A Tear In The Sky - Nimitz/Tic-Tac/Catalina UFO Documentary

[Gaspa]

i just discovered they made a panel on their last expedition. interesting stuff. dunno if they have released the data yet, i l ask in their discord.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avCDzCxjPEM

I've been watching this in my spare time and one of the things that is really strange is the RNG. It is brought up a few times, one of them is at 1:40:30 (timestamp link).

Can someone explain to me why they are looking at a "random number generator"? Are they literally looking for patterns in noise? This smells like ghost hunting stuff. There is text in the slide that says "Why the heck would we bring this?!" but it doesn't really explain anything. I mean there is no reason to believe that this circuit would detect "exotic propulsion" that "affects the spacetime manifold in fundamental ways". It's just pure gobbledygook.

I mean, the RNG is based on zener diodes, which is a physical thing, an electronic component in a circuit that probably can be affected by electromagnetic noise and such, but if you want to pick up EM signals, there are circuits with antennas, filters etc. that are designed to do just that.

This stuff too often is an explanation looking for a mystery, instead of a mystery looking for an explanation.

(edit: fixing incomplete sentence)

 

[Ravi]

Agreed @Gaspa

What is just not really scientific about this (I am of the empirical kind), is the "experiment by luck" approach. Scientific studies rarely start randomly measuring, there should be a reason for you to look somewhere. Randomly looking if you can spot something odd is what they seem to do..
The whole problem with the ufo phenomenon (whatever you want to believe of it) is the randomness of the cases, so I cannot really blame them for not having a solid (theoretical) starting point. But, nevertheless, the "research" as they claim to have been done, is not based on a theory or mathematical baseline.

 

[FatPhil]

Can someone explain to me why they are looking at a "random number generator"?

Because finding words and phrases distributed at arbitrary intervals throughout the letters of /Moby Dick/ is out of fashion nowadays?

 

[NorCal Dave]

an someone explain to me why they are looking at a "random number generator"?

I'll have to do some more looking, but I remember coming across the IONS website awhile back. It's the Institute Of Noetic Science and was founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell in the early '70s. Their Chief Scientist is currently Dr. Dean Radin, who is big into collective conciseness and ancient wisdom.

One of their big projects, IONSx, is attempting to show the ability to mentally or psychically, affect the physical world:

Nonlocal consciousness effects have been objectively demonstrated, by the IONS research team and by our many colleagues worldwide over the past 140 years, to a level of confidence such that further proof-oriented experiments are no longer necessary. The next research advancement, as reflected by most studies that are being conducted today, are process-oriented experiments, which are interested in what factors modulate these effects. Beyond those studies, the next moonshot or blue-sky advancement is to show that some of these effects are also pragmatically useful, even if we do not yet fully understand the underlying mechanisms.

They also have projects looking at, you guessed it, RNG and the possible effects of a "force-like causal influence"

A long-term psychokinesis experiment, the Global Consciousness Project, collected 23 years of random number generators and resulted in a 7 sigma anomaly. This project will investigate if that result is due to a force-like, causal influence on probabilistic events, or a passive effect based on precognition of fortuitous fluctuations in a random walk.

https://noetic.org/research/analysis-entropic-anomaly-23-years-random-data/

Given the stated mission of IONS:

The mission of the Institute of Noetic Sciences is to reveal the interconnected nature of reality through scientific exploration and personal discovery.

As scientists focused on what are common but not often understood phenomena, we are also aware of the vast historical records of wisdom practices that also speak to the mysteries and possibilities which allow us to access more of our human capacities. At IONS, our scientists apply the rigors of their respective disciplines to explore such phenomena, with a focus on understanding humanity's inherent interconnectedness and the inner wisdom common to us all. When we collectively embody our true interconnection and embrace our inner wisdom we envision the creation of a more compassionate and thriving world.

https://noetic.org/about/

One can suggest that the "force-like causal influence" that's affecting the RNGs is likely "humanity's inherent interconnectedness".

Which is a long way of saying that in some fringe science groups there is a belief that outside influences such as human collective conciseness, or maybe in the case of UAPx, UAPs can mess with a RNG.

 

[Ann K]

(From your citation "...level of confidence such that further proof-oriented experiments are no longer necessary."

