[vertnerd]

"... Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft."

Can you imagine that someone this clear-headed was ever the President of the United States?

[WillAdams]

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from:

- I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence.

to:

- I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board.

That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.

[sandworm101]

So many preconceptions. Firstly, what exactly does "speeds with allow interstellar travel" entail? A being that was functionally immortal wouldn't care about travel times. And why assume that interstellar travel is even required? There is no solid reason why extraterrestrials need to huddle around stars. They might live in the void between stars. Heck, there could be millions of truck-sized UFOs dancing around in "our" ort cloud and we wouldn't even notice.

[WillAdams]

See my reply elsethread --- a truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

[sandworm101]

>> truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

Who said anything about life? A machine-intelligence could operate a tiny craft. And even a biological, think brain in a jar, doesn't need that much space. Astronomers cannot find or disprove the existence of Planet X in the ort cloud, an object at least several times the size of earth. An entire civilization could be out there and we wouldn't notice.

[bitcharmer]

Not a strong believer in LGM but I don't like your statement for two reasons:

1) life may take different forms, some of which we probably haven't even dreamt about

2) life is not necessary for inter-stellar probes to exist. In fact it probably makes more sense to make these things entirely artificial

[dahart]

> the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous

Wait, which UFO thing are you referring to? Carter never thought it was anything extraterrestrial, he stated that he assumed it was a natural or man-made event. Are you saying it’s strange that some people believe in aliens?

[WillAdams]

I think it's strange to believe that a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed due to the requirements of:

- velocity --- it would need to be moving quickly and would have to decelerate (requires energy) to do more than pass through

- life support/technology requirements and attendant heat signature --- interstellar space is _cold_ and not conducive to either, so requires on-going energy output

- size requirements --- basically, an entire ecological system needs to be moved around --- how many trees does one person require to produce sufficient oxygen for them to breathe? (a quick search has an answer from 1--8)

&c. See Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel _Aurora_ for a well-researched examination of this.

[adammichaelc]

Are you suggesting American humans have reached the pinnacle of understanding how the Universe works?

With our technology, we could easily avoid being seen by a hunter-gatherer society.

Do you imagine that your society does not have similar blind spots?

How much arrogance there is in the modern Euro-centric world. Because the society has explored beyond what our grandparents believed possible, suddenly we are the pinnacle of the Universe.

[WillAdams]

I'm thinking more about the hard limits of physics.

Consider for example the "one-electron" hypothesis --- a far simpler take on it is that the electron is a fundamental particle and that we are nearing an end-game of understanding sub-atomic physics and realizing Einstein's dream of a grand-unified theory --- the universe doesn't seem to be shaped and formed so as to allow for FTL, so one instead needs to work within the bounds of converting mass to energy.

[v3ss0n]

Watch the tictac UFO cases where topguns, top physics, weapon systems experts cannot explain.

[konstmonst]

I think this post has a lot of preconceptions about life. I bet it wouldn't be biological any more, even our society is moving to digital: AIs , drones. Even if it were, why support the whole body, if supporting the brain is enough? I bet future space space ships won't be piloted by humans because we are sensitive to acceleration, temperature, radiation and are pretty short lived. Also we don't have much redundancy and are not very energy efficent. Just look at the trend with mobile phones.At one point in time we used notes to extend our memory, then digital things like PDAs now phones and watches and at some point it will become an implant in our head, extending us as humans. The human of tomorrow will have little in common with human of today, so you can't judge the form of life will take and its requirementfrom a more advanced civilization.

[dahart]

Sure, that’s fine. Easy for me to agree with, IMO, based on the actual science we have today. I might say I think it’s unlikely that starships can get close without being noticed rather than it’s strange what people believe. I mean, people believe lots and lots and lots of strange things for which there’s no evidence, and most are wrong but every once in a blue moon something strange that nobody knew turns out to be true. I just didn’t follow the juxtaposition of the comment about Carter, then a comment about presidents followed by the UFO ‘thing’ being ridiculous. The article suggests that Carter might also think it’s strange to believe a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed - it isn’t clear what you’re responding to.

[bitcharmer]

I think you heavily overestimate our capabilities to detect (even large objects) entering the solar system. Also, why do you assume there would have to be life present on-board?

[hackerlight]

No reason to think they're biological.

[sokoloff]

It’s also hard to achieve interstellar travel in the first place, so if you grant an alien civilization the ability to harness energy to that degree, it doesn’t seem incomprehensible to grant them the ability to control/harness maneuvering ability to enter our solar system.

(I’m on the side of “we will die out before ever interacting with intelligent alien life”, but I still think it’s non-zero.)

