna. You're certainly not going to run out of living space. Unless you plan to build a Dyson Sphere, you're probably never going to run out of resources either.
What reason would you have to visit the neighbors beyond curiosity? To me that explains the Fermi paradox...there's no reason to visit unless you specifically want to stop by and say hi. I'm highly skeptical that's the case here, but if we were ever visited, I imagine it would be remote probes doing some flybys and maybe a "Welcome, neighbor" message.
posted by Eddie Mars at 11:14 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Any resource they would need is available via asteroids/comets/smaller moons. Why bother mucking around with a planet sized gravity well let alone having to deal with local flora and fauna. You're certainly not going to run out of living space. Unless you plan to build a Dyson Sphere, you're probably never going to run out of resources either.
What reason would you have to visit the neighbors beyond curiosity? To me that explains the Fermi paradox...there's no reason to visit unless you specifically want to stop by and say hi. I'm highly skeptical that's the case here, but if we were ever visited, I imagine it would be remote probes doing some flybys and maybe a "Welcome, neighbor" message.
posted by Eddie Mars at 11:14 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
If you were an interstellar parasite which generally killed all life on a planet it infested in fairly short order by, say, causing a runaway greenhouse effect or something, your continued existence would depend on being able to colonize new star systems, and that would seem to be sufficient motivation.
posted by jamjam at 1:07 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 1:07 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Any aliens with the technology to travel between stars, either FTL or near-relativistic speeds, would have 0 reasons to want to colonize a planet. Why would they? They've clearly mastered living in space, either by adapting their bodies or perfecting the technology needed for long-term space living.
Eh? If some bright person invents FTL tomorrow we would have none of those things, and depending on how quickly we could find habitable planets we would have no need for them.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:21 PM on June 7, 2023
Eh? If some bright person invents FTL tomorrow we would have none of those things, and depending on how quickly we could find habitable planets we would have no need for them.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:21 PM on June 7, 2023
Why would they? They've clearly mastered living in space, either by adapting their bodies or perfecting the technology needed for long-term space living.
Because they might want to be able to walk around on the ground when they get there?
Kinda hard to do that with microgravity bones and muscles, I would think.
posted by y2karl at 1:31 PM on June 7, 2023
Because they might want to be able to walk around on the ground when they get there?
Kinda hard to do that with microgravity bones and muscles, I would think.
posted by y2karl at 1:31 PM on June 7, 2023
What reason would you have to visit the neighbors beyond curiosity?
posted by Eddie Mars
Seems a good enough reason on its own. Certainly one of the main reasons we humans do space stuff, maybe even the main reason.
Maybe one of the defining characteristics of intelligence is that it is endlessly curious and expansive. It always wants to experience and understand more.
posted by Pouteria at 2:56 PM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Eddie Mars
Seems a good enough reason on its own. Certainly one of the main reasons we humans do space stuff, maybe even the main reason.
Maybe one of the defining characteristics of intelligence is that it is endlessly curious and expansive. It always wants to experience and understand more.
posted by Pouteria at 2:56 PM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Alien Invaders is the new AI?
posted by njohnson23 at 4:42 PM on June 7, 2023
posted by njohnson23 at 4:42 PM on June 7, 2023
I can't wait to find out what I'm so famous for in the future!
Be careful what you ask for....
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:23 PM on June 7, 2023
Be careful what you ask for....
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:23 PM on June 7, 2023
My favorite resolution to the Fermi paradox is that the aliens all found somewhere better to go than to space.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:32 PM on June 7, 2023
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:32 PM on June 7, 2023
According to Clifford D. Simak's City, it's Jupiter. Humans explore Jupiter by taking the form of the native Jovian life, and discover that being a Jovian is the most ecstatic experience any of them have ever had, so nearly the entire species decamps to Jupiter and goes extinct, leaving behind only robots, genetically engineered intelligent dogs, and a handful of abandoned children.
Spoiler alert for 70+ year old science fiction novel, I guess. It's so good, read it if you haven't.
posted by biogeo at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Spoiler alert for 70+ year old science fiction novel, I guess. It's so good, read it if you haven't.
posted by biogeo at 7:52 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
My favorite resolution to the Fermi paradox is that the aliens all found somewhere better to go than to space.I suspect that we smell awful.
posted by Flunkie at 7:57 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have belatedly realized that I was unduly snippy, as is my wont because Life Sucks Always At All Times, so I feel like I should clarify a bit....
...I desperately wish it was aliens.
More than you can possibly imagine. Aliens with FTL, or aliens that have transcended mortality, hideous paperclip-optimizers, whatever i don't care shut up and give it to me, I wanna go see SgrA* take me with you or at least show me pictures!! Fuck Carl Sagan I will never see the things he showed me!!
I wouldn't even mind if it was aliens and they said "hey guys, sooooo, the Galactic Compact has decided you're all dangerous and unfortunately we need to sterilize your biosphere to avoid contaminating the rest of us" EVEN THEN I'd be like "well, OK, you make a good argument, please don't make it hurt too much?"
That's how much I wish it was aliens.
But it's not. It's not aliens.
It's just some random jackass who decided he should be important for a while, so he made up some shit so that the rest of us would realize how awesome he was, maybe impress some choice chick who doesn't even realize he exists. Except he isn't awesome, and now we gotta all deal with his warped feelings. As usual, with everything, because.
posted by aramaic at 9:30 PM on June 7, 2023 [8 favorites]
...I desperately wish it was aliens.
More than you can possibly imagine. Aliens with FTL, or aliens that have transcended mortality, hideous paperclip-optimizers, whatever i don't care shut up and give it to me, I wanna go see SgrA* take me with you or at least show me pictures!! Fuck Carl Sagan I will never see the things he showed me!!
I wouldn't even mind if it was aliens and they said "hey guys, sooooo, the Galactic Compact has decided you're all dangerous and unfortunately we need to sterilize your biosphere to avoid contaminating the rest of us" EVEN THEN I'd be like "well, OK, you make a good argument, please don't make it hurt too much?"
That's how much I wish it was aliens.
But it's not. It's not aliens.
It's just some random jackass who decided he should be important for a while, so he made up some shit so that the rest of us would realize how awesome he was, maybe impress some choice chick who doesn't even realize he exists. Except he isn't awesome, and now we gotta all deal with his warped feelings. As usual, with everything, because.
posted by aramaic at 9:30 PM on June 7, 2023 [8 favorites]
As long as they bring anti-gravity scooters then I am cool with them.
posted by Pouteria at 10:16 PM on June 7, 2023
posted by Pouteria at 10:16 PM on June 7, 2023
It's just some random jackass who decided he should be important for a while, so he made up some shit so that the rest of us would realize how awesome he was, maybe impress some choice chick who doesn't even realize he exists. Except he isn't awesome, and now we gotta all deal with his warped feelings. As usual, with everything, because.
appreciate that it's weird and unsettling to contemplate the prospect of any part of this story being true - and it may well not be! - but the above is detached from reality.
"some random jackass" = one of the people tasked by us agencies to investigate uaps.
"he made up some shit" = he provided congress with information that he says came from interviews with others (including some involved in the alleged programs), which is reported to have been corroborated to the icig's office by people currently involved in the alleged programs, plus other disclosures from non-public witnesses.
possible that all of these people have collectively 'made up some shit', sure, but seems pretty unlikely that they did that just so we'd all realise how awesome grusch is or so he could "impress some choice chick" (cringe, btw).
"now we all gotta deal with his warped feelings" - this take seems to be about your feelings, not his.
i can understand people being sceptical, but maybe make an effort to be sceptical about the actual story at hand? this is just painful.
posted by inire at 5:26 AM on June 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
appreciate that it's weird and unsettling to contemplate the prospect of any part of this story being true - and it may well not be! - but the above is detached from reality.
