Ann K
Senior Member.
No, we don't know. You are invited to share the details of the circumstances of your experiences with the group.
What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?
- Thread starter Edward Current
- Start date
RobertBillyBob
Senior Member.
What makes a person credible enough in your opinion?
I have friends with PHDs whose ethics I know well enough to consider them very trustworthy. If they told me about something that contradicts the known laws of physics in their own area of expertise I would still ask for proof.
Mendel
Senior Member.
All I said is that your experience is not reproducible (but my breakfast is).
It is also implied that you don't have a lot of data that quantifies your experience, and because it is not reproducible, you can't get more data.
This means you rely largely on your memory, yes?
At that point, you do not have a lot of hard evidence you can rely on.
That's why I argue that, while your level of belief is (understandably) high, your level of knowledge is not.
I'm not saying your interpretation is false. I'm saying it isn't well supported, and therefore I don't trust that it is correct, knowing that it is also very much unlikely to be correct.
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Mendel
Senior Member.
We went there a year ago, you were not enthused.
See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/can-ufo-uaps-be-studied-scientifically.13556/post-319429 and replies; also https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...-side-of-the-moon-or-alaska.13504/post-319102 .
It's a "light in the sky" type sighting with no photos.
owntheissue
Member
Not sure I'd ever believe any technology or biological sample was none terrestrial unless I also got to see the none terrestrial system/environment that produced it.
A visit to the homeworld/place of origin with a focus on verifying chronology of creation/evolution in this environment would be the only evidence that is acceptable.
Might seem a bit extreme but when you have people like Steve Justice asserting TTSA found an alien origin quantum waveguide- Blue Book levels of paranoia should apply.
A visit to the homeworld/place of origin with a focus on verifying chronology of creation/evolution in this environment would be the only evidence that is acceptable.
Might seem a bit extreme but when you have people like Steve Justice asserting TTSA found an alien origin quantum waveguide- Blue Book levels of paranoia should apply.
Gary C
Senior Member.
Interesting point. Scientists were able to classify ALH84001 as likely coming from Mars by virtue of decades of studying the Red Planet to include two (at the time) landers.
Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001External Quote:
Without the ability to collect extraterrestrial samples of verified provenance for comparison, there is always a non-zero probability that the example you wish to investigate is simply a unlikely event, no different than a long string of wins in a game of chance, but still originating locally.
[edited to add source]
Eburacum
Senior Member.
An alien organism from an evolutionary chain which is completely unconnected to Earth Life could be analysed and shown to have no genetic link with any organism on Earth, assuming the DNA of the organism can be recovered (or, even better, the fact that such an organism might not even utilise DNA at all).
Every organism on Earth has a genetic link back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, so determining if any given organism is terrestrial or not should be routine and indisputable.
Every organism on Earth has a genetic link back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, so determining if any given organism is terrestrial or not should be routine and indisputable.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
And as we've discussed in other threads, there are plenty of genius level PhD holding folks that believe in UFOs with no evidence. Obviously Garry Nolan comes to mind. A geneticist at the very prestigious Stanford University and founder of multiple bi-tech companies, he still spends time testing bits of magnesium that might have come from a crashed UFO, because a 70 year old anonymous letter to a news paper said so.
He also did unnecessary genetic testing on the looted remains of an indigenous child because UFO contact guru Dr. Steven Greer said the child might be an alien. PhDs are no guarantee of reliability.
I would go so far as to argue there is no such thing as a "reliable" witness when it comes to UFO/UAPs because there is no "reliable" definition of what is being witnessed. We've already discussed the fallacy of the "trained observer" The idea that a police officer or a pilot is somehow more "trained" in regards to "observing" things than the average Joe. None of them are trained to observe UFOs, because no one can agree on what a UFO is, other than it's unidentifiable.
While we can probably categorize some people as likely unreliable, due to a number of factors such as mental health issues or just bad eyesight, I'm not sure we can say others are more reliable when it comes to describing something that is by definition unidentifiable. In fact, the history of UFOs is that they are often described as very identifiable, according to the prevailing zeitgeist. In general, the flying saucer or cigar shaped was popular in the '50s-80's. It's what people described seeing, just as it was popular in the media and culture of the time. In the '90s the black triangle gained popularity with the advent of stealth aircraft. In modern times the Tic Tak and the orb have become popular. And note, black triangles are nothing like orbs. Many of these supposedly reliable observations are mutually exclusive.
