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Comment by hshshshshsh | Hacker News Reader

I feel like you already have decided that this is safe and then are using "boring" explanations to back that narrative. This is easy cause nothing bad has happened in a while so it's less cognitive dissonance to go with that narrative.

Have you even tried coming up with boring explanations on how this could be not safe?

Also why specifically boring explanations? Plenty of incidents have dramatic explanations. How do you know when to pick what? Is the idea most incidents have boring explanations? And what happens when there is a black swan and you fuck up because you only relied on boring explanations? Shouldn't you be doing some sort of probability distributions instead?

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If the military proclaimed these drones safe and are not shooting them down like crazy, these drones are likely reasonably safe, and are not an enemy that the US military, arguably the top one in the world, would fight.

A possible bad explanation: the US military actually would love to shoot down these drones, but cannot, because e.g. they are known to contain smallpox virus, dangerous radioactive contaminants, etc. These would be released at the slightest attempt to sound alarms or interfere. Someone caught them unawares and is now enjoying impunity.

A worse version: the US military and/or government is complicit, actually overrun by aliens / reptiloids / crackpots, and is allowing an invasion.

Etc.

Which version looks more plausible, any of these, or that the US military is testing something that can fly, but keeps the lips tight?

The military did NOT "declare them safe".

A spokesperson said that there was no proven harm done or something to that effect, as i particularly noted this oddball statement for what it was.

Please do go back and confirm.

I also think that any threat actor would attempt to dampen down alarm. GIVEN Putins proclivity and capabilities in convincing a cerain percentage of decadent western nations (tm) populations of certain scenarios in world power mongering, i dont see a brazen foreign drone surveillance campaign as out of the question.

Mind you, i did not allege that this is such, but that dismissal of such is currently impossible and unwise.

I believe they very explicitly said they pose no threat and also explicitly ruled out foreign entities and adversaries.

I talked about this in another comment but Putin/Russia and Iran could never be contenders for this. If it was a foreign entity it would pretty much be limited to China in terms of capability & readiness.

> Also why specifically boring explanations?

Without referring to anything specific about this case, things usually have boring explanations because what makes an explanation boring is that it is expected and empirically likely.

“The most likely explanation is the most boring one” is practically a tautology, because “boring” practically means “likely” in regards to explanations of events.

Makes sense. Maybe we can use explanations that are hard to vary instead?

The DoD has very publicly stated that these are safe; I know Americans have a lot of distrust in their military but when it comes to matters of national security and defense the intel community is more or less omniscient.

Knowing the current capabilities of the military, there is also no possibility that this is not safe and yet cannot be handled after this long, which kinda rules out any boring explanation.

When it comes to matters of UFOs, drones, and lights in the sky, it has only ever been a boring explanation. I think people want very much for it to be fantastical, but often times the boring reality is still very dramatic if you step back and consider we're talking about secret testing of highly advanced drones.

No, the DOD has NOT "declared them safe"

Please confirm the actual statement made.

No evidence of harm as of yet, or somesuch.

From Singh earlier today: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/...

> at no point were our installations threatened when this activity was occurring

> What our initial assessment here is that these are not drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or adversary

> initial assessments are that these are drones and potentially, you know, could be small airplanes

> But I think what's also important to remember is that at no time were our military installations or our people ever under any threat

This is about as declarative as the Pentagon will get on the matter

this is mind you, a specific form of satefy in that they didnt consider it a threat to the US military.

thats not to say it wouldnt be healthy for you if it crashed and caught your house on fire.

safe is more than "not a threat"

By the same definition every helicopter, plane, kid flying a drone, even car on the road is not “safe.”

It’s the same way I can call a system reliable when it is 3 9’s, but that doesn’t imply 100% guaranteed uptime. Or a statistician can reject a hypothesis that has a low enough p-value but still more than 0. Or how health systems and procedures are considered safe above a threshold, or how we consider condoms safe sex while understanding they are not 100% effective.

I’m finding it frustrating that when it comes to UFOs, people tend to isolate the most remote possibilities.

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