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Strathos

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Sounds good to me! If one showed up near us, I'd probably take it with a grain of wheat.

I've never seen a UFO myself, but we used to live just miles from an AFB, and they had UFOs on their radar all the time.

I've seen 3 UFOs in my lifetime. By that, I mean flying objects that I wasn't able to identify. But one of them was probably a plane and another one a meteor. Not sure about the third one.
 
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Kylie

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I've never seen a UFO myself, but we used to live just miles from an AFB, and they had UFOs on their radar all the time.

What a lucky position you must have been in, to have air force personnel inform you of the unidentified objects that they often detected. I would have thought that they wouldn't have told civilians about that at all!
 
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AV1611VET

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What a lucky position you must have been in, to have air force personnel inform you of the unidentified objects that they often detected. I would have thought that they wouldn't have told civilians about that at all!
FYI, I was a Radioman on Guam at the time, living in Finegayan, and we had a friend in the Air Force who worked at Andersen AFB.
 
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The happy Objectivist

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Sounds good to me! If one showed up near us, I'd probably take it with a grain of wheat.

I've never seen a UFO myself, but we used to live just miles from an AFB, and they had UFOs on their radar all the time.
I had wanted to see one all my life and it finally happened in 2014. It was huge, at least 600 ft. wide. I know this because I saw it moving behind a mountain peak and it was as wide as the top of the mountain and I scaled it off of a GIS map. Silent. Orange like the color of flame. Shaped like one of those paper crowns from Burger King that we used to get as kids. Moved slowly down the mountain range and then took off in the blink of an eye. Saw various different ones for the next 7 days. Since then at least once a year. There are some military bases and defense contractors over the mountains and I suspect this area is their test area because it's so sparsely populated. Whatever they are they have control of gravity and inertia because the maneuvers they make would be impossible without it.

Strangely I felt no fear that first time, just wonder and excitement. Raced home to tell the family and my daughter saw it out the kitchen window.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I had wanted to see one all my life and it finally happened in 2014. It was huge, at least 600 ft. wide. I know this because I saw it moving behind a mountain peak and it was as wide as the top of the mountain and I scaled it off of a GIS map. Silent. Orange like the color of flame. Shaped like one of those paper crowns from Burger King that we used to get as kids. Moved slowly down the mountain range and then took off in the blink of an eye. Saw various different ones for the next 7 days. Since then at least once a year. There are some military bases and defense contractors over the mountains and I suspect this area is their test area because it's so sparsely populated. Whatever they are they have control of gravity and inertia because the maneuvers they make would be impossible without it.

Strangely I felt no fear that first time, just wonder and excitement. Raced home to tell the family and my daughter saw it out the kitchen window.
Did you get a photo?
 
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Kylie

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FYI, I was a Radioman on Guam at the time, living in Finegayan, and we had a friend in the Air Force who worked at Andersen AFB.

Something still tells me that they shouldn't have been telling you about the unidentified things they saw on the radar.

In any case, even if there was some unidentified thing on the radar, doesn't mean it was aliens coming in their spaceship to leave funny patterns in fields.
 
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The happy Objectivist

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Did you get a photo?
No. It's not like I go looking for them with a camera and they usually only appear for 4 or 5 seconds. I don't have a cell phone. I did have one in the viewfinder of my camera once, the big crown looking thing. It was about 40 miles to the northeast and I got it in the viewfinder just as it was going behind a mountain peak which is why I was able to scale it off of the GIS map. It was at least 600 feet across. Unfortunately just as the camera focused it disappeared. I did ask around town the next morning and others saw it too and the next night we were coming home from Karate class and it appeared again right in front of us and both my daughters saw it when we were a mile from home. I ran to get the camera with a 300 mm lens and that's when I almost got the shot of it. In the time it took us to go a mile home and get the camera it had moved 45 miles. Maybe 3 minutes to get home and get the camera. Or perhaps there was more than one. Anyway, they are surprisingly hard to photograph. I've never seen that orange crown-shaped one again. Mostly what I see is a large white light that just appears for a few seconds and then winks out. Sometimes it will move a short way and then disappear. I see satellites all the time and helicopters and planes but these things are big and silent and they are bluish white. I also see 3 or 4 bluish lights in a row moving way up high, much higher than planes fly. The one I saw this Feb. was three orange lights moving along the mountains, no sound at all. It was there for maybe a minute. I ran to get the camera but it was gone when I got back. That's the one I waved at to come over.

