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Comment by etrabroline | Hacker News Reader

Any report that cites the navy videos from last year is not going to be very interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWGmiZs4JA

Videos of blurry splotches and eye witness testimony that repeats the word "technology" over and over to imply that unlike the last 6, _this_ blurry splotch is an alien spacecraft is really just annoying at this point.

EDIT: Hey judge2020 did you watch Dr Mason's analysis I linked above? It's very informative and pretty entertaining too. I'll take your downvote as a no.

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Got to agree.

Something I haven't heard mentioned is the possibility that these might be artifacts of the sensors themselves or of the image processing software used: i.e., a bad Kalman filter that won't settle down properly or such.

The pics are too fuzzy to be useful for judgment and the objects usually too small to discern shape and/or size. I am puzzled that the images appear so unclear yet the pilots verbal descriptions sounds very clear.

Before buying into UFOs, I want what I've always wanted: some clear photos.

I do find it interesting that the artifacts of the sensors themselves seem to be very similar to the eyewitness accounts of these objects that have appeared throughout the last several hundred years of history.

Perhaps a sufficiently advanced AI that has also learnt how to replicate human-eye conditions?

> _this_ blurry splotch is an alien spacecraft is really just annoying at this point.

I don't think anyone taking themselves seriously is considering these alien spacecraft; 'UFO' simply means unidentified flying object, which very well might be some another world superpower testing their own tech or testing the U.S. military's reaction and response to these things, likely using simple drone tech with outer shells that make it easy to stay 'unknown' by keeping their distance.

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

Is a serious individual and advocating that these maybe extraterrestrial.

He gave a fascinating Joe Rogan interview recently: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V0uWX1C4m8xEL0HHYqbnE

I think you're taking yourself too seriously if you don't consider that it's alien. Or that it implies cooperation with aliens. I'm not saying decide that it's that, but at least open to consider it. It just seems too arrogant to consider: we're the only ones, what we know is the limit of possibility, and we're so special that even if they're out there they will never visit us. I know there are aliens, they visited us and had some tech interactions. But right now I don't know how much overlap there is between these "sightings" and aliens. I know a lot of the current narrative is disinfo and I think these tech are mostly ours, but how did we develop them? That's where the alien overlap is that I see. What you believe is valid and is up to you, but I reckon it's smart to stay open to the possibility. I don't see there is as much gained by pre-answering that question in the negative if you don't know, as there is by staying curious and open. I think that's the way to "take yourself seriously" if that's what you want to do. :)

From a outside-US perspective, most UFO reports do seem to come from the US military, but there's also scattered reports from the rest of the world. If turns out to be a top secret US/Russian/Chinese/Moon nazi research program, this could be the beginning of a new arms race. However, since nobody seem to know what the hell these are, that leaves us with aliens or an unknown terrestrial party.

I'd feel better if it turned out to be extra-terrestrial; if the aliens are out there, watching and haven't annihilated us yet, then at least there's hope they're benevolent.

I'm with you on that. Also that Arthur C Clarke quote, "Either we're alone in the universe, or we're not. Both possibilities are terrifying." I don't really agree they're "terrifying" but, yeah, it's not really easy for people to accept either way. So we end up in some sort of collective fantasies about these things, probably ;p :) xx

Oh, being completely alone would raise far more questions than I'd like to think about. Terrifying? Perhaps, but definitely mind-blowing.

> It just seems too arrogant to consider: we're the only ones, what we know is the limit of possibility, and we're so special that even if they're out there they will never visit us.

I think the alternate view is the opposite of arrogant or that we’re so special; either the zoo hypothesis, or that we are so simple that communicating with us would be akin to trying to communicate with an ant for example.

Video of every object on Earth has been getting better.

People with cellphones have massively multi-megapixel cameras with jitter reduction.

When a meteorite lands in Russia a hundred dashcams record it from multiple angles. Beautiful video.

But UFOs? Still just camera splotches that human beings tell stories about in absurd detail.

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