The U.F.O. skeptics are in denial

originally posted by: Lucidparadox
If an alien came down and shook their hand... they would be trying to rip their face off thinking its a mask, or searching for a zipper in the back of the costume.

Yeah, but that has never happened.

My guess is that if the gov does disclose it, these people wont trust it and they will say "Its a Psyop!" and "Its all a distraction."

So an agency that has been proven to have repeatedly lied to you suddenly comes out and tells you that this time, no foolin', we're telling you the truth, and you're gonna believe them without question because it fits what you already believe? That's hilarious.

"Gee, no honey, I'm not cheating on you, you can ask any of my mistresses!"

originally posted by: Flesh699
What are the odds two separate people in separate countries having never met each other and speak different languages describe a similar thing?

You mean like two people describing a dream where the go to school and are not ready for the test? And they have no pants on? Like the odds of that happening?

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
For the record. I do believe in aliens. I just have not seen any credible evidence of such.

I'm with you. I've always been a "fan" of UFOs, and Bigfoot, too, along with a variety of paranormal stuff. But I also understand how logic and proof work. And when it comes to aliens, I have to admit I've never seen even one bit of objective, verifiable proof that they exist. That's not being skeptical, that's just being rational.

Same here too. I wish U.F.O. accounts could be taken as reported. But mistaken people and charlatans are much more the reality than aliens. It makes me sad that Ufology is ripe with cons, and has very little credibility. If any at this point.

originally posted by: neutronflux

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
For the record. I do believe in aliens. I just have not seen any credible evidence of such.

I'm with you. I've always been a "fan" of UFOs, and Bigfoot, too, along with a variety of paranormal stuff. But I also understand how logic and proof work. And when it comes to aliens, I have to admit I've never seen even one bit of objective, verifiable proof that they exist. That's not being skeptical, that's just being rational.

Same here too. I wish U.F.O. accounts could be taken as reported. But mistaken people and charlatans are much more the reality than aliens. It makes me sad that Ufology is ripe with cons, and has very little credibility. If any at this point.

I believe people when they report what they believe they experienced, and have no reason to think they're all liars. But that's very different than believing the actual experience itself happened as they described it. Not just because people lie, but because they can simply be wrong.

originally posted by: neoholographic
How are you going to limit what an advanced civilization can or can't do based on our current understanding of Physics which is limited. On the Kardashev scale we're a type 0 civilization. So if there's a type 2 or type 3 civilization out there, how can we limit what they can or can't do based on our understanding?

Then why limit it to alien technology? Maybe we don't have a very good understanding of the way demons or leprechauns work either, do you agree? If you're going to prove things according to what we don't know, then by all means let's bring those sneaky, manipulative leprechauns into the argument, as well.

Through much self-observation, I now know I believe in flying objects that are unidentified.

originally posted by: play4keeps
a reply to: Arbitrageur

What is your opinion of the Travis Walton case for example?

Before we discuss that, let's review some of the same evidence. I wasn't there, but listen to the recorded phone call #058 below, from a friend of Travis Walton's brother, who was there and believed the story, until the things he mentioned in that phone call happened. Dr. Spaulding of GSW (ground Saucer Watch, a pro-UFO organization) was there doing research, which is mentioned in the phone call. (There is also a memo of what GSW found in their investigation available online). The five witnesses other than Mike Rogers and Travis Walton certainly seem believable, but they can't even confirm they saw a "UFO", they saw a light close to the ground in the trees (described in another one of these phone calls to NUFORC), and they never saw Walton board any craft or that light. Listen to what the friend of Travis Walton's brother says in that phone call 058 below first, and tell me what you think of that.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: ConfusedBrit

There are some audio recordings from the week of the incident that few people know about. You'll enjoy hearing them. The guys who were with Walton made several calls to NUFORC as well as dealing with the sheriffs. To modern senses this will seem absurd, but back then NUFORC was fielding 1000s of calls a year and had somewhat of a public presence.

One of the calls did more to make me doubt the whole thing than anything else I've read or heard. I won't say which one so you can judge for yourself and, to be fair, it might sound different to me all these years later. There's also the sterling fact that we shouldn't judge how people react to experience and everyone's different. Here we go:

Travis Walton Abduction in the Apache-Sitgreaves National
Forest, AZ. November 6, 1975.
51-58 are the earliest calls recorded dealing with the Walton Incident.