"some random jackass" = one of the people tasked by us agencies to investigate uaps.
"he made up some shit" = he provided congress with information that he says came from interviews with others (including some involved in the alleged programs), which is reported to have been corroborated to the icig's office by people currently involved in the alleged programs, plus other disclosures from non-public witnesses.
possible that all of these people have collectively 'made up some shit', sure, but seems pretty unlikely that they did that just so we'd all realise how awesome grusch is or so he could "impress some choice chick" (cringe, btw).
"now we all gotta deal with his warped feelings" - this take seems to be about your feelings, not his.
i can understand people being sceptical, but maybe make an effort to be sceptical about the actual story at hand? this is just painful.
posted by inire at 5:26 AM on June 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
I very rarely comment on the blue, but this is a breaking news and a topic I'm interested in, so I was looking forward to talking about the details of the story, the background, the implications, what might be next, etc
But by the time I opened the thread we'd already had a hundred posts of snark, cynicism, uninformed conjecture, endless strawman arguments, zero engagement with the story itself, basically just crapping all over this topic in the name of "skepticism" and annihilating any chance of having a reasonable discussion. I feel like any other topic would have been treated with much more respect (and moderated accordingly). Quite disappointing.
posted by iivix at 6:25 AM on June 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
But by the time I opened the thread we'd already had a hundred posts of snark, cynicism, uninformed conjecture, endless strawman arguments, zero engagement with the story itself, basically just crapping all over this topic in the name of "skepticism" and annihilating any chance of having a reasonable discussion. I feel like any other topic would have been treated with much more respect (and moderated accordingly). Quite disappointing.
posted by iivix at 6:25 AM on June 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Not sure what else you think is here that is worth of discussion? This is a story by nobody about nothing sold as the most important event in human history - most people are going to treat that as exactly what it is - a con job and a bunch of empty air.
posted by Artw at 7:02 AM on June 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:02 AM on June 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
thanks for that considered contribution, artw.
back in reality: House of Representatives to hold hearing on whistleblower’s UFO claims (guardian)
date to be set in the next few weeks. some interesting comments on what is and isn't likely to come up:
"Congressman Burchett’s office is working through logistics, including a witness list of the most credible witnesses and sources who would be able to speak openly at an unclassified hearing,” a spokesperson said.
[...]
Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence, said the existence of [grusch's icig] complaint could hamper the oversight committee investigation.
“As an active complaint it is very difficult to get into the substance of the testimony, because it constitutes interference with an ongoing investigation,” Pope said.
Pope added: “So, for anyone who thinks great, the hearing will determine whether David Grusch’s allegations are correct or not, I think an awful lot of [what is said in the hearing] is going to be: ‘That’s the subject of an ongoing investigation and we can’t discuss it.’”"
doesn't sound like it will progress things much, but interested to see the witness list.
posted by inire at 7:18 AM on June 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
back in reality: House of Representatives to hold hearing on whistleblower’s UFO claims (guardian)
date to be set in the next few weeks. some interesting comments on what is and isn't likely to come up:
"Congressman Burchett’s office is working through logistics, including a witness list of the most credible witnesses and sources who would be able to speak openly at an unclassified hearing,” a spokesperson said.
[...]
Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence, said the existence of [grusch's icig] complaint could hamper the oversight committee investigation.
“As an active complaint it is very difficult to get into the substance of the testimony, because it constitutes interference with an ongoing investigation,” Pope said.
Pope added: “So, for anyone who thinks great, the hearing will determine whether David Grusch’s allegations are correct or not, I think an awful lot of [what is said in the hearing] is going to be: ‘That’s the subject of an ongoing investigation and we can’t discuss it.’”"
doesn't sound like it will progress things much, but interested to see the witness list.
posted by inire at 7:18 AM on June 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Presence of Nick Pope, famous for stringing out this bullshit for decades, does not exactly raise confidence in this being anything other than a parade of huxters or that “unnamed sources” will be anything other than local Nick Pope equivalents.
posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Grusch told The Debrief that UFO "legacy programs" have long been concealed within "multiple agencies nesting UAP activities in conventional secret access programs without appropriate reporting to various oversight authorities."
Per the Guarding and FOX News, here's what most of the 'UFO Congressional investigation" is going to be about: inappropriate accounting of funding and lack of oversight.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:46 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Per the Guarding and FOX News, here's what most of the 'UFO Congressional investigation" is going to be about: inappropriate accounting of funding and lack of oversight.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:46 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think the serious parts of this story are as follows:
posted by interogative mood at 8:06 AM on June 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
- A whistleblower alleges that programs related to recovery of space/aircraft were not disclosed to the UAPTF nor AARO.
- He claims that executive branch officials such as Sean Kirkpatrick have lied or at the very least mislead Congress in their testimony before the House and Senate
- When Grusch complained that they were not getting access to these programs as required by the legislation creating AARO/UAPTF he suffered retaliation and filed a whistleblower complaint. The whistleblower complaint was deemed credible and he has obtained legal representation from a very experienced attorney who was a former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
posted by interogative mood at 8:06 AM on June 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
certainly, if you pre-emptively decide that the parts of the story involving aliens are non-serious, then the serious parts of the story will not demonstrate that the us is hiding alien spaceships. but that's a reflection of how you've chosen to structure your argument, not a reflection of what is or isn't true here.
but along those lines, it is interesting to think about what would need to be true in order to explain (rather than dismiss) everything that's happened so far, if the us does not in fact have any alien bodies or spaceships.
at a minimum, the interviewees / corroborating witnesses who are said to be inside the recovery programs would need to be plants, i would have thought - it's hard to see why you would tell people working on the recovery of terrestrial craft (super-secret stealth drones or whatever) that they're actually dealing with ufos.
that would suggest the purpose is either disinfo to obscure genuine r&d projects, or covering up something more mundane (e.g. fake projects taking advantage of extreme secrecy to siphon off money for personal gain or whatever).
posted by inire at 8:35 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
but along those lines, it is interesting to think about what would need to be true in order to explain (rather than dismiss) everything that's happened so far, if the us does not in fact have any alien bodies or spaceships.
at a minimum, the interviewees / corroborating witnesses who are said to be inside the recovery programs would need to be plants, i would have thought - it's hard to see why you would tell people working on the recovery of terrestrial craft (super-secret stealth drones or whatever) that they're actually dealing with ufos.
that would suggest the purpose is either disinfo to obscure genuine r&d projects, or covering up something more mundane (e.g. fake projects taking advantage of extreme secrecy to siphon off money for personal gain or whatever).
posted by inire at 8:35 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm happy to see these summaries, because I have been wondering if the article actually said anything. My takeaway from the article was: there's a whistle blower, he's credible, and someone desperately wants it to be aliens, but can't actually say it. The article seemed as content-free as an Erich von Daniken book. Same "humans couldn't possibly have built the pyramids" vibe, too.
posted by surlyben at 8:45 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by surlyben at 8:45 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's really going to sting when this somehow turns out not to bullshit and I'll have to face up to my narrow-minded prejudice!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:23 AM on June 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:23 AM on June 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
I read through the FAQs that have been published about the article, but I might have missed it in all the detail about intelligence agencies: have the authors covered why they had to publish fast yet?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:29 AM on June 8, 2023
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:29 AM on June 8, 2023
it is interesting to think about what would need to be true in order to explain (rather than dismiss) everything that's happened so far, if the us does not in fact have any alien bodies or spaceships.
... at a minimum, the interviewees / corroborating witnesses who are said to be inside the recovery programs would need to be plants
These individuals have not been identified yet. We don't know if they exist and if they exist we don't know what they said. Grusch didn't produce an email, text message or other document to back up his claims. Did these witnesses actually see anything or did they just hear about it? What are the actual qualifications of the individuals and are they able to accurately describe what they saw -- e.g. materials scientist, biologist, talking about alien spacecraft and alien bodies is a lot more credible.