That sounds a lot like "Just believe us, and don't bother to do any actual science." I tried looking up their society, but huge steaming piles of woo give me heartburn.

 

[Mendel]

One can suggest that the "force-like causal influence" that's affecting the RNGs is likely "humanity's inherent interconnectedness".

How do they know that it's that, and not fairies/ley line fluctuations/the stars?

 

[MapperGuy]

- do they have flightradar24 to identify known aircraft?

- can they even track accurately where these cameras are pointed?

If the cameras were mounted on accurate electric gimbals with tracking, you could use some master optics to acquire a target and slave everything else to it, including the telescopes. Or mount everything in one huge frame.

Optical ranging accuracy depends entirely on your angular resolution and the width of the base line. "At right angles" simply means the baseline is wider than the object distance (and that you know in advance where the object will appear), but it's not required. Looking in approximately the same direction helps ensure that you're not looking at different targets.

What you are talking about is what I look for when I see stories about groups like this.

While building a "military budget" camera array to capture images of UFO's would be quite expensive, the amateur version would not have to be that complex. Just a rigid framework with multiple cameras capturing different parts of the spectrum, at different resolutions, different frame rates and zoom levels, while always facing the exact same direction. Just being able to compare images from a cheap security camera to those from a high-resolution high frame rate digital camera could be quite interesting. Especially to those who think zooming in on a low resolution image yields the same info as those through taken by a high speed camera looking through a telescope.

A bunch of cameras on different tripods pointing in different directions is just creating a bunch of snapshots of different things at different times. Amateur hour, not professional sky watchers.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Which is a long way of saying that in some fringe science groups there is a belief that outside influences such as human collective conciseness, or maybe in the case of UAPx, UAPs can mess with a RNG.

It appears I may need to correct myself. The follies of speculating, although I will defend myself as engaging in reasoned speculation about what seemed like a strange device to drag up on a roof while UFO hunting.

The actual UAPx report mentions a Quantum Random Noise Generator being used as a baseline:

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c4Uad8mn0iDBv_JCQTNeiWMjBsiH6n7w/view


I have no idea what a QRNG does in relationship to taking pictures. I would think something like a simple time stamp and synced clock would allow one to cross reference the various photos and sensor readings.

That sounds a lot like "Just believe us, and don't bother to do any actual science."

How do they know that it's that, and not fairies/ley line fluctuations/the stars?

It's an interesting facility. They have a mix of legit PhDs, "alternative researchers" and it seems, quite a bit of funding. Looking through their list of experiments, we could start a lot of threads here.

 

[FatPhil]

A long-term psychokinesis experiment, the Global Consciousness Project, collected 23 years of random number generators and resulted in a 7 sigma anomaly.

https://noetic.org/research/analysis-entropic-anomaly-23-years-random-data/

What did they do with their million dollars from Randi?

Just for reference, I've worked in cryptographic fields, and I've looked at pretending-to-be-random data sets so large that things that would be considered seven sigma in a small set were so common that they were pretty much guaranteed. (Yes, I just called a mere terabyte "so large" - it's hilarious, isn't it!) They're committing a statistical fallacy. (And if they're doing that, I don't trust them to even evaluate something as "7 sigma" in the first place.)

 

[Gaspa]

I've looked at pretending-to-be-random data sets so large that things that would be considered seven sigma in a small set were so common that they were pretty much guaranteed.

Just law of large numbers in action.

 

[Mendel]

What did they do with their million dollars from Randi?

Just for reference, I've worked in cryptographic fields, and I've looked at pretending-to-be-random data sets so large that things that would be considered seven sigma in a small set were so common that they were pretty much guaranteed. (Yes, I just called a mere terabyte "so large" - it's hilarious, isn't it!) They're committing a statistical fallacy. (And if they're doing that, I don't trust them to even evaluate something as "7 sigma" in the first place.)

Wikipedia lists 1 in 390 682 215 445 as probability for a value falling outside of μ ± 7σ, so if you have a trillion values, you'd expect to see that 2-3 times.

If you're using "the garden of forking paths", i.e. don't commit to a method of analysis before you've found anything, you can do it with less. For example, if you roll dice 15 times and write down the result consecutively, the chance of rolling the exact number you got is 1 in 470 184 984 576; that result would be a "7 sigma anomaly" if you had committed to rolling this number before you started, but it's a nothingburger if you didn't.

