[Simon_O_Rourke]

> Every human has a camera 24/7 now and no one has documented visitors.

Take a few minutes to listen to Prof. Robin Hanson talk on this very thing.

https://youtu.be/cQq2pKNDgIs

The jist of what he says, is that there's very much weird stuff seen in the sky, like the McMinnville photos [1], but there's nobody as yet landing a craft on the White House lawn and posing for the cameras.

He puts forward a model for this kind of scenario, it's worth a listen, that any visitors would quite rightly be far in advance of the societies we currently live in, and may only show themselves fleetingly so we gain an acceptance of their presence.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMinnville_UFO_photographs

[GolfPopper]

I don't buy it.

The "weird stuff" is always distant, blurry, shot under terrible conditions, etc. Yet when a research team, or random passer-by snaps a photo of some never-before-seen, or thought-extinct creature, there's no difficulty in getting a quality image, either on the initial sighting or shortly afterward. It's only the "aliens" that are so problematic.

As for the idea that "they" are doing it deliberately (and perfectly)... it reminds me of the TIGHAR folks and Amelia Earhart. TIGHAR knows that Earhart crash-landed on Nikumaroro (Gardner Island), so every piece of information they see is interpreted through the lens of how it fits with that interpretation. But they have no root basis for the conclusion, just that they really want to believe it.

When faced with the question, "Why are pictures of possibly alien UFOs blurry?" two (of many) possible answers are "because if they're not low-quality we can tell they're not aliens" and "because the aliens are carefully arranging circumstances so that pictures of them are always low-quality" I know which one I'm putting my money on.

[cthalupa]

The problem is that "Technology allowing an advanced civilization to travel to Earth, enter the atmosphere, leave, etc." is significantly more complex than "Technology that would allow them to be completely undetectable to us, and also not crash into the planet"

"Only detectable by people with bad gear" is just not a technological state that makes sense in this context.

There is A LOT of stuff recording what's going on in the sky at all times. A lot of stuff that could give us detailed and high resolution images and other readings. Some of it is actively beholden to various governments so I guess you could argue it's being kept from us there - but are all of these governments going to be in lockstep on this issue? And even more aren't - are scientists going to all just keep quiet on this?

We've had all these declassified videos released recently, and they're some of the most obvious not-extraterrestrial-visitors ever. The one recorded on an aircraft carrier through nightvision with the flying triangles? Night vision goggles have triangular apertures. Bokeh takes the shape of the lens aperture - so bokeh lights become triangles. The blinking in and out of existence? Same timing pattern as a commercial jet.

The pill video from the jets? Parallax makes stationary things look like they move fast. The pill only ever looks to rotate/change direction when the actual recording device in it's housing also does. It's all stabilized so it's not readily apparent unless you know to look for it, but it becomes obvious when you do. What is the object itself? It could be a mylar balloon, it could be an IR hot spot from the sun reflecting off the water. Could be other things. What we don't have any reason to believe is that it is some sort of advanced craft with physics-defying maneuverability.

I fully believe that there is intelligent life out there. Probably in our galaxy, but near certainty in the universe. I also believe that the chances we have had intelligent visitors from another place is the barest fraction of a fraction of a percent.