This wouldn't be the first time that a group of true believers found a home for themselves in the sprawling offices of our national security programs. agencies and departments and managed to convince the brass that they were one to something real. From the late 1970s to 1995 a group of true believers in the paranormal and psychic powers ran the Stargate Project at Ft Meade. They made all sorts of claims about their ability to use remote viewing to spy on on our enemies.
Sea monsters / mysterious creatures wash up on beaches every few years and there is a huge media story about it. Eventually biologists get called in, do tests and figure out it was just the partial decayed remains of some relatively common marine life. It is entirely possible that something like this has occurred here with these witnesses.
posted by interogative mood at 10:42 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
... at a minimum, the interviewees / corroborating witnesses who are said to be inside the recovery programs would need to be plants
These individuals have not been identified yet. We don't know if they exist and if they exist we don't know what they said. Grusch didn't produce an email, text message or other document to back up his claims. Did these witnesses actually see anything or did they just hear about it? What are the actual qualifications of the individuals and are they able to accurately describe what they saw -- e.g. materials scientist, biologist, talking about alien spacecraft and alien bodies is a lot more credible.
This wouldn't be the first time that a group of true believers found a home for themselves in the sprawling offices of our national security programs. agencies and departments and managed to convince the brass that they were one to something real. From the late 1970s to 1995 a group of true believers in the paranormal and psychic powers ran the Stargate Project at Ft Meade. They made all sorts of claims about their ability to use remote viewing to spy on on our enemies.
Sea monsters / mysterious creatures wash up on beaches every few years and there is a huge media story about it. Eventually biologists get called in, do tests and figure out it was just the partial decayed remains of some relatively common marine life. It is entirely possible that something like this has occurred here with these witnesses.
posted by interogative mood at 10:42 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Look, I'd love to believe that we're not alone out there. I'm sick of reality being shitty reality, even if we'd probably just nuke aliens if we ever found any. However, every time something like this comes out, people who know more about it than I do debunk the articles and point out all the flaws in them.
TLDR: it's always Lucy and the football with alien stuff.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:08 AM on June 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
TLDR: it's always Lucy and the football with alien stuff.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:08 AM on June 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
have the authors covered why they had to publish fast yet?
summary from an interview with them here and a comment in this vanity fair article.
basically, it sounds like there are more upcoming stories that this is intended to be out in front of, plus details were leaking and grusch was supposedly getting weird / threatening contacts and they decided publication would help to protect him.
These individuals have not been identified yet. We don't know if they exist and if they exist we don't know what they said. Grusch didn't produce an email, text message or other document to back up his claims.
they haven't been identified to us, and documents etc. haven't been provided to us, for the obvious reason that any such information would be classified and is the subject of an ongoing investigation, and grusch decided not to pull a snowden.
the article states that this information has been provided to the icig, and that other individuals have already been in contact with the icig. if that were false, (i) i would be confused as to why grusch's law firm (which is a serious one) would be ok with the article going out, given their professional obligations and ongoing interactions with the icig, and (ii) it would be trivial for anyone involved in the congressional investigation to immediately discredit grusch by stating that no-one else has contacted the icig. that suggests it's highly unlikely there are no such individuals.
who they are and what they actually know is another question. i agree with your other points that the credibility of whatever these individuals say and whatever other information is provided is not going to be clear without more context, which i presume is part of what is being pursued by the icig investigation. how much of that comes out in the end - no idea.
posted by inire at 11:13 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
summary from an interview with them here and a comment in this vanity fair article.
basically, it sounds like there are more upcoming stories that this is intended to be out in front of, plus details were leaking and grusch was supposedly getting weird / threatening contacts and they decided publication would help to protect him.
These individuals have not been identified yet. We don't know if they exist and if they exist we don't know what they said. Grusch didn't produce an email, text message or other document to back up his claims.
they haven't been identified to us, and documents etc. haven't been provided to us, for the obvious reason that any such information would be classified and is the subject of an ongoing investigation, and grusch decided not to pull a snowden.
the article states that this information has been provided to the icig, and that other individuals have already been in contact with the icig. if that were false, (i) i would be confused as to why grusch's law firm (which is a serious one) would be ok with the article going out, given their professional obligations and ongoing interactions with the icig, and (ii) it would be trivial for anyone involved in the congressional investigation to immediately discredit grusch by stating that no-one else has contacted the icig. that suggests it's highly unlikely there are no such individuals.
who they are and what they actually know is another question. i agree with your other points that the credibility of whatever these individuals say and whatever other information is provided is not going to be clear without more context, which i presume is part of what is being pursued by the icig investigation. how much of that comes out in the end - no idea.
posted by inire at 11:13 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
basically, it sounds like there are more upcoming stories that this is intended to be out in front of
Last month: International Ocean Discovery Program geologists extracted "a record-breaking core of upper mantle rock that stretched more than 3,280 feet long" from Atlantis Massif [Portugal], as part of a mission searching for the origins of life on Earth. "Massif's rocks contain olivine, which reacts with water in a process called serpentinization to produce hydrogen, an essential food source for microbial life."
Within weeks of that extraction: Why is China drilling a hole more than 10,000 metres deep? Previously: the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Murmansk Oblast, Russia. ['80s summary.] Scientific American Feb. 22, 2020, How Deep is the Deepest Hole in the World? There’s a portal to the center of the earth in the wreckage of an abandoned project site in Murmansk, Russia. What’s it for? And why is the Internet Googling “Kola Superdeep Borehole screams?”
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:56 PM on June 8, 2023
Last month: International Ocean Discovery Program geologists extracted "a record-breaking core of upper mantle rock that stretched more than 3,280 feet long" from Atlantis Massif [Portugal], as part of a mission searching for the origins of life on Earth. "Massif's rocks contain olivine, which reacts with water in a process called serpentinization to produce hydrogen, an essential food source for microbial life."
Within weeks of that extraction: Why is China drilling a hole more than 10,000 metres deep? Previously: the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Murmansk Oblast, Russia. ['80s summary.] Scientific American Feb. 22, 2020, How Deep is the Deepest Hole in the World? There’s a portal to the center of the earth in the wreckage of an abandoned project site in Murmansk, Russia. What’s it for? And why is the Internet Googling “Kola Superdeep Borehole screams?”
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:56 PM on June 8, 2023
UFOs and sci fi pew pew movies have everyone primed to look up, but my money is on the real stuff being miles underwater.
posted by emelenjr at 7:31 PM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by emelenjr at 7:31 PM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
My money is on it being sideways to us. I’m pretty sure we’ll find FTL there too.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:48 PM on June 8, 2023
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:48 PM on June 8, 2023
I've seen this movie a few times. I've read this book a few more. And I've heard this caller on Coast to Coast AM dozens of times. I always wonder when they're going to get around to reverse engineering that alien technology. I want to see some really cool shit that humanity would otherwise never have been able to create itself.