So I'm not really inclined to trust this claim without a review of the evidence. And if I found a RNG not being "random enough", my first thought would be that there's a problem with the RNG, not that there has been some kind of esoteric influence.

 

[NorCal Dave]

They're committing a statistical fallacy.

So I'm not really inclined to trust this claim without a review of the evidence.

I don't have the math skills you guys have, but I still found it dubious. They seem to proceed with, "psy is real, how do we demonstrate it scientifically". Like I said, a quick look at their list of experiments could start a lot of threads.

I shared that study as a possible expalnation to @Gaspa question about the RNG.

Getting back to the UAPx folks, here is their full abstract where they mention the QRNG. I don't see where they really explain what the QRNG was supposed to be doing. More frustrating, is this seems to be an abstract without a paper or report, at least there are no links to one that I can find, not even one behind a pay wall. I guess it's possible this is an abstract for the YouTube video (had to screen shot it):

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c4Uad8mn0iDBv_JCQTNeiWMjBsiH6n7w/view


Are abstracts for YouTube videos a thing?

 

[Mendel]

Are abstracts for YouTube videos a thing?

if you have a conference, lecturers will submit abstracts of their talks beforehand. A paper for the talk may only be required if the conference publishes proceedings.

At any rate, even then a paper may only get written once the talk is accepted (based on the abstract). So the fact that there's an abstract doesn't always mean there's a paper.

 

[MapperGuy]

There are some interesting claims in the Abstract linked above.
I hope they publish something, I would live to know what the random noise generator is for, and the "Cosmic Watch", which is describe elsewhere as a muon detector.
Pictures would be nice, they are after all worth a thousand words.

 

[Mick West]

Can someone explain to me why they are looking at a "random number generator"? Are they literally looking for patterns in noise? This smells like ghost hunting stuff. There is text in the slide that says "Why the heck would we bring this?!" but it doesn't really explain anything. I mean there is no reason to believe that this circuit would detect "exotic propulsion" that "affects the spacetime manifold in fundamental ways". It's just pure gobbledygook.

There's a trend in UFOlogy that posits that UFOs alter reality. This is poorly defined, and seems to have come up as a way of explaining why witnesses to the same event often have different perceptions. It also ties in with the idea that UFO witnesses have latent psychic powers, or at least special brains (see Gary Nolan's brain research), and then the Noetic stuff where imagined signals in random number generators are used as evidence of psi powers. All somewhat related to Jaques Vallee's influence on UFOlogy.

I got a Galton board for Christmas, as it's one of the randomness generators that have been used to test this type of thing, and I want to write an article about it at some point.

I dought they could clearly articulate what the RNG was for on a physical basis - but basically they figure that the reality distortion field of a UFO might skew it one way or the other, so they can use the display of an RNG as a UFO detector of sorts.

All pretty nonsensical.

 

[Ann K]

I got a Galton board for Christmas, as it's one of the randomness generators that have been used to test this type of thing, and I want to write an article about it at some point.
View attachment 56963

I dought they could clearly articulate what the RNG was for on a physical basis - but basically they figure that the reality distortion field of a UFO might skew it one way or the other, so they can use the display of an RNG as a UFO detector of sorts.

All pretty nonsensical.

Looks like a sleek, high-tech version of a game we had in the 1950s (which I think was many years old even then).

 

[NorCal Dave]

got a Galton board for Christmas, as it's one of the randomness generators that have been used to test this type of thing,

That has got to be near the top of the list:

"Christmas Presents for the Skeptic that has Everything"

I've only made it through about 3/4 of the UPAx YouTube video, just listening on my morning walk. Supposedly they get into the RNG with the 3rd speaker. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll have at least what they claim it's all about.

 

[Mendel]

Supposedly they get into the RNG with the 3rd speaker.

if they do, please share the time when the topic starts

 

[NorCal Dave]

if they do, please share the time when the topic starts

I worked through most of the rest of this video, but honestly, it's well over 2 1/2 hours of 2 guys talking at a podium or some very densely worded slides. Near the end there is a Q&A session with a moderator, the 2 afore mentioned guys and a third guy off screen that is at the conference virtually, but they don't seem to show him.