So what are our reliable witnesses seeing? Flying saucers? Orbs? Tic Taks? All of the above or none of them? We don't know, because in the end a report by a supposedly reliable witness is just an anecdote about something they couldn't really identify. By definition a UFO is unidentifiable, yet our witness almost always ends up identifying what they saw as something identifiable, like a black triangle. Identifying something that is unidentifiable is not an indication of reliability.
In the end, it's not some sort of concerted effort by nefarious forces that stymies scientists from studying UFOs, it's the lack of anything to study. One cannot study anecdotes, regardless of the reliability of the person offering the anecdotes. Look at the people that do study UFOs, what do they study? Bits of industrial junk because there's a UFO anecdote attached to it. 70 year old photographic plates. Bits of iron from the sea floor. There's just no there, there.
Ann K
Senior Member.
"Here's a clip someone created and it looked sort of like that" is not what I'd call "details". Not even the very most basic data of time, date, location, direction, etc therefore we cannot even find whether there were other witnesses or other views from different angles. I remain unenthused.We went there a year ago, you were not enthused.
See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/can-ufo-uaps-be-studied-scientifically.13556/post-319429 and replies; also https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...-side-of-the-moon-or-alaska.13504/post-319102 .
It's a "light in the sky" type sighting with no photos.
John J.
Senior Member.
I think that has to be right, we cannot know what you saw/ experienced or any relevant factors involved other than that which you recall and report.
As you say, reported sightings of anomalous flying craft have been made by people who are held to be reliable, honest and not prone to unusual claims or beliefs. Police officer Lonnie Zamora comes to mind, Socorro 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident as a rare example of an apparently solid witness reporting a structured craft, and beings possibly associated with that craft (although I very much doubt he saw an alien spacecraft).
I'd add, in the spirit of @NorCal Dave's post #290, that Zamora's craft didn't show the radical speed or manoeuvrability of many later claimed sightings; there seem to be trends in UFO characteristics that might be dependent on the popular perception of what UFOs should look like. Influential American SF magazines portrayed disc-shaped/ spherical spacecraft for at least 18 years before Arnold's 1947 sighting, from which a journalist's misunderstanding originated the phrase "flying saucer" before flying saucers were observed. The subsequent early 1950s hoaxes of George Adamski gave us the prototypical flying saucer; similar craft were reported (and received media attention) up to least 1977;
below, Adamski "Venusian scout ship", drawings by schoolchildren from Broadhaven*, Wales. 1977 (see Broad Haven UFO sightings marked 40 years on, BBC News, Wales 04 February 2017):
There was an increasing awareness (1970s on?) that Adamski's craft resembled a part of some chicken brooder lamps before it was realised that it was almost identical to the lid of some gas lamps sold via the Sears catalogue (as in my avatar).
Does this mean all those who saw Adamski-style saucers were lying? Definitely not (Although Adamski must be regarded as an influential hoaxer). But does it mean that some honestly-reported sightings might have been influenced by the contemporary milieu? Probably.
Our (collective) problem is: Many apparently unimpeachable witnesses have seen / experienced UFOs, ghosts, yetis, Chupacabra, Nessie, examples of psychic powers, communication with the deceased etc. etc.
Their claims are often interesting and receive media coverage- the tone of which might vary depending on the outlet, but I'm not persuaded that there is any systematic (even unofficial/ self-imposed) attempt to suppress or ridicule these accounts (while accepting that there might have been a less accepting culture within e.g. some military units in the past).
Even before the internet provided an egalitarian means for people to publish and share their experiences, there were many, many newspaper stories, TV news slots and documentaries; TV movie "recreations"; magazine articles (the once very popular Reader's Digest comes to mind); magazines and partworks and books from established, professional publishers that covered reports of UFOs and other interesting but unestablished phenomena without any obvious bias, and sometimes without any real critical examination whatsoever.
Where these phenomena have been investigated by scientists- and sometimes by committed (and arguably non-sceptical) amateur investigators (e.g. Jenny Randles re. the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident, explorer Andrew Benfield re. the yeti)- nothing has been found that realistically demonstrates the real-world existence of any of the above-mentioned phenomena. But claims for all these phenomena continue.
Nowadays, it is not difficult for most experiencers of unusual phenomena to find others who claim to have had similar experiences if they so choose, and to be shown purported evidence that might reinforce a particular interpretation of what they have seen/ experienced. Equally, the same is true for people who hold pretty much any form of belief or experience, some considered "mainstream" (e.g. as might be found on websites for major political parties in Western nations), some less so (alternative medicine, literal belief in some religious texts, "race"-based theories of intelligence).
All those sets of beliefs are deeply (and no doubt honestly) held by some people, and all those beliefs have adherents who can point to what they regard as evidence for their beliefs. But it is unlikely that all those beliefs are correct.