[paulddraper]

> I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from

I agree.

This isn't anything new, but I suspect it has to do with a much more fractured sense of national identity, and shared core values.

That engenders a "us vs them", "take what is mine" attitude, from top to bottom.

[v3ss0n]

Watch the nitmitz-tictac UFO case where topguns, top physics, weapon systems experts cannot explain. several high ranking witness there.

[cedws]

In cutthroat capitalism, integrity goes out of the window. The last Prime Minister of the UK had ties to many dodgy organisations and was backed by oil companies. The current Prime Minister is married to a billionaire.

[jdewerd]

I know, right? Of course, the American Electorate was quick to rectify its accidental moment of sanity by promptly voting him out after he installed Volcker and hiked rates to the moon (and then rewriting history to say that Carter was a bad president and Reagan tamed inflation).

He was not the president we deserved, but he was the president we needed.

[bluejekyll]

Who knows which single thing lost Carter the election, but the Reagan campaign appears to have back channeled with Iran to delay any hostages being released,

‘The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Mr. Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election.

To forestall such a scenario, Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-...

[pixl97]

>The term “October surprise” was originally used by the Reagan camp

In US politics it really is true with one political party that every accusation in a confession.

[throwaway743]

Reagan campaign paid Iran millions to stall the release of the hostages and shortly after winning the election they were released. Pretty shitty, and treasonous imo to be using your own fellow citizens being held hostage as political leverage.

[Der_Einzige]

Carter is straight up the best president we’ve had since FDR and yes I will die on that hill, specifically I will die on the hill which says that Carter was way better than JFK.

Carter is straight up the best individual person we have elected in 100+ years. Glad to see at least HN agrees that he was based.

[reducesuffering]

Now that you mention it, Carter onward, it seems like every Republican was wealthy and Democrat fairly middle class. Carter and Clinton were famously not rich during their presidencies. Biden was little known that he was one of the "poorest" in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Reagan was wealthy, the Bushes were oil wealth, Romney was a very wealthy Bain founder and CEO, and Trump obviously.

[hellojesus]

Funny considering I think FDR was one of the worst presidents we've had. Among the unconstitutional Wagner Act, social security, he also created far too many useless public jobs.

[daghamm]

He is today 99 years old and still the most clear headed president.

[schiffern]

>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft

One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.

This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.

For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones!

Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc

[Aurornis]

> One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.

By this line of thinking we can never put “100% confidence” into anything at all.

But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”, therefore this is just a cheap argument to say we must assign every claim a non-zero chance of being true.

> This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.

You’re mincing claims, jumping from obscure physics to “Epistemology 101” and trying to lump it all together as “totally uncontroversial”, but it’s really just an attempt at moving the goal posts with fancy language and big words.

It doesn’t change the fact that the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as the way the date of the encounter doesn’t even match other records of the event or even appear to be in the same season at which the event occurred, or that none of the other people present appear to have come away with similar observations.

Talking about physics and GR and QCD and Epistemology 101 doesn’t change anything. It’s just superfluous jargon.

[schiffern]

  >But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”

That's not the issue. It's not even consistent.

You (and all others) conflated my argument with the tired old trope that all knowledge 'might' be wrong. Yes I agree: yawn.

However in this case we actually have positive knowledge that our current physics must be incorrect. This is a far far stronger epistemic claim, of course.

Funny how for something so uncontroversial, it can be so controversial to remind people of it!

  >fancy language and big words

Sorry for using big words.

  >the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as...

Finally meat and potatoes. Anyone have a handy source for this debunking content?

[galangalalgol]

The first day of epistemology 101 (it wasn't actually a 100 series course) the initial exercise was to spot the flaws in Descarté's arguments. So yes, we can't even know (know used in the epistemological sense) that we ourselves exist, so everything else is just gradations of levels of justification and belief. Some explanations have more justification than others.

[vidarh]

We can't put 100% confidence in the claim that Santa Claus doesn't exist either, yet we say he doesn't because it'd be extraordinary for him to exist and we have no evidence to suggest he does.

That is not an "end of knowledge" style pronouncement, merely shorthand to avoid having to tack an "as far as we know" onto every single statement we make. Because we can known next to nothing with certainty. I don't know I'm speaking to a person and not an automaton for example, nor do I know I'm not a brain in a vat. It'd be very tedious if I had to caveat everything I said, however.

[technothrasher]

You're just making a long winded argument from ignorance, and strawmanning what Carter said. He said his knowledge influenced his belief. That is different from saying he knew it wasn't possible.