I don't think any skeptic here would be disappointed if actual proof of some advanced non human craft were discovered. That would be the greatest discovery in the history of humanity, for dogssakes. However, that proof has been elusive. To come here and claim that, no, there really is proof this time, demands that, well, the proof be produced. But like I said, we've seen this one before. Proof gets disappeared. Evidence is whisked away into secret government warehouses. Shadowy figures threaten witnesses. Witnesses who go on to do the UFO circuit in Holiday Inn conference halls across the country, for decades. Skeptics could be dismissive because the substance has been paper thin. The field is laden with tall tales, and the occasional inexplicable event that is no more than that-inexplicable at best.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:45 PM on June 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't think any skeptic here would be disappointed if actual proof of some advanced non human craft were discovered. That would be the greatest discovery in the history of humanity, for dogssakes. However, that proof has been elusive. To come here and claim that, no, there really is proof this time, demands that, well, the proof be produced. But like I said, we've seen this one before. Proof gets disappeared. Evidence is whisked away into secret government warehouses. Shadowy figures threaten witnesses. Witnesses who go on to do the UFO circuit in Holiday Inn conference halls across the country, for decades. Skeptics could be dismissive because the substance has been paper thin. The field is laden with tall tales, and the occasional inexplicable event that is no more than that-inexplicable at best.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:45 PM on June 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
... it has big eyes and its looking at us -- and its still there
posted by TwoToneRow at 10:09 PM on June 8, 2023
posted by TwoToneRow at 10:09 PM on June 8, 2023
Why didn't any one of them colonize Earth millions of years ago, occupying the ecological niche of intelligence that we instead evolved to fill?
How do you know that, in fact, this is not what has happened?
posted by slogger at 11:27 PM on June 8, 2023
How do you know that, in fact, this is not what has happened?
posted by slogger at 11:27 PM on June 8, 2023
How do you know that, in fact, this is not what has happened?
As far as we know, all life on Earth shares a common ancestor. The evidence of common descent comes from many disciplines. But you could probably just say "DNA" if you wanted to oversimplify and didn't mind making scientists sad.
posted by surlyben at 1:10 AM on June 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
As far as we know, all life on Earth shares a common ancestor. The evidence of common descent comes from many disciplines. But you could probably just say "DNA" if you wanted to oversimplify and didn't mind making scientists sad.
posted by surlyben at 1:10 AM on June 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
my money is on the real stuff being miles underwater
you might enjoy this series of 'deathbed leaks' from a 'ufo insider' posted on 4chan a few weeks ago. tl;dr there's a mobile deep sea construction facility in the atlantic (specifically, the bermuda triangle!) that produces the smaller craft encountered by navy pilots, civilians, etc.
someone get me 1980s james cameron and a truckload of cash, i will watch the shit out of this miniseries.
on the topic of the navy pilot encounters, see also the comments from the aaro director sean kirkpatrick at nasa's public meeting on uaps a couple of weeks ago - quote below from this salon article:
"Grusch's revelation is just the latest addition to a mounting body of UAP study concerns across the government. In a historic May 31 meeting, NASA held its first public meeting on UAPs, where officials confirmed several sightings of unusual activity that is "not readily identifiable."
The conference came nearly a year after the agency launched its first official study into UAP, and detailed the agency's sober, data-oriented approach to the collection and analysis of observable material events. The conference's 16-member panel included the Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Sean Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick said US military personnel are observing "metallic orbs" not just in the US — but "all over the world." He said the orbs (3 to 13 feet in diameter) account for nearly half of all UAP reports received by AARO, and that the objects can make "very interesting apparent maneuvers" — including appearing on multiple types of sensors, and being able to go from fully stationary to twice the speed of sound despite a lack of thermal exhaust ports.
Kirkpatrick also said his office is also working with other countries to develop its approach on the topic. "We've entered into discussions with our partners on data sharing: How do they do reporting? What kind of analysis can they help us with? What kind of calibration can they help us with? What can we help them with?," Kirkpatrick said. "
the latter presumably refers to the recent five eyes meeting to share information on uaps, mentioned later in the article.
posted by inire at 3:35 AM on June 9, 2023
you might enjoy this series of 'deathbed leaks' from a 'ufo insider' posted on 4chan a few weeks ago. tl;dr there's a mobile deep sea construction facility in the atlantic (specifically, the bermuda triangle!) that produces the smaller craft encountered by navy pilots, civilians, etc.
someone get me 1980s james cameron and a truckload of cash, i will watch the shit out of this miniseries.
on the topic of the navy pilot encounters, see also the comments from the aaro director sean kirkpatrick at nasa's public meeting on uaps a couple of weeks ago - quote below from this salon article:
"Grusch's revelation is just the latest addition to a mounting body of UAP study concerns across the government. In a historic May 31 meeting, NASA held its first public meeting on UAPs, where officials confirmed several sightings of unusual activity that is "not readily identifiable."
The conference came nearly a year after the agency launched its first official study into UAP, and detailed the agency's sober, data-oriented approach to the collection and analysis of observable material events. The conference's 16-member panel included the Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Sean Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick said US military personnel are observing "metallic orbs" not just in the US — but "all over the world." He said the orbs (3 to 13 feet in diameter) account for nearly half of all UAP reports received by AARO, and that the objects can make "very interesting apparent maneuvers" — including appearing on multiple types of sensors, and being able to go from fully stationary to twice the speed of sound despite a lack of thermal exhaust ports.
Kirkpatrick also said his office is also working with other countries to develop its approach on the topic. "We've entered into discussions with our partners on data sharing: How do they do reporting? What kind of analysis can they help us with? What kind of calibration can they help us with? What can we help them with?," Kirkpatrick said. "
the latter presumably refers to the recent five eyes meeting to share information on uaps, mentioned later in the article.
posted by inire at 3:35 AM on June 9, 2023
It's Time to Show the Ship
"I have been hearing and reading about aircraft of unexplained origin and mysterious alloys for five years now, but you know what I have not done? I have not seen one of these babies. So I'm putting my foot down. I don't want any more ships described to me by guys with jobs that sound fake. I want to see one. It is time to show me the ship."
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:46 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
"I have been hearing and reading about aircraft of unexplained origin and mysterious alloys for five years now, but you know what I have not done? I have not seen one of these babies. So I'm putting my foot down. I don't want any more ships described to me by guys with jobs that sound fake. I want to see one. It is time to show me the ship."
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:46 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Showing the ship would definitely change the course of this discussion.
posted by hippybear at 7:09 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:09 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Showing the ship would definitely change the course of this discussion.
maybe. depends on the context. if grusch had published a handful of images / videos in concert with the debrief article, i think there would be a lot of scepticism as to whether those were real.
if any images or videos were declassified and released pursuant to the icig investigation, they would likely have more credibility (depending on how many there are, what they show and how they line up with the testimony provided), but i could still see there being questions around their veracity.
what would really get things going would be the other stuff you would expect to exist if these projects are real. the stuff that isn't obviously glamorous and is less likely to be convincingly fakeable in meaningful quantities. thousands of pages of dry organisational memos, progress summaries, lab reports, briefing documents, financial records, terabytes of technical data, and the rest of it.
but all that stuff would be classified. so what should we expect, if it exists? we might get official statements that it exists, pursuant to the icig investigation, without it being made public. i guess it's possible that some or all of it might end up being declassified and published, but that seems like a pretty radical move. the only other way it comes out is if someone does a snowden and leaks it, which seems quite unlikely given the consequences for the leaker.
long story short: even if this is all true, it's very possible we never see the ship, and people end up having to decide what to believe based on the other available evidence for or against (whatever that turns out to be).
posted by inire at 7:48 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
maybe. depends on the context. if grusch had published a handful of images / videos in concert with the debrief article, i think there would be a lot of scepticism as to whether those were real.
if any images or videos were declassified and released pursuant to the icig investigation, they would likely have more credibility (depending on how many there are, what they show and how they line up with the testimony provided), but i could still see there being questions around their veracity.
what would really get things going would be the other stuff you would expect to exist if these projects are real. the stuff that isn't obviously glamorous and is less likely to be convincingly fakeable in meaningful quantities. thousands of pages of dry organisational memos, progress summaries, lab reports, briefing documents, financial records, terabytes of technical data, and the rest of it.
but all that stuff would be classified. so what should we expect, if it exists? we might get official statements that it exists, pursuant to the icig investigation, without it being made public. i guess it's possible that some or all of it might end up being declassified and published, but that seems like a pretty radical move. the only other way it comes out is if someone does a snowden and leaks it, which seems quite unlikely given the consequences for the leaker.
long story short: even if this is all true, it's very possible we never see the ship, and people end up having to decide what to believe based on the other available evidence for or against (whatever that turns out to be).
posted by inire at 7:48 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
even if this is all true, it's very possible we never see the ship, and people end up having to decide what to believe based on the other available evidence for or against
So basically the movie Contact all over again.
posted by hippybear at 7:51 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
So basically the movie Contact all over again.
posted by hippybear at 7:51 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Metabunk has been discussing the Vegas incident. This seems more like a meteor flash and a wild imagination. The circles in the gravel parking lot behind the house appear to be just an artifact of the cars turning around. There are ones found in older satellite images.
