[robbomacrae]

Regardless of incentives I think this is some of the most important research they should be doing. As a species we need to get a better understanding of the probability of life on other planets and therefore a better understanding of fermi's paradox in case the dark forest theory is correct. So if NASA has an incentive to discover potential pathways for extraterrestrial life... great!

[dash2]

The problem is that the incentive is biased against scepticism. So the process is more likely to find potential pathways but not notice obstacles or counter arguments.

[pavel_lishin]

> a better understanding of fermi's paradox in case the dark forest theory is correct.

We know so little about this, that we can't even begin to estimate the probabilities. It seems like other things are known potential dangers to us, no?

[robbomacrae]

Yes and this helps us make a start. It slightly increases the odds of life elsewhere. And yes there are other dangers.. climate change, nuclear armageddon, bio weapons etc but the existence of another problem doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also attempt to tackle this one. Specially as unlike the others a band aid seems somewhat tractable..

Researcher: “with this new device we think we can attempt to create a gravity wave in the lab” Professor: “we should consider whether this might violate the 2028 embargo on dark forest beacon technology”

[catigula]

A non-trivial faction of our government has been teasing knowledge of some sort of non-human intelligent lifeform (that word isn't considered precisely accurate) on EARTH.

This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real. You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to, but, if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op with vague parameters and goals, our entire system of government is basically forfeit.

I realize this is difficult to deal with but it's a pretty well-established fact at this point.

We don't need to go anywhere for this information.

[GolfPopper]

>our entire system of government is basically forfeit.

<looks at America's current government>

Yep, that seems accurate. Like it or not, the current US government is full of crackpot theories.

The "evidence" of "aliens" inevitably turns out to be blurry footage where people with bias tell you what you're supposed to think it is.

As for the U.S. Congress, you're talking about a body that has been avoiding it's own responsibilities for decades, particularly so right now. Invoking "Congressional hearings" here is an appeal to an unqualified authority. (Congressional representatives presumably has some experience with laws. I do not believe they are qualified for video forensics.)

[kjkjadksj]

Have you seen the footage? It isn’t blurry cell phone videos. It is quite clear thermal imagery from aircraft and drones. The most recent video going around shows a reaper drone tracking one of these objects that does not change its vector much after being hit with a kinetic missile.

[GolfPopper]

>thermal imagery

I have seen that one, as it happens. I am not an expert, but it looks to me like the asserted Hellfire hits a cruise missile and knocks some pieces off as the Hellfire fails to detonate, and the cruise missile then course corrects from getting knocked around.

The best way to determine that would be to have a number of experts independently assess the footage without being primed as to its provenance. A presentation by someone who is already convinced it's aliens to some congresscritters in need of a distraction is hardly that.

[kjkjadksj]

If it was merely that, why is it being presented to congress? How would the US military not know the origin of a cruise missile they are tracking? How many cruise missiles out there can take a broadside from a hellfire at 1000mph and continue on its direction of travel?

[GolfPopper]

Congress decides what gets presented to it.

Did anyone even ask about larger radar tracks for this "UFO"?

A Hellfire masses less than 50kg. A Tomahawk cruise missile, for example, weighs over 1000kg. The impact is clearly glancing - the Hellfire retains much of its own speed.

[catigula]

The information you claim to want isn't accessible to you. The US government has "platforms" with vast arrays of sensors and data collection capability - redundant, multiplicative platforms measuring things you and I might not even know about - and they use this data to get a pretty good idea of what they're looking at.

You're seeing a grainy video for a reason. It would be trivial for you to have every piece of data related to an incident but if you did, that might be problematic for multiple reasons, one of them being it would expose capability. Usually, multi-million dollar missiles aren't used on unknown targets with unknown capabilities for unknown reasons. Thus, more information is required.

So, where are we left? With you demanding inaccessible information to draw a conclusion. Given that you can't have it, you're essentially just throwing your hands up and saying "well, I guess we can't know". Fine, but untrue, as we can simply demand to know.

That is what people are doing. If you're at all concerned by any of this, you should be in this camp as well.

Regarding "distraction", how is this a "good" distraction if it's not a widely credibly held position and can clearly damage your reputation? This is just a nonsense idea. There's no reason to believe these people are lying.

[crackrook]

> You can think they [...] aren't credible

I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us. Congress people believing falsehoods is nothing new.

[catigula]

Non-human intelligence sharing the planet with us is a mundane explanation. It's a completely trivial possibility in the vastly expansive fields of biology and physics. Earth is known to host extremely complex life and is the only known planet to do so. To look for unknown forms of life one need only look at their feet. Bacteria was a previously unknown, extremely expansive form of life on Earth.

We unlocked the secrets of the atom and gained within it the capability of ending all life on earth trivially. Other secrets being locked behind physics isn't a radical speculation. In fact, it's surprising that we haven't really seen any since.

[crackrook]

Before we had the instruments to observe them directly we could theorize about the existence of bacteria because we could indirectly observe them through their effects on our biology and even their macroscopic effects on populations, effects that had no better explanations. I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence", whether they supposedly dwell in the depths of the ocean, the Earth's crust, Titan, or anywhere else in the universe. SETI has been listening for ~60 years and hasn't heard a peep from any of the billions (trillions?) exoplanet's worth of radio signals that could have reached us in that time.

The available-to-me evidence suggests that technologically advanced species are exceedingly rare, and the only such species we're aware of emits an overwhelming number of artifacts that would serve as evidence for its existence, so it would be very much not mundane to discover that another one has been living under our noses this whole time.