[dahart]

Who made any end of history or knowledge pronouncements? Where did you read any claims that express 100% confidence? Your argument about what native people saw most strongly supports the idea that we should assume UFOs are natural or human-created, and not fantastical beings from another planet. You’ve brought support for what Carter said, not debate. It wasn’t a “claim”, BTW, it was a third-hand account of an opinion that appears to allow for uncertainty.

[mistermann]

You will have to do much better than that.

[ak_111]

To blow your mind even further he also wrote an entire book accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.

[andsoitis]

> accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.

Carter explained that he is not using the word to describe racism, but the desire to acquire, occupy, confiscate and then to colonize Palestinian land.

Source: https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2008/january/cartervisit.html

The problem is that that is not apartheid. Apartheid “separateness” is explicitly a racist ideology and about forcing people to live in separate lands, not about colonizing.

[vidarh]

South Africa very much used townships and bantustans as a means of pushing both black South Africans and Namibians off land they wanted for whites. Yes, it is explicitly a racist ideology, but part of that racism is used to justify a treatment of others that enables confiscation and colonization.

[andsoitis]

The Bantu peoples also pushed the original inhabitants of Southern Africa off of their land (San, Khoi). If we’re going to apply the term apartheid to non-South African contexts[1] then we should also be intellectually rigorous in applying it in the case where the San and Khoi were victims of the Bantu expansion (and later European and Asian).

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

[1] It is worth noting that we also don’t use the word apartheid to describe the actions and regimes of older times that we see all over the world.

[runarberg]

The crime of apartheid under international law only looks at existing regimes and whether they apply oppression along racial lines. It does not include provisions on historic oppression done by the ancestors of the currently oppressed. That would be ridiculous.

So saying: “But they did it to a different people, dozens of generations ago” is not admissible as a justification for the crime of apartheid for the ICC. In fact the crime of apartheid has no clauses for any justification, at all, under international law.

[andsoitis]

People are using “apartheid” without the technical, legal meaning and that is what I have a problem with.

Here is a list of countries that have been accused of apartheid:

- China

- India

- Iran

- Israel

- Malaysia

- Myanmar

- North Korea

- Nigeria

- Qatar

- Saudi Arabia

- Soviet Union

- Sudan

- United States

I would be interested to know whether any country, other than South Africa, has been found guilty of the crime of apartheid by the ICC and what the repercussions for said regime had been.

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

[vidarh]

No, because it's not used about just pushing people off your land. Either you're being disingenuous, or you're unaware of the characteristics of the apartheid Bantustans.

[runarberg]

Apartheid is codified in the Rome Statute Part 2 Article 7 Paragraph 2(h):

> "The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;

So yes it is a racist ideology, but it doesn’t need the perpetrators to be explicitly racist. The fact that the oppressed Palestinians are of a different racial group as the oppressors, and the policy is to maintain a domination of one racial group over the other, that means this counts as apartheid.

“I didn’t mean to be racist” is not an excuse admissible to the ICC

That said, The Rome statute would not become international law until 22 years after Carter was no longer President. And would never be ratified by neither the USA nor Israel. Though interestingly Palestine has ratified it.

[n1b0m]

https://forward.com/opinion/539385/president-jimmy-carter-ap...

[azTzoxotrv]

Behind the scenes though was just another Pro-Israel US president.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/1979-vela-in...

[zrn900]

> his knowledge of physics...

...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today.

Us trying to 'interpret and judge' the technological level of such a civilization today would be akin to a never-contacted tribe seeing a helicopter and deducing that it cant be real because 'people cant fly'.

[klyrs]

> solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today.

No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we could launch a ChatGPT-enabled* probe to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about a century with today's technology.

If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist. Or if they do, they will not necessarily contribute significantly to our ability to traverse interstellar distances. While it is hubris to assume that we know everything; it is foolhardy to assume that there is gold at the end of the rainbow.

* note that ChatGPT is rather pathetic compared to intelligent life; but it's what we can ship today

[zrn900]

> Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years

This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'. Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds.

> If you think objectively about it, "physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today" do not necessarily exist.

That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered. It was already 'outside' our understanding then, and it still is. We take some things 'just as they are' and accept them, like quantum entanglement. We think we explain them through some unproven theories to avoid admitting the fact that they upended our earlier paradigm of how things are.

A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.

[klyrs]

> This is an excellent example of 'thinking inside the boundaries of our paradigm'.

And by thinking within the boundaries of our paradigm, we can conclude that this particular combination of technology and culture has not spread throughout our galaxy.

> Other civilizations may have discovered paradigms that allow them to traverse the galaxy in days, and even in seconds.

If that is physically possible. Which we have fairly strong evidence against.