051:11.08.1975 Taylor AZ mp3 link
Notification of the abduction by a friend of Travis Walton's brother. 07:00

052: 11.08.1975 mp3 link
Jerry Phillips reports to Gribble about his conversation with
the Taylor, AZ Town Marshall regarding the abduction. 04:00

053: 11.09.1975 Snowflake, AZ mp3 link
Ralph Anderson, Travis Walton's brother at 11:21 AM 12:15

054: 11.09.1975 mp3 link
Jerry Phillips and Robert Gribble discuss the investigations
progress at 6:00 PM 09:06

055: 11.11.1975 mp3 link
Jerry Phillips and Robert Gribble discuss investigation progress
at 10:15 AM. 02:45

056: 11.11.1975 Snowflake, AZ mp3 link
Ralph Anderson at 5:44 PM. 09:19

057: 11.13.1975 Snowflake, AZ mp3 link
Ralph Anderson at 8:15 PM. 08:13

058: 11.15.1975 Taylor, AZ mp3 link
Friend of Travis Walton's brother at 12:47 PM. 12:4

National UFO Reporting Center Hotline Recordings (1974-79)

originally posted by: Jay-morris
It's now that things are coming to light, that will make people take this subject seriously, and about time.

The things that have come to light have made me doubt witnesses more than ever, like the pilot who filmed the "Tic-Tac" UFO saying it didn't follow the laws of physics. We can study the video and see he is completely WRONG about that, the UFO doesn't even come close to violating the laws of physics at any time. In fact the video is remarkable for how unremarkable the behavior of the object is, it really doesn't do much of anything, which makes it even more shocking the pilot would say it shows the laws of physics being defied.

Navy Pilot Who Filmed the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Speaks: ‘It Wasn’t Behaving by the Normal Laws of Physics’

If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky — an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn’t tell you about — that would have made more sense to me. The part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics. You’re up there flying, like, “Okay. It’s not behaving in a manner that’s predictable or is normal by how flying objects physically move.”

Watch the video, absolutely nothing like "it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics" is confirmed by the video. It's shocking that despite all the explanation on the internet about the zoom change at the end, he still doesn't understand his own display, that it simply showed break of target lock followed by a zoom change, and this to me is the most shocking revelation of all:

Ergo, when the object kind of darts away to the left—
I was not aggressively maneuvering the aircraft in the manner that would make the FLIR pod would do that. But look: At that point, I did not actually see the object aggressively accelerate to the left, as the video shows, to actually prove that.

The video DOES NOT show the object accelerating to the left at all, if he understands what his display is telling him, but obviously he doesn't understand it. Am I the only one who find this completely shocking that he doesn't understand his own equipment? I don't think Fravor understood this either, since he seemed impressed by that "acceleration" at the end, but it really didn't accelerate, not the least little bit, if you understand the display showing the loss of target lock, and the zoom change.

So, it's time to stop talking about "credible" eyewitnesses as if that means we can rely on what they say, because if this doesn't prove to you that we can't trust what they say, you're not paying attention. We are talking about a pilot who I'm sure is highly trained at flying the aircraft, but he doesn't understand the technology he's using to make statements like what he said about the acceleration and "wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics". For once, we have a video to check his statement against, but the video does not confirm what he says, it proves him WRONG!

originally posted by: Lucidparadox
I really dont have a clue what it will take.

As Sagan said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" so it's not easy to prove such claims, but just taking the example above where the pilot says his tic-tac video defied the laws of physics, it would be helpful if at least it showed some interesting performance, but it is completely ordinary and doesn't even come close to doing what he says it does in the video. If his video showed an object defying the laws of physics, at least that would be a start but that wouldn't prove it was alien, I've already made a thread about man-made technology that can duplicate what Fravor described with apparent acceleration that would kill a human pilot etc, and "disappearing".

So to prove it's an alien ship, it's going to take something like a crashed alien ship to really confirm that's what it is, unless we see one of these hovering above, I'd probably be convinced this wasn't made on Earth, compare this to the fuzzy dots we see in the Pentagon videos:



Regarding your "psy-op" comment, they already have good training programs for those, it's already happening:

That's got three slides on UFOs near the end. It's one of the things Snowden leaked.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

This is what he said in an interview.

