[dwaltrip]

> they are not avoiding detection and there is a plethora of high resolution imagery and sensor data

That's my point. They seem to want to be hidden yet aren't very good at it? They can travel across the galaxy but somehow can't avoid being seen by our shitty cameras? Those two things don't square.

> They also may not be light years away, but rather ultra terrestrial or interdimensional or time travelers or they use wormholes to “teleport”.

They might also be magical pixies that travel via quantum flatulence. But it seems unlikely.

[nwienert]

There's so many ways to postulate it such that it makes sense, here's just one:

Beings lived on earth 50-60M years ago, they left without a trace but left probes to watch what happens, once civ reaches a certain point they reveal themselves in stages.

I was going to write a few more variations, but as I do I realize even more permutations. There must be at least 50 I can think of within an hour or so that seem remote but plausible enough.

I think with any postulate you sort of get to "ok so what now?" and I agree that there's not much you can really do. If they are super-squid or inter-dimensional beings or future humans or some sort of god, there's not really much to do with it unless you think they are weaving some sort of message for us to parse.

[dwaltrip]

Yes there are a million fantastical scenarios one could imagine. But they are all incredibly implausible compared all of the mundane, boring non-alien alternatives:

* People getting bored and imagining things (“seeing faces in the clouds” so to speak)

* People being primed to see something (they read about other “UFO” sightings) and then, of course, they “see it” too

* People wanting to believe something for tangential ideological or social reasons — the government is corrupt and is hiding things -> UFOs must exist!

* People literally just making things up (they want attention, money, want to one-up someone, want to be special, have unregulated emotions, etc)

* Faulty / mis-calibrated sensors

* Data corruption / misinterpretation

* It was just a bird / cloud / water vapor / reflection of sunlight / electrical short / optical illusion

* And so on

These are the types of “boring” things that are always the real explanation when someone starts talking about crazy shit like ghosts or aliens. Aliens and ghosts are cool and exciting so people don’t want to believe the boring reasons. We often want distractions in our lives, and what a fun distraction that would be, eh?

Wild and outlandish claims require overwhelming evidence.

[nwienert]

I get it, but now you’re moving the goalposts. You went from “there’s no way to explain it plausibly” to “there’s many ways to explain it but they are unlikely”.

I’ll take it that you’ve conceded that point.

If I wanted to engage with your new point I’d say - actually none of the points you’ve listed explain the current situation. There’s simply too many credible people, from too many separate instances, that are claiming largely similar things across many different incidents. And we now have hard (though not ideal) video evidence that has yet to be explained within our current popular understanding of physics (and I’m aware of the popular debunks, which I find far from compelling).

But that would be opening a whole new discussion, and I’m not here to fight that battle.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Maybe they are hive-minded cosmic shrimps, and their queen died en route, so they arrive headless, with an unsatiable craving for cat-food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9