The first time, the next day I called the sheriff and he wouldn't talk about it. I called the little airport south of us and they didn't want to talk either. I called the college where they have a small observatory and they wouldn't talk either. I called the news in Colorado Springs about 4 hours away and they were interested. I don't know if they ever sent anyone. I got interviewed by MUFON, lol.

Where we live is currently one of the hottest spots in the world for UFO sightings. Fun stuff. You've got to understand that it is very dark here at night. The nearest city is 4 hours by car. Hardly any lights at night so anything that is lit shows up like a bug on a plate. And there aren't many trees so you can see 360 degrees so your eye picks up on any light in the sky. I see the international space station all the time. It passes from northwest to southeast. Satellites move at a constant rate across the sky. If I go out and lay on my car hood I can see tiny, tiny lights moving around up there really high. They move and then stop and change direction.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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OK.

It does seem odd, that in this era of ubiquitous imaging devices, there seems to be fewer photos of UFOs around than back in the day when cameras were bulky dedicated devices yet back yard hubcap photos were a dime a dozen...
 
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The happy Objectivist

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OK.

It does seem odd, that in this era of ubiquitous imaging devices, there seems to be fewer photos of UFOs around than back in the day when cameras were bulky dedicated devices yet back yard hubcap photos were a dime a dozen...
I don't think that's true at all. There are thousands of videos, clear videos of UFOs, it's just that people write them off as hoaxes and some of them are. In this day and age of computer-generated special effects, people are right to think that they aren't real. It think we've all seen these older movies and photos so many times that it seems like there aren't as many today but I'm seeing new ones all the time. Amazing videos. I even saw one that was clearly a wedge shaped one similar to the stealth bomber flying wing and it had windows in the front with clearly visible figures in those windows. Could it have been computer generated? Yes, and that's the problem today. The Pheonix lights from the 90's had multiple videos taken from multiple places and angles. It was seen by thousands including the governor of AZ.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I don't think that's true at all. There are thousands of videos, clear videos of UFOs, it's just that people write them off as hoaxes and some of them are. In this day and age of computer-generated special effects, people are right to think that they aren't real. It think we've all seen these older movies and photos so many times that it seems like there aren't as many today but I'm seeing new ones all the time. Amazing videos. I even saw one that was clearly a wedge shaped one similar to the stealth bomber flying wing and it had windows in the front with clearly visible figures in those windows. Could it have been computer generated? Yes, and that's the problem today. The Pheonix lights from the 90's had multiple videos taken from multiple places and angles. It was seen by thousands including the governor of AZ.
OK, maybe it's just that the mainstream media are bored with them. I keep an eye out for mentions of interesting ones, but even the recently declassified USAF videos aren't good enough to make much of.
 
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The happy Objectivist

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They're good enough for the Navy to conclude that they don't know what they are but that they are operating on some principle currently unknown to science. They have no exaust, no flight surfaces and no visible means of propulsion. My thought is that they are from some top-secret special access projects. I hope that is the case. I hope we have control of gravity. It's always bothered me that we pretty much figured out electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force back in the 19th and early twentieth centuries but not Gravity.

I mean we have General Relativity but I mean actual control of Gravity, the ability to produce it and manipulate it like we do with electromagnetism.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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They're good enough for the Navy to conclude that they don't know what they are but that they are operating on some principle currently unknown to science. They have no exaust, no flight surfaces and no visible means of propulsion.
That's assuming they really are craft of some kind. Given the number of times craft described as 'not of this Earth' turned out to be fakes or misidentifications, I reserve judgement (I particularly liked the video, some years ago, of huge craft zipping around the distant hills at incredible speeds - which eventually turned out to be flies buzzing around in the foreground!).

I hope we have control of gravity. It's always bothered me that we pretty much figured out electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force back in the 19th and early twentieth centuries but not Gravity.

I mean we have General Relativity but I mean actual control of Gravity, the ability to produce it and manipulate it like we do with electromagnetism.
I think that's extremely unlikely, given the current understanding of the physics of gravity and the huge mass or energy equivalence needed to produce even an extremely weak gravitational force.

But, hey, never say never...
 
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The happy Objectivist

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That's assuming they really are craft of some kind. Given the number of times craft described as 'not of this Earth' turned out to be fakes or misidentifications, I reserve judgement (I particularly liked the video, some years ago, of huge craft zipping around the distant hills at incredible speeds - which eventually turned out to be flies buzzing around in the foreground!).

I think that's extremely unlikely, given the current understanding of the physics of gravity and the huge mass or energy equivalence needed to produce even an extremely weak gravitational force.