I was not aggressively maneuvering the aircraft in the manner that would make the FLIR pod would do that. But look: At that point, I did not actually see the object aggressively accelerate to the left, as the video shows, to actually prove that.
Because you were at a distance where you couldn’t make visual contact with your own eyes—
Right.
And so what’s happening in the video is a little ambiguous as a result. 
Right. Yeah. And that part kind of sucks, because I can’t confirm that the object aggressively accelerated that way. But I have my feelings, based off of my experience with my equipment — and also just logic, when it comes to, you know, physics.

LINK

He did not even say he saw the object make that dart to the left, so how can you say he is a bad observer?

So, what was the objects? Also, the objects the other pilots saw?

Why would skeptics be in denial since UFOs are still UFOs....

Just saying

originally posted by: Jay-morris
He did not even say he saw the object make that dart to the left, so how can you say he is a bad observer?

He says this: "object aggressively accelerate to the left, as the video shows"

The video DOES NOT show the object aggressively accelerating to the left.
To say the video shows that shows that he doesn't understand the video or the technology he's looking at.

We aren't talking about a visual sighting of the object, we are talking about what his display shows and what the video shows. He completely fails to understand that the amount of acceleration shown on the display and in the video is zero, not any aggressive amount, not any at all, it's none, no acceleration.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Did you read what he said? He said he could not confirm that the object aggressively accelerated that way. The people making that claim are the ones who saw the video and made that assumption.

originally posted by: Jay-morris
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Did you read what he said? He said he could not confirm that the object aggressively accelerated that way. The people making that claim are the ones who saw the video and made that assumption.

The pilot is the one saying his video shows an object which didn't follow the normal laws of physics!

There is NOTHING in the video to support his statements, the video proves him wrong!
Yes he had no visual sighting, agreed. But he's talking about his video and what that shows, and he claims it shows an object which didn't follow the laws of physics. It doesn't show that, in fact the object it shows is completely boring, whatever it is. His description of the video is ridiculously inaccurate, and wrong.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: neutronflux

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
For the record. I do believe in aliens. I just have not seen any credible evidence of such.

I'm with you. I've always been a "fan" of UFOs, and Bigfoot, too, along with a variety of paranormal stuff. But I also understand how logic and proof work. And when it comes to aliens, I have to admit I've never seen even one bit of objective, verifiable proof that they exist. That's not being skeptical, that's just being rational.

Same here too. I wish U.F.O. accounts could be taken as reported. But mistaken people and charlatans are much more the reality than aliens. It makes me sad that Ufology is ripe with cons, and has very little credibility. If any at this point.

I believe people when they report what they believe they experienced, and have no reason to think they're all liars. But that's very different than believing the actual experience itself happened as they described it. Not just because people lie, but because they can simply be wrong.

What?

You do realize this is just your opinion and it's meaningless as it pertains to the actual description provided by eyewitnesses to U.F.O.'s?

This is an important point.

I approach this with common sense. I say the person is describing what they saw and experienced and then I gather evidence that could either say there's no other explanation at this point that will explain what the person described or the person is mistaken or exaggerating what they experienced based on past behavior.

What you and other pseudoskeptics do is start with a priori. You say all of these reports are false because as you say "People get it wrong."

Let me ask you a question. If people get it wrong do people also get it right?

Sorry what disclosure are you claiming? The NYT article were some guy speculates we couldn’t make some material and it must have been made off world? That article? It’s nothing more than speculation at best, and a tabloid at worst. Coming from the NYT i think we both know it’s of the highest journalistical valu... lol couldn’t enough type that one out.

There isn’t anything presented in that article that constitutes disclosure, or anything more than some old men speculating what could be, that’s a far cry from describing a reality that is.


a reply to: neoholographic

All ufo skeptics want to be believers, we just don’t want to confuse our hope and desire to see a specific reality with the one in front of us. I’ve stated it on forums here before, viewing the world only in duality (good/evil, win/lose) keeps you playing at a lower level, you can’t see clearly when you are caught up in “winning” a reply to: neoholographic

a reply to: Arbitrageur

First I have to ask what is the point you're trying to make? Are you saying because some Pilots might be mistaken or that some Pilots don't get every detail right then all Pilots are bad observers?

