Hmm; I've read your account, elsewhere, as you know; as far as I can see there doesn't seem to be anything about it that is inconsistent with a formation of jets seen under unusual circumstances. But this thread is about pilot misperceptions, while you were in a car. Similar circumstances, but not completely relevant.
Well, that's not what they were, and you clearly have not read the other accounts of the same objects. There is nothing about hovering stationary round objects or their behavior that would suggest fighter jets, or planes of any sort. We have strongly disagreed about a number of your "identifications" in the past too. I stand by those other objections to those, every one.
This is off topic. The topic is "How Can Highly Trained Military Pilots Possibly Misinterpret Things They See?"
Sure.
Absolutely, and most of them are just trying to get attention, if you are referring to certain bloggers, pundits, etc. However, regardless of what UFOs are at the end of the day, military personnel are reporting them regularly and folks who have had access to classified information from Avril Haines to Bill Nelson to the former Chief Engineer at Wright Patterson to Obama, and Bush jr. to name but a few have made noises about UFOs possibly not being something made by humans.
Well it sounds --like Eburacum, that you have a priori made up your mind in advance about UFOs --they can't exist, so every bit of evidence must be fake. As I told him before, that isn't science...
You've got to admit, every claim for which we have sufficient evidence has been debunked. Every single one. The rest are in the LIZ and thus unidentifiable, and of course that includes every one for which the only record is anecdotal. There has never been an event or a piece of matériel that proved to be supernatural, or extraterrestrial, or alien. The odds are overwhelmingly with the naysayers.
That is a paraphrase, you're putting words in @Mendel's mouth. Quote him exactly, with sufficient context, and link to it. If you can't find a quote where he says what you claim - an absolute "can't exist", that means that you have told an untruth, and untruths are definitely neither science nor acceptable rhetoric.
I don't know that you can definitively say that that hasn't happened; you can say that you have never seen any physical testable evidence.
"I maintain that nobody, "UFO expert" or layperson, has ever seen a genuine extraterrestrial craft"
Compare the ufologist to a paleontologist.
Yes. There is no evidence for it, so it's a good working hypothesis that stands uncontradicted. Note that this does not cover the future.
Compare my (and other members') contributions in https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wh...are-real-and-are-or-have-been-on-earth.13253/ .
I haven't said it never happened. I said that it has never been proved. I just know that the huge number of mistakes, misinterpretations, and hoaxes that have been uncovered make it perfectly reasonable that those are the first things we look for in each new UFO claim. We would be remiss to immediately jump to "Gee, golly, THIS one is the extraterrestrial smoking gun!" without first thoroughly checking out the usual suspects.
Ufologists generally study the history of the phenomenon --as I have by going through old article databases with a fine-tooth comb, looking for similarities in accounts, or corroborative sightings.
There are many accounts, some quite old that describe objects very similar to what is being reported today. Here is an example.
no, they can't, because the "UFO phenomenon" is undefined
You can study accounts.
Hehe.. It does seem to be that way! Perhaps "UFO historian" or "researcher" might make more sense. Hoaxes and unexplained cases both are part of UFO history.
You seem to be confused. It isn't up to skeptics to explain what something isn't, although we are free to speculate. It's up to the believers to explain what it is, and bring the receipts.
You're right that skeptics shouldn't dismiss eyewitness reports out of hand- and I find many reports of UFOs, cryptids, ghosts interesting (and entertaining) even if I don't think they necessarily represent what the claimants believe they do, but in the absence of other evidence they remain eyewitness reports of (arguably) improbable phenomena.
Awesome! Thanks.Not really, but if you're suffering I hope this helps...
Yes.
Try that logic, substituting leprechaun or unicorn for UFO expert... A 'Unicologist' is not an expert in unicorns, they are an expert in the stories/myths/lores/beliefs about them. There is no ability to make predictions that can be validated with scientific criteria: this for me is a large part of why UFO expert is a red herring. They have no working hypothesis that is testable/repeatable.
It really depends.
I agree with most of your post, but the Drake equation, being entirely without numerical factors, doesn't really tell us anything about the likelihood of alien visitation.
Yes. But we're learning to look for signs of life in nearby systems and therefore test that likelihood.
Agreed, but that might also include data gathered from particular encounters that is not wholly subjective.
I'm happy to retract the statement, but I don't believe there is a way to say definitively that it has not happened. I think it has.
Why are you even on this forum? You are clearly a "trust me bruh" evidence type of believer. Whereas we skeptics need solid proof and testable evidence. We do not run headlong into a story and say "that's aliens". You clearly are a believer just from stories. We need more than that. Sorry if this bothers you. And it is not up to us to come up with a "good explanation for the Lubbock lights". It's up to the person making the claims as to why it's space elves in flying saucers.
it could be a variation of the Anthropic Principle
UFOs by definition are unidentified. Certainly there are people involved in national security whose job it is to identify knowns from unknowns. Ologies are ologies; in the case of UFOs this often involves studying past accounts. If physical evidence surfaces that can be tested and isn't paper mache, then that would change.
Encounters with technologies not made by people, that is.
Well, I'm not really a trust me bruh kind of guy. And I have a strong interest in science like the rest of you. Some of my best childhood friends became science professors. In fact I never posted about UFOs before 2010, with my first experience that set me to looking at old accounts. If yiu were going to try and understand a little known phenomenon like ball lightning, it wouldn't be a bad idea to look at historical accounts to get some context and perhaps more understanding and look for corroborative descriptions. It's possible to do this; historians do it all the time. I understand that you want incontrovertible physical evidence.
But are they unidentifiable?