The metal spheres videos (1, 2) and still image, along with reports going back several years seem to be where all the action is at the moment. Mick West suggests that these might just be mylar party balloons and parallax effects from the fast moving aircraft focusing on a slow moving balloon and the ground giving it apparent movement.
posted by interogative mood at 7:58 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The metal spheres videos (1, 2) and still image, along with reports going back several years seem to be where all the action is at the moment. Mick West suggests that these might just be mylar party balloons and parallax effects from the fast moving aircraft focusing on a slow moving balloon and the ground giving it apparent movement.
posted by interogative mood at 7:58 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
inclined to agree re vegas. metabunk is also discussing grusch here, albeit they have as little to go on as the rest of us at the moment.
speaking of metabunk, i'm pretty sure someone there made a good case for at least one of the videos that once wind speeds were taken into account - based on both meteorological data for the area / altitude and looking at the speed of the waves in the video - the "slow moving balloon" was likely to be moving quite a bit faster than the initial analysis suggested (like 100+ mph rather than 40mph), and notably faster than the prevailing wind.
that might give more credence to the theory that this was a powered object, whether terrestrial (see e.g. the powered surveillance balloon referenced here) or not. will see if i can dig out the thread.
posted by inire at 8:56 AM on June 9, 2023
speaking of metabunk, i'm pretty sure someone there made a good case for at least one of the videos that once wind speeds were taken into account - based on both meteorological data for the area / altitude and looking at the speed of the waves in the video - the "slow moving balloon" was likely to be moving quite a bit faster than the initial analysis suggested (like 100+ mph rather than 40mph), and notably faster than the prevailing wind.
that might give more credence to the theory that this was a powered object, whether terrestrial (see e.g. the powered surveillance balloon referenced here) or not. will see if i can dig out the thread.
posted by inire at 8:56 AM on June 9, 2023
I also want to see a ship, dammit. I did hear some podcast where someone actually found some abandoned spaceship and that's as close as I ever heard.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 AM on June 9, 2023
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 AM on June 9, 2023
Vegas news segment: it's an insult to my arse that I sat through 3 minutes of it. Did no-one in the house have a phone? The back yard looked well lit enough to support even a crappy phone's camera.
I stopped at "This might seem like a really dumb question, but did you guys see anything fall out of the sky?"
Why, yes, that is a truly dumb question. It cues the people you're asking about what general sort of answer you're looking for. The best question would be to the switchboard operator back at base, to ask whether they'd logged any relevant reports.
When I was young I wanted to believe. These days, though, even in a world festooned with decent quality surveillance devices capable of capturing actual evidence, I despair of ever believing.
posted by BCMagee at 11:27 AM on June 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I stopped at "This might seem like a really dumb question, but did you guys see anything fall out of the sky?"
Why, yes, that is a truly dumb question. It cues the people you're asking about what general sort of answer you're looking for. The best question would be to the switchboard operator back at base, to ask whether they'd logged any relevant reports.
When I was young I wanted to believe. These days, though, even in a world festooned with decent quality surveillance devices capable of capturing actual evidence, I despair of ever believing.
posted by BCMagee at 11:27 AM on June 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
>>How do you know [that the Earth wasn’t colonized millions of years ago], in fact, this is not what has happened?
>As far as we know, all life on Earth shares a common ancestor.
That doesn’t rule out an unsuccessful colonization. In fact I remember an old broadcast about invading aliens getting wiped out by Earth microbes.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:59 AM on June 9, 2023
>As far as we know, all life on Earth shares a common ancestor.
That doesn’t rule out an unsuccessful colonization. In fact I remember an old broadcast about invading aliens getting wiped out by Earth microbes.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:59 AM on June 9, 2023
The title of this post truly reflects many of the comments in the thread.
posted by hippybear at 12:06 PM on June 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 12:06 PM on June 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Within a few hundred years we'll have a monoculture and no meaningful genetic differences left. We really need an "other" soon if we're going to keep claiming that outsiders are the authors of our troubles.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:52 PM on June 9, 2023
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:52 PM on June 9, 2023
The title of this post truly reflects many of the comments in the thread.
Except we ain't got no Stinkin' Cigarette Man.
posted by y2karl at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Except we ain't got no Stinkin' Cigarette Man.
posted by y2karl at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
The motivated reasoning displayed in this thread is amazing to see.
Anyway. Here's one more thing. The neutral position, that we just don't have evidence one way or the other about UFOs visiting the earth is not actually a neutral position, but instead it is an example of special pleading: that we should treat these reports differently from all other similar things, such as ghosts and poltergeists and bigfoot and yeti and angels and demons and chupacabras and so on. But there is no reason to treat the belief in UFOs as meaningfully different.
I suppose it's easier to see with religion. Many people think that agnosticism with respect to (something like a christian) God is the reasonable position. It is not, because it is special pleading. The same people usually don't think the same way about other gods and entities, other spiritualities that don't have gods, or more unique stuff like perspectivism. They just think that the Christian God is a really special case and should be treated separately, and therefore they are agnostics, because of lack of evidence. But only evidence about a christian-like god is relevant, all the other religious beliefs are treated as nonsense superstition not worth considering.
Agnosticism is a textbook example of special pleading.
"We don't know whether aliens have visited the earth" is an example of special pleading.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 5:57 PM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anyway. Here's one more thing. The neutral position, that we just don't have evidence one way or the other about UFOs visiting the earth is not actually a neutral position, but instead it is an example of special pleading: that we should treat these reports differently from all other similar things, such as ghosts and poltergeists and bigfoot and yeti and angels and demons and chupacabras and so on. But there is no reason to treat the belief in UFOs as meaningfully different.
I suppose it's easier to see with religion. Many people think that agnosticism with respect to (something like a christian) God is the reasonable position. It is not, because it is special pleading. The same people usually don't think the same way about other gods and entities, other spiritualities that don't have gods, or more unique stuff like perspectivism. They just think that the Christian God is a really special case and should be treated separately, and therefore they are agnostics, because of lack of evidence. But only evidence about a christian-like god is relevant, all the other religious beliefs are treated as nonsense superstition not worth considering.
Agnosticism is a textbook example of special pleading.
"We don't know whether aliens have visited the earth" is an example of special pleading.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 5:57 PM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Except we ain't got no Stinkin' Cigarette Man.
Given the Smoking Man's role within X-Files of working to continually cover-up any evidence of anything Mulder and Scully uncovered, maybe we've had the Smoking Man with us all along.
-eerie music-
posted by hippybear at 6:03 PM on June 9, 2023
Given the Smoking Man's role within X-Files of working to continually cover-up any evidence of anything Mulder and Scully uncovered, maybe we've had the Smoking Man with us all along.
-eerie music-
posted by hippybear at 6:03 PM on June 9, 2023
Maybe the real Smoking Man is the one we met along the way.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:50 PM on June 9, 2023
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:50 PM on June 9, 2023
Many people think that agnosticism with respect to (something like a christian) God is the reasonable position. It is not, because it is special pleading. The same people usually don't think the same way about other gods and entities, other spiritualities that don't have gods, or more unique stuff like perspectivism. They just think that the Christian God is a really special case and should be treated separately, and therefore they are agnostics, because of lack of evidence.I think the word and its implications oversimplify what I believe, but it's OK shorthand, so for the purposes of this post, let's say I am an "agnostic".