(Edited to add: The last example I gave reminds us that some honestly-held beliefs can be not only wrong, but deeply pernicious as well).
We know individual people have unusual experiences, and this has always been the case: In ancient myth, religious texts, in folk tales across the centuries, later in parish records, local almanacs and journals, the records of doctors and "men [and women!] of letters", later still news reports, military logs etc.. There are many possible reasons why honest well-meaning people might see or experience something unusual that isn't what it appears to be; some of these reasons have been shown to be the correct, or overwhelmingly likely, explanation for some UFO sightings.
The fallibility of human perception and witness testimony is beyond doubt. It has been shown countless times in legal/ policing contexts, in reports from and in-flight recordings of aircrew, and can be repeatedly demonstrated in psychology experiments.
Where an unusual observation is an accurate description of a physical reality, it is usually confirmed by others, and accepted by most relevant scientists/ informed others who were perhaps formerly sceptical, in a reasonably short space of time.
Without examinable, testable evidence, even experiences that are of great significance to the experiencer must be regarded as questionable if they are taken as a basis for unusual claims. This shouldn't be a matter of how much we like the claimant, agree with them on other issues or want them (or ourselves) to be correct. The claim that there are flying technological artefacts that clearly demonstrate behaviours unachievable by any likely human technology is unusual, and (AFAIK) has no testable evidence that might support it. I'm not sure that camphone footage of lights in the sky (which, if recorded over built-up areas are often seen and recorded by a single person or tiny number of phone owners in the area, and which lack the large numbers of corroborating eyewitnesses that might be expected) represent testable evidence.
A superficial examination of footage of lights over New Jersey, late 2024, does not provide any evidence of anything other than misidentifications, sometimes of what are very clearly conventional aircraft being where they should be and doing nothing unusual.
We have no photos/ footage of a clearly structured object that is best explained by it being an ETI artefact (or radically esoteric human technology), at a time when hundreds of millions of people around the world carry phones with cameras, and when many public places are constantly monitored by CCTV (albeit perhaps not encompassing much of the sky in their field of vision).
Back to the point about UFOs apparently changing with fashion, the structured, portholed discs of the 50s, 60s and 70s, sometimes landing, sometimes crashing or dumping metallic waste, have been superseded by more ethereal lights and "orbs". At a time when there has been a vast expansion in satellite numbers and drone usage- this might be a coincidence, but perhaps not. We have seen on this forum examples of lights in the sky pulling seemingly impossible manoeuvres, interpreted by some as UFOs, that have demonstrably been caused by searchlights/ lasers for entertainment or commercial/ publicity purposes.
An issue with relying on one's own observation of something unusual is that it requires total confidence in one's own perception and interpretation. This is sometimes characterised by sceptics (not always very charitably) as "I know what I saw"**, but there is some truth to that labelling: No-one can disprove what another has perceived to be true (although in rare cases it might be possible to demonstrate that the recalled perception was not objectively correct), but the firmness with which a claimant believes that their perception of an event was accurate is no indication of the accuracy of that claim.
I don't think it's objectionable for sceptics to raise the possibility of observer error, even if a claimant is adamant that this wasn't the case, or to propose alternative explanations. We don't object to criticism of Pons' and Fleischmann's announcement of cold fusion- their feelings might have been spared, but our industries and governments might have invested billions in a non-existent technology (probably our billions).
Equally, It would be wrong to insist that everyone should hold the same beliefs, or expect claimants of strange events to grit their teeth and say that they accept a prosaic explanation which they don't believe.
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* All the children in the photos of the Broadhaven Primary School claimants appear to be boys. A large majority of state schools in the UK at that time (as now) were completely mixed (co-educational). It should be possible to establish if that school had boys and girls; if it did, the absence of girl witnesses might be a problem.
**The song Don't Have Nightmares by Lanterns on the Lake, used as a theme tune by the BBC's Uncanny radio and TV series (mainly concerned with accounts of ghosts and poltergeists, but with a couple of shows featuring UFOs) has the repeated refrain, "I know what I saw".
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Ann K
Senior Member.
I would not find it at all surprising if primary school boys were far more likely to watch science fiction or to read comics with that theme than girls did, which might explain their claims and their illustrations. I was fond of science fiction myself, but not until my early teens when I discovered authors like Asimov and Bradbury. The flying saucer / little green men genre, however, I'd have considered too childish by that age.
No it doesn't. The problem with your suggestion, is you want absolutist thinking.