It's during the Q&A session that the QRNG comes up and it's answered by the virtual guy off screen and of course his connection breaks up a bit.

At 2:11:04 the question is asked about what the QRNG is for followed by the response. Here it is using Closed Captioning:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avCDzCxjPEM&t=8453s


It gets a bit garbled, but I get him saying the QRNG is used to set a base line and also just in case there is a space time anomaly. The altering of reality in the presents of UAPs is a thing for some as Mick alluded to in post #55. It's also a thing in the New Age collective conciseness realm as I noted in post #44.

I guess the thought with both groups is that if a UAP/collective conciseness event happens and it alters the space time continuum, this will be manifested by QRNGs or RNGs generating demonstrably non-random outputs?

It also begs the question, "A baseline of what"? A baseline of what a QRNG outputs in every day normal circumstances? If so, wouldn't that be the equivalent to a control? But if looking at the results of the QRNG is a control/baseline, then it should not be done while also looking for and claiming to have found radioactive anomalies that corresponded to strange things captured in night vision googles, right?

I would think a baseline for the output of a QRNG would be collected in a different time and place to be used as a true control. This assumes of course that UAPs and/or the collective conciseness can alter an RNG in the first place.

 

[Mendel]

It also begs the question, "A baseline of what"? A baseline of what a QRNG outputs in every day normal circumstances? If so, wouldn't that be the equivalent to a control? But if looking at the results of the QRNG is a control/baseline, then it should not be done while also looking for and claiming to have found radioactive anomalies that corresponded to strange things captured in night vision googles, right?

I would think a baseline for the output of a QRNG would be collected in a different time and place to be used as a true control. This assumes of course that UAPs and/or the collective conciseness can alter an RNG in the first place.

yep, sounds like cargo cult science to me

 

[JMartJr]

his assumes of course that UAPs and/or the collective conciseness can alter an RNG in the first place.

And that nothing else can.

 

[MapperGuy]

OK, based on what Mick said I guess I understand why they have the QRNG and Cosmic Watch. They are looking at measurement instruments that might be influenced by a UFO, somehow, if a UFO should happen to fly by while they are watching. Makes sense, and in this case it looks like an inexpensive way to maybe capture data. You never find the things you are not looking for.

But in this case I would suggest they have a dozen identical sets of instruments scattered around the planet operating simultaneously, as a check on whatever data they might get. Perhaps the UFO's effect is limited to their immediate area, or perhaps its planet wide, or perhaps what they measure at their site is coming from a far distant source and has nothing to do with that UFO hovering over their heads. Data at one location is nice, data from many locations may tell you far more.

I still want to see the pictures of their UAP's, as well as some of the known objects. The pictures of knows would tell you about the quality of their instruments and help judge the quality of the UAP photos.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I still want to see the pictures of their UAP's,

This is an example of what they were showing in the video. It appears that they were literally trying to hold a camera lens up to the viewing lens of night vision googles. Because this "orb" doesn't flash, they say it can't be an airplane. The screen grab makes it look a little better than it does in the video as trying to film through googles doesn't make for easy to see UAPs. You can check it out for yourself at the 1:24:30 point.

 

[FatPhil]

I worked through most of the rest of this video, but honestly, it's well over 2 1/2 hours of 2 guys talking at a podium or some very densely worded slides.

There's some horrific abuse of mathematics at 00:56:28 - 00:58:30
He's assumed the probability of each putative seagull being in any particular area of sky is independent of that of any other putative seagull, and calculating the probability that all of the 40 seagulls being in the region of the image that's 0.007 of its total area is 0.007^40, which is a tiny number. Bird positions are not statistically independent of each other. We even have a word for such behaviour - "flocks". His willingness to perform an utterly meaningless calculation and then conclude with this snark: "scientists need to be more careful before they make silly comments. Do the simple math that your undergraduate can do." (00:58:21-00:58:30), shows a remarkable level of lack of self-awareness.

If he can make such an egregious mistake, I'm disinclined to plough further through the video. He's just wasted an hour of my time that I'll never get back, he's successfully persuaded me that he doesn't understand how to apply probabilities, I don't feel the need to invest any more time reinforcing that opinion.