But, hey, never say never...
I think it's proper for you to reserve judgment. But your complaint was that there aren't any good videos of these things. The fact is that there are many videos out there and a Navy video has more credibility in my opinion. They track these things on radar going thousands of miles an hour and zooming great distances in a split second and making maneuvers that they shouldn't be able to make given our understanding of physics, which I have observed as well. There is something there and it is flying and it's unidentified, therefore it's a UFO or a UAP as they are calling them now.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I think it's proper for you to reserve judgment. But your complaint was that there aren't any good videos of these things. The fact is that there are many videos out there and a Navy video has more credibility in my opinion.
Sure, I know there are plenty of videos out there; my point was that they "aren't good enough to make much of." They're typically small blurry things a considerable distance away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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The happy Objectivist

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Sure, it's not enough to conclude that aliens are visiting us but it's plenty enough for me to conclude that someone or something has technology far in advance of what the public knows about. I for one hope that it is ours and that we did it all on our own without help from some advanced civilization. I'd not be a bit surprised to find out that aliens exist and have visited us but that's something I would need more evidence for than some strange lights in the sky.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Sure, it's not enough to conclude that aliens are visiting us but it's plenty enough for me to conclude that someone or something has technology far in advance of what the public knows about.
That's assuming they really are craft of some kind...
 
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The happy Objectivist

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That's assuming they really are craft of some kind...
Yeah, so what? If we learn that they are something else we can change our minds. They are something. They seem to be under intelligent control. I don't see a problem with assuming they are craft of some type. We don't have to be certain until we learn more. It's OK to be wrong sometimes. That's how we learn.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Yeah, so what? If we learn that they are something else we can change our minds. They are something. They seem to be under intelligent control. I don't see a problem with assuming they are craft of some type. We don't have to be certain until we learn more. It's OK to be wrong sometimes. That's how we learn.
One can keep an open mind and still consider the prior probabilities; e.g. the likelihood and implications of each interpretation that comes to mind.

It would be fantastic if they were terrestrial craft, it would be fantastic and scary if they were extra-terrestrial craft or used alien technology; but, given what we know, what are the most likely explanations? Without going through the options for the USAF videos in detail, just comparing, say, government/military disinformation vs real physical craft, it seems to me that the former is far more likely than the latter - we know that disinformation is a major part of national security activities and that the technology exists to easily produce such videos.

OTOH, if they were real craft, they would appear to require major and radical breakthroughs in multiple technologies, and quite possibly violation of known physics at an everyday scale, which - given that our current model of physics is extremely robust at everyday scales, on the face of it makes this option extremely unlikely. YMMV.

There are various other options and variations, but by establishing reasonable prior probabilities based on what we know today, we have a reasonable foundation for a Bayesian approach to integrating new information as it appears.

It's also worth considering the wider context, such as similarities and differences between various reports, cultural correlations over time, and so-on.
 
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The happy Objectivist

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One can keep an open mind and still consider the prior probabilities; e.g. the likelihood and implications of each interpretation that comes to mind.

It would be fantastic if they were terrestrial craft, it would be fantastic and scary if they were extra-terrestrial craft or used alien technology; but, given what we know, what are the most likely explanations? Without going through the options for the USAF videos in detail, just comparing, say, government/military disinformation vs real physical craft, it seems to me that the former is far more likely than the latter - we know that disinformation is a major part of national security activities and that the technology exists to easily produce such videos.

OTOH, if they were real craft, they would appear to require major and radical breakthroughs in multiple technologies, and quite possibly violation of known physics at an everyday scale, which - given that our current model of physics is extremely robust at everyday scales, on the face of it makes this option extremely unlikely. YMMV.

There are various other options and variations, but by establishing reasonable prior probabilities based on what we know today, we have a reasonable foundation for a Bayesian approach to integrating new information as it appears.

It's also worth considering the wider context, such as similarities and differences between various reports, cultural correlations over time, and so-on.
That this is disinformation was the first thought I had. I've heard of project Blue beam.
 
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That this is disinformation was the first thought I had. I've heard of project Blue beam.

The crash at Roswell in 1947 was a balloon, but not for weather, but rather detecting Soviet nuclear tests.

There *is* an Area 51 at Groom Lake and this was the test site for the SR-71 spy plane and at least one of the first stealth projects (F117 & B2).

I saw an actual B2 (or was it a B1, I forget) flying in the daylight over SD in the late 80s.
 
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