You can also have reasonably high confidence in certain qualitative details of something you saw, and interpret what you saw fairly confidently within the bounds of what you are able to confidently ascertain from that information.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
With respect to all involved, if Our Own beku-mant does not want to talk too much about their experience (which is absolutely their right, no problems with that at all) and has not responded to a suggestion above to share some of the alluded-to cases they think are similar enough to theirs to be relevant (also absolutely their right), then I'd suggest that we've reached the point where further discussion involving that experience is pointless, as only one of us has any idea about what was experienced!
I'd suggest a common position might be that if ANY of us had an experience that convinced us that aliens were involved (or were the most reasonable explanation) that we would find that convincing, by definition, and that somebody else having such an experience about which we have no further information we would not find that convincing.
Not sure there is any more to be said on the topic.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Once again, we're going back 50 plus years with all the information being contained in a 2:26 video from a UFO YouTube channel (2nd video in the post). UFO people make similar claims about the Stephenville TX UFO encounter with over 200 witnesses. Turned out the main culprit behind the event, just made that number up, attributing it to the various people he claimed to talk to. When MUFON showed up they got 17 witness statements, only 8 of which were useful. No where near 200.
As for the military threatening everyone, this is a common UFO trope. The MiBs or other nefarious characters show up and tell everyone not to talk about what they saw or things will go bad for them, then all the witnesses proceed to talk about what they saw anyway and are still doing so 50 years on. So much for the threats.
Here is some other enlightening content from the UFO Database YouTube channel for context:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HmfezBbl7xQ
This is the kind of stuff that creates "stigma".
EDIT: The clip I posted in response to Jonhn J post #291 and Ann K's post #292, which this post was referring to, has been taken down. For anyone confused, the sentence below is in reference to that clip, which featured someone testifying about the Westall case.
The key part of that video clip is it contains some testimony from a teacher, who was an adult at the time, which adds to the available information we have to form our interpretation of the event.
The problem with searching for straw-men to focus on is it weakens one's epistemic practice. In the extreme, some random guy can hang hubcaps from fishing line, and that's about all it takes to misdirect and sabotage it. "Hey look over here, what's that", and one's intellect is defeated.
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Mendel
Senior Member.
Are you claiming that Adamski really saw a spaceship that merely happened to look like a lampshade?
John J.
Senior Member.
And that is relevant to my observation about the Broad Haven UFO sightings in what way?
My point was, IF that school was mixed (which is likely) it is odd that there were numerous boys but no girls who claim to have been witnesses.
And it is odd that the "mainstream media", and UFO enthusiasts, did not picked up on that point in 40+ years of coverage.
Maybe girls aren't ready for the cosmic revelation yet...
[Smiley winky face for those who might miss the intended irony]There is a possible parallel: The (mainly European background, older children) at Ariel School in Zimbabwe (1994) reported seeing "UFOnauts" (although of wildly different types, see threads The Ariel School, Zimbabwe UFO sighting... and Ariel School UFO - glinting reflections through vegetation how to visualise?) but the only children who seem to have been noticeably distressed at the time were younger African children, who are reported as being worried that the school was being threatened by tokoloshes. Tokoloshes are hairy, perhaps baboon-like demons or cryptids from (native) Zimbabwean folklore. They do not resemble any of the UFOnauts described (and drawn) by the (minority of) older children who claimed to have seen UFOs and occupants.
Meaning, the younger children- although distressed by the situation- hadn't seen what the older children claimed to have seen.
As at Broad Haven, although the extraordinary events are reported to have occurred over several minutes, visible to children in a relatively small outside area, most of the children present that day, in that area, saw nothing, and no-one thought to alert a teacher until it was over.
(Respectful mention to @Giddierone who has spent considerable time and effort thinking about the Ariel School sightings).
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Well, I suppose I believe something is "true" or "isn't true". All truths are ultimately compatible. If you think otherwise, perhaps you could explain. At risk of being a bit petty, your apparent insistence that you cannot possibly be wrong seems a little absolutist; fact by assertion.
I have no trouble with absolutist thinking in the moral realm. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is bad. Telling people that childhood vaccinations do more harm than good is bad. Slavery is bad. Lying for personal gain is bad. Subverting the democratic will of an informed population is bad.
I realise some other people, and many people in other times, would disagree. I don't give a fig.
If that makes me an unsophisticated absolutist, I think I can live with that.
I fully accept that what any of us believes to be true might be mistaken. I have believed things that are false. I have had the unsettling experience of realising that my memory of an event or fact was incorrect. I have been taught things by suitably qualified people, acting in good faith, that I have later found to be wrong or inaccurate.
