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How is this still so crazy when we have 100s of interviews by military and intelligence personnel talking about this stuff openly: https://www.youtube.com/user

How is this still so crazy when we have 100s of interviews by military and intelligence personnel talking about this stuff openly: https://www.youtube.com/user/csetiweb/videos?shelf_index=0&view=0&sort=dd https://www.youtube.com/user/csetiweb/videos?shelf_index=0&v... What exactly discredits all of them?

joshontheweb 12y ago
One of the most compelling things to me is the astronauts testimonies. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, and Gordon Cooper all have reported either first hand experience or second hand knowledge. Also presidents of the USA. Reagan and Carter both have UFO stories they have talked about openly.
- neuronic 12y ago
  I seriously wonder if maybe it's just a running joke or something? Only people who work in the field or are exposed to it are somehow in on the joke?
  - ics 12y ago
    It might not be the worst idea for getting more funding for space projects...
- tedd4u 12y ago
  Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
  - joshontheweb 12y ago
    This may account for some of them. Gordon Coopers experience didn't happen in space though. Not saying it's proof but it does cause me to raise an eyebrow.
- scott_s 12y ago
  You may want to read a downthread comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917287
chez17 12y ago
The fact that there are literally millions, if not billions, of people walking, driving, riding in trains, and flying every single day with quality cameras on them and not a single one of them has captured a single shred of credible evidence. To quote Tim Minchin, every extraordinary claim that has ever been presented by humans has turned out to be "not magic".
- seren 12y ago
  I think a good reference point is the Chelyabinsk meteor[0]. Just afterwards, we had plenty of high resolution videos from dash cam, smartphones, etc, with different angle, time and location. I would expect about the same in quantity and quality for a major UFO sighting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
  - senjutsuka 12y ago
    You are comparing natural phenomenon with life forms. A better comparison would be silver back gorillas which up until the 70s were considered a myth. Or giant squid which are still somewhat unsubstantiated even today because they actively avoid us.
    - seren 12y ago
      I am not sure your comparison is apt. Strange things in the sky tend to be viewed by much more people than animals that are actively hiding in unexplored/hard to reach areas. I am totally ready to believe there are plenty of things we don't know about the deep sea for example.
      - senjutsuka 12y ago
        Um, but if this phenomenon is a creature why wouldnt it try to stay out of sight? Further if 'things in the sky' are easier to find why were the bird of paradise only recently discovered and recorded? Answer: because their rare and prefer locations that arent very occupied by humans. Hell we have whole tribes we've only just discovered. If something doesnt want to be found, its not impossible for it to stay hidden.
dogma1138 12y ago
What i find quite surprising is that by some magical coincidence just as us puny humans mastered digital photography and managed to miniaturize electro optical sensors to a point where they can be emended into virtually any device and then sent out 100's of millions of people armed with these sophisticated cameras the UFO phenomenon pretty much died out... For the most part the "latest" UFO shots you can find out there are grainy film cameras shots from the early 90's just about when the X-Files was fresh and cool. As we get closer to the 2000's for some reason all of those photos dry out, i guess ET's are just camera shy.
- senjutsuka 12y ago
  Thats just patently false. Anyone type UFO video 2014 in google. You will literally get 100s of hours of crappy film shot by people at the expected quality for anyone trying to shoot a moving ariel object with a cell phone. There has been NO drop off of sighting reported or videos created. My guess is YOU stopped paying attention b/c xfiles was no longer cool...
  - mb_72 12y ago
    Your multiple replies on this page stating the same information remind me, as much as it would be cool and interesting for UFOs to be alien spacecraft, many in the pro-UFO community come off sounding a little obsessed and some come off sounding downright nutty. If there is so much 'real' evidence, it would have spoken for itself by now. The same goes for other supernatural occurrences (ghosts etc). Mulder's famous poster said it best - "I want to believe".
    - LordKano 12y ago
      I ask you to think, for just a moment, how your outlook would change if you were to witness something that's not readily explainable. I suspect that his passion on the issue was inspired by an experience. I have known a couple of people who saw things that defy explanation and you pretty much can't make them shut up about it. I'm not screaming ERRMUHGERD ALIENS! I'm just saying that many people see things that defy the mundane explanations of passenger aircraft, birds, swamp gas and the planet Venus. It's perfectly normal for someone who has had such an experience to be interested in the subject matter. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I consider myself to be an open-minded skeptic. I'm in the "Hey Stan, did you find that proof yet? No. OK. I'll be over here, let me know if you find it" camp.
bunderbunder 12y ago
No one thing discredits all of them, and personally I think that Occam's razor compels us to agree that in the vast majority of reports people are describing an actual phenomenon they saw. However, the sheer variability of these reports does discredit the idea that there is a common explanation for all of these sightings. And that's where things like the alien visitation hypothesis begin to unravel. For the most part UFOlogists fail to see the forest for the trees - they look at each story individually, and never really spend any time trying to figure out how they could all possibly fit together into a single coherent story. Occam's razor also compels us to seek different explanations for different phenomena in the absence of any compelling evidence to show that they are, in fact, related. The problem is, it's nearly impossible to come up with explanations for every single isolated anecdote by virtue of that very isolation. Skeptics understand this truism so implicitly that they oftentimes even fail to realize it's worth mentioning.