I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.

[catigula]

>I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence"

This is precisely the point. You aren't aware of these mysteries, despite the earnest attempts of many to bring them to your direct attention.

There is no longer any attempt to hide the mysteries categorically, so this lack of information is now on you.

>I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.

Yes, that's why the correct scenario is wide declassification of the premises that are asserted in this regard, i.e. to make general knowledge of unidentifiable phenomena which have no definitive known cause or origin, communication with these entities, capture of their technology, etc. All of these things could be explained by various competing theories, some of them "simple" (funny how Occam's razor is always just what I prefer), but this information, which has been trickling out from credible sources, needs to be brought into the public space and then we get to decide what it implies or doesn't imply.

Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.

[IAmBroom]

> Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.

OK, I get that you're a cryptozoology/"aliens walk among us!" kinda person, but...

A lack of evidence against a theory is never evidence for the theory. It's very hard to prove a negative.

[crackrook]

> the correct scenario is wide declassification

It sounds to me like you and I see the same expansive hole where the evidence should be. My preference would be to say "show me a claim without a hole or stop wasting my time," you appear to assume that the evidence exists - because someone "credible" said it's so - and demand that the hole be filled immediately.

To claim there exists a grand conspiracy and web of well-kept secrets, ironically, is to try to explain away the first substanceless claim with a new one.

[IAmBroom]

> This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real.

Congresspeople also say Jewish space lasers are a thing.

> You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to

Yes, I do. The current GOP party is not interested in any way in scientific fact.

[catigula]

You've immunized yourself from any possibility of entertaining this information. Many people sharing it aren't republicans, including senators.

[ceejayoz]

Senators are humans, and the selection process prioritizes charm over knowledge. Many people share all sorts of silly ideas.

I'm very prepared to look at evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but it better be damned good evidence.

[kjkjadksj]

Where do you draw the line for sufficient evidence? Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient? It isn’t like the videos lack provenance like something random from youtube.

[ceejayoz]

> Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient?

Have you watched a congressional hearing? They serve primarily as evidence that politicians like to hear themselves speak.

[rkomorn]

I draw the line at "we have conclusive evidence that it is extra terrestrial", not at "we don't know what it is", and I would say they are categorically not the same.

[fwip]

Making the analysis harder is the fact that those politicians are either exceedingly stupid or brazen liars, or both.

[catigula]

Credible non-politicians, people in sensitive CIA or senior military leadership have consistently made these claims. They may all be liars, but none seem particularly stupid.

One problem is that we haven't gotten a "UAP Snowden". Such a person has seen a serious chilling effect.

[rkomorn]

Or maybe there's been "no UAP Snowden" because there's actually nothing to leak.

[catigula]

No, that isn't possible.

Note that my post was designed to be agnostic. Leaking a psy-op, or leaking the extensive, close-up details of UAP phenomena which we do have (president Obama himself said there are confirmed unknown phenomena, taking him at his word on this topic), is still a Snowden style leak, especially if they continue to do this dog and pony show in congress and elsewhere.

There's also not a nuclear physics Snowden, or F-47 Snowden, do you think there's nothing to leak?

[rkomorn]

> There's also not a nuclear physics Snowden, or F-47 Snowden, do you think there's nothing to leak?

There might be, but even if there was, a leak in those fields would still have no bearing on whether or not there are actual things to leak regarding UAPs.

Maybe the info is simply not public because publishing it would let the very likely other humans responsible for said UAPs know that we do and don't know what they're up to.

And it could also be that that info on UAPs isn't leaked because (unlike the Snowden leaks), they aren't actually relevant to Americans and to their liberties, and so the people who have access to that info see no point in leaking it.

[IAmBroom]

> (president Obama himself said there are confirmed unknown phenomena, taking him at his word on this topic),

So, by one POTUS admitting that we don't already know everything about everything, that proves aliens are here and they look like little grayskinned ET's?

[kjkjadksj]

By that logic there was nothing to leak before snowden

[rkomorn]

By that logic, you're also hiding the truth that you are actually seven sentient potatoes in a wetsuit. It just hasn't been revealed yet.

Except there is no "logic" to thinking a leak just hasn't happened "yet".

There's no "logic" to thinking that the absence of a leak implies there is information to be leaked.

[kjkjadksj]

Isn’t David Grusch just that?

[Dilettante_]

>if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op [...] our entire system of government is basically forfeit.

And you're asserting that this cannot possibly be the case? "For that which must not be, cannot be"?

[catigula]

No, I'm just asserting that I don't find that theory tenable.

I'd love to know more (even your mundane explanation of "there's a psy-op on congresspeople for some reason" - if so, why?) but it's been decided that we're not allowed.

[Dilettante_]

If we take "psy-ops exist"(In my head, "propaganda" is a type of psy-op, but I would not disagree if you drew the circle tighter than that) as a prior, I would have to ask why in the world congresspeople would not be subject to them, both to those that target a broader population, which they are still undeniably part of, and to those that target policy-makers specifically, because if you had the power to influence people, it seems obvious to me that you would target those that gave you great leverage.

[IAmBroom]

One needn't posit a "psy-op".

We already know major GOP leaders court votes by pushing absurd ideas that are rejected by the scientific establishment. "Injecting bleach can cure Covid" is one from the highest-ranking GOP elected official. "No vaccines are safe" is from a top health official.