 

[jplaza]

OK, based on what Mick said I guess I understand why they have the QRNG and Cosmic Watch. They are looking at measurement instruments that might be influenced by a UFO, somehow, if a UFO should happen to fly by while they are watching. Makes sense, and in this case it looks like an inexpensive way to maybe capture data. You never find the things you are not looking for.

I disagree. It does NOT make sense, since they have no theory, not even any hypothesis on why or how UFOs would/should influence a RNG. It is just a "happy idea", a "just in case" idea, trying to be lucky. Like blindly trying to hit a piñata, without knowing if there is a piñata to start with.

The stereotypical image of lucky discoveries in science are not as common as it may seem.

 

[Mendel]

Like blindly trying to hit a piñata, without knowing if there is a piñata to start with.

and then to conclude that whatever you manage to hit must be a piñata

 

[Ann K]

I disagree. It does NOT make sense, since they have no theory, not even any hypothesis on why or how UFOs would/should influence a RNG. It is just a "happy idea", a "just in case" idea, trying to be lucky. Like blindly trying to hit a piñata, without knowing if there is a piñata to start with.

The stereotypical image of lucky discoveries in science are not as common as it may seem.

QRNG and Cosmic Watch? Aren't some of these the same folk who found a magnetic anomaly on Skinwalker ranch by using a cell phone compass and walking up to a metal fence line, and attributed it to something supernatural? I'm forcibly reminded of people who carry thermometers and EMF detectors to find "ghosts" in abandoned houses, or those who hear animal sounds in the woods at night and solemnly intone to camera "Sounds 'squatchy'".

It's just so much razzmatazz, showmanship to impress the gullible. It adds nothing material to the subject.

 

[NorCal Dave]

There's some horrific abuse of mathematics at 00:56:28 - 00:58:30

Thanks Phil, I saw this and was going to bring it up to get the opinion of you, and others with better math skills than myself about it. You saved me the time.

I got that what he was trying to say was that "there is a low probability that a flock of seagull would appear at the exact same area where there is a hole in the clouds". I think. But that assumes that what they were seeing is in fact a hole in the clouds. Even then, if they are filming off the coast of So Cal, I would think the probability that there are flocks of seagulls, pelicans and other sea birds in any given area of the sky at any giving time is somewhat high, right? They should eliminate the possibility of sea birds appearing on a video taken over the sea through practical means before snarkely dismissing the idea with mathematical gymnastics.

He seemed to get equally snarky earlier in the video when describing his paper that he wrote using "simple undergraduate level math" to determine that some UAPs are traveling at Mach 45-50. Having proved the speed of the UAPs with "physics" he concludes they are likely alien. I guess I'll have to track down his paper to see what it is he actually perorming his calculations on. In the video it seems to be reports from pilot:

He uses basic kinematics:

Simple to calculate:

And when applied to the radar returns of the Tic-Tac in the Nimitz case, he arrives at Mach 50:

Here is his slide that lists the paper in question:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avCDzCxjPEM&t=409s

QRNG and Cosmic Watch? Aren't some of these the same folk who found a magnetic anomaly on Skinwalker ranch by using a cell phone compass and walking up to a metal fence line, and attributed it to something supernatural?

Its interesting that in the Q&A section of the video Szydigas says that while a Cosmic Watch is basically a muon detector, they are using it "beyond what it was deigned for" and more like a "Swiss Army Knife". So who know what they're detecting.

They're also going to use the Cosmic Watch to analyze crashed UAP parts.

And yes, somewhere in the video Szydigas does drop "Skinwalker Ranch". I'll have to find it at some point.

 

[Itsme]

He seemed to get equally snarky earlier in the video when describing his paper that he wrote using "simple undergraduate level math" to determine that some UAPs are traveling at Mach 45-50.

The "simple undergraduate level math" was applied on the ATFLIR video, but alas it contained an undergraduate level mistake...

When their paper was put online for peer review, I pointed out this undergraduate level mistake. Their only reply consisted of snarky remarks plus lots of smoke and mirrors. They published the paper with the errors left uncorrected.

