Is Sean Kirkpatrick Leaving AARO? [Yes]

[NorCal Dave]

So only actively now with the government, not former government, have more legitimacy?

No. Legitimacy should be based on evidence. Lacatski has none. In addition to his new claims he's making, he set up and ran AAWSAP, what could be considered a kind of forerunner to AATIP, UAPTF, OSMIOG and now AARO.

Lacastki then wrote a book about his time at AASAP. He never mentioned crashed UFOs, alien bodies or reverse engineering programs. Ever. He did outline how he wrote a misleading Request for Proposal that asked for thoughts on speculative future technology and then admits in his book the program was really about UFOs. Now he's part of the disclosure team?

If we take Lacatski at his word about crashed UFOs, do we take him at his word with the rest of the claims in his book? He thinks UFOs and aliens are manifestations of the same interrelated "phenomenon" that includes ghosts, orbs, a mysterious cotangent from SWR and 7' bipedal wolf creatures among other things.

So, Lacatski is to be believed about crashed UFOs without presenting any evidence because of who he is or where worked. And to many in UFOlogy Kirkpatrick is not to be believed when he says "I've found no evidence for these things". In both cases, there is a lack of evidence.

As noted, if we just believe Lacatski because of his former position, do we now also believe malevolent spooks from SWR were running around suburban Virginia? He's made that claim too, in writing. If one rejects Lacatski's more esoteric claims, but believes his crashed UFO claims it's a bit of cherry-picking to reenforce and already held belief.

One side is making claims with no evidence. The other side is simply rejecting that claim, for now, based on that lack of evidence.

 

[FatPhil]

No. Legitimacy should be based on evidence. Lacatski has none.

One of the problems is that he was in a privileged position to be able to see some evidence that he could not reveal at the time, and in situations like that you have to have a trust model, and that trust model can only sensibly be built on reputation or reliability. Given previous claims of evidence that we have been given later insight into, how reliable was he in reporting the believability of the evidence that he had privileged access to? Or, if you prefer an information-theoretic approach: as a communication channel, what's his signal to noise ratio? Given that person's history, how much weight would/should new can't-show-you-the-evidence claims be given? How much signal would you expect from them?

Of course, because of the problems you list, he is very reputationally tainted, as are many others mentioned in the same context, and a valid (bayesian) conclusion is that if he were to now claim evidence of something it is most likely to be extremely poor, or non-existent, evidence. So you and I reach basically the same conclusion, but I've interposed a layer of probabilities between us non-privileged outsiders and what we currently can't see.

Meanderings deeper into rhetoric follow, feel free to skip:

Back to the information-theoretic perspective, I'm also viewing concepts of "legitimacy", "reliability", etc. as properties of a source, not properties of any individual thing that comes from that source, which does contrast distinctly against your statement above. It's a subtle difference, but it is a very real one in many contexts. A source can be correctly evaluated as unreliable, and that unreliable source can then provide true information without any contradiction - just as a stopped clock can display the right time. We cannot know with certainty the truth of the information until all the evidence is available for examination. And in situations where that's not possible, we can only use knowledge about the source. Yes, that means sometimes we have no alternative but to use what's almost indistinguishable from /Ad Hominem/ or /Ab Auctoritate/. However, we're being *inductive*, not *deductive* - because we can't be deductive, and that changes the rules of the game. However, to fend off the obvious knee-jerk counters, we should be careful to frame our uncertainties suitably. For example, I'd be safer uttering a sentence like "If Lacatski said it, it's probably not true." than one like "If Lacatski said it, it's false."

 

[Mendel]

So only actively now with the government, not former government, have more legitimacy?

Someone with a government position, speaking as the holder of that office, has an official record. There's a bureaucratic paper trail and full accountability. And we know what kind of information that official has access to.
For example, Kirkpatrick has access to anything UAP-related, and his office is set up to process and communicate that information. I can see what he does, and when he claims he has evidence it's highly likely that this evidence actually exists.

