[seren]

I think a good reference point is the Chelyabinsk meteor[0]. Just afterwards, we had plenty of high resolution videos from dash cam, smartphones, etc, with different angle, time and location.

I would expect about the same in quantity and quality for a major UFO sighting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

[senjutsuka]

You are comparing natural phenomenon with life forms. A better comparison would be silver back gorillas which up until the 70s were considered a myth. Or giant squid which are still somewhat unsubstantiated even today because they actively avoid us.

[huxley]

Silverbacks are male Mountain Gorillas, Diane Fosey studied them for 18 years starting in 1967 and George Schaller studied them back in 1959 and he wrote 2 books about them.

The giant squid is rare but not unsubstantiated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBRZuafewzI

[vitd]

Giant squid are in no way "unsubstantiated." Dead ones have been washing up on shores around the globe for centuries. Live ones were elusive until recently, but we now have a lot of footage of those, as well, thanks to things like deep sea oil exploration and various ocean science missions.

If there are aliens, even if they can easily elude us, it seems likely that there would still be traces of them had they visited. Some sort of technological foot prints, whether they be emissions from ships or communications, or actual pieces of technology that have been left behind or broken off. Something, somewhere, you'd think.

[senjutsuka]

You mean evidence like the 100s of hours of unexplainable phenomenon recorded each year (see google search of ufo video 2014). Including that which was release from classified status by an arm of our armed forces which chose to not only investigate, but to classify the investigation.

And for the record, we have more video and imagery of these unexplained phenomenon then we do of the giant squid. They, for whatever reason, just dont leave bodies floating up on the beaches.

[seren]

I am not sure your comparison is apt. Strange things in the sky tend to be viewed by much more people than animals that are actively hiding in unexplored/hard to reach areas. I am totally ready to believe there are plenty of things we don't know about the deep sea for example.

[senjutsuka]

Um, but if this phenomenon is a creature why wouldnt it try to stay out of sight? Further if 'things in the sky' are easier to find why were the bird of paradise only recently discovered and recorded? Answer: because their rare and prefer locations that arent very occupied by humans.

Hell we have whole tribes we've only just discovered. If something doesnt want to be found, its not impossible for it to stay hidden.

[nitrogen]

These sound a lot like arguments from ignorance. "We don't know for sure, therefore it must be true!" The dash cam videos are an excellent counterargument. If someone is lucky enough to film an alien on grainy blurry film, why is nobody lucky enough to get one on an HD dashcam?

[wavefunction]

I don't think you can claim that giant squid are avoiding humans: rather our respective habitats simply don't overlap enough to have noticed them until we could build vehicles capable of exploring where they are found.

A sentient species capable of interstellar travel would almost certainly be able to avoid detection by humanity if they wanted to, I will agree.

[dragonwriter]

> I don't think you can claim that giant squid are avoiding humans: rather our respective habitats simply don't overlap enough to have noticed them until we could build vehicles capable of exploring where they are found.

Well, we've got documented reports going back continuously to the ancient Greeks of giant squid, and photographic evidence going back almost as far as common photography. So, its not so more that we needed "vehicles capable of exploring where they are found" to substantiate them as we needed photography, etc., for people other than those who directly encountered them to be able to clearly distinguish the real reports of giant squid from all the rumors of fantastic beasts that lack such evidence.

[Crito]

The "giant squid was considered a myth" thing is much like the "the earth was considered flat" thing; both are largely myths themselves. Nobody who has put any research or thought into the matter has doubted the existence of giant squids for a very long time. They have been scientifically studied for centuries, about as long as we've been scientifically studying anything. Before then, fishermen were finding specimens all the time.

The only thing that is actually doubted is nonsense like the existence of squid the size of ships, big enough to take on Naval vessels. Much like the round nature of the Earth was never in question, just the idea that it was small enough to make sailing right around it a sensible thing to do.