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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Could be this, could be that, nobody knows, more investigation needed, probably a real phenom, probably artificial, probably not aliens.

Really, the only interesting question here is whose military technology it probably is and what the objects in question were actually doing, rather than just appearing to be doing from one perspective. I would love if it were aliens but if they wanted to announce themselves there are so many more obvious ways of doing so.

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As a hypothetical, there's a non-zero chance that an alien wouldn't even have the concept of an announcement. Language, psychology, and consciousness are all things we take for granted.

Not to mention the hubris inherent in the assumption that any aliens would consider us worthy of such an announcement. The universe is 14 Billion years old, while our civilization is roughly 10 Thousand years old. From the standpoint of an interstellar civilization, we may not be worth the miniscule effortinvolved, just like humans have never condescended to announce our presence to "lesser" species.

When they see us puttering around, they may just chuckle, thinking "the filter's definitely gonna get these chumps!"

I guess 'announce themselves' has connotations of a speech; I meant if they wanted to openly show themselves.

For example, I can't really communicate with the various animals in my vicinity, from dogs to bees, but I can certainly tell whether or not they've noticed my presence. I feel pretty confident that alien visitors would be aware of the existence of human life and its proarteacts (cities, infrastructure, vehicles) even if we were not considered very interesting or sufficiently advanced to communicate with.

Perhaps reveal themselves would be the better phrase. It'd be odd if they primarily revealed themselves near to and observing the US military, but that entirely makes sense if they're of terrestrial origin.

I really do hope there's some kind of exotic technology that some nation possesses/is working on that gets spilled through this release. It would make things interesting.

Or it’s just a misinformation campaign. Try to send your enemies searching down rabbit holes.

The problem with it being a misinformation campaign is that it assumes our enemies are idiots.

No enemy worth worrying about is actually going to believe we've suddenly leapt thousands of years (or impossibly) ahead in technological development and created anti-gravity drones, much less then leaked it to the press.

Senator Rubio is very serious about the importance of this important matter, so you can rest assured that folks assumed to be idiots are not our national adversaries.

What enemies? And what wouldn't they already be aware of?

Where is the evidence for that, though?

The problem with statements like this is - what’s obvious to us may not be obvious to them.

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