Agnosticism is a textbook example of special pleading.
What you describe is absolutely not my experience as an agnostic, nor does it seem to be the experience of any of the seemingly like-minded people whose thoughts on this I know.
posted by Flunkie at 10:54 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Can you describe what agnostic means then for you and the like-minded people? I ask because unlike you I have the exact experience that what I said is the most commonplace agnosticism among people I know. I didn't just randomly make it up.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:02 PM on June 9, 2023
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:02 PM on June 9, 2023
None of the religions that I am at all familiar with seem plausible to me (Christianity is one of those, not by any means the sole one).
posted by Flunkie at 11:23 PM on June 9, 2023
posted by Flunkie at 11:23 PM on June 9, 2023
Ahh ok Flunkie I think we are actually on the same page here, but maybe talking a bit past each other. What I was on about is essentially how culture-specific beliefs about reason and rationality can be.
What I meant by an agnostic believes something like:
- belief in a generic god is commonplace, and this is derived from christianity.
- arguments about religion center around this idea, and not any other, such as spirituality without gods
- any, say, animist ideas are dismissed as not to be taken seriously. christianity-derived belief is the standard according to which to judge other belief systems
- in general, the culturally specific christian idea of monotheism is taken as the standard
And then judgments of proof and probability are about that very particular conception of religion or of god.
My point was that when assessing evidence for UFOs, the thing that is being "assessed" is 1) culturally stereotypical beliefs about aliens and 2) any "evidence" is assessed to be more plausible the more it conforms to culturally stereotypical beliefs about aliens.
Does this make sense or is it a derail
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:36 PM on June 9, 2023
What I meant by an agnostic believes something like:
- belief in a generic god is commonplace, and this is derived from christianity.
- arguments about religion center around this idea, and not any other, such as spirituality without gods
- any, say, animist ideas are dismissed as not to be taken seriously. christianity-derived belief is the standard according to which to judge other belief systems
- in general, the culturally specific christian idea of monotheism is taken as the standard
And then judgments of proof and probability are about that very particular conception of religion or of god.
My point was that when assessing evidence for UFOs, the thing that is being "assessed" is 1) culturally stereotypical beliefs about aliens and 2) any "evidence" is assessed to be more plausible the more it conforms to culturally stereotypical beliefs about aliens.
Does this make sense or is it a derail
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:36 PM on June 9, 2023
Maybe I should be more straightforward: agnosticism is always special pleading and the actually rationally consistent belief is non-belief, that is, atheism.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:44 PM on June 9, 2023
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:44 PM on June 9, 2023
That seems like an extremely overbroad conclusion to me, without much real strength behind it, even ignoring that both of those terms have multiple distinct meanings. But anyway, to answer your question, it does seem derailly to me.
posted by Flunkie at 12:11 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Flunkie at 12:11 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
The motivated reasoning displayed in this thread is amazing to see.
it is, but not only in the way you mean.
Anyway. Here's one more thing. The neutral position, that we just don't have evidence one way or the other about UFOs visiting the earth is not actually a neutral position, but instead it is an example of special pleading: that we should treat these reports differently from all other similar things, such as ghosts and poltergeists and bigfoot and yeti and angels and demons and chupacabras and so on. But there is no reason to treat the belief in UFOs as meaningfully different.
this is deeply confused.
we have a bunch of published stuff (eyewitness accounts, second-hand accounts, photos, videos, etc.) that purports to be evidence of aliens visiting the earth. so far, none of this stuff really holds up as evidence of that - it has either been conclusively debunked, or the available data doesn't allow for conclusive debunking but is strongly suggestive of not-a-ufo, or we don’t have enough data to assess and it remains unexplained. so it’s perfectly reasonable to say that we have no evidence in favour of aliens visiting the earth.
what evidence do we have that aliens have not visited the earth? how do you think we have proved that negative? (not impossible to do, as sometimes claimed, but it is really difficult if you’re using a reasonably strong definition of ‘prove’.) the debunked / unexplained stuff above isn’t evidence that aliens have not visited. it’s an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. you’re looking around and seeing nothing but white swans, and concluding that all swans must therefore be white.
we might have stronger grounds to treat an absence of evidence as evidence of absence if we had, for example, identified the tangible / conceptual spaces where such evidence would most likely be found (if it existed), searched for it in those spaces, and not found it. we haven’t done that. this post is about an effort to do that (in one particular space).
‘special pleading’ consists of treating something as an exception to a general principle, without justification. it seems relevant to note in this context that in relation to aliens / uaps, there is, for example:
none of the above proves the existence of aliens. it’s very clear that a bunch of people have taken it as proving this, which i agree is motivated reasoning. it’s also clear that many people have instantly dismissed the above as meaningless, but can’t explain why that is without begging the question or arguing from incredulity. i think that is quite often motivated reasoning as well.
(edit: fixed a link)
posted by inire at 12:14 AM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
it is, but not only in the way you mean.
Anyway. Here's one more thing. The neutral position, that we just don't have evidence one way or the other about UFOs visiting the earth is not actually a neutral position, but instead it is an example of special pleading: that we should treat these reports differently from all other similar things, such as ghosts and poltergeists and bigfoot and yeti and angels and demons and chupacabras and so on. But there is no reason to treat the belief in UFOs as meaningfully different.
this is deeply confused.
we have a bunch of published stuff (eyewitness accounts, second-hand accounts, photos, videos, etc.) that purports to be evidence of aliens visiting the earth. so far, none of this stuff really holds up as evidence of that - it has either been conclusively debunked, or the available data doesn't allow for conclusive debunking but is strongly suggestive of not-a-ufo, or we don’t have enough data to assess and it remains unexplained. so it’s perfectly reasonable to say that we have no evidence in favour of aliens visiting the earth.
what evidence do we have that aliens have not visited the earth? how do you think we have proved that negative? (not impossible to do, as sometimes claimed, but it is really difficult if you’re using a reasonably strong definition of ‘prove’.) the debunked / unexplained stuff above isn’t evidence that aliens have not visited. it’s an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. you’re looking around and seeing nothing but white swans, and concluding that all swans must therefore be white.
we might have stronger grounds to treat an absence of evidence as evidence of absence if we had, for example, identified the tangible / conceptual spaces where such evidence would most likely be found (if it existed), searched for it in those spaces, and not found it. we haven’t done that. this post is about an effort to do that (in one particular space).
‘special pleading’ consists of treating something as an exception to a general principle, without justification. it seems relevant to note in this context that in relation to aliens / uaps, there is, for example:
- a federally funded organisation tasked with collating and investigating reports of uaps and making classified reports to congress
- an ongoing congressional investigation into uap-related allegations that appear to have been made by more than one person in relevant roles
- five eyes intelligence coordination to gather and share uap-related data
- comments from e.g. the director of national intelligence and the administrator of nasa treating this as a serious endeavour (avril haines: “There's always the question of 'is there something else that we simply do not understand, that might come extraterrestrially”; bill nelson: “Who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?”).
none of the above proves the existence of aliens. it’s very clear that a bunch of people have taken it as proving this, which i agree is motivated reasoning. it’s also clear that many people have instantly dismissed the above as meaningless, but can’t explain why that is without begging the question or arguing from incredulity. i think that is quite often motivated reasoning as well.