joshontheweb 12y ago

One of the most compelling things to me is the astronauts testimonies. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, and Gordon Cooper all have reported either first hand experience or second hand knowledge. Also presidents of the USA. Reagan and Carter both have UFO stories they have talked about openly.

neuronic 12y ago
I seriously wonder if maybe it's just a running joke or something? Only people who work in the field or are exposed to it are somehow in on the joke?
- ics 12y ago
  It might not be the worst idea for getting more funding for space projects...
tedd4u 12y ago
Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
- joshontheweb 12y ago
  This may account for some of them. Gordon Coopers experience didn't happen in space though. Not saying it's proof but it does cause me to raise an eyebrow.
scott_s 12y ago
You may want to read a downthread comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917287

chez17 12y ago

The fact that there are literally millions, if not billions, of people walking, driving, riding in trains, and flying every single day with quality cameras on them and not a single one of them has captured a single shred of credible evidence. To quote Tim Minchin, every extraordinary claim that has ever been presented by humans has turned out to be "not magic".

seren 12y ago
I think a good reference point is the Chelyabinsk meteor[0]. Just afterwards, we had plenty of high resolution videos from dash cam, smartphones, etc, with different angle, time and location. I would expect about the same in quantity and quality for a major UFO sighting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
- senjutsuka 12y ago
  You are comparing natural phenomenon with life forms. A better comparison would be silver back gorillas which up until the 70s were considered a myth. Or giant squid which are still somewhat unsubstantiated even today because they actively avoid us.
  - seren 12y ago
    I am not sure your comparison is apt. Strange things in the sky tend to be viewed by much more people than animals that are actively hiding in unexplored/hard to reach areas. I am totally ready to believe there are plenty of things we don't know about the deep sea for example.
    - senjutsuka 12y ago
      Um, but if this phenomenon is a creature why wouldnt it try to stay out of sight? Further if 'things in the sky' are easier to find why were the bird of paradise only recently discovered and recorded? Answer: because their rare and prefer locations that arent very occupied by humans. Hell we have whole tribes we've only just discovered. If something doesnt want to be found, its not impossible for it to stay hidden.

dogma1138 12y ago

What i find quite surprising is that by some magical coincidence just as us puny humans mastered digital photography and managed to miniaturize electro optical sensors to a point where they can be emended into virtually any device and then sent out 100's of millions of people armed with these sophisticated cameras the UFO phenomenon pretty much died out... For the most part the "latest" UFO shots you can find out there are grainy film cameras shots from the early 90's just about when the X-Files was fresh and cool. As we get closer to the 2000's for some reason all of those photos dry out, i guess ET's are just camera shy.

senjutsuka 12y ago
Thats just patently false. Anyone type UFO video 2014 in google. You will literally get 100s of hours of crappy film shot by people at the expected quality for anyone trying to shoot a moving ariel object with a cell phone. There has been NO drop off of sighting reported or videos created. My guess is YOU stopped paying attention b/c xfiles was no longer cool...
- mb_72 12y ago
  Your multiple replies on this page stating the same information remind me, as much as it would be cool and interesting for UFOs to be alien spacecraft, many in the pro-UFO community come off sounding a little obsessed and some come off sounding downright nutty. If there is so much 'real' evidence, it would have spoken for itself by now. The same goes for other supernatural occurrences (ghosts etc). Mulder's famous poster said it best - "I want to believe".
  - LordKano 12y ago
    I ask you to think, for just a moment, how your outlook would change if you were to witness something that's not readily explainable. I suspect that his passion on the issue was inspired by an experience. I have known a couple of people who saw things that defy explanation and you pretty much can't make them shut up about it. I'm not screaming ERRMUHGERD ALIENS! I'm just saying that many people see things that defy the mundane explanations of passenger aircraft, birds, swamp gas and the planet Venus. It's perfectly normal for someone who has had such an experience to be interested in the subject matter. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I consider myself to be an open-minded skeptic. I'm in the "Hey Stan, did you find that proof yet? No. OK. I'll be over here, let me know if you find it" camp.

bunderbunder 12y ago

No one thing discredits all of them, and personally I think that Occam's razor compels us to agree that in the vast majority of reports people are describing an actual phenomenon they saw. However, the sheer variability of these reports does discredit the idea that there is a common explanation for all of these sightings. And that's where things like the alien visitation hypothesis begin to unravel. For the most part UFOlogists fail to see the forest for the trees - they look at each story individually, and never really spend any time trying to figure out how they could all possibly fit together into a single coherent story. Occam's razor also compels us to seek different explanations for different phenomena in the absence of any compelling evidence to show that they are, in fact, related. The problem is, it's nearly impossible to come up with explanations for every single isolated anecdote by virtue of that very isolation. Skeptics understand this truism so implicitly that they oftentimes even fail to realize it's worth mentioning.