If that's your point it's illogical in every way and that's why you keep avoiding my question. Hynek showed the more technical knowledge you have the better you are at identifying U.F.O.'s.



Why should I trust your biased and illogical opinions over the Pilots. You can't even answer a basic question that you have been asked 4 or 5 times now so I will ask it again.

Which one of these statements accurately describes all observers or eyewitnesses?

A. The independent objective truth is that people are not very reliable observers, and no, not even pilots.

or

B. The objective truth is some people aren't reliable observers while some people are very reliable observers.

It's obvious why you don't want to answer the question.

If you answer A, you realize how illogical it sounds but you want to support your pseudoskeptic brother Arbitrageur.

If you answer B, then you have to admit that some U.F.O. accounts from Pilots are reliable.

You're the one that said:

The independent objective truth is that people are not very reliable observers, and no, not even pilots.

This isn't objective truth. There's some people who are very reliable eyewitnesses.

The fact that you're acting like there's no reliable eyewitnesses is just asinine.

Now, let's get to the Pilot your trying to disparage and turn into an idiot to support your illogical pseudoskeptic postions. You said:

The pilot is the one saying his video shows an object which didn't follow the normal laws of physics! There is NOTHING in the video to support his statements, the video proves him wrong!

There's a reason why you didn't quote much of what he actually said. It's because you want to be dishonest and paint a picture that the Pilot is an idiot and your uniformed, illogical opininion should be listened to. So let's take a look at what was actually said:

Was that named based on what you saw with your own eyes, or from looking at the screen on the camera?

The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by “erratic” is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets. It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.

Does this sound like the idiot Pilot that Arbitrageur tried to paint? There's more. He then explains why normal aircraft that he engages with has some source of lift or some source of propulsion.

And it was doing that during your engagement too?

Yes. That was the thing that was the most interesting to me: how erratic this thing was Jim Gillingham, an engineering consultant who worked on ATFLIR for Raytheon, suggested in an interview with Intelligencer that “if there were several things in the sky to look at, but none were quite where the pilot was trying to look,” it might produce erratic results, a glitch he’d experienced using the ATFLIR to track planes from the ground during development testing. “We ran into this when trying to get a lock and there were two aircraft climbing out. (LAX has four parallel runways). Sometimes the image would switch back and forth vigorously until we took steps to bias the lock some way.”. If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky — an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn’t tell you about — that would have made more sense to me. The part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics. You’re up there flying, like, “Okay. It’s not behaving in a manner that’s predictable or is normal by how flying objects physically move.”

Like I said, there's a reason Arbitrageur barely quoted the article. Does this sound like a bad observer to you?

From looking at the video at the time and more recently, do you get a sense as to how much heat this thing was giving off?

Well, normally, you would see engines emitting a heat plume. This object was not doing that. The video shows a source of heat, but the normal signatures of an exhaust plume were not there. There was no sign of propulsion. You could not see the thing that the ATFLIR pod should pick up 100 percent of the time: the source of heat and exhaust that a normal object flying would give youFormer Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot Vincent “Jell-O” Aiello expressed a similar reaction to the object in the FLIR1 video during a telephone interview. “Where it looks different to me is that it has no wings like an aircraft, and there’s no perceptible heat signature from the engines or from intakes like an aircraft,” he said. “If you’re close enough to an actual aircraft and you’re tracking it, you can see heat spots at different places either leading edges of wings, where it’s hotter because of friction, or exhaust ports from where bleed air comes out, and, of course, the actual exhaust of the engines themselves.”. Does that make sense?

Let's look at what he's saying.

He said it didn't obey the laws of physics based on 2 things.

1. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.

2. You could not see the thing that the ATFLIR pod should pick up 100 percent of the time: the source of heat and exhaust that a normal object flying would give you [and no sign of lift he mentioned earlier].

Let's think about this logically. Here's a Pilot that used to watching how things behave in the sky on FLIR(Forward Looking InfraRed) vs the pseudoskeptics opinion?

Let me ask again, what's your point? I have stipulated misidentifications happen that doesn't mean all observers are unreliable.

a reply to: neoholographic

Everyone who thinks they have answers without relevant proof is lying to themselves.