(edit: fixed a link)
posted by inire at 12:14 AM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
no. would you like to take a few minutes to think about what the differences between this and q might be? if not, happy to point them out in a little while.
posted by inire at 1:29 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by inire at 1:29 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sure, out of curiosity what are the differences as you see them? To me this seems maybe a little less malicious but functionally identical: attempts to hang depth and significance on official sounding pronouncements that are untraceable and without substance, lots of references to sources that never actually emerge, etc. etc.
posted by Artw at 2:10 AM on June 10, 2023
posted by Artw at 2:10 AM on June 10, 2023
I'm thrilled to learn that all this conversation started occurred now thanks to a billionaire conspiracy nut, not some dumb US psyop or whatever.
It's all now being discussed though, so what's the endgame or social consequences?
At present, artificial intelligence provides a major distraction for many rich people who want to imagine they're doing something useful with their money. We still need terawatt-hours to train these AIs, who then regurgitate the same jokes over and over.
It's thus plausible AI x-risk falls out of fashion, maybe peak oil restricts when they can be trained, maybe people realize more immediate concerns exist, etc. If popular enough, then aliens could then step-in to help justify not reducing economic growth, energy use, or CO2 emissions. A mythical x-risk makes a good distraction from real x-risks.
It's more comforting to hope aliens save us or think aliens control all this, or whatever, instead of believing humans could change anything if they take sufficiently painful action, so in some sense the aliens myths may really be here to kill us. ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 5:25 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's all now being discussed though, so what's the endgame or social consequences?
At present, artificial intelligence provides a major distraction for many rich people who want to imagine they're doing something useful with their money. We still need terawatt-hours to train these AIs, who then regurgitate the same jokes over and over.
It's thus plausible AI x-risk falls out of fashion, maybe peak oil restricts when they can be trained, maybe people realize more immediate concerns exist, etc. If popular enough, then aliens could then step-in to help justify not reducing economic growth, energy use, or CO2 emissions. A mythical x-risk makes a good distraction from real x-risks.
It's more comforting to hope aliens save us or think aliens control all this, or whatever, instead of believing humans could change anything if they take sufficiently painful action, so in some sense the aliens myths may really be here to kill us. ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 5:25 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
NYT: Does the U.S. Government Want You to Believe in U.F.O.s?
The possibility of literal spacecraft stashed in U.S. government hangars, meanwhile, piles up two immense-seeming improbabilities. First, that inhuman species cross oceans of space or leap interdimensional barriers using unfathomable technology and yet somehow keep crashing and leaving souvenirs behind. Second, that human governments have been collecting evidence for generations without the truth ever being leaked or uncovered or just blurted out by Donald Trump.posted by jenfullmoon at 9:47 AM on June 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
But this whistle-blower’s mere existence is evidence of a fascinating shift in public U.F.O. discourse. There may not be alien spacecraft, but there is clearly now a faction within the national security complex that wants Americans to think there might be alien spacecraft, to give these stories credence rather than dismissal.
But this whistle-blower’s mere existence is evidence of a fascinating shift in public U.F.O. discourse. There may not be alien spacecraft, but there is clearly now a faction within the national security complex that wants Americans to think there might be alien spacecraft, to give these stories credence rather than dismissal.
The evidence for this shift includes the military’s newfound willingness to disclose weird atmospheric encounters. It includes the establishment of the task force that Grusch was assigned to. It includes the government’s bizarre behavior, secretive in an attention-grabbing way, around the military shootdowns of what were presumably balloons earlier this year.
I have no definite theory of why this push is happening. Maybe it’s because there really is something Out There and we’re being prepared for the big reveal. Or maybe the dose of Pentagon funding that Harry Reid engineered for studying the paranormal back in 2007 allowed a cluster of U.F.O. enthusiasts to infiltrate the defense establishment. Or maybe there’s always a Deep State network of occult-knowledge believers — think of the Cold War experiments in psychic research — and they’ve just become more media-savvy lately.
Or maybe it’s a cynical effort to use unexplained phenomena as an excuse to goose military funding. Or maybe it’s a psy-op to discredit critics of the national security state — to make, say, Tucker Carlson look bad by persuading him to believe in aliens and then doing a debunking.
Actual aliens would be more interesting than Deep State cranks or psy-ops. But all these scenarios make for pretty strange stories about how our government operates.
So you should be following the U.F.O. beat even if you don’t think aliens are out there — because the truth might be weird enough.
'special pleading’ consists of treating something as an exception to a general principle, without justification. it seems relevant to note in this context that in relation to aliens / uaps, there is, for example:
posted by y2karl at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2023
• a federally funded organisation tasked with collating and investigating reports of uaps and making classified reports to congressAlso, The Arrival of Wang comes to mind. He does show up speaking Mandarin, after all. For good reason, from his point of view.
• an ongoing congressional investigation into uap-related allegations that appear to have been made by more than one person in relevant roles
five eyes intelligence coordination to gather and share uap-related data
• comments from e.g. the director of national intelligence and the administrator of nasa treating this as a serious endeavour (avril haines: “There's always the question of 'is there something else that we simply do not understand, that might come extraterrestrially”; bill nelson: “Who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?”).
posted by y2karl at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2023
A long video interview with Mick West on the “Bad Boys of Science Podcast”. It covered a lot of the reasons to be skeptical of this report and the connections to the larger ufo community.
posted by interogative mood at 7:15 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 7:15 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
this is deeply confused.
No, it is not confused, you just disagree. You think there's credible reasons to think seriously about UFO-s, and I do not. That is a disagreement, not me not knowing what special pleading means. Maybe try not calling others stupid when they disagree with you, you may convince more people that way.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:31 PM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
No, it is not confused, you just disagree. You think there's credible reasons to think seriously about UFO-s, and I do not. That is a disagreement, not me not knowing what special pleading means. Maybe try not calling others stupid when they disagree with you, you may convince more people that way.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:31 PM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
without the truth ever being leaked or uncovered or just blurted out by Donald Trump, in office during the formalization of the Space Force.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:37 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:37 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
What’s up with those claims the US has recovered UFOs?
Some purported whistleblowers are truth-tellers with solid information, some are kooks, and some fall somewhere between those two poles. Grusch admits he has no firsthand knowledge of these purported programs. He hasn’t seen any craft, or certainly any dead alien pilots. Rather, he says he’s repeating what other people have told him. Who are these people? Does he really know what they are saying is true? What evidence does he have?posted by jenfullmoon at 1:11 PM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
He has not publicly released any such specifics. His defenders point out that any such details would be classified, so it would be illegal to release specifics. They also argue that he handed over the classified details he knew to the inspector general and Congress, and point out it would be a crime to lie to either.
Yet skeptics question whether Grusch is just repeating tall tales that have long circulated through the UFO-believing community, suggesting he may be just a gullible sap (if not an outright fabulist). They also point out that prestigious media sources have so far remained wary of Grusch — the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico were all offered his story but none thought it was publishable. The Debrief, which published it, is a notably UFO-friendly outlet, as are Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, the two journalists who wrote the story. And purported bombshells like this in the past have tended to fizzle out.
More prestigious media sources, though, have stayed away from Grusch’s claims. According to Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein, Kean and Blumenthal brought the story to the Times, but the paper turned it down in April. They then went to the Washington Post and Politico, neither of which was prepared to publish it. One reason for the Post’s caution, per one of Klein’s sources, is “that it was unclear what members of Congress made of Grusch’s testimony.” (Translation: do the people who have clearance to review his information think he’s legit, or crazy?)
As Grusch has been doing interviews his claims have gotten more specific and more out there. He is now claiming that aliens are killing people. They might not just be aliens but beings from a higher dimension. They have ships that are much bigger on the inside — the size of football fields. The President is seen as a temporary employee so they are not read into this. The US has secret agreements with ar least one of the groups of aliens. Italy recovered a spacecraft in 1933 and it was transferred to the US with the help of the Vatican in 1944.
posted by interogative mood at 3:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 3:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Grusch admits he has no firsthand knowledge of these purported programs. He hasn’t seen any craft, or certainly any dead alien pilots. Rather, he says he’s repeating what other people have told him. Who are these people? Does he really know what they are saying is true? What evidence does he have?