But some of us attempt to base our views on some issues on evidence, and accept scientific methodology as a useful tool (the best intellectual tool that homo sapiens has devised to explain the workings of the physical world, bar none), and hope, whatever errors, oversights and omissions that we (collectively) are sure to make, that this might continue.
The alternative is a world where anecdotes are evidence, claims are treated as reality, and he who shouts loudest determines what is "true".
The problem being, the physical universe doesn't care what we believe. More carbon dioxide emissions = rising global temperature. Less vaccinations = greater preventable childhood death and disability. More belief in unproven (and probably non-existent) phenomena = greater scientific illiteracy, and a reduced ability to confront real problems or find out real things about our universe.
Only if the experiencer is sure, and is right to be sure, that what is perceived is an accurate impression of what is objectively present.
All of us trust the evidence of our own senses. But there is overwhelming evidence that our perceptions, and our interpretation and recall of our perceptions, can be wrong, and that this is particularly relevant to extraordinary claims.
We are all human. None of us is immune to perceptual or other cognitive error.
We cannot know if anyone's subjective account, in the absence of other evidence, of seeing something extraordinary is accurate or not, but I do know that anyone claiming that they could not possibly be mistaken is ignoring decades of overwhelming evidence.
If your stance is "I saw it, therefore my interpretation of what I saw is objectively true, and anyone suggesting otherwise is impugning my honesty and/ or denying the truth" then O.K., but that's not how science works, and it's not how most of the discourse on this forum progresses.
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John J.
Senior Member.
O.K. @beku-mant, what do you disagree with?
My suggesting that you (like me, like everyone else) is not immune to perceptual / cognitive error?
That the invasion of Ukraine/ vaccine denial/ slavery/ subverting democracy is bad?
That scientific methodology is superior to trusting anecdotes and assertions?
Or the checkable facts about the Ariel School/ Broad Haven primary school sightings?
(Hell; I thought I was trying to get a reasonable discussion going in post #291).
My suggesting that you (like me, like everyone else) is not immune to perceptual / cognitive error?
That the invasion of Ukraine/ vaccine denial/ slavery/ subverting democracy is bad?
That scientific methodology is superior to trusting anecdotes and assertions?
Or the checkable facts about the Ariel School/ Broad Haven primary school sightings?
(Hell; I thought I was trying to get a reasonable discussion going in post #291).
John J.
Senior Member.
Can't let a Neuromancer reference go by without acknowledging it. Made me smile.
Ann K
Senior Member.
I think that's from Gertrude Stein.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
I will confess to not understanding this argument, maybe I'm just slow. What exactly is the "straw-man" here? Hoaxes or the trope spouting teacher who is talking away about how he was told not to talk, or the silly YouTube channel that provided the video?
As for the YouTube channel, I specifically said it was for "context". That is, any channel that produces a short about kids finding a miniature UFO, which is clearly a model because nothing ever came of it nearly 50 years later, as a real mystery is questionable at best as a source. As I've said before, presenting silly stuff like this as possibly real UFOs for clicks and likes helps to create a stigma:
Pointing out that many of the supposed UFO sources are credulous at best or straight up hustling at worst is not a straw man, it's an important contextual detail when evidence from these sources is presented.
As for the teacher, I'm confused as @John J. was talking about the Broad Haven UFO sighting in 1977 Wales, whereas the teacher being threatened by the military you offered up is talking about the Westall UFO sighting in 1966 Australia. Nevertheless the Westall video as hosted by UFO Database provides some of the standard UFOlogy story telling one would expect.
It opens by saying over 200 students were threatened by the military:
There are a few cartoon drawings and a CGI recreation of the event, then they throw in the Balwyn UFO photo as it's supposedly from 4 days earlier. Link below to thread on the photo:External Quote:
The video shows 6-7 supposed witnesses, some with drawings none of whom speak. I'm sure there were some, but despite the claim of "over 200" people being threatened by the military, we only hear from a single teacher. It's largely a narrator telling the story with little evidence besides the teacher's recollections of being threatened and a likely unrelated photo. Typical UFOlogy, tell a now canonical version of an event as if it's all true while actually providing very little evidence for any of it. As I pointed out, it is very much like the Stephenville TX UFO case where the canonical story is "hundreds" of witnesses saw the "Walmart sized" UFO, when in fact there is no such number. Link to Stephenville thread below.
You specifically noted that this teacher was threatened, so calling attention to this age old trope in UFOlogy is not a straw man, it's just pointing out that, as usual, the supposed threats were empty words.