My peer review remarks and their replies are still online: See comment 2 on this peer review site:
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1

 

[Gaspa]

Makes sense

Does it, though? Does it make sense to look at random noise just in case something in the sky can be correlated to a perceived anomaly in it? There is no good reason to believe this is able to pick up anything. It is an "inexpensive" way to create meaningless noise, that's all. But when I look at it as an engineer, they are simply adding more noise into their data. This is not only inefficient, it is counter-productive. Even if they got the tool for free, they would be better off without it.

IF they claim to find anything with it, I bet you they'll be as likely to correlate such "anomalies" while looking through data unknowingly taken from a different time and place, call it a "blind control" for their method of detection, as they are for the data from the time that something was found in the sky.

I am having to strongly fight back my tendency to be sarcastic, here, as this forum doesn't seem to be the place for my snark. Let's see if this sticks: The fact that this is not just your regular RNG, but a Quantum RNG, no less, just makes this more of a joke.

His willingness to perform an utterly meaningless calculation and then conclude with this snark: "scientists need to be more careful before they make silly comments. Do the simple math that your undergraduate can do." (00:58:21-00:58:30), shows a remarkable level of lack of self-awareness.

Exactly. I don't even think that blotch with dots was necessarily birds, but his argument was utter nonsense.

Has anyone mentioned yet that @Mick West got a "shoutout", of sorts, in the video? Starting at around 2:28:41.

...it's just like how Mick West will take the Nimitz encounter and he can debunk the FLIR or the radar or the pilot testimony but not when you put them together then it's a lot of coincidence. So it's similar with the hole and the dots... [Szydagis is interrupted]

OH man. It seems like debunking each individual evidence for a claim is not sufficient. One would also need to explain how such "coincidences" happen.

The fact that they keep repeating the debunked "MACH 50" (or whatever) claims is just so cringeworthy.

 

[Ann K]

My peer review remarks and their replies are still online: See comment 2 on this peer review site:

Thanks. I wondered when I read this if your mention of @Mick West was what triggered their disparaging rebuttals.

 

[NorCal Dave]

OH man. It seems like debunking each individual evidence for a claim is not sufficient.

Wait a tick. It seems that he's saying Mick "can debunk the FLIR or the radar or the pilot", emphasis on CAN. If the individual debunks are accurate, then there is no point in putting them together, right?

 

[Gaspa]

If the individual debunks are accurate, then there is no point in putting them together, right?

One would assume so.

 

[FatPhil]

The "simple undergraduate level math" was applied on the ATFLIR video, but alas it contained an undergraduate level mistake...

When their paper was put online for peer review, I pointed out this undergraduate level mistake. Their only reply consisted of snarky remarks plus lots of smoke and mirrors. They published the paper with the errors left uncorrected.

My peer review remarks and their replies are still online: See comment 2 on this peer review site:
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1

Please quote the material you are making reference to, so (a) people don't have to pop off elsewhere to find it; and (b) if that site changes, there's a permanent record of the pertinent material here. (Often called the "no-click" policy here.)

Comment 2
Received: 17 September 2019
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The analysis of the Nimitz ATFLIR video in 1.4.3 is built on the wrong assumption that the ATFLIR's 'gaze' does not move relative to the object.

You can see the angle of the ATFLIR 'gaze' in the ATFLIR display: the ATFLIR 'gaze' moves steadily from right to left while it is locked on the object. This means that the object is slowly moving right to left with respect to the jet, even if the ATFLIR keeps it locked in the center of the display which means we see no movement in the display at all.

When the ATFLIR lock is broken, it suddenly stops gazing at the object while the object continues its right-to-left movement. This causes an illusion of sudden acceleration on the ATFLIR display, which looks even more dramatic due to a zoom change halfway the object's drift out of the ATFLIR field-of-view.

The angular velocity of the right-to-left movement of the object can be computed from the data on the ATFLIR display, so it is possible to predict the time it takes for the object to drift out of the display when the ATFLIR suddenly stops looking straight at it. This time exactly matches the time in the video. A detailed analysis with a graph can be found here: https://www.metabunk.org/posts/222154/ .

Conclusion: The slow right-to-left movement of the object throughout the whole ATFLIR video is the only real movement there is. There is no indication of any acceleration.