This reminds me a lot of the insistence that there were still American POWs being held by the Vietnamese after the end of the Vietnam War: there's no intersection between the sets of "people claiming first-hand knowledge of the alleged POWs" and "people that you'd believe."
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:39 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
This reminds me a lot of the insistence that there were still American POWs being held by the Vietnamese after the end of the Vietnam War: there's no intersection between the sets of "people claiming first-hand knowledge of the alleged POWs" and "people that you'd believe."
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:39 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
UFO Whistleblower, Meet a Conspiracy-Loving Congress
I guess it’s less dumb than many of the things these people could be doing with public time.
posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I guess it’s less dumb than many of the things these people could be doing with public time.
posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS — EXCEPT EUROPA -- OH, AND CALLISTO, DIONNE, ENCELADUS, GANYMEDE, TITAN AND TRITON. SO FAR. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE AND CHECK BACK ON THIS PSA OFTEN.
posted by y2karl at 4:10 PM on June 16, 2023
posted by y2karl at 4:10 PM on June 16, 2023
It never fails. Ask anyone promulgating what you would think of as a conspiracy theory Where's the Vatican in all of this? and you will immediately discover how sensible their theory is.
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 PM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Etrigan at 4:55 PM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mussolini could have been Italian Elon Musk, but no, stupid pope.
posted by Artw at 5:14 PM on June 16, 2023
posted by Artw at 5:14 PM on June 16, 2023
The most insane part of this is that the Department of Defense had “reality” host Dr Travis S. Taylor as a scientific advisor on the UAPTF. He has made his living off the UFO grift for a long time with work on shows like Ancient Aliens, The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, When Aliens Attack. Despite a degree in Optics he made what appear to he simple mistakes in talking about footage to claim the DOD had footage of possibly extraterrestrial craft — these later turned out to be stars, commercial aircraft and birds.
posted by interogative mood at 6:18 PM on June 16, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 6:18 PM on June 16, 2023
But what if the birds are the ancient aliens?
Oh, wait, no, my bad, I forgot.
But wait, no, wait! That only brings up more questions!
posted by Flunkie at 6:39 PM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, wait, no, my bad, I forgot.
But wait, no, wait! That only brings up more questions!
posted by Flunkie at 6:39 PM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
This might work, however, for someone with no ties to the past--a loner on a solitary, one-way expedition.
Or: Traveling Carnival civilization. They're self-contained and move as a group, dropping in periodically to see how the Universe is doing and trade for needed consumables, then disappear for a few eons due to special relativity en route to their next stop.
But as fun as that is to imagine, as others have pointed out, the "I want to believe" camp has a very tough hill to climb due to the sheer size of the Universe and the timescales involved. Expansionist alien civilizations with interstellar travel should have colonized the entire galaxy by now; non-expansionist (Traveling Carnival or just stay-at-homes) would be so rare as to make their appearance now, at this point in human history, spectacularly low odds. And then you get into the suspicious similarities between our current cultural expectations of what aliens might be like (about our size, flying in spaceships, vulnerable to crashing / mishaps) and the actual would-be aliens, which seems to also be extremely low odds, given the various forms that aliens might take.
My take: I think that our existence suggests that life is probably common or at least present elsewhere in the Universe, but sentient or recognizable intelligent life is orders of magnitude less common than that (since it does not seem to have existed throughout much of our planet's history), technological civilization is still far less, spacefaring civilizations a small fraction of those, etc. The net is that civilizations like ours are probably rare and probably don't exist for very long. (With a pessimistic explanation that we go extinct, or an optimistic explanation that we hit some sort of Singularity-type threshold and become beings-of-pure-energy or something.) So the odds of running into another live, spacefaring civilization is impossibly small. At some point I think it's plausible we might run into the ruins of one, though, or into planets capable of supporting life that haven't evolved it yet (in fact I tend to think this is true within our own Solar System, and we could accelerate this process if we weren't so chickenshit; if Elon had any imagination he'd be firing extremophile bacteria at the Galilean moons, not farting around with Mars colonies).
Anyway, re the more general "what's the harm in pretending it's true?" question, I don't think there's much harm in a forum like this (see noodling above), but in, say, a Congressional hearing or something, or any other forum in which limited resources are being allocated, the extraterrestrial theory is so ridiculously improbable that it doesn't make sense to investigate while there are other possibilities. E.g. our own government, other governments, rogue mad engineers living under mesas in the Sonoran desert, crashed satellites, etc.
The 'government' possibilities should themselves be considered in light of the extremely mixed record that most governments have regarding keeping secrets, though. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of the US government keeping significant secrets over timespans longer than a few decades; stuff tends to trickle out and become known as multiple generations of people are entrusted with the knowledge, retire, and feel themselves to be beyond the reach of consequences. Even more close-lipped societies like the Soviets had trouble keeping major secrets over long timescales (e.g. their secret, closed cities were pretty well-known to people in the regions around them and, I'm told, to educated people generally; they just weren't discussed openly).
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:09 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or: Traveling Carnival civilization. They're self-contained and move as a group, dropping in periodically to see how the Universe is doing and trade for needed consumables, then disappear for a few eons due to special relativity en route to their next stop.
But as fun as that is to imagine, as others have pointed out, the "I want to believe" camp has a very tough hill to climb due to the sheer size of the Universe and the timescales involved. Expansionist alien civilizations with interstellar travel should have colonized the entire galaxy by now; non-expansionist (Traveling Carnival or just stay-at-homes) would be so rare as to make their appearance now, at this point in human history, spectacularly low odds. And then you get into the suspicious similarities between our current cultural expectations of what aliens might be like (about our size, flying in spaceships, vulnerable to crashing / mishaps) and the actual would-be aliens, which seems to also be extremely low odds, given the various forms that aliens might take.
My take: I think that our existence suggests that life is probably common or at least present elsewhere in the Universe, but sentient or recognizable intelligent life is orders of magnitude less common than that (since it does not seem to have existed throughout much of our planet's history), technological civilization is still far less, spacefaring civilizations a small fraction of those, etc. The net is that civilizations like ours are probably rare and probably don't exist for very long. (With a pessimistic explanation that we go extinct, or an optimistic explanation that we hit some sort of Singularity-type threshold and become beings-of-pure-energy or something.) So the odds of running into another live, spacefaring civilization is impossibly small. At some point I think it's plausible we might run into the ruins of one, though, or into planets capable of supporting life that haven't evolved it yet (in fact I tend to think this is true within our own Solar System, and we could accelerate this process if we weren't so chickenshit; if Elon had any imagination he'd be firing extremophile bacteria at the Galilean moons, not farting around with Mars colonies).
Anyway, re the more general "what's the harm in pretending it's true?" question, I don't think there's much harm in a forum like this (see noodling above), but in, say, a Congressional hearing or something, or any other forum in which limited resources are being allocated, the extraterrestrial theory is so ridiculously improbable that it doesn't make sense to investigate while there are other possibilities. E.g. our own government, other governments, rogue mad engineers living under mesas in the Sonoran desert, crashed satellites, etc.
The 'government' possibilities should themselves be considered in light of the extremely mixed record that most governments have regarding keeping secrets, though. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of the US government keeping significant secrets over timespans longer than a few decades; stuff tends to trickle out and become known as multiple generations of people are entrusted with the knowledge, retire, and feel themselves to be beyond the reach of consequences. Even more close-lipped societies like the Soviets had trouble keeping major secrets over long timescales (e.g. their secret, closed cities were pretty well-known to people in the regions around them and, I'm told, to educated people generally; they just weren't discussed openly).
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:09 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
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