If the straw man is hoaxing, then I really don't see how that works. UFOs and hoaxing go together like peanut butter and jelly. @John J. made a good point that the drawings from the Broad Haven UFO encounter closely resemble the hoaxed photos produced by Billy Meire. As if the hoaxed photos actually influenced the zeitgeist of the time and helped define what a UFO was.
I can't fathom a situation where knowing how common hoaxing is in the UFO world and at least being cognoscente of that in any way "defeats one's intellect". Hoax should be right up there with miss-identified birds, planes, stars, satellites, search lights, Christmas displays, balloons and all the other stuff that is so often labeled UFOs and aliens. The same goes for shoddy click bait sources and anecdotes about being threatened for talking about what the person is talking about. One should absolutely apply their epistemological practices to such claims.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/balwyn-melbourne-ufo-picture-1966.12606/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/stephenville-texas-ufo-2008.13446/
Ann K
Senior Member.
Pure speculation follows: I think it's a sprinkler head, perhaps used for crop irrigation if the monsoon fails and the rice paddies don't get enough water.
John J.
Senior Member.
Ah, you're right. You're much more widely-read than I am!
In my defence, Gertrude's output was limited in the SF and technothriller genres, but I'm sure to get round to it.
I was doubly wrong, I was convinced "There is no there, there" was a musing/ recollection of early "cyberspace" lessons by the character Case in William Gibson's Neuromancer, but it turns out it was used by Gibson in the related Mona Lisa Overdrive (by the character Angie Mitchell);
Quote Investigator website https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/10/20/no-there/
An example of the fallibility of recall (at least mine).
Mendel
Senior Member.
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
Ann K
Senior Member.
You've just provided one data point in my earlier surmise as to the gender makeup of people with different reading habits.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/what-evidence-of-aliens-would-convince-skeptics.12366/post-351028
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Males have James Joyce, females have Gertrude Stein. I'm a very tolerant guy, and clearly both have the right to exist, but if the winters ever get cold again and the electricity fails, I know what I'm throwing into the mantel first.You've just provided one data point in my earlier surmise as to the gender makeup of people with different reading habits.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/what-evidence-of-aliens-would-convince-skeptics.12366/post-351028
Mendel
Senior Member.
"Ulysses" burns a lot longer than "Tender Buttons".
JMartJr
Senior Member.
At this point we will all bitterly regret the loss of the old-time "phone book.""Ulysses" burns a lot longer than "Tender Buttons".
I can still get plenty of heat out of mine:
JJB
Active Member
To convince the scientific community and serious skeptics that aliens are visiting Earth, you'd need more than anecdotes, radar blips, or shaky videos. You'd need verifiable, empirical evidence - like physical material of clear non-Earth origin, with documented provenance and scientific analysis showing properties no known human technology could produce.
Multiple independent sensor systems (radar, IR, satellite, etc.) would need to confirm the same object behaving in ways beyond our capabilities. Biological evidence, if claimed, would need genetic testing that rules out all Earth-based life.
Crucially, all of this would need to be shared openly, peer-reviewed, and reproducible - not hidden behind NDAs or filtered through secondhand interviews. A real event would stand up to public, international, and scientific scrutiny.
Without that level of proof, stories and speculation just aren't enough. Scientists don't dismiss claims because they're "paranormal" - they dismiss them because they don't meet the evidentiary standard we apply to everything else.
Multiple independent sensor systems (radar, IR, satellite, etc.) would need to confirm the same object behaving in ways beyond our capabilities. Biological evidence, if claimed, would need genetic testing that rules out all Earth-based life.
Crucially, all of this would need to be shared openly, peer-reviewed, and reproducible - not hidden behind NDAs or filtered through secondhand interviews. A real event would stand up to public, international, and scientific scrutiny.
Without that level of proof, stories and speculation just aren't enough. Scientists don't dismiss claims because they're "paranormal" - they dismiss them because they don't meet the evidentiary standard we apply to everything else.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
To properly *convince* me - not just to open me to the idea that there might be something alien on earth, but to make me reject all other hypotheses as essentially unlikely - I'd need the evidence to be post-facto queriable: testable, probeable, scannable, or what-have-you; and a prerequisite for that is almost certainly that it be tangible.
The origins of the word "evidence" are from the latin "vide" root - as in vision: the "evidence" should make things clear and obviously[*] so. I'm not really asking much more from "evidence" than what the word was coined to imply anyway.
[* EDIT: and in case anyone spots the "vi.." after the prefix and wonders if that also shares the same root, alas not: ob-="in front of", "via"=way - so it's something unavoidable.]
The origins of the word "evidence" are from the latin "vide" root - as in vision: the "evidence" should make things clear and obviously[*] so. I'm not really asking much more from "evidence" than what the word was coined to imply anyway.