When a former official (or anybody else) speaks, you know none of that. If a former official reads a book on Roswell and repeats it to the press, does that give the book more weight? If someone believes Grusch and repeats his claims, does that give those claims more weight? Absent any evidence?

Plus, with Lacatski, he's changed his story, but it's unclear why.

I trust Kirkpatrick for another reason: his approach is truly scientific, and not the pseudoscience that permeates the field. That's the same reason I trust Fauci or Lothar Wieler.

 

[AllTheQuestionsToday]

I can at least speak to the 'changing story' with a mundane prosaic explanation that the doctor himself offered on that podcast--he said he has numerous things in the DOPSR et al clearance pipeline. So if you ask for 1000 things to be able to speak about, you can only do what's allowed. When more is "cleared", some of that can modify what you can say about previously discussed topics.

If you need to say 5 of 5 things to have a topic make sense or be coherent but are only cleared for 1, 2, and 4, and speak to it... and then later get 3 cleared... that can completely contextualize what came before. He very specifically I think said that there was things he wanted in the first book that didn't clear in time (he said it can take well over a year) and that only made it into the second one.

Having known someone who did a DOPSR thing (nothing UFO related) that tracks with the complaints I heard from my acquantance.

 

[Skalman]

I can at least speak to the 'changing story' with a mundane prosaic explanation that the doctor himself offered on that podcast--he said he has numerous things in the DOPSR et al clearance pipeline. So if you ask for 1000 things to be able to speak about, you can only do what's allowed. When more is "cleared", some of that can modify what you can say about previously discussed topics.

If you need to say 5 of 5 things to have a topic make sense or be coherent but are only cleared for 1, 2, and 4, and speak to it... and then later get 3 cleared... that can completely contextualize what came before. He very specifically I think said that there was things he wanted in the first book that didn't clear in time (he said it can take well over a year) and that only made it into the second one.

Having known someone who did a DOPSR thing (nothing UFO related) that tracks with the complaints I heard from my acquantance.

He can still talk to AARO without needing to clear it anywhere else, right? They have the whistleblowing route they asked for and for some reason all the people who say they have seen real, heavy evidence refuse to talk to them?

 

[Rum]

I can't believe Politico doesn't mention where this interview took place. Did I miss the source? And how can it be that such a decision is not announced on an official channel - while an official statement by Kathleen Hicks is quoted. Maybe I should take a little more time to research, but that's missing right now.

Okay, that doesn't change the facts. Now there are memorable statements that perhaps need a little more context. He distances himself from the Loeb study, somewhat half-heartedly, but above all this statement is strange:

In fact, he believes “the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens” — because the alternative is a much bigger problem.
“If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard,” he said. “And that’s not good.”

Content from External Source

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/07/pentagon-ufo-boss-00125883

Yes, somewhat odd that he posits only two options - (1) pilots are reporting observations of Chinese or Russian tech or (2) pilots are reporting observations of alien tech. One might've expected that he'd also offer (3) the very human fallibility of even highly trained people (and their equipment) in the armed forces, especially since he'd just brought up that very option in response to the previous question.

 

[NorCal Dave]

source can be correctly evaluated as unreliable, and that unreliable source can then provide true information without any contradiction - just as a stopped clock can display the right time

I think a lot of UFOlogy operates in this realm. A lot of cherry picking of bits that corroborate a pre conceived notion. Focus on the hits and ignore the misses.

Taken a step further, any hint of evidence like claims from Lacatski or Grusch is taken as proof, while any lack of evidence is considered proof of a cover up. Kirkpatrick is part of the cover up because he’s not confirming the already true claim of crashed UFOs.

Head I win, tails you lose.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Saw this today. It's from Coulthart, so... Haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart reported this week that retired U.S. Army Colonel Karl Nell is one of the candidates being considered to take over the job of outgoing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. Earlier this year, Nell indicated that retired Air Force official and UFO whistleblower spoke the truth about secret crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programs of alien craft.

Content from External Source

Source: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grusch-ally-and-former-army-colonel-karl-nell/id1594940535?i=1000635234293