The Flake Equation -- The Number of Credible-Sounding Sightings

xkcd.com...

As someone who does want to be a believer, and wants to see aliens, and wants to believe, I found this outright hilarious. It's probably fairly accurate, too. Unfortunately, there's also an implication that Monsieur Randall Munroe (who is not French in the least, so I don't know why I did that) believes that there have been no genuine sightings, which is a rather unfortunate position, since we don't know for sure whether there have or not...

For those who are unaware, it's a parody of The Drake Equation, which estimates how many extraterrestrial civilizations there must be in the universe based on... Very little evidence. But it's cool anyway.

en.wikipedia.org...

Discuss: UFO Humor, and whether we could calculate the chances that there have been any actual sightings in a similar fashion!

Absolutely brilliant ...

Embedded below for easy viewing,

reply to post by Solasis


That's a good one!

I especially like the "probability the details not fitting the narrative will be revised or forgotten in retelling", I see that a lot so I think 0.9 is too low for that one!

The more details they forget about the original sighting, the more the probability goes up they're supposedly real.

This story comes to mind where the retelling by Ruppelt left out so many facts it's hilarious:

"Of these UFO reports,the radar/visual reports are the most convincing. When a ground radar picks up a UFO target and a ground observer sees a light where the radar target is located,then a jet interceptor is scrambled to intercept the UFO and the pilot also sees the lights and gets a radar lock only to have the UFO almost impudently outdistance him,there is no simple answer."

Edward J Ruppelt USAF Capt 1956

Link

I looked at that case in some detail here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

But the biggest omission was that Ruppelt's own original report indicates he thought the pilot who got a "radar lock" had a malfunctioning radar because that pilot was also getting a flashing "radar lock" when returning to base when there was nothing seen and he wasn't pursuing anything. That's quite a detail to forget to mention and just the tip of the iceberg of distortions in the retelling which I discovered.

The other argument that cracks me up is "one fuzzy dot in the sky may not be proof of anything, but the fact that tens of thousands of these are seen must be proof of something".....What?

That quantity=quality argument is sort of parodied in this equation which makes it funny!

reply to post by Xtraeme


Haha, I've never been able to get embedding to work. I've only tried twice, though, so it's totally my own fault. Thanks for gettin' in with that so fast!

Arbitrageur: The details of that case are awesome.

I do think that there is something to the "quantity --> quality" idea when it comes to sightings, but it's only something suggestive, nothing definitive. And I mean that as "suggestive" is really used, not as "Well don't you think it suggests something?!" would indicate. But, as you've pointed out, and as the comic pointed out -- It's a terribly weak and useless suggestion.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

The other argument that cracks me up is "one fuzzy dot in the sky may not be proof of anything, but the fact that tens of thousands of these are seen must be proof of something".....What?

Proof that people really are seeing fuzzy dots in the sky ?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

"Of these UFO reports,the radar/visual reports are the most convincing. When a ground radar picks up a UFO target and a ground observer sees a light where the radar target is located,then a jet interceptor is scrambled to intercept the UFO and the pilot also sees the lights and gets a radar lock only to have the UFO almost impudently outdistance him,there is no simple answer."

Edward J Ruppelt USAF Capt 1956

I looked at that case in some detail here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Arbitrageur, I think Captain Ruppelt does make a very good point about there being 'no easy answer' to radar/visual cases and there are quite a few examples of unknown objects being confirmed on radar in the same area of sky to which they've been visualy reported.

There are several examples on this thread including incidents from the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, Japan, Australia, Chile, Korea, France, Canada etc..

As for the Dakota incident -you certainly did some good work on that case but it still remains very far from explained - in this report to the US House Committee, Dr James Mcdonald states that Dr Hyneck thought the case was extremely puzzling and he did make some interesting observations in his report here.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Solasis
Randall Munroe believes that there have been no genuine sightings, which is a rather unfortunate position, since we don't know for sure whether there have or not...

Solasis, you're right about us 'not being sure' but there have been quite a few interesting reports - I did enjoy the cartoon though.

I realise fabrications, misinterpretations, embellishments etc.. do occur but certain incidents like the Allagash case, the Tuscumbia case, the Zanfretta case, the West Lothian case, the Flatwoods case etc.. are all pretty intriguing and certainly deserve looking at with an open mind - there's a thread here dealing with witness reports and some of the testimony is quite compelling - heres a lady from Staffordshire describing an encounter in 1954:




Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by karl 12
As for the Dakota incident -you certainly did some good work on that case but it still remains very far from explained -

I agree the case remains unexplained!

My claim isn't that the case is somehow explained, but just that the omission of details on the retelling of the case, like the radar "confirmation" being the result of a malfunctioning radar was known initially, but wasn't mentioned in the re-telling. And it's especially egregious in this case because it's the same person who wrote the initial report about the malfunctioning radar doing the re-telling. It's even more common to see omission of important details like that when someone else re-tells the story.

While it's not explained and we can only speculate on what happened, the inclusion or omission of certain details does affect what we would include or exclude from our speculative ideas about the incident.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Arbitrageur, am all in agreement there mate and I think you may have used the right word with 'egregious'.

There were also some discrepencies and contradictions when Captain Ruppelt was discussing explanations and radar reports for the Lubbock Lights incident although I don't know whether he was being purposefully disingenous.

The Lubbock Lights

Classic Case: Lubbock Lights, Texas (1951)

Cheers.