[* EDIT: and in case anyone spots the "vi.." after the prefix and wonders if that also shares the same root, alas not: ob-="in front of", "via"=way - so it's something unavoidable.]
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Dad_SB_83
Member
I've had an open invitation to ETs for some time now to just park one of their ships in my backyard, I'll throw some burgers on the grill.
Seriously, though... I am of the opinion that if something non-human (NHI) or extraterrestrial was here poking around, I think it'd either be obvious that this is what was happening, or we'd be completely oblivious. I strongly doubt the truth about ET life is being held in some underground bunker by the government or some contractor that thinks we're all too stupid to handle the truth or wants a monopoly on alien technology.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
I really do think the proverbial landing on the Whitehouse lawn is the only acceptable level of evidence. Videos can be faked. There was the classic example of the multiple videos of a UFO over the Dome Of The Rock in Israel....faked. I have myself produce some amazing AI videos of UFOs, it's astonishing how realistic they now look. So...short of Trump shaking tentacles with a 17 headed being from Beta Reticuli on the Whitehouse lawn in front of all the world's media, I'll remain unconvinced.
Dad_SB_83
Member
Exactly, or at the very least some type of mass sighting of something wild, captured clearly on camera by thousands of people from different angles.
Edward Current
Senior Member.
I dunno, if someone produced a lobster-claw-like thing with flesh that had silicon-based genetic information and non-phospholipid cell membranes, as determined by multiple independent teams of legitimate experts, I'd be pretty convinced that aliens have been on Earth.
Mendel
Senior Member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS
Have that on something we can communicate with, or that brakes and enters orbit.External Quote:
Perene
Member
What I feel is often forgotten when discussing what would convince a skeptic is this:
-- Let's assume:
- Aliens exist somewhere in the Universe, and are responsible if not for multiple, at least some of these objects (or, let's say, just one, of all we have read to this date);
- And also they are so technologically advanced...
That doesn't mean they would know Earth exist. This is the first argument that must be presented at the beginning of every debate, and no one that I have seen to this date, remembers it.
That's right, they can have the most advanced crafts or know physics we will probably be still trying to figure out in the next 1000 years... perhaps the aliens can time-travel to the past, move at incredible speeds, yet...
They all don't know a single thing about US.
Think about every single detail related to humans, Earth and our solar system... they wouldn't know any of it. And if they ever did somehow in the past, that also assumes they imparted that knowledge to the other aliens, or were able to leave this system back to where they came from.
Telescopes and other methods to detect there's life in all sorts of places (assuming the aliens use the same methods as we do...), can't tell from such distances, with any certainty. We would need a telescope with a mirror over a kilometer across, for example, to identify the flag planted on the Moon, which light takes less than 2 seconds to reach. For the closest stars at 4 light-years, they can't tell there's life in here as much as we can't looking at them, if (let's assume) the ETs had 100% the same tech as us.
And to have the same tech from Earth it's already a feat. We have beaten many extinction events to be where we are. I'd say the odds of aliens to survive whatever the Universe throws at them are probably worse than us finding microscopic beings living somewhere in this Universe. We can choose many of the things that happened (and some almost did), that could have wiped us all, and consider they must face the same challenges. Unless their tech allows them to move and settle elsewhere, or deflect killer asteroids.
So it's unlikely aliens living at 40, 400, 4000 light-years, know we exist, in the first place. Signals sent from here degrade over long distances, meaning they are no different from background noise. That tells me the aliens could not communicate with us, too, even if they are fully aware we are located a few light years from them, at least in this fashion (assuming they can't physically visit us, and face the same problems we have, so sending probes is the only way). Our radio waves also have not escaped the planet for more than 100 years, too.
If they don't know where we are or that we even exist, they can't be looking for US.
Whatever they are interested in, and this is not a guess, it's 100% the truth, it's not humans.
Really. If the aliens were like giant bugs, yet smarter than the best of us, they must be looking for that sort of life-form, too, not humans. I am not even expand this argument and say all other animals on Earth cannot have meaningful conversations with our species... that just complicates things even more.
Let's also hypothesize they live in a Star Trek reality, with multiple friends from nearby planets... don't you think that hurts the chances of them bother to seek for more alien life? The desire may not vanish, but it is diminished.
"We were already visited". It's what I have been listening all the time about this, that we had ancient aliens, that we recovered some stuff, kept hidden...
It doesn't make sense, too, claiming aliens stumbled upon Earth at any moment in history. It's not like Columbus discovering America, don't think they are simply coasting through space (or traveling very fast, judging from the reports) and hoping to find anything worth visiting.