You aren't above it, you just do it differently.

a reply to: neoholographic

originally posted by: neoholographic
Even if it was true, how would you decide which eyewitnesses didn't make misperceptions from which ones did, or which observers are reliable and which ones aren't?

I have to pause hear because sometimes when I hear these statements from pseudoskeptics I can't decide if you're joking or not. This is just so illogical it has to be a joke.

Way to not answer the question, it was not a joke.

Some people get some things right sometimes but there are also things that all people or nearly all people get wrong nearly all the time.

Take the Yukon case for example, how many of the over 30 eyewitnesses got that right? The answer is none, as far as I know. Zero. That's a case where we know from experience with similar events that people always or nearly always misjudge the distance by a vast amount, and they always or nearly always think it's closer than it really is. And that's why the UFO report was classified as a "close encounter" on Hynek's scale when it was nowhere near a close encounter.

"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!

Report: the UFO was hovering approximately 300 yards in front of the observer. "Hynek Classification: CE1" (Close Encounter of the First Kind).

Reality: the distance to the re-entering booster was approximately 233 km (145 miles), so this was not a "close encounter." At no time did it stop, or hover.

I don't think any of the witnesses estimated a distance anywhere near 233km away, they all thought it was much closer, and we know that's how that particular human misperception works.

Take another case where witnesses did a little better, the 8:30 or so pm Phoenix lights. One man saw them through his telescope and identified them as planes. Because of his telescope and its large magnification, he had a big advantage over other witnesses who only saw it with their eyes.

Phoenix Lights

Under magnification, Stanley could clearly see that each light split into pairs, one each on the tips of squarish wings. Even under the telescope's power, the planes appeared small, indicating that they were flying high.

So do I believe him? Yes, because he saw the "UFO" through his telescope.

But for all the other observers, which gave conflicting reports, it's a serious question, how do we know which ones to trust?

About 8:30, however, something else appeared--a vee pattern of lights that traveled nearly the entire length of the state in about 40 minutes.

The witnesses included New Times writers. David Holthouse and Michael Kiefer both saw the pattern of five lights move slowly overhead. Holthouse says he perceived that something connected the lights in a boomerang shape; Kiefer disagrees, saying they didn't seem connected. Like other witnesses, both reported that the vee made no sound, and each saw slightly different colors in the lights. Both watched as the lights gradually made their way south and faded from view.

The many eyewitnesses have elaborated on this basic model: Some saw that the lights were not connected, others swear they saw a giant triangular craft joining them, some felt it was at high altitude, others claim it was barely over their heads and moving very slowly. All seem to be describing the same lights at the same time

So here is the problem, multiple witnesses all apparently "describing the same lights at the same time". Which witnesses are right? The "some felt it was at high altitude" witnesses, or the "others claim it was barely over their heads" witnesses, do you see the problem here?

The telescope observer would seem to confirm the high altitude (maybe 10k-15k feet) witnesses, but there are still plenty of people who want to claim that no, the witnesses who said it was "barely over their heads" were right because they could see the texture and other details.

The truth is there's usually no way to accurately estimate the size and distance of an unknown object. So I think UFO observers estimates of size and distance are generally ALL unreliable except in special circumstances where they have perhaps a bounded reference to compare the distance with, like there's a tree 300 yards away and the UFO passed in front of the tree, the witness has a way to tell it was less than 300 yards away. But most UFO cases lack any such reference, though there are exceptions. If a witness sees a UFO and says it was 50 feet wide and 500 feet away, we should not believe either of those numbers unless the criteria above are met for justifying such a claim. The estimates will almost always be off, if they get it right without a reference it's just luck but that would rarely happen.

Other things a witness reports are more reliable. Almost all the witnesses in the Phoenix case reported about the same number of lights, though there were even exceptions in that. I think most said there were 5 lights, Kurt Russell said there were 6 lights or objects. So I believe there were 5 or 6 lights since all the witnesses seem to agree. The video seems to show 5 lights but a 6th light can't be ruled out if it was behind one of the 5 lights in the video. So you see it's not so simple as accepting everything a witness says or rejecting everything, it depends...witnesses are better at some aspects of UFO sightings than others but size and distance estimates of UFOs can be considered unreliable from all witnesses barring the exceptions noted above.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Are you a person who was an alien nutter at one point and got disillusioned with the lack of evidence?

I think you're incorrectly being perceived as a "Skeptic".