However, thanks for the link, of course, even though the hands being clamped over the ears are evident in the response you get:

Response 1 to Comment 2.
Received: 18 September 2019
Commenter: Peter Reali
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: I am one of the cited author's of the paper.
Comment: The analysis of the acceleration of the object is based on when the camera loses lock and is based on an analysis of the size of the object which has been testified by several witnesses that say the object was the Tic-TAc and about the size of an F18. By knowing the field of view of the flir camera it is possible to then calculate the acceleration of the object after it loses lock with respect to the plane. This is detailed in the report. metabunk is incorrect in its analysis and has not studied the video in detail nor the actual specification of the camera.

I don't seem to remember the size of the object ever being an important input into the calculation of the accelleration - were it ever an input into any calculation, it was either algebraically cancelled immediately out, or at worst remain as a term so much smaller than the other values you can ignore it. (For the same reason that sin(x) = x for small x, there's absolutely no need to include an x^3 or higher power term, as if x is small, x^3 is tiny.) Don't quote me on that though.

I love the fact that we've "not studied the video in detail" - that is a truly counterfactual conclusion!

 

[jplaza]

I love the fact that we've "not studied the video in detail" - that is a truly counterfactual conclusion!

It's hilarious, since they use the last 30 frames of the video(~1 second) while ignoring the previous 70 seconds (~2100 frames)

 

[Ann K]

Wait a tick. It seems that he's saying Mick "can debunk the FLIR or the radar or the pilot", emphasis on CAN. If the individual debunks are accurate, then there is no point in putting them together, right?

I get the sense that he is thinking that a whole bunch of nothings add up to something, a common fallacy.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I get the sense that he is thinking that a whole bunch of nothings add up to something, a common fallacy.

Yes, we need a name for this. In strictly debating terms, bombarding your opponent with lots of rabid fire "evidence", each one of which has to be tediously addressed, is of course a Gish Gallop. Named for Biblical creationist Duane Gish.

In writing and non-debate situations, the full load of evidence can be spread out more, but it's the same effect. Szdigas does it here in this video and in his article on Debunking the Debunkers. He lists lots of cases, as if they are factual and provides a link. It's up to the reader to track down each link and case and slowly whittle away at the evidence presented. Meanwhile, he's on to the next thing.

The Sum is Greater Than the Parts Fallacy, or something like that. In my construction days, we had more colorful terms for when people tried to make something look like it was more or better than it really was.

 

[deirdre]

The Sum is Greater Than the Parts Fallacy, or something like that.

illusory pattern perception. or connecting-the-dots.

 

[scombrid]

There's some horrific abuse of mathematics at 00:56:28 - 00:58:30
He's assumed the probability of each putative seagull being in any particular area of sky is independent of that of any other putative seagull, and calculating the probability that all of the 40 seagulls being in the region of the image that's 0.007 of its total area is 0.007^40, which is a tiny number. Bird positions are not statistically independent of each other. We even have a word for such behaviour - "flocks". His willingness to perform an utterly meaningless calculation and then conclude with this snark: "scientists need to be more careful before they make silly comments. Do the simple math that your undergraduate can do." (00:58:21-00:58:30), shows a remarkable level of lack of self-awareness.

If he can make such an egregious mistake, I'm disinclined to plough further through the video. He's just wasted an hour of my time that I'll never get back, he's successfully persuaded me that he doesn't understand how to apply probabilities, I don't feel the need to invest any more time reinforcing that opinion.

But was it a mistake?

 

[derwoodii]

hot afternoon downunder and i just watched/endured this on TV,, what bad plot & movie. i then logged on to MB to find "tear in the sky USS Nimitz" thread top of page, so now wondering if somehow connected or seeded the idea as many movies have done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film)
The Final Countdown is a 1980 American science fiction war film about a modern nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Produced by Peter Douglas and Lloyd Kaufman (founder of Troma Entertainment) and directed by Don Taylor, the film contains an ensemble cast starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Charles Durning.

Plot[edit]

In 1980, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is departing Naval Station Pearl Harbor for naval exercises in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The ship takes on a civilian observer, Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen) — a systems analyst for Tideman Industries working as an efficiency expert for the U.S. Defense Department — on the orders of his reclusive employer, Mr Tideman, whose secretive major defense contractor company designed and built the nuclear-powered warship.