No alien would waste resources in the emptiness to search for something it isn't looking for (and don't know what can find, it's not pretty up there, to make senseless trips). That's logic 101.
The fact their crafts can scout through space much better than us means nothing, they may not find anything at all, in a million-year-trip. The chances of that against one day knowing we are here, are vastly greater. Finding Earth is like discovering a drop of water in the ocean. Especially considering how hostile to life most of the Universe is, assuming their bodies can survive the trips.
Unless, of course, these UFOs are actually drones to gather information, or the flying objects are the aliens themselves? Another scenario is Inside them we find immortal machines... a downloaded conscience? Who knows?
Theories about UFOs living underwater, inside volcanoes, or hiding in the Bermuda Triangle are not convincing, too. It would require a permanent presence here, with logistics, energy sources, and no one ever finding physical remains or structures.
That's when I thought of an alternative: what if these UFOs are not deliberately coming here, but instead:
- They are from another dimension or a parallel space-time layer.
- They "bleed" into our reality by accident, perhaps due to fluctuations, energy phenomena, or the way their propulsion interacts with spacetime.
- They appear here briefly, are seen by some of us, and then vanish back into their native dimension.
This would explain why:
- They don't seem to have a mission or consistent behavior.
- They sometimes appear to defy inertia (because they're not fully bound by our physical laws).
- They don't leave obvious traces of atmospheric disturbance or massive gravitational effects (their interaction with our space is partial).
And why such theory makes more sense than anything we have assumed until now?
-- Not only they aren't seeking us, they can't just be hiding in our solar system.
--- If these objects had mass and were sitting somewhere near Earth, say, 20,000 km away, in orbit or beyond, we should have detected them with telescopes, satellites, or other instruments by now (unless we can all agree these suck at detection, or the UFOs can really bypass what we have?). Modern observation systems are sensitive enough that stationary or slow-moving artificial objects of such sizes would show up eventually.
--- So the idea that they're just "parked" in space, waiting to come down or doing whatever they do here, doesn't seem very plausible.
Kinda like a bird that spends most of its time perched high in the cage, only descending briefly for food or water before instinctively flying back up. The Tic Tac UFO incident from 2004 seems to suggest these crafts came from altitudes in the upper atmosphere (around 24 km / 80,000 ft?), regions we probably don't monitor closely enough to detect similar objects (and this one would be too small?). Even if they were orbiting us at 7,000 km, and eventually descended for whatever reason, where would they go? Where is their planet or base?
If we can't answer that last question and simply say they are hiding here, such as living underwater, that raises a million more questions (that follow) - did they built the UFOs in there, too? Or decided to settle on Earth for good? Why such structures were never found? Despite our lack of knowledge from the deep seas.
Plus, if we consider (again, for argument sake) the Tic-Tac speeds to be 10 times faster than the fastest human-craft ever made (based on the reports), that is not too impressive, from a cosmic perspective. To reach the Moon, said UFO needs to travel for almost 6 hours. And that's less than 2 seconds at the speed of light. So where are they going?
This proposed alternative leads to the "Interdimensional UFO hypothesis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdimensional_UFO_hypothesis
Has that been sufficiently proven? No...
John J.
Senior Member.
I don't think our tentative attempts at CETI (e.g. the Arecibo message, Pioneer plaques, Voyager records) are aimed only at human-like creatures.
Maybe intelligent extraterrestrials would be equally eager to find out if any other intelligent beings exist.
Why would they be speciesist?
I'm not a physicist, but I'm guessing the problems involved in trans-dimensional travel (whatever that might mean) make interstellar spaceflight look trivial.
Edited to add:
The title of the thread, "What evidence of aliens would convince skeptics?" kind of implies that there isn't evidence of aliens that convinces skeptics at the moment. The overwhelming majority of scientists in relevant disciplines are also unconvinced.
It isn't because skeptics/ mainstream scientists believe we are being visited by other intelligences that can't be aliens from our universe, it's because they don't believe we are being visited by other intelligences, period. Or their artefacts.
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And there is the added complication of, If Aliens are here why are they hiding? Are you hiding from the ants living in your lawn? Probably not. So why haven't they just started making their presence obvious, like visiting shopping malls, or building mile-wide space stations in orbit, or carving a smiley-face on the near side of the Moon?
And if they were here in the past, where is the trash they left behind? Surely they would have carved that smiley-face on the Moon as a "KIlroy was here" marking for the next space traveling race to pass by to see. Or the remains of a temporary base on the near-side of the Moon?
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