[mbnull]

Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better.

Alien intelligence would also be alien enough if it wasn't interstellar. Interplanetary, inter-dimensional or subterranean would be alien by my standard, too.

The Videos might have been plausibly explained, but i would argue that the pentagon has certainly more footage and sensor data to base their statement on.

And please do try to take photos of planes in the night sky with your smartphone camera. The image quality is not great.

[thwarted]

There is nothing "simple" about the concept of flat earth. It's one set of exceptions on top of another set of exceptions, ad infinitum.

To use the pre-enlightenment list of exceptions: It's flat, but not infinite. It's a disc. Ringed by mountains. Held up by giant elephants. On the back of a turtle. On the back of another turtle.

The modern "rationale" for flat earth is just as complex (not simple) an explanation of exceptions upon exceptions. The Copernican, Galileo-an and Newtonian attempts to explain things are much closer to "simple", despite being incomplete, because they are experimentally gathered and predictive and not just mentally created from whole cloth.

[KSteffensen]

Medieval people did not think the Earth was flat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

[mbnull]

Medieval people certainly believed that. The linked wikipedia page does not say otherwise. It states that "European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat". Most people in Medieval times were not scholars or educated. Furthermore I haven't even said anything about Medieval times.

There are other examples like rocks falling from the sky or the earth- or solar-centric cosmos, if you prefer.

[IncRnd]

That Wikipedia page can be edited by any visitor, therefore it is not a reliable authority on the posted information. Take a look at the revision history page for your link, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Myth_of_the_flat_.... Half of the edits appear not to be attributed to people but to unnamed ip addresses.

i.e. Don't believe everything you read.

To illustrate this point, go to different Wikipedia page that shows the opposite of what you wrote, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth and look at the Early Middle Ages of Europe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth#Europe:_Early_Middl....

[KSteffensen]

So what would you consider a reliable source? How much time are you willing to put into evaluating your source?

Pretty much anything on the internet is written by random people, all of whom could be great authorities on the subject or complete crackpots.

A couple more sources on the Myth of the Flat Earth, written by random people on the internet and found by a google search:

[0] : https://www.discovery.org/v/the-flat-earth-myth/

[1] : https://jameshannam.com/flatearth.htm

[2] : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003172170708800...

[3] : https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2012/12/20/why-did-so-many-peop...

[bluesign]

"Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better."

Actually this is problem with the simplifying Occam's Razor. It is not about simple solution, it is about fewer assumptions. Actually with each assumption you are limiting the domain of the question.

Actually before we observed more (like before we knew better), earth being flat is the correct solution vs earth being round.