> That's what was said in the mid to late 19th century. Then quantum physics was discovered.

Right! Physicists found evidence to support revolutionary findings, and it was believed because other physicists reproduced the evidence for themselves.

Keep your mind open, but not so open that your brain falls out. By all means, there is more physics to discover, but pinning one's hopes on superluminal spacetravel without a shred of evidence is folly.

> A lot of the things that are observed in the ufo phenomenon can be similar things if they are actual extraterrestrial civilizations 'observing' us. 'Shape changing' ufos, ufos that travel in a speed that no creature can withstand etc.

Yeah, I love science fiction, too. It's really fun. But you're so frothy about the possibility that physics is wrong, that you aren't considering that a small number of poorly-instrumented observations are wrong.

[zrn900]

> And by thinking within the boundaries of our paradigm, we can conclude that this particular combination of technology and culture has not spread throughout our galaxy.

Yep, its basically what the relevant xkcd comic explains:

https://xkcd.com/638/

> If that is physically possible. Which we have fairly strong evidence against.

We don't. Our science is not all-encompassing.

> superluminal spacetravel without a shred of evidence is folly.

This sentence and your sentences preceding this one contradict. Solely the very concept of quantum entanglement broke all the preexisting notions about how existence worked. Its something that shouldn't have happened according to all the 'hard' evidence we had beforehand.

Apparently, the evidence we had before wasn't so 'hard'. Just like how the evidence we have currently is not.

> But you're so frothy about the possibility that physics is wrong

Leaving your choice of words aside, physics is !regularly! wrong just like all the other sciences.

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

[ta1243]

Obama was erudite and clear headed. Clinton and Bush I were fine too.

[bequanna]

Obama was charismatic and an excellent speaker.

But overall, a pretty middling presidency in terms of actual accomplishments.

[belter]

"I have a great relationship with the aliens. They love me. We’re going to do great things together. The aliens told me they’ve never seen a leader as strong as me. They said that."

[perrygeo]

Unfortunately some of Carter's contemporaneous head's of state were not so clear headed. In 1977 Eric Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada, spent 45 minutes discussing his theories about UFOs to the United Nations. He claimed to have seen many and was convinced they were driven by “highly intelligent aliens of extraterrestrial origin." He even met with Carter about it. Two years later Gairy's government was overthrown by revolutionaries and he had to flee his home country - his strange obsession with UFOs is just an historical footnote.

[keepamovin]

Did he mean that like:

- "I know I saw something that violated my laws of physics, but my knowledge of physics prevented me from believing it (was a physical object/ was real/ was actually behaving in the physics-violating way I saw)." or

- "From my knowledge of physics it was clear that aliens could not get here, so whatever I saw could not have been their craft."

or something else?

[karmakaze]

This seems to be over-analyzing. I take it to mean it didn't feel like any kind of physical object to him. You know how in the moment you're either going to react with "oh shit!" or "curious..." because you made an unconscious snap judgement. I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that.

[keepamovin]

It's not over analyzing, hahaha! :) We're going to get more by analyzing what it is. I get what you're sayin' but it's important to consider the possible meanings, right?

I think your take is fair, but it's just another interpretation like mine. Otherwise how it's taken or presented could be totally different to how it's intended.

> I don't think he deeply considered how different alien physical objects could behave with far advanced science, then decided how to feel about that.

No but he could have considered more on reflection then provided an answer that was the result of that. Hahaha! :) This discussion between us is like proof of why it's important to consider.

We don't want Jimmy Carter to be a puppet for whatever ideology or theory, we want to know what we thought. Hahah! :)

But I also reflect that maybe these sort of statements where it's ambiguous isn't that important to consider, because you can't really know, ya know what i mean? :) Hahah. So funny you say over analyzing but then we get down into analysis of it hahahaha! :)

[sgnelson]

Jimmy Carter may have been one of the most decent human beings the US has ever had as a President.

I think the way that the Republican party treated (both then and now) a southern, small family farmer who served in the military and taught Sunday school is one of those ironies that shows what values the Republican party actually believes in. And this has obviously only accelerated massively since Trump.

[paulddraper]

I find people to be inconsistent. This conversation has happened more than once:

"I really like Carter's presidency because he was a good person."

"Oh so you must hate Clinton."

"Well, you can't judge a president based on his personal life."

"..."

[reducesuffering]

Ok so you're assuming Clinton was a terrible person, I'm assuming off of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Is there anything else to reach that conclusion?

[paulddraper]

Yeah, when judging personal character, I can't imagine cheating on your spouse would put you in the "good" category.

But maybe I'm old-fashioned like that.